God, the Faithful Friend

I. Whoever, this morning, conceives no exceeding astonishment at the astonishment of Christ shows himself a dullard; for he gives clear proof that he does not grasp what wonder can mean in an infinite Wisdom. Hear me. And what great act of virtue was it, after all, by which the Centurion came to earn applause so rare? Did he lead his soldiery in homage before Christ, as before the great God of hosts, to adore Him with lowered banners and levelled spears, to acclaim Him with festive drums and tuneful trumpets? Did he raise Him altars? dedicate Him images? offer Him victims? Did he come to tear the laurels from his brow and fling them at His feet; or lay all his spoils and trophies at His feet, to consecrate them to Him by vow, as to the God of victories whom he revered? What, in the end, did he do? Here it is. He trusted Christ, and believed that, even from afar, He would heal his sick servant, provided only He would engage to it a single word of His: “Only say the word, and my servant shall be healed.” And is it for this, then, that Christ breaks out into transports of wonder so unwonted in Him? for this that He heaps so many praises upon the Centurion? for this that He does the Centurion so much honour? for this that He goes so far—what more can be said?—as to swear, “Amen I say to you,” and to swear that not even in Israel had He found a trust to equal it? “I have not found so great faith in Israel.” Even so it is. The common faithlessness of mortals makes it be counted a prodigy that there should be found a man who will trust himself wholly to God, even where the works at His right hand are not great: “I think God is not believed,”¹ so cried the great prelate Salvian, in the like sense: “And why do I say, I think? Would that I but doubtfully thought it, and did not plainly know it!” It is manifest that man does not trust in God, most manifest: “God is not believed, God is not believed.” Whether it be that His power is little prized, or that His will is much suspected, there is by now scarcely one who does not believe an earthly friend more than he believes God Himself. Forgive me, then, O my dear Lord, that this once I am constrained to do You, from this place, an infinite wrong, a public affront. I am constrained to exhort this people, who hear me here, to be content to do—what? to trust in You. Yes, yes, my dear soul: shall it then be possible that you should lay all your confidence in human friends—that these you follow, these you entreat, after these you lose yourself—and yet have no faith in a divine Friend? Oh, if I could this morning sweep from your soul an error so grave, how much more thronged would the churches be than the courts, how much more the sanctuaries than the halls of state! But, whatever come of it, I will not fail in my duty; rather, with the good leave of all who cry up their great fidelity to the world, I mean to show that there is no other friend of whom we may wholly assure ourselves, save God. Let others go and seek their own, who care for them. God alone is the loyal friend upon the earth; God the true friend; God the only friend—so that it ought to seem a great prodigy, not (as Christ once said of the Centurion) that a man should be found who believes Him, but rather that one should be found who does not. Your attention, then; and let us begin the proofs.

II. It cannot be denied that worldly friends are most lavish of words. Hear them talk. Oh, with what magnificence of phrases do they pledge you their service, offer you their substance, adjure you to lay your commands upon them—and in this one case alone protest that they will be vexed with you, if you do not employ them! But if, too credulous, you give credit to offers so grand, oh, how soon you will find yourself deceived; and you will see that the Laban who had promised you his fair Rachel gives you a Lia, and the Saul who had promised you his firstborn Merob gives you a Michol. Nothing is more in use nowadays than to promise much and perform little; to imitate—do you know what?—to imitate certain summer clouds, which, after a very long drought, appearing overladen beyond measure, set all the country-girls running to bring out every basin and every tub, reduced as they are to a scarcity of water, and then melt away in a few sprinkles. Not so, in truth, is it with God. He indeed may say with truth: “The things that proceed out of my lips I will not make void.”² Nay, you will find that, where others are wont to promise far more than they perform, He, on the contrary, is wont to perform far more than He promises. God had once promised Ezechias that the formidable army of the proud Sennacherib should not set foot in Jerusalem; nay, that it should not so much as shoot an arrow against it, nor assault it, nor plant its trenches: for these were the very words He used: “He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow into it, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a trench about it.”³ Now then: to keep His promise, it would have been enough that He make the Assyrians turn back dismayed by some mishap met with on the way; enough to permit some disturbance in their prince; enough to stir up some discord among their captains; enough to rouse some mutiny in the soldiery. And yet God, not content with this, what did He do? That night He sent an Angel, who entered the camp with naked sword, and there, making a bloody slaughter, a horrible carnage, left a full hundred and eighty-five thousand corpses for the vultures to feed on.⁴ Nor is this all. Was it not enough, so as not to break His word to Solomon, to give him only that wisdom which he had asked, to wield the sceptre worthily? And yet God added to it riches besides.⁵ Nor is this all. Was it not enough, so as not to fail Josaphat of His correspondence, to grant him only that water which he had sought, to succour his army in good time? And yet God added to it the victory besides. And so, if you run through the Scriptures, you will see that He not only makes good what He promises, but moreover—as St. John Chrysostom observes—makes it good with overflowing measure: “He fulfils His promises with liberality.”⁶

III. Oh, this indeed is fidelity, my hearers—far different from that of your friends! But from where does so great a difference arise? Do you know from where? Because those others, who are your friends, are your friends not to give you of their own, but to strip you of yours. Let me explain. Of what do you suppose certain men are for the most part friends, who come thronging about you with so much homage, so much flattery, so many smiles? Friends of your person? Oh, good souls, if you believe it! They are friends of that dowry which you have laid up in the funds to settle your daughter in honourable marriage; friends of that office which it falls to you to bestow; friends of that favour which may be hoped from you; of your new prosperity they are friends. They are your friends as the bees are of the flowers—to draw from them the sweetest nectar. They are your friends as the vine is of the elm—to climb to a loftier place. God alone is He who desires to be our friend in order to give us His own. All that He enjoys, all that He has, He longs to lay out for us. And He has indeed willed that between us there should pass a mutual sharing of all that is ours and all that is His, according to that so celebrated law:⁷ “Among friends all things are common.” But mark—a sharing unheard of! Of His own He has given us nothing but riches, nothing but glories; of ours He has taken for Himself nothing but nakedness, nothing but squalor. To us He has given all that the Godhead has of greatness; for Himself He has taken all that Manhood has of abasement. To us He has given His merits; for Himself He has taken our pains. To us He has given His immortality; for Himself He has taken our death. To us He has given the happiness of His kingdom; for Himself He has taken the sorrows of our exile. What more? “He came Himself to take upon Him our infirmities” (so St. Peter Chrysologus has told me⁸) “and to confer upon us His own virtues; to seek what is human, and bestow what is divine; to receive injuries, and render back dignities.” And will you find another friend who is willing to strike with you a like compact—who asks of you nothing but your woes, while he shares with you nothing but his joys?

IV. Hence let us go on to consider: who are they of whom God more openly declares Himself the friend? Do you know who? The poor, the afflicted, the oppressed, the dishonoured: “To whom shall I have respect,” He says by Isaias, “but to the poor little one?”⁹ And well did the Israelites find it in proof; for if ever God showed Himself partial to them, it was when He saw them reduced by the Egyptian, like so many rotting frogs, to fester in the mire. But why do I speak of them alone? Look at Elias. Did God ever work for him more magnificent wonders than when He saw him fallen into the hatred of the great? It was then that for him He made the flames rain down from heaven. Look at Eliseus. Did God ever take up his defence more openly than when He saw him become the mockery even of children? It was then that for him He made the wild beasts break out of the wood. Look at Lazarus, that great brother of Martha and of Magdalen. When was it perceived that he was so dear to Christ? Was it not when even his own sisters had come to hold him in horror? “Behold how He loved him,”¹⁰ said the Jews, amazed at the high tokens of affection which Christ gave there upon the tomb of the poor man. But O malicious ones!—here the Angelic St. Thomas ingeniously takes them up. Why did they say “He loved him”? They should have said “He loves him.” For the Lord gave plainly to know that He did not cease to love His friend, though he stank: “His misery increased, His friendship did not decrease.”¹¹ Not so, in truth, do human friends. But what? No sooner do they see you fallen upon evil fortune than at once they sound the retreat, the recall—if not, perhaps, a most shameful flight; and those who in the days of sunshine went so far as to adore you, in the days of cloud do not so much as show that they know you. God keep me, my lords, from ever wishing that you should learn by experience whether I speak the truth! I pray you every good, and that it be everlasting; I wish you every greatness, and that it be secure. For the rest, if your own roof should ever come to threaten ruin, alas, that at once—at the first crack, at the first hair’s-breadth—you will see fly away all the tame little swallows that have their nest there. Poor Job! What had he not done to earn, in his hour of need, the succour of a faithful man? He had protected widows, maintained orphans, clothed the naked, fed the hungry. And yet, when he fell into that great misfortune of his, which is known to all, he found himself so forsaken that, for want of anyone to lend him a hovel, a mattress, a pallet, he had to lie like a dead dog upon a public dunghill: “My brethren have passed by me as the torrent that passeth swiftly in the valleys.”¹² But you will tell me that he had, even in that state, three friends, who went together to console him, and no sooner saw him than they broke out, like men in despair, into mourning, into groans, into cries, and befouled even their hair with dust. Very true. But these three friends are precisely those who come to confirm my point the more. For tell me: with all their most lofty compassion, did they not leave poor Job in the very nakedness in which they found him? Did they relieve him with a penny? did they succour him with a rag? Nay, hear what Job himself said to them. He said that at the sight of him they had taken fright: “Now you are come; and now seeing my affliction, you are afraid.”¹³ Afraid! And of what? What fear did these three great personages take, at beholding their friend so sorely brought down? Of falling into a like misery? of catching a like disease? Think again, says Lyra shrewdly upon this passage. They feared lest Job, in the deep necessity that pressed him, should come to ask of them some notable subsidy of money: “They feared lest he should ask something of them for his relief.”¹⁴ You laugh at it, my hearers? Let no one despise such an interpretation, as though it were more pleasant than well-founded. Job himself confirms it with his own mouth. For no sooner had he said, “Now you are come; and now seeing my affliction, you are afraid,” than in the very next verse he at once added, “Did I say: Bring to me, and give me of your substance?”¹⁵ Did I say to you: Bring me, make me a present? Which gives plainly to understand that this, and nothing else, was chiefly their fear: to have to put their hand to the purse. I reason, then, in this way. If not even from those friends who are by nature the more tender and the more compassionate—as these were, who made such an outcry—we are commonly to hope any succour but of words, tell me, I pray you, my hearers, what are we to hope from the more inhuman? Will they not pitilessly leave us to rot in our languishing, without vouchsafing us so much as a comfort, so much as a greeting, so much as a glance? Alas, all too surely the cruel will deny us all their help—if indeed they do not conspire, they too, to aggravate our calamities, whether by words or by deeds; like those who, having taken under the shade of a beech, in summer, every fair pleasure of suppers, of dances, of games, of story-telling, of love-making, are then the first, when they see it withered in the winter, to raise the axe, and to lay on blindly between head and neck, between trunk and branches.

V. But come, let us suppose that you have lighted upon friends more liberal by nature, more kindly, and, in short, so disposed as to be humanly ready to succour you in your needs: even so, when will it be that they do you a benefit of any moment, without wishing to parade it with pomp, to trumpet it with show, and not seldom to sell it for far more than it is worth? But what did I say—benefits of any moment? The least courtesies, trifling little services, cannot today be received from anyone without first reddening the face for shame: one must plainly acknowledge the debt, must promise the obligation forever; nor is there any longer to be found a man who, in doing us a kindness, is content to do it after the manner of rivers—that is, flowing unobserved through underground caverns. “He will give little” (see here what stands written of the worldly friend in Ecclesiasticus) “and upbraid much.”¹⁶ Whereas God—how does He do? “He gives much to them that know it not” (so would St. Eucherius here gracefully say of Him¹⁷) “nor is God’s bounty less in the hidden than in the open.” Well-nigh numberless are the favours which God does us continually, so secretly that we do not even perceive we receive them; and if He does us some more openly, He does them with such modesty, such quietness, as though He counted it a great good fortune to be able to give us what is His own. I have often read the Gospel attentively, and have been at pains to find in it a grace done by Christ which was not at once graciously ascribed by Him to the virtue of the one who received it.¹⁸ He grants the Canaanite woman the recovery of her daughter; and “Go,” He tells her, “thy faith hath deserved it.”¹⁹ He staunches for the woman with the issue the flowing of her blood; and “Go,” He tells her, “thy faith hath saved thee.”²⁰ He clears from a blind man the mist of his eyes; and “Go,” He tells him, “thy faith hath healed thee.”²¹ He cleanses a leper of the scab of his members; and “Go,” He tells him, “thy faith hath made thee clean.”²² He grants Magdalen the remission of her sins; and “Go,” He tells her, “thy faith hath won thee back grace.”²³—“Thy faith hath made thee whole”: this was the humble rescript with which He was wont perpetually to endorse the petitions brought to Him. But more remarkable is what I shall now say to the same purpose. One day Christ was entreated to deign to go and restore life to a dead daughter of the ruler of the synagogue; and He readily consented, and went. But oh, with what dissembling of His power! Let it pass that He at once drove out of that house all the crowding throng and all the weeping trumpeters; that He drew the curtains, shut the doors, demanded secrecy, and laid express silence upon so great a matter. Over and above all this, when He was now near the corpse, to lessen in the grieving parents their estimate of the grace He meant to do, He began to say, with a divine equivocation, that their girl was not dead, but asleep:²⁴ “The maid is not dead, but sleepeth. Sleepeth?” And who does not think that another would have done the contrary, had he been able to do so much? It seems that another would first have wished to put it beyond doubt that she was dead, and would have said: Come here, look well, observe whether she keeps in her a shadow of life. Feel the pulse, whether it stirs; touch the heart, whether it beats; consider the eyes, whether they have any liveliness; note whether a faint breath trembles upon her lips; make certain whether she is all cold, stiff, wan, covered with the lividness of death—and thus, to exaggerate the more the greatness of the benefit, he would have wished to attest clearly the gravity of the need. But not so did Christ. He chose to appear to be doing no greater deed than to shake sleep from the eyelids of a slumbering girl; and thus, to my judgment, to shame those who with so much pomp are wont to magnify the slightest of services, while He, for His part, chooses to make so little of services so great, with so much moderation. Nor is this all. Will you ever find that, of all whom Christ once benefited with miraculous cures, He kept even one about Himself for His disciple, His familiar, His follower? Not at all. He healed a man of the dropsy in the Pharisee’s house, but at once bade him depart.²⁵ He cured a paralytic in the country of Nazareth, but straightway made him withdraw to his house.²⁶ He raised a young man near the gates of Naim, but at once made him remain with his mother.²⁷ Nor did He deal otherwise with that man possessed, whom He set free on the borders of the Gerasenes. For when this man begged Him earnestly to let him go with Him by land or by sea, wherever He went, it was never possible that He would be brought to keep him at His side:²⁸ “He admitted him not, but said: Go into thy house to thy own.” So true is it that He was wont to do as the sun, which, doing so much good to the stars, wants of them in return, not that they follow Him, not that they attend Him, but rather that they flee at once, wherever He appears. Now what do you say, my hearers? Do you find a friend in the world who is wont to do likewise? On the contrary, no sooner have they conferred on you a somewhat showy favour than they at once demand that all day long you must attend them in their retinues, wait upon them at their coaches, serve in their antechambers; they want you to lose at a stroke, for their sake, all your freedom; they want you at once to run up their ensigns everywhere, and their inscriptions, and their statues; and, as though they, like so many gods, had given you your very life, your very being, they want you to go so far as to call yourselves their creatures.

VI. But come, let us take yet one step further, and grant that there are found in the world friends so splendid that they take all pomp from their favours, and ask of you for them nothing of gratitude, of homage, of self-abasement. Even so, I go on to say that not for this will you yet have found faithful friends in the world. And for what reason? Observe it attentively. Because it may come to pass that these leave off loving you, and that without any fault of yours. Pharaoh long kept prisoners, in the bottom of a tower, two of his once most beloved servants: the chief of the cupbearers and the chief of the bakers; “the chief of the bakers, and the chief of the cupbearers.” And both he kept there because, as we read in the sacred Text, it fell out that they sinned against their lord:²⁹ “It came to pass that they sinned against their master.” Now who can tell me what great sin this was that they committed? Did they attempt to poison him? weave him frauds? plot him treasons? boldly raise his realm in revolt? No, if we believe what the Jews have of it by tradition.³⁰ Do you know what it was? It was precisely a most accidental fault. “It came to pass that they sinned.” The fault of the one was that the king had found a gnat in his cup; of the other, that he had found a little pebble in the bread. And so little is enough to take from us the favour of a mortal man? So little, yes, so little. But what do I say? May not a friend easily be robbed of you by a slight suspicion he takes of your doings, even without foundation? A slander told him of you may take you from him—just as, for a slander, Joseph lost the favour of Putiphar, when the shameless woman falsely defamed him.³¹ An envy he bears you may take you from him—just as, for envy, David lost the goodwill of Saul, when the Hebrew women praised him too much.³² A natural inconstancy of soul, which mortals commonly have in their affections, may take you from him. A quarrel at play may take you from him. A word said in jest may take you from him. A civil difference arising between you—an interest, a controversy, a lawsuit—may take you from him. And what friendship seemed closer than that which Lot and Abraham, Abimelech and Isaac, had once knit between them? And yet³³ there arises a quarrel between the herdsmen of the one, about the pastures; a quarrel between the herdsmen of the other, about the wells; and Abraham must withdraw from Lot, and Isaac must depart from Abimelech. And if, on this occasion, we would see how easily an interest can take from us any friend, hear a case of that kind full solemn. In the sacred book of Judges it is told how there was a certain nobleman, named Micah, who, having built on his estate a little temple—fair, devout, seemly—had gathered there withal, for its priest, a Hebrew Levite; and, treating him as a son, “as one of his sons,” had assigned him an honourable lodging, a double suit of garments, a large stipend, daily provisions, and—perhaps that he might always have money to spend—the sacred Text says too that “he had filled his hand.” The priest had therefore taken, in exchange, an equal love for good Micah. Hence it was that one day, seeing some soldiers of the tribe of Dan enter the temple to plunder it, he, without fearing their swords, came forward, reproached them, rebuked them, and set himself alone to defend the sacred furniture:³⁴ “What do you? what do you?” And was not this a singular heartiness? a most high courage? But hear what follows. When the soldiers saw themselves met with such resistance: Come, hold your peace, they said to him; do you not perceive that here you are a laughable little curate, a paltry priestling? Do as we bid you. Be content to be silent, and we will give you a far better cure than this to administer: “Hold thy peace, and put thy finger on thy mouth; and come with us, that we may have thee for a father and a priest. Which is better for thee, that thou shouldst be a priest in the house of one man, or in a whole tribe and family in Israel?” Would you believe it? When the good man heard talk of advancement in rank, of betterment of charge, not only did he hold his peace (which was all the soldiers asked), but he was himself the first to fall at once to sacking the altar with his own hand—to stripping the walls, to emptying the presses, to carrying off the censers, to stealing away the little idols; and with great strides he fled off with the soldiers. O friend, O friend, do you then so betray me? so forsake me? so turn your back on me? Think of it. Micah may spend his breath crying out as much as he pleases; the priest, now far off, does not hear him. And what do you think, my hearers? Could Micah have done more to keep this man faithful? Had he not treated him with the highest honour? not shown him an entire confidence? not always kept his hands full? “And had filled his hand?” Yes indeed. But this, in the end, was the ancient way of mortal friends: to turn to whoever offered them a better bargain. To imitate the flies, which run to whoever sets the richer table. To imitate the doves, which fly to whoever has the choicer dovecote. But is this practice, perhaps, not with us today? O God, O God! Do not make me speak, my hearers—for I would be too great a shame upon our age.

VII. Let us return, then, to our purpose, and say: What foundation can we ever lay upon human friends, when—even without any fault of ours, even without any demerit of ours—they can forsake us? But what did I say: without fault, without demerit? I said too little. The very benefits sometimes done to a friend are cause that he forsake us—the very goodwill, the very love: “Madness has come to such a pitch,”³⁵ says Seneca, “that it is a most perilous thing to confer great benefits upon anyone.” It is most perilous to do another some very great service. For while the one benefited has no recompense to match the benefit, he begins little by little to look upon his benefactor with that adverse eye with which creditors are regarded; he begins to shun him, begins to be wearied of him, and becomes at times a most ungrateful enemy for no other reason than that it seems it would be a shame to be his friend, and, on the other hand, not to be a friend grateful to him. And is this to be called, my hearers, a steadfast friendship? a faithful friendship? a firm friendship?

VIII. Now let us come, on the other hand, to speak of God, and to conclude the comparison. Can you perhaps fear from Him anything of all we have just said? But say what? That without your fault He may leave off loving you? that He should be angered with you, though you be good? that He should shun you, though you be well-affectioned? On the contrary, this is precisely the marvel, my hearers: that we, without any fault of His, are free to leave God; but God is not free to leave us, without a fault of ours: “He forsaketh not, unless He be forsaken.” There is no cause, then, that we fear from Him inconstancies, nor spites, nor slanders, nor quarrels, nor shadows, nor withdrawals: let us beware of ourselves. The Apostle one day lifts up his voice, and cries out that no one could ever have been able to part him from the love of Jesus: not Angels, not Principalities, not Virtues, nor any whatsoever, high or low, strong or weak, present or to come:³⁶ “For I am sure that neither Angels, nor Principalities, nor Powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.” But have you noted?—says here, with the highest acuteness, Bernard the Abbot. The Apostle has not reckoned in this list his own self:³⁷ “The Apostle enumerated many things, yet by no means did he add, nor we ourselves.” And why? “Because we alone can forsake God by our own will. Besides this” (beautiful words!) “besides this, there is nothing we need fear”: no, “nothing, nothing.” We alone can do ourselves that harm which not even a God can do us, with all His most terrible omnipotence. And if this is so, does it not seem to you, my hearers, a great advantage—to be able to grieve at none but ourselves, when by mischance we lose so good a friend? Oh, what a consolation! oh, what a peace! oh, what a security! If I love a man, I must guard myself against a thousand, lest they take him from me; if I love God, I need guard myself against none but myself. Hence let others promise Him magnificent gifts, rich revenues, inheritances more than royal: there is no danger that for this He will ever set me behind another, if I, though poorer, though more wretched, bear Him for all that a greater love. He is not like the priest of Micah, to cleave to whoever offers him a better bargain; nor does He go after whoever gives Him the more,³⁸ but after whoever loves Him the more. And so I note that when, among His Apostles and followers, He had to raise one of them to the first office, He raised not the one who had signalized himself in leaving the greater riches (for, to look to that, the pontificate would have fallen to Matthew), but the one who bore Him the more fervent affection.³⁹ So too I consider that when, among the sisters who lodged Him, He had to give to one of them the first praises, He gave them not to her who had bestirred herself in making Him the better cheer (for, to look to that, the encomiums would have been due to Martha), but He gave them to her who languished for Him with the more tender love. And those rich men who once cast so much gold into the treasury could not, with all their offerings, obtain from Him that He prefer them—nay, that He so much as match them—to that poor widow who had with great ado laid in it two little mites only,⁴⁰ “two mites”: for God, as I was saying, lets Himself not be lured by gifts, and esteems friends not for what they give, but for what they are:⁴¹ “For God loveth a cheerful giver.” He does not say a bountiful giver, does not say a liberal giver, does not say a splendid giver; He says a cheerful giver—a quality that looks not to the hand, but to the heart; not to the work, but to the affection.

IX. Nor let anyone suppose that this happens, perhaps, because God, like men, disdains to see Himself another’s debtor for much. Quite the contrary, says St. John Chrysostom:⁴² “A creditor is not so delighted with his debtors as God is with His creditors.” We do not so rejoice in beholding those from whom we are to receive, as He exults in beholding those to whom He is to give. But note here a most beautiful difference. He who, in his low estate, once secretly received alms from persons beneath him—when afterward he comes, by some marvellous chance, to change his lot, and finds himself in riches, in favour, in high place, in prosperity—is ashamed to see those to whose houses he was wont to go so often to play the beggar; nor can anything more exasperate him than to hear that one of these, whether out of display or out of spite, should say: Look at this fellow, who now flaunts himself in such luxury; I remember to have seen him myself come to our house more than once to beg a penny of us. But how differently is it with our God! On the last day He will, at the sound of trumpets, summon the universe—and for what cause? To make known every least farthing that He shall have secretly obtained from us; nor, in all that glory of His, will He blush to acknowledge, one by one, His old benefactors, and to declare how He, once most poor upon earth, had of this man, for alms, a rag to cover Himself, of that a loaf, of that an apple, of that a cup of water: “When He shall come in His majesty,” what will He do?⁴³ “When He shall come in His majesty, He shall say: I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink.”

X. Oh Friend, then—the one Friend, surely, that is faithful in the world! oh singular sincerity! oh utmost frankness! oh loyalty beyond compare! Does it not seem to you, Christians, that with reason I have wished to discredit for you every other, save Him in whom our most wise Centurion trusted so? Say for yourselves, if you will candidly confess me the truth: have you not, more than once, come to break out, you too, into that saying of the Wise Man: “A faithful man, who shall find?”⁴⁴ In sum, in the world there is not to be found a friend of whom to be assured: have you not proved by experience that the most of them deceive us, betray us, and, like sparrow-hawks intent on prey, slip from our hands precisely when we thought ourselves most sure of them? Keep, then, all we have said in memory while I rest; and prepare, in the meantime, to answer a great question which afterward, for your much profit, I will set before you.

SECONDA PARTE

XI. The great question which I resolved to set before you is none other than this. If God alone can with reason be called the true friend, and all others suffer, more or less, from unfaithfulness, how then is it possible that there should be found one who, to please a friend, displeases God? You answer nothing, my hearers? Speak, speak. Have I perhaps not known how to explain myself enough? I will say it again. How, I say, is it possible that there should be found one who, to please a friend—to accept his invitations, to fall in with his counsels, to flatter his whims—displeases God, dishonours Him, offends Him, and is loyal to that friend who uses every disloyalty, and disloyal to Him who uses every loyalty? Does this not seem to you a question well worthy of your wits? What say you, then? Solve it for me, satisfy me, give me at least some show of an answer. Ah, most thankless hearts of Christians! It is plain to see that no one dares to breathe a word, because there is no one who is not perhaps guilty too of so monstrous a crime. Our vanity, our levity, our thoughtless manner of living, brings us to such an excess. And if this is so, shall we not at least come, for very shame of it, to cover our faces with public confusion? Nearly everyone praises Pericles, because, when asked by a certain man to swear, for his sake, to a falsehood, he answered (as is most well known) that he was indeed a friend, but only as far as the altar:⁴⁵ “A friend as far as the altars.” And yet Plutarch not only does not praise him for this, but blames him, saying that he had run too far. “As far as the altars? as far as the altars?” Ah, ill-advised! “He had come too near.” For in how many things not good must Pericles have already yielded to his friend, since he had given him the boldness to ask of him a sacrilege? Hear, then, what I say to you also. Friendship must end, not at the altar—for that is too far—but on the threshold of the temple, so that your companions may not have even the heart to tempt you. Have they, then, not yet come to know that you esteem God far more than them? can they still be in doubt of it? can they still show themselves uncertain of it? Oh, the great wrong you do, in very truth, to a friend so noble as God!

XII. And with what face will you then dare, in your needs, to appear before Him?—while He, stung with a most pointed jealousy, may say to you: Go now, go and have recourse to your worthier friends, to your dearer friends, to those you have prized so much more than Me. Have you not placed all your affection in men? Then let men draw you back from death, let men restore you your health, let men give you Paradise, let men save you from the pit:⁴⁶ “Where are your gods, in whom you trusted?” Up, merrily now:⁴⁷ “Let them arise and help you; let them arise and defend you.” And you, Christians, what will you be able to answer Him? Do you hope, perhaps, that these very friends—who are now the cause that you offend Him—should intercede with God for you? that they should tell Him they are the guilty ones, they the culprits, and that they, as such, should offer to pay the penalties prepared for you? On the contrary, they will be, if need be, the first to cry out against you, to confound you, to accuse you. The divine Scripture tells how, when Absalom had been defeated by the army of Joab, in his flight—which he made at full gallop through a most thick wood—there befell him a great mischance. For, his hair being caught, as he took the wind, in the boughs of a tree, it came about that his frightened beast ran the harder on; and so he remained miserably hanging aloft, with no means either of cutting his hair or of freeing himself from it. An enemy soldier who perceived it flew to bring the news to Joab himself. And Joab to him: If this is so, he replied, why have you not straightway driven a dagger into his breast, and I would have given you at the least a bounty of ten shekels of silver? Oh, that, no, the soldier then rejoined: you might have given me a thousand of them, and for all that I would not have touched him. For the king has given express order that Absalom be kept alive; and if I had been bolder than reverent, more hasty than cautious, the king would have kindled with a high displeasure against me: and you, in that case—whether to console him, or to content him, or to flatter him, or by some other habit usual with you practised courtiers—you would have been, perhaps, the very first to give him the right of it:⁴⁸ “Yea, and if I had done against my own life boldly, this could not have been hid from the king, and wouldst thou have stood on the other side?” Oh, how well, oh, how wisely did this poor foot-soldier answer in his own defence! You who persuade me to commit against my king so grave a disobedience—you, you yourself, would then not only have failed to defend me, but would have said that I was a rash man, a shameless one, a sacrilegious one, a scoundrel, and would have lent a hand to send me the quicker to the gallows: “And wouldst thou have stood on the other side?”

XIII. Now this is what you ought to say in your own heart, my hearers, when a companion either coaxes you or urges you to some evil: Do not trust him, do not believe him; but hold it for certain that when you afterward come before the divine tribunal, he will be the most implacable accuser and the most hostile adversary you can have. Does he now invite you, as a friend, to hear that profane play? Yes indeed; but then “he will stand on the other side,” and will say that you gave him heart for it by the immoderate love of pastimes you showed. Does he now invite you, as a friend, to accompany him to that shameless house? Yes indeed; but then “he will stand on the other side,” and will say that you gave him the occasion for it by the most youthful licence of love-making he marked in you. Does he now invite you, as a friend, to enter into that forbidden contract? Yes indeed; but then “he will stand on the other side,” and will say that you furnished him the argument for it by the insatiable love of goods he knew in you. And so reckon that, so far as he can, he will always be the first to overturn his own guilt upon you. And will you let yourselves be led by such men—wicked as they are, treacherous as they are—to offend God? O blindness! O senselessness! O madness! What merit have these wicked men with you, what claim, what title, that for their sake you should turn your back on Him to whom, in the end, you must have recourse in your last abandonment?

XIV. Do you behold this Christ, my hearers—this Christ so full of pain, this Christ so covered with wounds? Turn where you will, here in the end we must all come. That hour will come in which, overwhelmed by sickness, given over by the physicians, we shall find ourselves with nothing more of this mortal life than the regret of having ill employed it. And which of our friends will then be the one to come and console us? Someone, perhaps, who hopes for some place in the will. For the rest—oh, what a deep desolation! The squalor of the chamber half-tainted by the variety of the medicines, the stench of our flesh, the corruption of our breath, will make even the most charitable religious draw unwillingly near our bed. One little Crucifix only will remain at last in our hand; and He alone, amid all our foulness, will not count it a horror to be touched by us, to be kissed by us. What, then, will become of us, if our conscience shall then accuse us of having, to that day, made so vile account of Him? O God, what anguish! what heartbreak! what tremblings! To see plainly that we are already forsaken by every other; that we have no other hope than in God, no other comfort than God, no other Good than God; and yet must say to God Himself: I despised You, and I despised You to please ungrateful men! Oh, how then we shall beg of Him at least one year of life—one year, one year—with which to make plain to everyone that we care no more for mortal friends! Oh, what worthy resolves! oh, what pious vows! But we are already come to our last breath, and we must die. Imagine, then, with how great a bitterness we shall then look upon that offended Lord, with what confusion, with what remorse; and God grant that, overwhelmed by a sudden frenzy, we be not brought by the enemy even at the last to despair, and so to be damned. How, then, are we to do, to avoid perils so dreadful? Here it is, my lords. Let us make this day this firm resolve: to have God for the friend that He is—which is to say, in good sense, the greatest of all. Let our kindred be dear to us, but less than God; our companions dear, but after God; our masters dear, but under God. And let us not blush to profess it, with open face, to whoever would claim the contrary: “My God, in Thee I put my trust; I shall not be ashamed.” Who shall there be to take offence, if we set him behind Him who created us, who redeemed us, who is to make us eternally blessed? And if there yet be found one who does take offence at it, for this very reason we ought to set him behind God with the greater resolve—since a friend so wicked is not worthy of our affection.

Synopsis

An editorial aid to the reader — not part of Segneri’s sermon.

Theme — the Centurion’s faith that astonished Christ (Matt. 8): God is the one wholly faithful Friend, though men trust an earthly friend more than Him.

• §I — Christ marvels at the Centurion’s bare trust; the scandal that God is not believed (Salvian).
• §II — worldly friends are most lavish of words, hollow in deed.
• §III — from which the difference: your friends love you for their own sake, not yours.
• §IV — God declares Himself the friend of the poor, the afflicted, the oppressed, the dishonoured.
• §V — even the kindliest human friend fails you at your need.
• §VI — even the most splendid friend, who asks no gratitude, cannot keep you.
• §VII — human friends can forsake you through no fault of your own.
• §VIII — God, by contrast, forsakes none who do not first forsake Him.
• §IX — God delights to be your debtor (Chrysostom) — unlike men.
• §X — the one Friend: faithful, sincere, loyal beyond compare.
• §XI — the great question: God alone being the true friend, why do men trust others more?
• §XII — with what face will you turn to Him in need, having preferred worldlier friends?
• §XIII — what to say in your heart when a companion urges you to evil.
• §XIV — behold the wounded Christ; that hour of death comes to all — resolve to hold God as your chief Friend.