Wisdom

As … the same medicine and the same food are not in every case administered to men’s bodies, but a difference is made according to their degree of health or infirmity; so also are souls treated with varying instruction and guidance. To this treatment witness is borne by those who have had experience of it. Some are led by doctrine, others trained by example; some need the spur, others the curb; some are sluggish and hard to rouse to the good, and must be stirred up by being smitten with the word; others are immoderately fervent in spirit, with impulses difficult to restrain, like thoroughbred colts, who run wide of the turning post, and to improve them the word must have a restraining and checking influence.

There are some who desire to know simply for the sake of knowing, and this is shameful curiosity. And there are some who desire to know in order that they may become known themselves, and this is shameful vanity.… And some there are who desire to know in order to trade with their knowledge, bartering it for gold or for honors, and this is shameful traffic. But there are some also who desire to know in order to edify, and this is charity. And some, finally, who desire to know in order to be edified, and this is prudence. Of the above-mentioned classes, the last two alone are free from the guilt of abusing knowledge, for only these seek understanding as a means of well-doing.

Plant in the garden of your memory, the tree of the holy Cross; it produces a very efficacious medicine against all the suggestions of the devil. Of this most noble and fertile tree, the root is humility and poverty; the bark, labor and penitence; the branches, mercy and justice; the leaves, true honor and modesty; the scent, sobriety and abstinence; the beauty, chastity and obedience; the splendor, right faith and firm hope; the strength, magnanimity and patience; the length, long-suffering and perseverance; the breadth, benignity and concord; the height, charity and wisdom; the sweetness, love and joy; the fruit, salvation and life eternal.