To Whom the Way of Perfection Should Be Opened

Take care, too, when your riper years lead you to teach, that you are not led astray by love of empty glory into teaching at random, to the most impure people, these things you have learned not so much by reading as by what experience has worked in you. Otherwise you will fall into what Solomon, the wisest of men, condemned: “Do not bring a wicked man into the pastures of the righteous, and do not be led astray by a full belly.” For “delicacies are not good for a fool, nor is there room for wisdom where sense is lacking: for folly is led on all the more, because a stubborn servant is not improved by words; for even if he understands, he will not obey.” And, “Do not say anything in the ears of a foolish man, or he may mock your wise words.” And, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, or they may trample them under foot and turn and tear you to pieces.” It is right, then, to hide the mysteries of spiritual meanings from men of this sort, so that you can sing to good effect: “I have hidden your words in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” [a]

But perhaps you will say: Then to whom are the mysteries of Holy Scripture to be handed out? Solomon, the wisest of men, will teach you: “Give strong drink,” he says, “to those who are in sorrow, and give wine to drink to those who are in pain, so that they may forget their poverty and remember their pain no more.” That is, to those who are weighed down by grief and sorrow as a result of the punishment of their past deeds, give richly the joys of spiritual knowledge, like “wine that gladdens the heart of man,” and revive them with the strong drink of the word of salvation. Otherwise they may sink into constant sorrow and a despair that brings death, and so people of this kind would be “swallowed up by too much sorrow.” But of those who remain in coldness and carelessness, and are struck by no sorrow of heart, we read this: “For one who is kindly and without sorrow will be in want.”

With all possible care, then, avoid being puffed up by love of empty glory, and so failing to share the lot of the man the prophet praises, “who has not lent his money at interest.” For everyone who hands out the words of God for love of human praise lends his money at interest: those words of which it is said, “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried in the fire, purged of earth, refined seven times.” And for this he will deserve not only no reward, but punishment instead. For he chose to spend his Lord’s money so that he himself might reap a passing profit, and not so that the Lord, as it is written, might “when he comes, receive his own with interest.”