Chapter 28.—On Doing Good to the Soul of Our Neighbor. Two Parts of Discipline,
Restraint and Instruction. Through Good Conduct We Arrive at the Knowledge of the
Truth.
55. As regards discipline, by which the health of the mind is restored, without which
bodily health avails nothing for security against misery, the subject is one of great difficulty.
And as in the body we said it is one thing to cure diseases and wounds, which few can do
properly, and another thing to meet the cravings of hunger and thirst, and to give assistance
in all the other ways in which any man may at any time help another; so in the mind there
are some things in which the high and rare offices of the teacher are not much called for,—as,
for instance, in advice and exhortation to give to the needy the things already mentioned
as required for the body. To give such advice is to aid the mind by discipline, as giving the
things themselves is aiding the body by our resources. But there are other cases where dis-
eases of the mind, many and various in kind, are healed in a way strange and indescribable.
Unless His medicine were sent from heaven to men, so heedlessly do they go on in sin, there
would be no hope of salvation; and, indeed, even bodily health, if you go to the root of the
matter, can have come to men from none but God, who gives to all things their being and
their well-being.
56. This discipline, then, which is the medicine of the mind, as far as we can gather
from the sacred Scriptures, includes two things, restraint and instruction. Restraint implies
fear, and instruction love, in the person benefited by the discipline; for in the giver of the
benefit there is the love without the fear. In both of these God Himself, by whose goodness
and mercy it is that we are anything, has given us in the two Testaments a rule of discipline.
For though both are found in both Testaments, still fear is prominent in the Old, and love
in the New; which the apostle calls bondage in the one, and liberty in the other. Of the
marvellous order and divine harmony of these Testaments it would take long to speak, and
many pious and learned men have discoursed on it. The theme demands many books to
set it forth and explain it as far as is possible for man. He, then, who loves his neighbor en-
deavors all he can to procure his safety in body and in soul, making the health of the mind
the standard in his treatment of the body. And as regards the mind, his endeavors are in
this order, that he should first fear and then love God. This is true excellence of conduct,
and thus the knowledge of the truth is acquired which we are ever in the pursuit of.
57. The Manichæans agree with me as regards the duty of loving God and our neighbor,
but they deny that this is taught in the Old Testament. How greatly they err in this is, I
think, clearly shown by the passages quoted above on both these duties. But, in a single
word, and one which only stark madness can oppose, do they not see the unreasonableness
of denying that these very two precepts which they commend are quoted by the Lord in the
Gospel from the Old Testament, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
On Doing Good to the Soul of Our Neighbor. Two Parts of Discipline, Restraint and Instruction. Through Good Conduct We Arrive at the Knowledge of the Truth.
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On Doing Good to the Soul of Our Neighbor. Two Parts of Discipline, Restraint…