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TAKE care too, when your riper age leads you to teach, lest you be led
astray by the love of vainglory, and teach at random to the most impure
persons these things which you have learnt not so much by reading as by the
effects of experience, and so incur what Solomon, that wisest of men,
denounced: "Attach not a wicked man to the pastures of the just, and be not
led astray by the fulness of the belly," for "delicacies are not good for a
fool, nor is there room for wisdom where sense is wanting: for folly is the
more led on, because a stubborn servant is not improved by words, for even
though he understands, he will not obey." And "Do not say anything in the
ears of an imprudent man, lest haply he mock at thy wise speeches." And
"give not that which is holy to dogs, neither east ye your pearls before
swine, lest haply they trample them under foot and turn again and rend
you." It is right then to hide the mysteries of spiritual meanings from
men of this sort, that you may effectually sing: "Thy words have I hid
within my heart: that I should not sin against Thee." But you will
perhaps say: And to whom are the mysteries of Holy Scripture to be
dispensed? Solomon, the wisest of men, shall teach you: "Give, says he,
strong drink to those who are in sorrow, and give wine to drink, to those
who are in pain, that they may forget their poverty, and remember their
pain no more," i.e., to those who in consequence of the punishment of
their past actions are oppressed with grief and sorrow, supply richly the
joys of spiritual knowledge like "wine that maketh glad the heart of
man," and restore them with the strong drink of the word of salvation,
lest haply they be plunged in continual sorrow and a despair that brings
death, and so those who are of this sort be "swallowed up in overmuch
sorrow." But of those who remain in coldness and carelessness, and are
smitten by no sorrow of heart we read as follows: "For one who is kindly
and without sorrow, shall be in want." With all possible care therefore
avoid being puffed up with the love of vainglory, and so failing to become
a partaker with him whom the prophet praises, "who hath not given his money
upon usury." For every one who, from love of the praise of men
dispenses the words of God, of which it is said "the words of the Lord are
pure words, as silver tried by the fire, purged from the earth, refined
seven times," puts out his money upon usury, and will deserve for this
not merely no reward, but rather punishment. For this reason he chose to
use up his Lord's money that he might be the garner from a temporal profit,
and not that the Lord, as it is written, might "when He comes, receive His
own with usury."
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