CHAPTER I They who suspected him of declining the Priesthood through arrogance, injured their own reputation
CHAPTER I
They who suspected him of declining the Priesthood through arrogance, injured their own reputation
[CHRYSOSTOM.] 164. As it regards my contempt for those who have honoured me, and my having evaded the honour because I did not wish to put them to shame, I might say what I have already said. But I will now try to the best of my ability to make it plain to you that I have not been puffed up with any arrogance.
165. If the acceptance of a generalship or of a kingdom had been proposed to me, and I had then entertained this sentiment, this might reasonably have been suspected; or rather, no one would then have condemned me for arrogance, but all would for insanity. But when the priesthood was within my reach, a thing which is as far above a kingdom, as the distance between flesh and spirit, who will venture to accuse me of contemning it?
166. And is it not absurd that those who reject trifles should be charged with being unreasonable,—and yet to deliver from accusations of folly those who act thus in regard to things much more excellent, and to subject them to charges of vanity? It is as though one should accuse him who looked with contempt upon a herd of oxen and would not be a herdsman, not of vanity but of the loss of reason, and should say that he who would not accept the government of all the world, and be lord of universal armies, was puffed up with pride, and not that he was insane.
167. But it is assuredly not so; nor do they who say thus, slander me more than themselves. For only to imagine that it is possible for human nature to despise that authority, is a token of the honour in which those who say so, hold the matter; for if they did not think it to be among ordinary things and such as are not of much account, it would not have occurred to them to suspect this.
168. In reference to the honour of angels, why has no one ever ventured to suspect and to say it is because of pride that the human soul does not aspire to attain to the dignity of their nature? For we imagine something grand concerning those powers, and this does not allow us to believe that man could conceive of anything greater than their honour.
169. So that one would more justly accuse of pride those who make this charge against me; for they would never have suspected this of others, if they had not first depreciated the matter as of no account.
170. But if they say I have done this with a view to glory, they will be convicted of coming into collision, and of openly contradicting themselves; for I do not know what other language they would have devised in preference to this if they had wished to free me from accusations of vain glory.