Letter 119: Severus urges Theodore to keep his monastic vow and not turn back to household claims after entering the battle.

Severus tells Theodore that his present confusion was predictable. Theodore had already discussed the matter many times with him: Scripture, the fathers, and the ordinary rules of Christian life all point to a middle road, not to sudden zeal that later collapses under family pressure. Before Theodore took up the monastic life, he was free to think through his obligations. After he took up the cross, the question changed. He can no longer treat wife, children, and household claims as if no vow had been made. The letter does not deny that those claims are real. Severus quotes the law about soldiers who had built houses, planted vineyards, or become betrothed: before the battle began, such men could be excused. But once someone has entered the battle, he cannot use those earlier exemptions to abandon the fight. Theodore has joined combat not against flesh and blood but against unseen powers. If he turns back now, he will not merely disappoint Severus; he will teach others that a solemn offering to God can be recalled whenever it becomes painful. Severus then sharpens the point through biblical examples. Lot's wife, Israel after the failed attempt to enter the promised land, and those who vow but do not pay all become warnings. Zeal must be governed by discernment before a vow, but after the vow the danger lies in reversal. Theodore must not try to make worldly prudence look like obedience. God can be father to the children and protector to the wife more truly than Theodore can if Theodore remains faithful to what he has promised. There is still affection in the severity. Severus says he writes under heavy pressure, almost unable to breathe from affairs, because he loves Theodore and remembers his good deeds. The advice is therefore not a cold legal ruling. It is a plea that Theodore let his first fervor become mature endurance: stay on the road, join himself fully to the orthodox fathers of the house of Bassus, and press toward the upward calling rather than trying to undo a consecrated life.

It was perfectly obvious that your devoutness would fall into "a later mind " as is written^ after thus incon- siderately beginning the solitary life; and this after many arguments had often been discussed between you and 1 Ja. i. 17. '^ Mt. iv. 7. ^ Col. iii. 17. * prefects. ^ Pr. xxiv. 71. X. 5- me. and scriptural principles and patristic admonitions, which the God-clad doctors of the holy church left to us, directing every man in every order and kind of life known to the gospel to the royal road, and handing down the advice that we should beware of turning aside to the right or to the left, as the divine scripture says/ However, as you have in fervour betaken yourself to such a garb and mode of life, you need another exposition. Before attaching yourself to Jesus and taking up the cross you were yourself free to consider what mode of life was best for you to choose. But, as you have gone up to the hill of philosophy, do not any more return to the land of Sodom, lest you be fixed as a pillar of salt. To bury a father also was right, and in full accord with reasons of nature: but even this was thought a secondary matter after following Jesus. You should at the beginning; have listened to Koheleth who says, " Let not thine heart be hasty to utter thy speech before God's face; since a dream cometh c. through a multitude of trials."^ However, since as I said we have come to this, we will now quote the admonition of the same Koheleth which says, " Better is it for thee that thou shouldst not vow than vow and not pay."^ This too is worthy of consideration: that, when Moses the ggreat was prescribing the array of physical war (which however signified the nature of the spiritual array), he ordered the rulers of the sons 1 Id. iv. 27. '^ Ec. V. I, 2. ^ Id. V. 4. of Israel in time of battle to cry to those that were going out to combat and say, " Who is the man that hath built a new house and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the war and another man dedicate it. And who is the man that hath planted a vineyard? And who is the man that hath betrothed a wife? 'V and things like these. If a man then, when the law gave him liberty to stay at home for one of these reasons, had in ready ardour taken up arms and hastened to join battle with the foemen, and accordingly stood even at the very pinnacle of danger: and afterwards had come to remember the passibility of the flesh, and had gone back again, would anyone be right in saying that he had not left the line of battle and been enrolled with deserters and traitors, because before gioincr out to the combat he had permission from the law to remain within the house? Certainly not. Accordingly you also, who have joined battle with invisible enemies, and stripped yourself not against blood and flesh, but against principalities and powers and spirits of wicked- ness,^ must not trade upon laws which you rendered superfluous by taking arms: but keep the same excel- lent mind in which you made light of children and of wife, and perform true service to the " Father of the orphans and Judge of the widows,"^ and He will be more truly a husband to the wife, and a father to the children. We must also examine the character of 1 De. XX. 5-7. 2 £ph. vi. 1 2. ^ Ps. Ixvii. 6 X. 5- times and of persons, and so apply the divine command- ments to deeds to be done, and choose those that are good instead of those that are bad. For this reason among animals also some are clean and allowed to be eaten and hallowed for sacrifice, those whose hoof is parted, and those that besides this chew their food also and masticate it, and chew the cud as it is written.' Often, when a thing a short time before appeared to be lawful and a matter of duty, the interposition of some small circumstance has at once and immediately rendered it unlawful. For instance, after the twelve men whom Moses sent had explored the land of promise, together with Caleb and Joshua the son of Nun he urged the whole congregation to go up to that land; but, when they showed fear and hung back and turned to conten- tion and abuse, and after the transgression against God's commandment and the wrath thgreatened against them prayed the next day that they might go up, he who the day before had been urging them to go up pre- vented them from doing so, saying, "Ye shall not prosper. Go not up, for the Lord is not with you; " ^ and nevertheless they went up, and they roused God to double exasperation. You too therefore, who put on the angelic garb of the monastic life without restraining the fervour that led you to this by the strict letter of the canons, have other men also as an example, who were fired with a fire or fervour like yours. Imitate them, and distin- ^ Le. xi. 3. 2 jsju xiv. 41, 42. guish yourself in the struggles of the solitary existence, lest, while wishing to correct a small fault, and that at an improper time, you forget yourself and fall into a pit of evils, and dishonour the sacred garb by involv- ing yourself in worldly cares. As it is an unhallowed and profane thing for us to apply to human use a revered vessel that has once been set apart for the service of God, so also is it foul and abominable for a man who has given himself to God, and hallowed in some sort his own life, to turn back to the claims and judgments of the flesh. Say farewell therefore to the thoughts that call you to live in the world, and keep to the road that lies before you, until you reach, as it is written, "the goal of victory of the upward calling of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."^ There is only one thing which I would have wished added to the beginning that you have made; that you had joined yourself in everything, both in community of opinion concerning the faith and in community of habi- tation, to the holy fathers of the house of the saintly presbyter Theodore; which also you were in the beginning impelled to do and for which you were very eager; and I do not know how the hater of what is good hindered you. But it is easy for us not to be cheated by Satan to use the language of the divine Apostle.2 These things we have written while much harassed ^ Ph. iii. 14. 2 2 Co. ii. 1 1. with many affairs and not able even to bgreathe, because we are inflamed with love towards you, and know that we owe even more to your excellent person. Never at any time shall we be forgetful of the good deeds that you have shown towards us.