The Ambitious Mind Flatters Itself with Promised Good Works

But for the most part those who covet pastoral authority also set before their minds some good works besides. Though they desire it out of pride, they still muse on how they will accomplish great things. So it comes about that the motive buried in the depths of the heart is one thing, and what the surface of thought presents to the musing mind is another. For the mind lies to itself about itself. It pretends to love good work, which it does not love, and pretends not to love the world’s glory, which it does love. Eager for rule, it is timid about it while pursuing it, and bold once it has gained it. For while it moves toward it, it trembles for fear it will not reach it; but as soon as it has reached it, it thinks what it has gained to be its just due. And once it has begun to enjoy the office of the authority it has gained in a worldly way, it gladly forgets what it had pondered in a religious way. [a]

So it is necessary, when such thoughts reach beyond what is usual, that the mind’s eye be called back to works already done, and that each person consider what he did as one under others. In this way he may at once discover whether, as one set over others, he will be able to do the good things he has planned. For a man can in no way learn humility in a high place who has not stopped being proud while in a low one. He does not know how to flee from praise when it abounds who has learned to pant for it when it was lacking. He can in no way overcome greed when raised to the support of many, whose own means could not suffice for himself alone. So let each person discover from his past life what he is, so that in his craving for high position the phantom of his own thinking does not deceive him. Nevertheless, it is generally the case that the very practice of good deeds that was kept up in quiet is lost in the busyness of government. For even an unskilled person can steer a ship on a straight course in a calm sea; but in a sea stirred up by the waves of a storm even the skilled sailor is thrown into confusion. For what is high authority but a storm of the mind, in which the ship of the heart is always shaken by hurricanes of thought, driven ceaselessly this way and that, so that it is shattered by sudden excesses of word and deed, as if on rocks in its path?

In the midst of all these dangers, then, what course is to be followed, what is to be held to, except this: that one who abounds in virtues should come to government under compulsion, and that one who is empty of virtues should not approach it even under compulsion? As for the first, let him beware that, if he refuses altogether, he is not like the one who wrapped the money he had received in a cloth and was judged for hiding it. For to wrap it in a cloth is to hide the gifts received in the listlessness of sluggish idleness. But on the other hand, let the second, when he craves government, take care that he does not, by his example of evil deeds, become an obstacle to those who are journeying to the entrance of the kingdom, after the manner of the Pharisees, who, as the Master says, neither go in themselves nor let others go in. He should also consider that when a chosen leader of the church takes up the cause of the people, he goes, as it were, like a physician to a sick man. If, then, diseases are still alive in his own body, what presumption it is for him to hurry to heal the wounded while carrying a sore on his own face!