Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Dearest brothers, God's mercy — the Father's and Christ's alike, generous and never withheld — has done great things for our salvation, and does them still. To keep us alive and restore what was lost, the Father sent the Son; the Son, for his part, agreed to be sent and to bear the name ‘son of man’ so that we might become sons of God. Laid low, he raised up a fallen people; struck with wounds, he brought healing to ours; bound in service, he led the enslaved out into liberty; submitting to death, he opened immortality to those who die. These are vast and generous gifts already. Yet a further mercy, no smaller than the rest, still watches over us: a plan meant to give more thorough care to a man once he has been ransomed. When the Lord arrived, he healed the wounds Adam had borne and drew out the serpent's old poison — then, to the man now cured, he gave a law and a command: sin no more, or something heavier will follow. That confined us, penned within the tight limits of a rule demanding innocence. Human weakness and frailty would have had nowhere to turn, if divine goodness had not stepped in again, displaying works of justice and compassion and clearing a path by which salvation could be kept safe — so that any filth we pick up afterward, we might scrub away through mercy shown to others.
Scripture carries the Holy Spirit's own words: through almsgiving and faith, offenses are washed away — though not the offenses already committed beforehand, since those are cleansed by Christ's blood and by sanctification. Elsewhere it says the same thing differently: sin is put out by almsgiving the way fire is put out by water. The point being proved is this — hell's fire is quenched by the bath of saving water, and in just the same way, works of righteousness and almsgiving smother the flame that sin produces. Baptism grants forgiveness once; but ongoing, unbroken good work, modeled on baptism's pattern, keeps drawing God's pardon back down on us. The gospel makes the same point through the Lord himself. His disciples were criticized for eating without washing their hands, so he answered: the one who made the inside made the outside too. Instead, give what you have to the poor — and suddenly everything is clean for you. What he was teaching, plainly, is that hands are not what needs washing; it is the heart, and the grime inside must go before the grime outside does. Whoever scours what is within has, by that very act, scoured what is without as well — once the mind is clean, the flesh and body follow into cleanness. He then went further, pointing to the source of this cleansing: giving to the poor is required. Being merciful himself, he calls for mercy from us; and because he means to keep safe those he bought back at such cost, he assures us that anyone stained again after baptism's grace can still be washed clean.
Beloved, let us own this healing gift of God's indulgence: none of us is free of some wound in conscience, so let spiritual remedies tend to whatever sins still need cleansing and purging. No one should flatter himself over a spotless, untouched breast to the point of thinking, on the strength of his own innocence, that no medicine belongs on his wounds — for scripture asks: who can boast of a pure heart, or claim to be free from sin? And John, in his letter, puts it plainly: to say we have no sin is to deceive ourselves, and the truth has no place in us. Given, then, that nobody escapes sin altogether, and that calling oneself faultless is either arrogance or folly, how fitting, how generous is God's mercy — aware that even those already healed will pick up fresh wounds afterward, he has supplied saving cures for healing them all over again.
Never, indeed, dearest brethren, has the divine admonition ceased or fallen silent, but always and everywhere, in the scriptures both old and new, God's people have been urged toward works of mercy, and everyone, instructed by the singing and exhorting of the Holy Spirit toward the hope of the heavenly kingdom, has been commanded to give alms. God commands and instructs Isaiah: cry aloud, he says, and spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet, announce to my people their sins and to the house of Jacob their wrongdoings. Only after commanding that their sins be exposed before them, after laying out their wrongdoings with the full weight of his anger, and after declaring that no prayer, no supplication, no fast, not even rolling in sackcloth and ashes, could calm God's wrath or answer for their offenses, did he finally reveal — in this last section — that alms alone have the power to appease God, adding these words: break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house. If you see one naked, clothe him, and do not despise the members of your own household. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your garments shall soon rise up, and righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry out, and God will hear you; while you are still speaking he will say: here I am.
God supplied, in his own words, the remedies for winning back his favor; divine teaching spelled out for sinners exactly what was required — righteous deeds satisfy God, and the merit of mercy washes sin away. Solomon puts it this way: hide your alms away in a poor man's heart, and it will plead your cause against every misfortune. And elsewhere: whoever shuts his ears against the cry of the weak will himself cry out to God one day and find no one listening. A man cannot earn God's mercy without first being merciful himself, nor will he win anything from God's goodness through prayer if he showed no humanity toward the prayers of the poor. The Holy Spirit confirms this same point in the psalms: happy is the one who considers the poor and needy — the Lord will rescue him on the day of trouble. Daniel kept these commands in mind: when King Nebuchadnezzar was tormented and burning with dread over a threatening dream, Daniel offered him a way to turn aside disaster and secure God's help — let my counsel please you, O king: buy back your sins with alms, and your wrongs with mercy toward the poor, and God will bear patiently with your sins. The king ignored the advice and endured the very disasters he had dreaded and foreseen; alms could have spared him from all of it. The angel Raphael says something identical, urging that alms be given freely and without stinting: prayer joined with fasting and almsgiving is good, because almsgiving rescues from death and scours away sin on its own. What this shows is that our prayers and fasts accomplish less without almsgiving behind them, and that requests alone carry little weight unless backed by deeds actually done. The angel is telling us, without ambiguity, that almsgiving is what makes our petitions effective, that it buys life back out of danger, and that it is almsgiving which frees souls from death.
None of this, beloved, do we assert without backing the angel Raphael's words with the proof of an actual event. The Acts of the Apostles records exactly such a case, proving through a deed done and completed that almsgiving rescues souls not merely from the second death but from the first as well. Tabitha had given herself wholeheartedly to righteous work and to almsgiving; when illness took her life, it was Peter who was called to her lifeless body. He arrived without delay, as apostolic kindness demanded, and found widows gathered around him in tears, pleading — not through their own words on the dead woman's behalf, but by displaying the cloaks and tunics she had once made for them, letting her own works speak for her. Peter recognized that such a plea could succeed, that Christ would not withhold his help from pleading widows, since Christ himself was clothed in them. He knelt and prayed, carrying to the Lord, as a worthy advocate, the prayers entrusted to him by widows and the poor; then he turned to the washed body laid out on its bier and said, Tabitha, rise up in the name of Jesus Christ. Peter did not fail to deliver at once the help pledged by the one whose gospel promise was that anything asked in his name would be granted. Death loosened its grip, breath returned, and while everyone stood amazed, her body was revived and brought back into the light of this world. That is the power mercy's rewards carry, that is the strength righteous deeds hold — she who had given widows their means of survival in hardship earned, through the widows' own plea, her recall to life.
The gospel shows the Lord — teacher of our life, guide to salvation without end — giving life to those who believe and, for those already given life, providing still further; and among all his heavenly commands nothing recurs more than this: keep giving alms, stop clinging to earthly holdings, and store up treasure in heaven instead. Sell what you own, he says, and give to the poor; and elsewhere: do not hoard treasure on earth, where moth and rot consume it and thieves break in to steal, but hoard treasure in heaven, safe from moth, from rot, from thieves who cannot break in there — for wherever your treasure sits, your heart will be found beside it. And wanting to show what completeness looks like once the law has already been kept, he told a man: if you want to be perfect, go, sell everything, give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven — then come, follow me. Elsewhere still he pictures a trader after heavenly profit, a buyer of salvation without end, who must spend his whole estate on one costly pearl — eternal life, made costly by Christ's own blood: the kingdom of heaven, he says, is like a merchant hunting fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl worth everything, went and sold all he owned to buy it.
Those he finds working to help and feed the poor, he names sons of Abraham. When Zacchaeus declared: I give half my goods to the needy, and repay fourfold whatever I have taken by fraud, Jesus replied: salvation has come to this house today, for he too is a son of Abraham. Just as Abraham's belief in God was counted to him as righteousness, so too the man who gives alms in obedience to God's command is believing God; and whoever holds genuine faith keeps the fear of God, and whoever keeps the fear of God has God in mind when he shows mercy to the poor. Such a man acts within God, because he believes — because he knows the promises spoken in God's word are true and that scripture cannot lie: barren trees, meaning fruitless men, are felled and thrown into the fire, while the merciful are summoned to the kingdom. Elsewhere he names the faithful as those who labor and bear fruit, but strips that title from the barren and unfruitful, saying: if you proved untrustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with what is genuine? And if you were untrustworthy with what belonged to another, who will give you what is your own?
You may worry that generous giving will eventually drain your estate and leave you in want. Set that fear aside; there is nothing to be uneasy about. Whatever is spent in Christ's service, whatever funds heavenly work, cannot run dry. This is not a promise I make on my own authority — I offer it on the strength of scripture and the guarantee of God's own word. Through Solomon the Holy Spirit says: the one who gives to the poor will never be needy, but the one who looks away will fall into deep want — proof that the merciful and the active never suffer lack, while it is the miserly and the barren who end up poor. The blessed apostle Paul, speaking under the Lord's own inspiration, adds the same lesson: the one who supplies seed to the sower will supply bread for food too, multiplying what you sow and building up the harvest of your righteousness, so that you come away enriched in every way. And elsewhere: carrying out this service will do more than meet the needs of the saints — it will overflow into abundant thanks offered to the Lord, since the poor's own prayer of gratitude to God for our giving and our labor brings back, through God's reward, greater wealth to the one who did the work. The Lord himself, in the gospel, already reading the hearts of such people and speaking ahead of time as a warning to those without faith, says plainly: do not worry, asking what we will eat, what we will drink, what we will wear — that is what the nations chase after, but your Father already knows you need all of it. Seek first the kingdom and God's righteousness, and everything else will be given to you besides. All these things, he says, are supplied to whoever seeks the kingdom and the righteousness of God; and it is these — those who have labored within his church — whom the Lord will welcome into the kingdom when judgment day arrives.
You worry your estate might run dry if you start giving from it freely — and, poor fool, you fail to see that while you fear your goods running short, it is your life and your salvation that are running short; while you watch closely lest your property shrink, you do not notice that you yourself are shrinking, obsessed with money rather than mindful of your own soul; and while you dread losing the estate on your own account, it is you who may perish on the estate's account. Rightly, then, does the apostle declare: nothing did we bring into this world, and nothing can we carry out of it — so, having food and covering, let that be enough for us. Those who set their hearts on getting rich fall instead into temptation, into a trap, into countless harmful desires that drag a person down into ruin and destruction. Greed is the root of every evil, and some, chasing after it, have wrecked their faith and driven themselves through with many griefs.
You fear that your estate may perhaps run out if you begin to work generously from it? But when has it ever happened that the righteous man lacked support? For scripture itself declares that a righteous soul will never be allowed by the Lord to perish of hunger. Elijah is fed by ravens ministering to him in the wilderness, and for Daniel, shut up in the lions' den by the king's order to be their prey, a meal is provided by divine power; and do you fear that food will fail one who works and who is pleasing the Lord, when the Lord himself in the gospel, to rebuke those of doubtful mind and little faith, affirms and says: consider the birds in the sky, which do not sow, do not harvest, and store no crops in barns, yet are fed by your Father who dwells in heaven. Are you not worth more than they? God feeds the birds, and daily food is provided even for sparrows, creatures with no sense of divine things, and neither drink nor food is lacking to them; and do you suppose that something will be lacking for a Christian, a servant of God, a man devoted to good works, dear to his own Lord?
Unless, that is, you imagine that feeding Christ leaves you unfed by Christ in turn, or that earthly things will be denied to those given heavenly and divine ones. Where does such a faithless notion come from — such an impious, sacrilegious thought? What business does a treacherous heart have inside the house of faith? And what of someone who does not believe in Christ at all, and yet goes by the name Christian? ‘Pharisee’ would suit you better. For when the Lord was discussing almsgiving in the gospel, warning us faithfully and to our benefit that prudent generosity now makes friends of worldly wealth who will one day welcome us into eternal dwellings, scripture adds what came next: the Pharisees, lovers of money that they were, heard all this and jeered. We see the same type in the church today — people whose ears are shut and hearts darkened, letting in no light from spiritual, saving counsel; no surprise that they sneer at a servant's preaching, when we see that even the Lord himself was sneered at by such men.
Why indulge yourself with such foolish, empty thinking, as though fear and worry over the future were what held you back from good works? Why hold up these shadowy illusions, these hollow excuses? Confess instead what is true — since you cannot fool one who already knows — and bring into the open what your mind is hiding. Barrenness has cast its darkness over your soul; with the light of truth withdrawn, a thick fog of greed has blinded a heart grown carnal. You are money's captive and slave now, shackled in the chains of greed, bound once more though Christ had already set you free. You hoard wealth that, hoarded, gives you no protection; you pile up an estate whose weight only crushes you; and you forget how God answered the rich man who gloated foolishly over his overflowing harvest: fool, he said, this very night your soul will be required of you — then who will have what you prepared? Why brood over your riches alone, why load yourself with an estate's weight to your own ruin, so that the richer you grow in this world, the poorer you stand before God? Split your income with your God; share your harvest with Christ; let Christ hold a share in your earthly goods, so that he in turn may make you co-heir of his heavenly kingdom.
You are mistaken and deceived, whoever you are, if you believe yourself rich in this world. Hear, in the Apocalypse of your Lord, a voice of this kind rebuking such men with just reproaches. You say, it says, I am rich, and I have grown wealthy, and I need nothing—unaware that in truth you are wretched, poor, blind, and naked. My counsel: buy from me gold that fire has refined, that you may be rich, and a white garment, that you may be clothed and the shame of your nakedness not be seen, and to anoint your eyes with salve, that you may see. You, then, who are wealthy and rich, buy from Christ gold refined by fire, so that once your filth has been smelted away as though by fire, you may be able to have gold that is pure, if you are cleansed by almsgiving and righteous work. Buy for yourself a white garment, so that you who had been naked after the pattern of Adam, and shuddered before, disfigured, may be clothed in the shining garment of Christ. And you, matron rich and wealthy, anoint your eyes not with the devil's antimony but with Christ's salve, so that you may be able to arrive at the sight of God, while you earn God's favor both by your conduct and by your works.