How Government Scatters the Mind

Often the care of government, once taken up, pulls the heart in different directions. A man finds himself unequal to dealing with particular things, while his mind is confused and divided among many. That is why a certain wise man warns against it with foresight, saying, “My son, do not meddle with many matters.” For the mind, divided among many things, is in no way gathered to the plan of any single work. And when it is drawn outward by care it is not used to, it is emptied of the steadiness of inward fear. It grows anxious in ordering things outside it, and, ignorant of itself alone, it knows how to think about many things while not knowing itself. For when it entangles itself more than it should in outward things, it is as though it were so busy on a journey that it forgot where it was going. So, estranged from the work of examining itself, it does not even notice the losses it is suffering, or know how great they are. [a]

For Hezekiah did not believe he was sinning when he showed the strangers who came to him his storehouses of spices. But he fell under the anger of the judge, to the condemnation of his descendants, because of what he supposed he was doing lawfully. Often, when means are plentiful and many things can be done that those under us will admire, the mind exalts itself in thought and fully provokes the anger of the judge against itself, even though it does not break out in open acts of wickedness. For the one who judges is within, and what is judged is within. So when we transgress in heart, what we are doing within ourselves is hidden from men, but in the eyes of the judge we sin. For the king of Babylon did not first stand guilty of pride when he came to speak words of pride. Even before, when he had not yet given voice to his pride, he heard the sentence of rejection from the prophet’s mouth. For he had already wiped away the fault of the pride he had been guilty of, when he proclaimed to all the nations under him the almighty God whom he found he had offended.

But after this, lifted up by the success of his rule and rejoicing in the great things he had done, he first set himself above everyone in thought, and afterward, still full of empty glory, said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built as the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?” This utterance of his, as we see, fell openly under the vengeance of the wrath that his hidden pride had kindled. For the strict judge first sees, unseen, what he afterward rebukes by striking it in public. That is why he even turned him into an irrational animal, cut him off from human society, changed his mind, and joined him to the beasts of the field, so that by a plainly strict and just judgment the man who had thought himself great beyond other men should lose even his being as a man. Now in bringing forward these things we are not finding fault with authority. We are guarding the weakness of the heart from coveting it, so that none who are imperfect should venture to snatch at the highest rule, and so that those who stumble on level ground should not set foot on a cliff. [d]