36. Since these things are
so, suffer me awhile, holy brother, (for the Lord giveth me through
thee great boldness,) to address these same our sons and brethren
whom I know with what love thou together with us dost travail in
birth withal, until the Apostolic discipline be formed in them. O
servants of God, soldiers of Christ, is it thus ye dissemble the
plottings of our most crafty foe, who fearing your good fame, that
so goodly odor of Christ, lest good souls should say, “We will
run after the odor of thine ointments,”
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and so should escape his snares,
and in every way desiring to obscure it with his own stenches, hath
dispersed on every side so many hypocrites under the garb of monks,
strolling about the provinces, no where sent, no where fixed, no
where standing, no where sitting. Some hawking about limbs of
martyrs, if indeed of martyrs; others magnifying their fringes and
phylacteries;
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others
with a lying story, how they have heard say that their parents or
kinsmen are alive in this or that country, and therefore be they on
their way to them: and all asking, all exacting, either the costs
of their lucrative want, or the price of their pretended sanctity.
And in the meanwhile wheresoever they be found out in their evil
deeds, or in whatever way they become notorious, under the general
name of monks, your purpose is blasphemed, a purpose so good, so
holy, that in Christ’s name we desire it, as through other lands
so through all Africa, to grow and flourish. Then are ye not
inflamed with godly jealousy? Does not your heart wax hot within
you, and in your meditation a fire kindle,
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that these men’s evil works ye
should pursue with good works, that ye should cut off from them
occasion of a foul trafficking, by which your estimation is hurt,
and a stumbling-block put before the weak? Have mercy then and have
compassion, and show to mankind that ye are not seeking in ease a
ready subsistence, but through the strait and narrow way of this
purpose, are seeking the kingdom of God. Ye have the same cause
which the Apostle had, to cut off occasion from them which seek
occasion, that they who by their stinks are suffocated, by your
good odor may be refreshed.
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Cant. i. 3, 4
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Reg. S. Ben. c. l. Cass. Coll.
xviii. 7.
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Ps. xxxix. 3
. [See
R.V.]