Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
This is that perfect justice which safeguards the fellowship of the human race of which the philosophers speak; this is the greatest and truest fruit of riches — not to spend one's resources on private pleasure, but toward the welfare of many, seeking no benefit for oneself in the present, since justice alone is what never perishes. It must therefore be held to in every way that from an act of mercy all hope of receiving something back be entirely absent, since God alone is the one from whom this labor's due wage should be awaited. If you look for it from a human being, what you do is no longer kindness but the lending of a favor at interest, and a man cannot be thought to have done well who confers his gift not on another but on himself. Still, everything circles back to one conclusion: give to another expecting nothing in return, and you are truly giving to yourself, because God will pay your wage. Likewise God commands that whenever we prepare a dinner, we should invite to share it those who cannot invite us back and repay the favor, so that no act of our life may go without the office of mercy. Yet let no one suppose that fellowship with friends or affection for kin has thereby been forbidden him; rather, God has made known to us what the true and just work is. We must live with our neighbors in such a way that we understand: this belongs to man, that belongs to God. The chief virtue, then, is hospitality — a thing the philosophers too commend, but they wrench it away from true justice and drag it toward advantage. Cicero rightly says that hospitality was praised by Theophrastus. 'For it seems to me,' he says, 'quite fitting that the houses of distinguished men stand open to distinguished guests.' But here again he strayed in the same way he did when he said that generosity should be shown to the deserving. A wise and righteous person's household should not throw its doors open for the distinguished, but rather welcome the lowly and the outcast; for those illustrious and powerful people can lack nothing, since their own wealth both protects and honors them. Nothing should be done by a just man except what is truly beneficent. But a benefit, if it is repaid, perishes and comes to an end; we cannot keep intact something whose price has been paid back to us. The essence of justice, then, is found in those benefits which remain whole and uncorrupted — and they remain so only when bestowed on people who are in no position to repay them. But that man, in receiving the distinguished, looked to nothing but advantage, nor did this clever man conceal what profit he hoped to gain from it. He says that whoever does this will become powerful among foreigners through the favor of the leading men whom he has bound to himself by the bond of hospitality and friendship. Oh, on how many counts could Cicero's inconsistency be exposed, were I to pursue it! And it would be refuted not so much by our own words as by his. For this same Cicero maintains: the more someone directs every act toward what benefits himself, the further he falls from being a good man. It is likewise his claim that angling for favor, feigning one thing while pursuing another, appearing to act for someone else while actually serving oneself — none of this belongs to a straightforward, open character, but rather betrays a schemer, crafty, deceitful, and underhanded. How then could he defend that ambitious hospitality from being malice? You run around to every gate to invite the arriving leaders of peoples and cities into your house, so that through them you may gain power among their own citizens, and you wish to be seen as just, humane, and hospitable while you are really pursuing your own advantage? This was not so much carelessness on his part — for what could be less fitting for Cicero? — but knowingly and deliberately, through ignorance of true justice, he entangled himself in these snares. That he may be excused for this, he himself testified that he was giving precepts not for true justice, which he did not hold, but for the shadow and image of justice. So this teacher of a shadowy, imagined justice must be forgiven, and truth must not be demanded of one who admits he does not know it. — Redeeming captives from bondage counts among justice's great and splendid works, something Tullius himself likewise commended. 'And this kindness,' he says, 'is useful to the state as well — that captives be redeemed from slavery and the poor be enriched. I set this habit of kindness far above the lavish giving of gifts; this is the mark of serious and great men.' It is, then, the proper work of the just to feed the poor and ransom captives, though even among the unjust, those who do these things are called serious and great; for it is especially praiseworthy to do good to those from whom no one expected it would be done. For whoever does good to a blood relation, a neighbor, or a friend deserves little or no praise, because he is obliged to do it and would be wicked and detestable if he did not do what nature itself and the bond of kinship demand of him — and whatever he does along these lines, glory is not really his goal — avoiding reproach is. But whoever does good to a stranger, someone unknown to him, truly deserves praise, since he was led to act by humanity alone. Justice, therefore, exists precisely where there is no chain of necessity binding one to do good. This office of kindness, then, he ought not even to have ranked above the lavish giving of gifts, as though comparing two goods and choosing the better one. For that lavish giving, by which people cast their patrimonies into gifts, is empty, trivial, and utterly removed from justice. Indeed such things ought not even to be called gifts, when the only ones who receive them are those who do not deserve to receive. Equally significant among justice's works is guarding and standing up for widows and orphans left destitute and helpless — something that divine law prescribes for everyone, since even good judges consider it part of their office to favor such people by natural humanity and strive to help them. But these works belong properly to us, who have received the law, the very words of God commanding it. Those others do perceive that shielding the unguarded is simply just by nature, yet the reason behind it escapes them. For God, whose mercy is unceasing, commands that widows and orphans be defended and cherished for this reason: so that no one, out of regard and pity for his own dependents, should be held back from accepting death for justice and faith, but should undergo it without hesitation and bravely, knowing that he leaves his dear ones to God, and that they will never lack a protector. To take up the care and nursing of the sick who have no one to attend them is likewise a mark of the highest humanity and a great work; whoever does this acquires a living sacrifice for God, and what he gives to another for a time, he himself will receive from God for eternity. That final and greatest office of piety is the burial of strangers and the poor — something those teachers of virtue and justice never so much as touched, for they could not see it, since they measured every duty by advantage. In the other matters mentioned above, though they did not hold to the true line, still, because they detected some advantage in them, they were drawn, as it were, by a certain scent of truth and erred less widely; but this one, because they could see no advantage in it at all, they abandoned. Indeed there were some who thought burial superfluous and said there was no harm in lying unburied and cast aside. Such godless reasoning is rejected on two fronts — the human race as a whole condemns it, and so do the divine pronouncements that require burial. Yet even they do not dare say it should not be done; they only say that if by chance it is not done, there is no harm in it. So on this point their role is less that of people issuing commands than of people offering comfort, so that if this should happen to a wise man, he need not think himself wretched on that account. But we do not say what a wise man ought to bear, but what he himself ought to do. So we do not now ask whether the whole practice of burial is useful or not, but this: even if it is pointless, as they think, it must still be done, if only because it appears among men to be a good and humane thing to do — for it is the disposition that is sought, and the intention that is weighed. We will not, then, allow the image and form of God to lie as prey for beasts and birds, but instead return it to the ground it originally came from, and even for a stranger we will fulfill the duty owed to kin; where they are lacking, humanity takes their place, and wherever a human being is needed, there we will consider our duty to be required. And in what does the reasoning of justice consist more than in this — that what we render to our own out of affection, we render to strangers out of humanity? This is a far surer and more just kind of giving, for it is given not to a man, who gains no awareness of it, but solely to God, for whom an act of justice is the most cherished offering. Someone will perhaps say: 'If I do all this, I will have nothing left. What then? If a great number of people are in need, cold, captured, dying, so that in doing these things I may find myself stripped of my whole estate in a single day — am I to lose the wealth won by my own labor or that of my ancestors, so that I myself must then live on the mercy of others?' What? Do you fear poverty with so small a spirit — poverty which even your own philosophers praise, testifying that nothing is safer, nothing more tranquil than it? What you fear is a harbor from anxieties. Or are you unaware of the sheer number of perils and misfortunes that come bundled with such ill-gotten wealth, leaving you exposed? They will treat you well if they pass from you without your bloodshed. But as it is, you walk about laden with plunder and carrying spoils that provoke the greed even of your own people. Why then do you hesitate to put to good use what some robbery, or a sudden proscription, or some hostile plundering, may perhaps snatch from you anyway? Why be afraid to turn a fleeting, fragile good into an everlasting one, or to entrust your treasures to God's safekeeping, where you need fear no thief, no robber, no rust, no tyrant? Whoever is rich before God can never be poor. If you value justice so highly, follow it: cast off the burdens that weigh you down, free yourself from your own shackles and chains, so that, unencumbered, you may run to God. It is the mark of a great and lofty spirit to despise and trample underfoot mortal things. But if you cannot rise to this virtue — to lay your riches upon God's altar, exchanging perishable things for lasting ones — I can at least relieve your fear. None of these instructions is meant for you in isolation — they apply to the entire people, who are joined together in mind and cohere as a single body. If you alone are not sufficient for great works, do what you can according to your own strength — yet so that you excel in good works as much as you excel others in wealth. And do not now suppose you are being urged to diminish or exhaust your household estate; rather, turn toward better ends what you would have spent on useless things. From the money with which you buy wild beasts, ransom captives instead; from what you spend feeding animals for the arena, feed the poor instead; from what you use to purchase men for the sword, bury the innocent dead instead. What good does it do to enrich degenerate gladiators and train them for depravity? Turn toward the great sacrifice what would otherwise be badly wasted, so that in place of these false gifts you may have from God an eternal gift. Great is the reward of mercy, for which God promises to forgive all sins. 'If you hear,' he says, 'the prayers of one who begs of you, I too will hear yours; if you take pity on those who struggle, I too will have mercy on you in your struggle. But if you do not look on them or help them, I too will turn my mind against you and judge you by your own laws.'
As often, then, as you are asked for help, believe that you are being tested by God to see whether you deserve a hearing. Look inward at your own conscience and, insofar as lies within your power, tend to your own wounds. Yet do not suppose, because sins are wiped away by giving, that you are thereby given license to sin; for they are blotted out only if you give because you have sinned — if you sin relying on the giving, they are not blotted out. God desires above all that a man be cleansed of his sins, and therefore he commands that repentance be done; and to do repentance is nothing other than to profess and affirm that one will sin no more. Pardon, then, is granted to those who slip into sin unwittingly and unwarily; but he who sins knowingly has no claim to forgiveness. Yet even if someone has been purified of every stain of sin, let him not suppose that he should hold back from the work of giving, on the ground that he no longer has sins to wipe away. On the contrary, he ought to practice justice all the more once he has become just, so that what he formerly did as a remedy for wounds, afterward he should do it for virtue's own praise and honor. One more point deserves mention: nobody is free of fault while still weighed down by the garment of flesh, whose weakness lies open to sin's dominion in three ways — in deeds, in words, in thought. Through these steps justice advances to its highest summit. Virtue's first level is refraining from wicked deeds; its second, keeping clear of wicked speech too; its third, avoiding even wicked thoughts themselves. Whoever has climbed the first step is just enough; whoever has reached the second already has perfected virtue, since he offends neither in deed nor in speech; whoever attains the third has genuinely achieved something resembling God's own likeness, since keeping even one's thoughts free of what is wicked to do or shameful to say lies almost beyond human capacity. And so even just men, who can restrain themselves from every unjust deed, are sometimes overcome by mere frailty, so that anger provokes them into cursing, or the sight of something tempting stirs quiet desire within them. But if the mortal condition does not allow a man to be wholly free of every stain, the sins of the flesh must therefore be continually wiped away by giving. It is the single work of a wise, just, and truly living man to place his riches in justice alone; whoever lacks this, though he surpass Croesus or Crassus in wealth, must be reckoned poor, naked, and a beggar. We must take pains, then, to clothe ourselves in the garment of justice and piety, which no one can strip from us and which affords us everlasting adornment. For if the worshippers of the gods lavish care on senseless images and pour out on them whatever precious things they have, even though such images can neither make use of these things nor offer thanks for receiving them — then surely it is far more just and true to honor God's living images instead, so as to gain favor with the God who lives? For these, as they truly use whatever they receive and give thanks for it, so God, in whose sight you do good, will both approve it and pay out the reward of piety.
If, then, mercy is among men a splendid and outstanding good, and is judged the best of things by both divine testimony and the agreement of good and bad alike, it is clear that the philosophers stood far from the good proper to humanity, since they neither taught anything of this kind nor practiced it, but instead always counted as a vice this virtue which is nearly unique to mankind. Here it is worth inserting one point from philosophy, so that we may more fully expose the error of those who class mercy, desire, and fear among the soul's diseases. They do indeed try to distinguish virtues from vices, which is easy enough to do. For who could not, as they do, separate the generous man from the wasteful, the thrifty from the stingy, the calm from the sluggish, the cautious from the timid? — since these good qualities have their proper limits, and if a person oversteps them, he slides into vice: so that firmness of purpose, unless undertaken for the sake of truth, becomes shamelessness. Likewise courage, if it faces certain danger with no necessity compelling it and for no honorable cause, turns into recklessness. Liberty too, if it attacks others rather than resisting those who attack, is defiance. Even severity, unless it confines itself to punishments fitting the offense, becomes savage cruelty. And so they say that those who appear wicked do not sin of their own free choice, nor deliberately pick out evil things, but rather fall into evils under the appearance of good, because they do not know how to distinguish good from evil. These statements are not false, but they are all measured with reference to the body. For to be thrifty, or firm, or cautious, or calm, or courageous, or strict — these are indeed virtues, but virtues of this temporary life. We, however, who count this life as nothing, hold before ourselves other virtues, of which the philosophers could not even form a suspicion by any reasoning. And so they have taken certain virtues for vices and certain vices for virtues. For the Stoics strip a man of all the emotions by whose impulse the soul is stirred — desire, joy, fear, sorrow — of which the first two arise from good things, whether future or present, and the latter two from evil ones. In the same way they call these four, as I have said, sicknesses, holding that they are implanted not so much by nature as adopted through mistaken opinion, and for that reason they judge that they can be torn out by the very root, if the false opinion about good and evil things is removed. For if the wise man judges nothing to be good and nothing to be evil, he will neither burn with desire, nor exult with joy, nor be terrified with fear, nor be gripped by sorrow. We shall see presently whether they achieve what they intend, or what they actually do achieve; for now, their purpose is an arrogant one, and nearly that of madmen, who think themselves able to heal themselves and to strive against the very force and reason of nature.