|
WHEREFORE we never ought to admire those who affect these things, for
these powers, but rather to look whether they are perfect in driving out
all sins, and amending their ways, for this is granted to each man not for
the faith of some other, or for a variety of reasons, but for his own
earnestness, by the action of God's grace. For this is practical knowledge
which is termed by another name by the Apostle; viz., love, and is by the
authority of the Apostle preferred to all tongues of men and of angels, and
to full assurance of faith which can even remove mountains, and to all
knowledge, and prophecy, and to the distribution of all one's goods, and
finally to the glory of martyrdom itself. For when he had enumerated all
kinds of gifts and had said: "To one is given by the Spirit the word of
wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another faith, to another the
gift of healing, to another the working of miracles, etc.:" when he was
going to speak about love notice how in a few words he put it before all
gifts: "And yet," he says, "I show unto you a still more excellent way."
By which it is clearly shown that the height of perfection and
blessedness does not consist in the performance of those wonderful works
but in the purity of love. And this not without good reason. For all those
things are to pass away and be destroyed, but love is to abide for ever.
And so we have never found that those works and signs were affected by our
fathers: nay, rather when they did possess them by the grace of the Holy
Spirit they would never use them, unless perhaps extreme and unavoidable
necessity drove them to do so.
|
|