Volume III, Treatise VIII, Chapter III

Of the Inconveniences Resulling from not Receiving Correction in Good Part

Prive and folly, of which I have just spoken, are grown to such an excess, and all the world knows it so well, that there is scarce one at present to be found who will admonish his brethren of their faults; because there is scarce any one that is willing to make himself hated, or, as the common proverb says, to give money to purchase ill-will. But proud men gain hereby only what they deserve. For what is it that a sick person deserves who will not permit himself to be treated? Why, he deserves to be forsaken and alone to die; and what else does that man also deserve who will not permit himself to be reprehended, and who receives in bad part all the charitable admonitions that are given him? “He that hates correction”, says the wise man, “shall die, and he who hates discipline despises his own soul” (Proverbs 15:10) and 32. He deserves, without doubt, not to be admonished, nor to be reprehended for anything, and that his defects should daily increase, that they come to be known to all the world, and that all the world may divert themselves with them without any one’s having the charity to speak to him of them. It is this which ordinarily happens to those that find difficulty in being reprehended; and what greater punishment can such a man receive than to be left in his pride and obstinacy? ‘“We have taken care of Babylon, and she is not cured; let us forsake her”—VJerem., li. 9. He that will not make use of the remedies that are given him deserves to be forsaken. If we find a vineyard incapable of bringing forth grapes, we cease to dress and prune it. In like manner, when we cease to reprehend a person who takes it in ill part, we abandon him as being incapable of correction.

St. Francis Borgia, speaking of the inconvenience of not receiving correction in good part, says, that there are two very considerable inconveniences into either of which a person must infallibly fall. For either the correction will be entirely abandoned, as it is very distressing to be giving remedies to reluctant patients, and in this case the defects will take root; or, if the correction is continued, but taken ill, then the house will be presently filled with gall and bitterness by such indocile beings, who take that for an injury which they ought to receive as a favour, and who, converting wholesome remedies into poison, will be offended and exasperated at the very thing for which they ought to feel themselves eternally obliged. This methinks ought very much afflict those to whom no reprehension is given. For they ought to reflect upon themselves and say, “Is it not because I am like a sick person that is given over by the physician—is it not because I have received in bad part what has been said to me, that I am no longer spoken to?” The same saint afterwards recommends to us, in the same place, the spirit of sweetness, simplicity, and charity, that was practised in the beginning of our institution, and which caused that correction was so far from being an occasion’ of scandal and bitterness to those that were told of their faults, that it was a subject of edification and thanksgiving.

A grave doctor, speaking of those who wish not to be reprehended, compares them to the Devil, because they are as incorrigible as he is, and says, that one of the things that distinguish a sinner from the Devil is, that the sinner is capable of correction whilst he lives, whereas the Devil is eternally incapable of it. He applies to this subject these words of Ecclesiasticus, ‘He who hates correction is of the race of the sinner, that is to say, of the Devil, who figuratively is called the sinner’ (Ecclesiasticus 21:7) As, then, the impression made by the foot is like to the foot, so he who hates correction is like to the Devil, because he renders himself as incorrigible as he is, and shuts the gate against one of the best means he can have to correct himself. St. Basil says, “that he who does this is a most dangerous companion, because his example makes others hate correction, and thereby diverts them from their enterprise, which is to labour ‘continually in the amendment of their life’. For which reason he orders that these indocile and incorrigible spirits should be separated from the rest of the community, lest they should communicate their disease to their brethren.

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