CHAPTER III The monk is less embarrassed than the man who rules in the church
CHAPTER III
The monk is less embarrassed than the man who rules in the church
Many who escaped the former nets, which are woven of gold and perfumes and garments, and the other things I mentioned, have easily stumbled into those which are so different from them, and have perished.
509. Since then, both by penury and wealth, by adorning and a neglected appearance, by manners studied and unstudied, and, in a word, by all that I have enumerated, war is enkindled in the soul of a beholder, and its machinations encompass him on every side, where can he find breathing room, while so many snares surround him? What retreat can he discover, I say not to avoid being taken by force, for this is not so difficult, but that he may preserve his soul untroubled by defiling thoughts?
510. Honours which are the causes of ten thousand mischiefs, I pass over.
511. For those which come from women are ruinous to the maintenance of sobriety, and often cast down him who does not know how to watch continually against such temptations.
512. As for the honours which come from men, unless one receives them with much dignity he is ensnared by two contrary affections, by the servility of flattery, and the folly of conceit. He is forced to stoop to those who favour him, and is inflated against the lesser brethren because of the honours which others have given him, and is hurried into the whirlpool of arrogance.
513. These things I say indeed, but what injury they cause, nobody can thoroughly learn without experience; for not these things alone, but more and worse than these must needs befall men who are engaged in public life.
514. But he who courts a solitude enjoys immunity from them all; and if some absurd imagining should ever represent any such thing to him, still it is a feeble fancy and can soon be extinguished, because his eyes find no fuel outside to feed the flame.
515. The monk, too, fears for himself alone; and even when he is compelled to care for others also, they are very few; and if they were more, they are fewer than those who attend the churches, and bring lighter cares by far to him that is set over them, not simply because of their fewness, but because they are all exempt from worldly affairs, and have neither children, nor wife, nor anything of that sort to be anxious for; and this makes them very obedient to their directors, and to have a common residence; so that their faults can be carefully watched and corrected, by the constant oversight of the teacher, which tends no little to progress in virtue.