CHAPTER VI
DEGREES OF HUMILITY
pleases them and they long to be what they are not a result which they distrust their power to achieve.
Yet they find their consolation in the fact that their judgment of themselves has been stern and severe ; and they hope that their love of truth and their hunger and thirst after righteousness even to the point of self-contempt will enable them to exact a strict satisfaction for the past and to effect a real amendment in the future.
But when they perceive their incapacity for any adequate and extensive reform, and realize that when they have done all that is commanded they must still call themselves unprofitable servants, they fly from justice to mercy.
And that they may obtain this they follow the advice given by Truth, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.* This then is the second degree of truth, the one in which men look for it in their neighbours when from the realization of their own shortcomings they discover those of other people and learn from their own painful experience to sympathize with those who suffer.
CHAPTER VI
The third, degree of Truth the clearing of the spiritual sight, so that it may gaze on holy and heavenly things.
If therefore men practise perseverance in trie three matters that have been mentioned viz., the 1 Matt. v. 7.
SAINT BERNARD
sorrow of repentance, the longing for righteousness, and works of mercy, they clear their spiritual
which either sight of the three hindrances through ignorance, infirmity or disposition they have encountered, and may thus pass on to that direct vision in which the third degree of truth consists.
These are the ways that seem good to men at all events to those who are glad when they have done evil and rejoice in most wicked things,
and who attempt to cover their sins with the cloak
But vainly do of ignorance or of weakness. they whose ignorance or weakness is wilful put forward either of these pleas as an excuse for
Do you suppose that the first indulgence in sin.
1 The same idea is more fully and finely expressed by St.
Bernard in his treatise ' On Conversion (cap. xv). where he '
' The clemency of God blots out sin, not indeed so that it shall pass out of the memory, but so that what has been in it as a blemish, shall in future so linger in the memory as to cause no stain.'
Ts : sa} 2 Prov. ii.
(cp. xiv. 12 and xvi.
25).
The 'ways' are the evil tendencies just mentioned, not the three stages in the search for truth, as the unauthorized insertion of the word ' except ' in the Benedictine edition suggests.
See note in Select Treatises.
3 St. Bernard's words here are taken from Ps. cxl. 4 (Vulgate 4 to make excuses in sin ' which differ widely from the Hebrew and English versions of Ps. cxxxix. 4.
* The argument here anticipates that of St. Thomas Aquinas a century later, who says :
' Some things we are under an obligation to know, those, to wit, without the knowledge of which we are unable to accomplish a due act rightly.
. Now it isevident that whoever neglects to have or to do what he ought to have or to do, commits a sin of omission.
Wherefore through negligence, ignorance of what one is bound to know is a sin, whereas it is not imputed as a sin to man if he fails to know what he is unable to know .
. it is evident that no invincible ignorance is a sin .
. vincible ignorance is a sin, if it be about matters one is bound to know, but not if it be about things one is not bound to know.
(Summa Theologica i.
11, Quest.
Ixxvi,.
Art. 3, Eng. Trans.)
DEGREES OF HUMILITY
man could successfully plead infirmity of the flesh on the ground that he sinned, not of his own accord, but at the instigation of his wife?
Or were the men who stoned the first martyr, and had themselves stopped their ears, excusable on the plea of ignorance?
Some people think that they have a natural antipathy to truth, and an inclination to and affection for sin, and that they are overcome by weakness and ignorance.
Let such persons turn inclination into aversion, affection into distaste ; let them conquer the weakness of the flesh by righteous energy, and dispel ignorance by better education.
For if they disregard truth now, when it is needy, naked and weak, they may recognize it to their shame too late, when, coming with full authority and power, it overawes and rebukes them.
The^ will then tremble as they return the vain reply, When did we see thee
Surely the Lord whom they now disregard when He in need, and did not -minister to thee ? seeks sympathy shall be known when he executeth judgments.* Finally they look on him whom their pierced* as shall also the covetous on him whom they despised.
Thus by the tears of penitence, by the pursuit of righteousness and by 1 It is not very clear what St. Bernard means by liberalitas.
The translation here given is suggested by Cicero's description of a well-educated man as liberaliter eruditus (Tusc.
Disp. ii. 2).
2 Matt. xxv. 44.
The various forms of need enumerated by our Lord are summed up in the one word egere
' to be in need '.
3 Ps. ix. 16
(Vulg.
17) .
* John xix. 37.