Book II, Part 1, Chapter 7. Remedies against Anger, and the Hatred and Enmities which arise from it

1. Anger is an inordinate desire of revenge against any one we imagine has offended us. The apostle has left us a good medicine against this vice, when he says, " Let all bitterness, and anger, and wrath, and noise, and blasphemy, be removed from you, with all kind of malice. Be kind and merciful to one another, as God has given you in Christ." Ephes. v. 21, 22. Our Saviour, speaking in St. Matthew of this vice, says, " Every one that is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ; but he that shall call him fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire ;" Matt. v. 16.

2. Whenever you find yourself in danger of running into this outrageous vice, do not forget to make use of the following considerations, and to arm yourself as much as you can against the temptation. Consider, in the first place, that even beasts live peaceably with those of their own kind. We see that elephants are friendly to one another, that sheep and oxen are in their flocks and herds, that the little birds fly together ; that cranes take it by turns to stand sentry in the night ; that storks, stags, dolphins, and many other creatures, do the same ; every body knows the friendships there is between the ants and the bees; nay, even wild beasts, be they ever so cruel, are at peace with one another. The lion does not vent his fury on lions, bears do not fight with bears, one wolf does not devour another, nor do dragons fall out amongst themselves. In fine, the very devils, the first authors of all our discord, have their mutual ties, and exercise their tyranny by common consent. Man, whom peace most becomes, and who stands most in need of it, is the only creature that entertains an inveterate hatred against his own kind. Nor is it less remarkable, that nature has furnished all other creatures with arms to fight, as the horse with his feet, bulls with horns, boars with tusks, bees with stings, birds with beaks and talons, and even gnats and flies are not without the power of biting ; but thou, O man, whom she has designed for peace and concord, she sent into the world naked and unarmed, that thou mightest have nothing at all to do harm with. Reflect, then, how unnatural it is for you to endeavor to be revenged, or to return an injury that has been offered you, especially with weapons sought without yourself, which nature denied you.

3. Consider, in the next place, lhat anger and the desire of revenge is a vice that becomes none but wild beasts, of whose savage fury Solomon says, God gave him the knowledge, and that you consequently degenerate and fall very low from the generosity and nobleness of your condition, as often as you imitate the fury of lions, serpents and other wild creatures ; Sap. vii. iElian relates a passage of a certain lion, that had been wounded once with a lance in a chase. A twelvemonth after, the person that had given him the wound passed by the same way in company with king Juba, who had a great train attending him ; the lion knew the man again, and breaking through the guards, notwithstanding all their endeavors to beat him off, made no stop till he came up to the man that had hurt him, fell on and tore him to pieces. We see bulls do the same every day to those that vex them. Men that are given to anger and revenge imitate these brutal motions, for when they might quiet their fury wTith reason and human discretion, they choose rather to follow the fury and impulse of beasts, and to make use of that baser part of their souls, which even brutes have as well as they, neglecting at the same time that part of them which is more divine, and which they share in with angels. If you say it is very hard to quell and tame a heart when once it is provoked, why do not you consider how much harder that is which the Son of God has undergone for your sake? What were you when he shed his blood for the love of you? Were you not at that time his enemy ? Why do you not consider how patiently he bears with you, notwithstanding the sins you are hourly committing against him, and with what mercy he is ready to receive you when you return to him ? You will say, perhaps, your enemy does not deserve to be pardoned : do you deserve any better that God should pardon you ? You will have God show his mercy to you, whilst you yourself will exercise nothing but justice upon your neighbor. Consider that if your enemy does not deserve to be forgiven, you yourself are unworthy of pardon, and Jesus Christ is most worthy that you should pardon your enemy for the love of him.

4. Consider that as long as you keep any malice in your heart, you cannot make God any offering that he will accept of. Our Saviour, for this reason, says, " If you offer your present at the altar, and should there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go first and be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift;'' Matt. v. 23, 24. This sufficiently shows what a grievous crime brotherly discord is, because, as long as it continues, you are one of God's enemies, and do what you will in this state, you will never be able to please him : whereupon St. Gregory says, " That all our good actions can have no merit, unless we suffer with patience the injuries that are offered us ;" 21 Moral, c. 16.

5. You are also to consider what he is whom you look on as your enemy, for he must of necessity be either a just man or a sinner. It is certainly a very deplorable thing to wish any ill to such a one, and to reckon him your enemy whom God looks on as your friend ; but if he be a sinner, it is a case no less lamentable to desire to be revenged of another man's wickedness, by being wicked yourself, and by making yourself judge in your own cause, to commit an injustice yourself that you may the more easily punish another man's. If the other person should endeavor to revenge his injuries as much as you do yours, when will your quarrels be at an end ? The apostle teaches us a much more generous way of overcoming our enemies, when he says, " Overcome evil with good" (Rom. xii. 21); that is to say, another man's bad actions by our own good ones. For whilst you are endeavoring to retun* evil for evil, and are unwilling to yield in any points whatever, you may often happen to be shamefully foiled, whilst you are carried away by anger and overcome by your passions ; whereas if you had resisted it, you would have shown yourself much stronger than him who should have taken a town by force of arms. For the taking of a city, which is a thing without you, is not half so considerable a victory as is the subduing of the passions that are within you, the putting of yourself under your own equitable laws, and the bridling and stopping of your anger in its heat and its most vigorous sallies. For if you do not suppress it in time, it will rise up against you, and make you do that which you will afterwards be sorry for. And, what is worst of all, you will scarce be able to know what mischief you do, because an angry man thinks that whatever he does in order to revenge himself, he has always justice on his side ; nay, he is often deceived so far as to imagine, that the very heat of his anger is nothing but a zeal for justice, and thus vice hides itself under the color of virtue.

§ I. — 6. One, therefore, of the most sovereign remedies for the better overcoming this vice, is to endeavor to pluck up this evil root of an inordinate love for yourself, and of every thing else that belongs to you ; otherwise the least word, spoken against either you or yours, will make you fly out into a passion ; and besides the more naturally you shall find yourself inclined to anger, you ought to labor so much the harder for the acquiring of patience, by considering beforehand, and preventing all kinds of grievances which you are like to meet with in your affairs. For the foreseeing of any misfortune lessens the influence it would otherwise have had over us. For this reason you are to make a strong resolution, as often as you shall perceive yourself breaking out into a passion, not to say or do any thing whilst you are in that condition, nor to believe even your own self, but to suspect whatever your heart shall at that time dictate to you, let it seem ever so just and reasonable ; put off the execution till such time as your passion is over, or say the Pater Noster once over or oftener, or some other devout prayer. Plutarch tells us of a very eminent and learned philosopher, who, taking his leave of a prince, his greater friend, advised him never, when he was in a passion, to order any thing to be done till he had first said the letters of the alphabet over ; to give him to understand what rash and inconsiderate actions the heat of anger would excite him to.

7. And it is very observable that though this is the worst time that can be for a man to resolve on any thing he has to do, yet at no time has he a stronger desire to do any thing in than this, which obliges you to be very prudent and rigorous in the resisting of the temptation. For as a man that is drunk is incapable of acting according to reason, and afterwards repents him of what he has done, as is written of Alexander the Great ; so that he that is drunk with the wine of anger, and blinded with the vapors of this passion, cannot follow any advice or counsel to-day, but let it appear ever so sound and wholesome, he will dislike and condemn it tomorrow. For it is certain that the worst counsellors in the world are anger, wine, and the desires of the flesh. And, therefore, Solomon says, " That wine and women make wise men beside themselves." Where, by wine, he means not only real wine, which is wont to blind the reason, but any violent passion, which in some manner blinds the senses ; and yet whatsoever a man does in such a disposition is, nevertheless, a sin.

It is very advisable, whenever you are angry, to employ yourself about something else, and to put the thing out of your mind which was the occasion of your passion ; because, if you take away the fuel that nourishes the fire, the flame must, of necessity, go out. Endeavor also to love what necessity obliges you to suffer ; for, if suffering and love do not go together, the patience which appears on the outside is very often turned into hatred. Whereupon St. Paul having said, " Charity is patient," immediately adds, " It is kind ;" because true charity never fails to have a kind and tender love for those persons who suffer patiently. In fine, it is further advisable to give your neighbor time to let his anger work off ; for if you will but retire a little when you see him in a passion, you will give him room to overcome it by degrees: or, at least, in such a conjuncture you must answer him with a great deal of civility and mildness ; because, as Soloman says, " A soft answer appeases anger;" Prov. xv. 1.