Chapter XXXVII.
Of the exhortation to be applied to one person, who
labours under contrary passions.
It is indeed a serious labour for the preacher to keep
an eye in his public preaching to the hidden affections and motives of
individuals, and, after the manner of the palæstra, to turn
himself with skill to either side: yet he is worn with much
severer labour, when he is compelled to preach to one person who is
subject to contrary vices. For it is commonly the case that some
one is of too joyous a constitution, and yet sadness suddenly arising
immoderately
depresses him.
The preacher, therefore, must give heed that the temporary sadness be
so removed that the constitutional joyousness be not increased; and
that the constitutional joyousness be so curbed that the temporary
sadness be not aggravated. This man is burdened by a habit of
immoderate precipitancy, and yet sometimes the power of a suddenly-born
fear impedes his doing what ought to be done in haste. That man
is burdened by a habit of immoderate fear, and yet sometimes is
impelled in what he desires by the rashness of immoderate
precipitancy. In the one, therefore, let the fear that suddenly
arises be so repressed that his long-nourished precipitancy do not
further grow. In the other let the precipitancy that suddenly
arises be so repressed that yet the fear stamped on him by constitution
do not gather strength. And, indeed, what is there strange in the
physicians of souls being on their guard in these things, when those
who heal not hearts but bodies govern themselves with so great skill of
discernment? For it is often the case that extreme faintness
weighs down a weak body, which faintness ought to be met by strong
remedies; but yet the weak body cannot bear a strong remedy. He,
therefore, who treats the case gives heed so to draw off the
supervening malady that the pre-existing weakness of the body be in no
wise increased, lest perchance the faintness should pass away with the
life. He compounds, then, his remedy with such discernment as at
one and the same time to meet both the faintness and the
weakness. If, then, medicine for the body administered without
division can be of service in a divided way, why should not medicine
for the soul, applied in one and the same preaching, be of power to
meet moral diseases in diverse directions: which medicine is the
more subtle in its operation in that invisible things are dealt
with?