A Source Book of Mediæval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance
History
A Source Book of Mediæval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance
Middle Ages -- Sources
The forward and the faint-hearted.
The impatient and the patient.
The kindly disposed and the envious.
The simple and the insincere.
The whole and the sick.
Those who fear scourges, and therefore live innocently; and those
who have grown so hard in iniquity as not to be corrected even by
scourges.
The too silent, and those who spend time in much speaking.
The slothful and the hasty.
The meek and the passionate.
The humble and the haughty.
The obstinate and the fickle.
The gluttonous and the abstinent.
Those who mercifully give of their own, and those who would fain
seize what belongs to others.
Those who neither seize the things of others nor are bountiful
with their own; and those who both give away the things they have,
and yet cease not to seize the things of others.
Those who are at variance, and those who are at peace.
Lovers of strife and peacemakers.
Those who understand not aright the words of sacred law; and those
who understand them indeed aright, but speak them without humility.
Those who, though able to preach worthily, are afraid through
excessive humility; and those whom imperfection or age debars from
preaching, and yet rashness impels to it.
[Sidenote: How the wise and the dull are to be admonished]
(Admonition 7)[100]. Differently to be admonished are the wise of
this world and the dull. For the wise are to be admonished that
they leave off knowing what they know[101]; the dull also are to be
admonished that they seek to know what they know not. In the former
this thing first, that they think themselves wise, is to be
overcome; in the latter, whatsoever is already known of heavenly
wisdom is to be built up; since, being in no wise proud, they have,
as it were, prepared their hearts for supporting a building. With
those we should labor that they become more wisely foolish[102],
leave foolish wisdom, and learn the wise foolishness of God: to
these we should preach that from what is accounted foolishness
they should pass, as from a nearer neighborhood, to true wisdom.
[Sidenote: Emphasis on the importance of setting a right example]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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