Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

"Re

of giving alms for the sake of one's own soul. mark," says Manzoni," the progress of this exaggeration within the mind which commits it. Disinterestedness," it begins, "is shown when to perform a just action,* a man sacrifices some present pleasure, or incurs some pain which he might have avoided. The greater the sacrifice the more disinterested is the action, and vice versâ. All the pleasures which may enter for motives to the action, will diminish its merit, and give it a character of egotism. All the pleasures and the hopes of pleasure, of whatever order or in whatever time, all that in the last analysis signifies pleasure, as promises, rewards, felicity, will render it less disinterested and consequently less virtuous." Here begins the error which is against an eternal law of the human soul, against a condition of intelligence and of justice,

τίς γὰρ ἐσθλὸς οὐχ αὐτῷ φίλος *;

or, as the English Sophocles saith, "Love, loving not itself, none other can." This doctrine proposes as perfection what is impossible. The condemnation which is associated with the idea of pleasure arises only from knowing that there are many pleasures opposed to duty. To push this condemnation to the general idea of pleasure, is to employ a noble sentiment to authorize an error and to reject an idea, although it is separated from the quality which alone made it worthy of rejection. When the word interested is transferred to the future life, it assumes wholly a different signification. What does a Christian mean by the good of his soul? Considering it in another life he means a felicity of perfection, a repose which consists in being absolutely according to order, in loving God fully, in having no other will but his; in being exempt from every grief because exempt from every inclination to evil; and with regard to the present life he means a felicity of progress to perfection, an advance in order and in the hope of joining the other state. This is the sense of the profound admonition of St. Paul to Timothy, "Pietas autem ad omnia utilis est, promissionem habens vitæ quæ nunc est, et futuræ." It is impossible to propose a more noble view for the moral conduct of man †.

[blocks in formation]

I think it has now been shown clearly that the morality of the ages of faith was heroic, and that its heroism so far from resembling the extravagance of modern writers, was as rational and solid as it was generous. Let us pass on to consider other features essential to the morality of the Catholic church.

CHAPTER VII.

At the time when Charlemagne was entrenched on the banks of the Ora at Wolmerstede, in East Saxony, the infidel prince Wedekind is related to have repaired to the royal camp in the disguise of a beggar, not through fear, as he was then reconciled, but in order to scrutinize the

manners of the Christians. The paschal solemnities were at hand, and the king and all the host were commemorating the Lord's passion. Having crossed the river he joined the multitude of poor persons who daily flocked to court, but on the holy day of Easter when he applied for alms, he was recognized, and asked by the king what were the motives which had induced him to come in a manner so unworthy of his rank. He confessed that it was curiosity which had prompted him, in order to examine into their lives and customs. "Permit me now," said he, "most serene king, to demand what is it that hath this day so much delighted you? You appeared during the last few days wholly cast down, oppressed with sorrow, and I could not discover the cause, and lo, I beheld you this morning in your temple full of gladness and rapture, and so sudden and complete a change excites my astonishment?" The king then explained to him the great mysteries of faith, and showed him the ground of his lamentation and of his joy *. This little narrative will prepare you, reader, for the observations that I have now to offer; for you may perceive from it

Alber Krantzii Metrop. Lib. I.

that sensible and deep impressions were made upon the minds of men during the ages of faith by supernatural motives; and it is my present object to show that the justice imparted to those who hungered and thirsted after perfection in this life was divine, and the whole tenor of morality of ages of faith, supernatural both in its motives and in its effects, superior and even perhaps sometimes contrary to what men would have conceived or practised, if left without the assistance of an express and positive revelation of their Creator's will. For though the natural law is promulgated to man as soon as he comes to the use of reason*, and though he is wisely exhorted, by poets as well as by philosophers, to withdraw himself from ways that run not parallel to nature's course, yet in consequence of the incapacity of that law to meet the disarrangement introduced by sin into the original order, and from the uncertainty in which he stands respecting what is the direction of nature's course, from which corrupt passions are continually drawing him aside, a new law had become necessary for the government and restoration of his fallen state, and additional light was required to enable him to discern what was the original design, and the true principles, the observance of which was indispensable for the perfection and felicity of his nature. Savanorola was true to the Catholic faith in teaching the philosophers of Italy, that the Christian life could not have its roots in the natural love of man, or in the sensitive parts of his nature, or in the imagination; nor again in the natural light of reason, for then faith would be only an opinion, nor in the influence of any natural cause, since the whole Christian life is spiritual, and independent of the body, and capable of universal practice ; but that the root and foundation of the Christian life, is the grace of God, which is a supernatural gift infused into the soul. This was the Catholic doctrine acutely maintained. Those, indeed, whom, as the church says,

66

God had purged from all ancient corruption, and rendered capable of the holy novelty †," had not cast off the grace and beauty of nature. The natural law was not abrogated; for to have supposed that God does not require its observation would have been the same thing as

*Ligorio Theolog. Lib. I. Tract. I.
Third Collect for Holy Week.

to suppose that it had no existence, which is absurd *. That the Christian character, though in this sense supernatural, retained all that was truly amiable and good in the ancient manners, is admitted in the reply of the Pagan father of Cymodocee to Lasthenes the Christian, in the celebrated work, entitled the Martyrs, which paints with such historical fidelity the two societies which were dividing the world. "You appear to me," says the admirer of the Homeric life, "to be wholly of the ancient times, although I have not seen your words in Homer! Your silence has the dignity of that of the sages. You rise to sentiments full of majesty, not on the golden wings of Euripides, but on the celestial wings of Plato. In the midst of your sweet abundance you enjoy the graces of friendship. There is nothing about you forced or strained; all is content, persuasion, love t." Would you see this exemplified in history? Read the public and domestic life of Ferdinand and Isabella, in the Chronicles of Spain, by Lucius Marinæus, the Sicilian. What admirable pictures have you there! What Homeric simplicity! What tenderness! What poesy in all the detail of manners ‡ ! Manzoni has admirably treated on the correspondence between Catholic morals with the natural sentiment of right and justice §, the union and harmony of which are proved by the testimony not alone of history and experience, but also of ancient philosophers.

There are Pagan moralists to whom we might have recourse in order to shame the admirers of the natural and passionate character; for even the manners of the blessed meek are recommended by an ancient Aristotelian philosopher, who makes mildness consist in being able to bear insult and neglect, and in not being quickly moved to anger, but having a sweetness of address and an imperturbable tranquillity in the soul, exempt from all desire of contention. Still it is no less true, that the morality of the Catholic society during ages of faith, if conformable to nature, in its original state, or Homeric, according to the ideal of poets and philosophers, was something also beyond and often even contrary to what was actually

[blocks in formation]

De reb. Hispaniæ, Lib. XXI.

§ Osservazioni sulla Morale Cattolica, cap. V.

[blocks in formation]

in the thoughts of man.

Real humanity and goodness

can have no existence without the action of an influence superior to nature; and this the poet discerns, saying,

-" by grace divine,

Not otherwise, O nature! we are thine *."

It is men of natural virtues who fill the world with crimes and woe, for they are Passion's slaves, and therefore their virtues are not sure and constant. Homer perceived what was the highest praise, and investing his hero with divine virtue, styles him toλúrλŋtov, which is the very character that is formed by the supernatural principles of the Catholic faith, and in perfection by them alone. Christian severity and Christian love are intimate relations, and therefore to the voluntary mortifications which we observed in a former book, to those spiritual and sacramental communions with God, not as reigning in heaven, but as suffering in his passion, the justice, the divine patience of the ages of faith must mainly be ascribed. With natural indulgence, you have hatred, jealousy, pride, and cruelty, for without an initiation into the mysteries of faith, from which springs the principle of the supernatural life, what is conformable to corrupt nature, or as Pindar says, “what is natural must, generally, prevail.'

دو

τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν †.

"Hæc curare voluit Socrates, curare potest Deus. O quam miserum animal homo est," continues Marsilius Ficinus, "nisi aliquando evolet super hominem, commendet videlicet seipsum Deo. Deum amet propter Deum et cætera propter ipsum. Hæc unica problematum illorum solutio est, requiesque malorum ‡.”

"I have remarked," says Bossuet, "that the apostle, speaking of those who love themselves and their pleasure, calls them men cruel, without affection, without pity;' and I have been often astonished at so strange a union. In fact, this blind attachment to pleasure seems at first to be something gentle, that would shun cruelty and malevolence; but one is soon undeceived, and able to detect in this apparent gentleness, a malignant and pernicious sweet

* Wordsworth.

† Olymp. IX. Epist. Lib. I. to Landino.

« ПредишнаНапред »