On Jealousy and Envy.
1. To be jealous of what you see to be good, and to be envious of those who are better than yourself, seems, beloved brethren, in the eyes of some peo
2. He goeth about every one of us and even as an enemy besieging those who are shut up (in a city), he examines the walls, and tries whether there is
3. Wherefore, beloved brethren, against all the devil’s deceiving snares or open threatenings, the mind ought to stand arrayed and armed, ever as read
4. From this source, even at the very beginnings of the world, the devil was the first who both perished (himself) and destroyed (others). He who was
5. Hence, in fine, began the primal hatreds of the new brotherhood, hence the abominable fratricides, in that the unrighteous Cain is jealous of the r
6. Considering which things, beloved brethren, let us with vigilance and courage fortify our hearts dedicated to God against such a destructiveness of
7. But what a gnawing worm of the soul is it, what a plague-spot of our thoughts, what a rust of the heart, to be jealous of another, either in respec
8. Hence the threatening countenance, the lowering aspect, pallor in the face, trembling on the lips, gnashing of the teeth, mad words, unbridled revi
9. The mischief is much more trifling, and the danger less, when the limbs are wounded with a sword. The cure is easy where the wound is manifest and
10. And therefore, beloved brethren, the Lord, taking thought for this risk, that none should fall into the snare of death through jealousy of his bro
11. Why do you rush into the darkness of jealousy? why do you enfold yourself in the cloud of malice? why do you quench all the light of peace and cha
12. We ought to remember by what name Christ calls His people, by what title He names His flock. He calls them sheep, that their Christian innocence m
13. Thus also the Apostle Paul, when he was urging the merits of peace and charity, and when he was strongly asserting and teaching that neither faith
14. Vices and carnal sins must be trampled down, beloved brethren, and the corrupting plague of the earthly body must be trodden under foot with spiri
15. For this is to change what you had been, and to begin to be what you were not, that the divine birth might shine forth in you, that the godly disc
16. The mind must be strengthened, beloved brethren, by these meditations. By exercises of this kind it must be confirmed against all the darts of the
17. To these rewards that you also may come who had been possessed with jealousy and rancour, cast away all that malice wherewith you were before held
18. And you have many things to consider. Think of paradise, whither Cain does not enter, who by jealousy slew his brother. Think of the heavenly king
