Letter LXXXIV. To the Same

He sends back an erring monk, but advises that he should be treated more gently and kindly after his return.

In the first place, please to notice that your wandering sheep¹ has been detained by us against our custom, not for ourselves, but for his own sake, and for you; not without a good result, as you see, since we have succeeded by such treatment, and by salutary counsels, in satisfying his desire for a stricter life, and in giving you at the same time full satisfaction, by his return to you with his own assent.

I say this to you not to show you our kindly feeling towards you, which I could never sufficiently show, but to convince you of the truth of what I have already said to you, if I remember rightly, that the trial of a Rule somewhat more strict often suffices to calm unquiet spirits who are not content with the kind of life that they are living. You have written to say that you wish to have my advice on the subject of this very brother who is now reconciled to you; but I have thought it now unnecessary to give it, now that he has returned to you with the intention not of extorting his own will from you, but of doing yours, as it is right he should. I beg you on his behalf, and with him, kindly to soften the difficulty of his first return, which he greatly fears, and to treat him with greater kindness and condescension than is usual with other fugitives, because, although the circumstances are similar² to these, yet the cause of his conduct was different, and should justify different treatment. It is evident that there is a great distinction between one who quits his monastery from fear and dislike of the religious state, and one who quits it to go to another from love of his vocation and desire to practise it better.

To WILLIAM, ABBOT 01^ S. THIERRY.

Here is inserted in some editions a Letter of S. BERNARD, which we have prefixed as a preface to the Apology of Bernard, addressed to the same WILLIAM.

Footnotes

1. Bernard himself calls him Nicholas in his Apology to William, par. 4. ↩

2. But the actions were not really similar: because, according to philosophers, it is the final and determining causes which make the difference between actions. Thus they are similar only in class (in genere entis) to borrow their language, not in moral quality (in geuere muris). S. Augustine draws out this difference excellently in his 9^rd Letter, notes 6 and 7. ↩