Letter 1537: What appears elegant is not necessarily elegant, and what appears just is not necessarily just.
Those who live rightly do not attend sumptuous banquets, nor do they think it proper to indulge in the excesses that pass for entertainment among the wealthy. The physician does not treat his patient by feeding him whatever delights the palate, but only what promotes health. So also the teacher of the soul must prescribe not what pleases but what heals, not what the patient desires but what his condition requires. The love of feasting and luxury is a disease of the soul as much as of the body, and it must be treated with the same discipline that a good physician applies to bodily ailments: abstinence, moderation, and the substitution of wholesome nourishment for harmful indulgence. Let the Christian table be governed by need, not desire, and let our gatherings be marked by prayer and edifying conversation rather than by excess and frivolity. For the belly is a tyrant that enslaves all who serve it, and freedom belongs only to those who have learned to be its master. Let no one deceive himself into thinking that knowledge of the truth is sufficient without the practice of it. For the person who knows the good and does not do it commits a greater sin than the person who does evil in ignorance. Knowledge increases responsibility, and the person who has been given much will have much required of him. The devils themselves possess extensive theological knowledge — they know that God is one, as James tells us — yet their knowledge does not save them, because it is not accompanied by love and obedience. Let our knowledge therefore be always joined to practice, our understanding to obedience, and our theology to holiness of life.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
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