A Treatise on Christian Moderation

From the Book

“I cannot but second and commend that great clerk of Paris who (as our witty countryman, Bromyard, reports), when King Louis of France required him to write down the best word he ever learned, called for a fair skin of parchment, and in the midst of it, wrote this one word, “MEASURE,” and sent it sealed up to the King. The King, opening the sheet, and finding no other inscription, thought himself mocked by his philosopher, and calling for him, expostulated the matter; but when it was showed him that all virtues, and all religious and worthy actions were regulated by this one word, and that without this virtue itself turned vicious, he rested well satisfied. And so he well might; for it was a word well worthy of one of the Seven Sages of Greece, from whom indeed it was borrowed, and only put into a new coat. For, while he said of old (for his motto), Nothing too much, he meant no other but to comprehend both extremes under the mention of one. Neither in his sense is it any paradox to say that too little is too much; for as too much bounty is prodigality, so too much sparing is niggardliness; so as in every defect there is an excess, and both are a transgression of measure. Neither could anything be spoken of more use or excellency. For what goodness can there be in the world without moderation, whether in the use of God’s creatures or in our own disposition and carriage? Without this, justice is no other than cruel rigor; mercy, unjust remissness; pleasure, brutish sensuality; love, frenzy; anger, fury; sorrow, desperate mopishness; joy, distempered wildness; knowledge, saucy curiosity; piety, superstition; care, wracking distraction; courage, mad rashness. Shortly, there can be nothing under heaven without it but mere vice and confusion. Like as in nature: if the elements should forget the temper of their due mixture, and encroach upon each other by excess, what could follow but universal ruin? Or what is it that shall put an end to this great frame of the world but the predominancy of that last devouring fire? It is therefore moderation by which this inferior world stands, since that wise and great God, who hath ordained the continuance of it, hath decreed so to contemper all the parts thereof that none of them should exceed the bounds of their own proportion and degree to prejudice the other. Yea, what is the heaven itself, but (as Gerson compares it well) as a great clock regularly moving in an equal sway of all the orbs without difference of poise, without variation of minutes, in a constant state of eviternal evenness, both of being and motion. Neither is it any other by which this little world of ours (whether of body or mind) is upheld in any safe, or tolerable estate; when humours pass their stint, the body sickens; when passions, the mind.

There is nothing therefore in the world more wholesome, or necessary for us to learn than this gracious lesson of moderation, without which, in very truth, a man is so far from being a Christian that he is not himself. This is the center, wherein all, both divine and moral philosophy, meet; the rule of life, the governess of manners, the silken string of all virtues, the very ecliptic line, under which reason and religion move without any deviation, and therefore, most worthy of our best thoughts, of our most careful observance.“

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