The Quarrelsome and the Peaceable

Admonition 23. Those who are at odds and those who are at peace are to be admonished differently. Those who are at odds are to be admonished to know most certainly that, however rich they may be in virtues, they can never become spiritual if they neglect to be united with their neighbors in harmony. For it is written, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.” So the one who does not care to keep peace refuses to bear the fruit of the Spirit. That is why Paul says, “Since there is envy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh?” That is why he also says, “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.” That is why he admonishes again, saying, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling.” The one hope of our calling, then, is never reached unless we run toward it with a mind at one with our neighbors. But it often happens that some people, proud of certain gifts they have in special measure, lose the greater gift of harmony. So it may be, for instance, if someone who subdues the flesh more than others by reining in his appetite should scorn to live in harmony with those he surpasses in abstinence. But whoever separates abstinence from harmony should consider the psalmist’s admonition: “Praise him with timbrel and choir.” For in the timbrel a dry, beaten skin resounds, but in the choir voices join together in harmony. So whoever afflicts his body but forsakes harmony praises God with the timbrel, indeed, but does not praise him with the choir. Often, however, when superior knowledge lifts some people up, it cuts them off from the company of others; it is as if the wiser they are, the less wise they are about the virtue of harmony. Let these, then, hear what the Truth himself says: “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.” For salt without peace is not a gift of virtue but grounds for condemnation. The better a man is in wisdom, the worse is his offense, and he will deserve punishment without excuse for this very reason: that, had he been willing, his good sense could have kept him from sin. To such people it is rightly said through James, “But if you have bitter envy and strife in your hearts, do not boast, and do not lie against the truth. This wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable.” Pure, that is, because its thoughts are chaste; and peaceable, because it never cuts itself off from the company of its neighbors by being puffed up. [a]

Those who are at odds are to be admonished to note that they offer God no sacrifice of good work as long as they are not living in love with their neighbors. For it is written, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go first and be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” This command leads us to consider how unbearable people’s guilt is shown to be when their sacrifice is refused. For while all evils are washed away when good follows them, let us consider how great the evils of discord must be, since unless they are completely put out, they allow no good to follow. Those who are at odds are to be admonished that, if they will not bend their ears to the commands of heaven, they should open the eyes of the mind to consider the ways of the lowest creatures: how birds of one and the same kind often do not desert one another as they fly together, and how dumb beasts graze together in herds. So, if we look wisely, nature without reason shows by its agreement how great an evil nature with reason commits by disagreement, when the one has lost by the use of reason what the other keeps by natural instinct.

But those who are at peace, on the other hand, are to be admonished to take care that, by loving the peace they enjoy more than they need to, they do not lose all longing to reach the peace that lasts forever. For calm circumstances commonly test the bent of the mind more severely: the less troublesome the things that occupy people, the less lovely the things that invite them come to seem; and the more present things delight them, the less eternal things are sought. That is why the Truth himself, speaking in his own person, when he wanted to distinguish earthly peace from heavenly peace and to stir his disciples on from the peace that now is to the peace that is to come, said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” That is: I leave a passing peace; I give a lasting one. If, then, the heart is fixed on what is left, what is to be given is never reached. Present peace, then, is to be held as something both to love and to think little of, so that the mind of the one who loves it is not caught in a fault by loving it beyond measure. So those who are at peace should also be admonished not to become so eager for human peace that they fail altogether to rebuke people’s evil ways, and so, by going along with the perverse, cut themselves off from the peace of their Maker; and not to dread human quarrels outside them so much that they are struck down by the breaking of their inward covenant. For what is passing peace but a kind of footprint of eternal peace? What, then, could be madder than to love footprints pressed into the dust and not to love the one who pressed them? That is why David, when he wanted to bind himself wholly to the covenants of inward peace, testifies that he kept no agreement with the wicked, saying, “Did I not hate those who hate you, O God, and waste away because of your enemies? I hated them with a perfect hatred; they became enemies to me.” For to hate God’s enemies with a perfect hatred is both to love what they were made and to rebuke what they do; to be severe on the conduct of the wicked, and to do good to their lives.

So it must be well weighed, when we hold back from rebuking, how blameworthy it is to keep peace with the worst of men, if so great a prophet offered this to God as a sacrifice: that he stirred up the hostility of the wicked against himself for the Lord’s sake. That is why the tribe of Levi, when they took their swords and went through the middle of the camp, because they would not spare the sinners who were to be struck down, are said to have consecrated their hands to God. That is why Phinehas, spurning the favor of his countrymen when they sinned, struck down those who had joined themselves with the Midianites, and in his wrath appeased the wrath of God. That is why the Truth himself says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” For when we are carelessly joined in friendship with the wicked, we are bound up in their sins. That is why Jehoshaphat, praised for so much in his earlier life, is rebuked for his friendship with King Ahab as one near to ruin, when it is said to him through the prophet, “You give help to the ungodly, and you are joined in friendship with those who hate the Lord; and for this you indeed deserved the wrath of the Lord. Yet good works are found in you, in that you have taken away the groves out of the land of Judah.” For our life is already at odds with the one who is supremely righteous by the very fact that it agrees in friendship with the perverse.

Those who are at peace are to be admonished not to be afraid of disturbing their peace in this present time if they break out in words of rebuke. And again, they are to be admonished to keep inwardly, with undiminished love, the same peace they disturb outwardly with their voice of reproof. David declares that he wisely kept both, saying, “With those who hate peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause.” See: when he spoke, he was fought against; and yet, when fought against, he was peaceable, because he neither stopped rebuking those who raged against him nor forgot to love those he rebuked. That is why Paul also says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, have peace with all people.” For when he was about to urge his disciples to have peace with all, he first said, “If it is possible,” and then added, “as far as it depends on you.” For it was hard for them, if they rebuked evil deeds, to be able to have peace with all. But when peace in this present time is disturbed in the hearts of bad men through our rebuke, it must be kept unbroken in our own heart. Rightly, then, he says, “as far as it depends on you.” It is as if he said: Since peace rests on the consent of two parties, if it is driven out by those who are rebuked, let it still be kept undiminished in the mind of you who rebuke. So the same apostle again admonishes his disciples, saying, “If anyone does not obey our word, note that man by this letter, and have no company with him, so that he may be put to shame.” And at once he added, “Yet do not count him as an enemy, but rebuke him as a brother.” It is as if he said: Break outward peace with him, but guard an inward peace toward him in the core of your heart, so that your discord with him may strike the sinner’s mind, and yet peace may not leave your hearts, even though it is denied to him.