Page:King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care (2).djvu/391

382 should be specially God's servants. He said: "Let him who is God's servant, come hither to me, and put his sword on his hip, and pass from gate to gate through the midst of the city, and let every man slay his brother and his friend and his neighbour." Putting one's word on one's hip is preferring the zeal of instruction to the lusts of the flesh, and taking care to subdue and conquer unlawful lusts and doctrines, when one desires to teach holiness. Running from one gate to another is running with reproof from one vice to another, through which death can enter into a man's soul. Running through the middle of the city is being so impartial towards Christian people in the reproving of their sins as neither to flatter any man nor care for any man's flattery. As to which it was very rightly said, that they were to slay their brothers and friends and neighbours. A man slays his brother and his friend and his neighbour, when no relationship makes him hesitate to punish the sins of the guilty. If he is called the servant of God who is inspired by the zeal of divine love to slay vices, does not he absolutely refuse to be God's servant, who refuses to rebuke as much as he can the vices of worldly men! On the other hand, those who have neither age nor wisdom enough to be able or know how to teach, and yet hasten to undertake it, are to be warned not to block up for themselves the way of reformation, which might in time come to them, when they assume so hastily the burden of so arduous a ministration. But when they prematurely assume what they neither can nor know how to manage, they have cause to fear losing what in due time they might have attained, that is, wisdom, which they prematurely desire and display, but which very rightly proves their destruction. They can consider that young birds, if they try to fly before their wings are fully developed, are made to descend by the desire which before exalted them, till they perish. They are also to be admonished to consider that, if a big, heavy roof is placed on a new wall before it is dry and firm, not a hall, but a ruin is built. They are also to be admonished to consider, that those women who bring forth the children they have conceived before they are properly formed, fill, not houses, but tombs. Therefore Christ himself, who could easily have strengthened whom he wished,