XIX. (111) This is what the lawgiver in one passage says, while declaring the will of God, that, “thou shalt complete the number of thy days,” prophesying thus with great beauty and using great propriety and naturalness of language. For the man who is destitute of all learning, and who disregards the law, does not speak either in reason nor in number, as the old proverb says; but he who has a fair share of instruction and who adheres to the holy laws, receives as his first reward, since he is proved to be a respectable and reputable man, a share in number and arrangement. (112) And very admirable is this fulness and completeness, not of months or years, but of days, so that no day whatever in the life of a virtuous man ever leaves an empty and open door for the entrance of sins, but is filled in all its parts and all its intervals with absolute virtue and excellence. For virtue and goodness are judged of not by quantity but by quality, for which reason I look upon it that even one day spent with perfect correctness is of equal value with the entire good life of a wise man. (113) This is what is enigmatically implied in other expressions, where the holy writer says that such a man “shall deserve blessings both at his coming in and going out;” because the virtuous man is praiseworthy in all his positions and in all his actions, both indoors and out of doors, whether engaged in affairs of state or in the regulation of his household, regulating all his affairs inside his house with economy, and all the business out of doors with a due regard to principles of state government in the way in which it is most expedient for them to be regulated. (114) If, then, any one proves himself a man of such a character in the city he will appear superior to the whole city, and if a city show itself of such a character it will be the chief of all the country around; and if a nation do so it will be the lord of all the other nations, as the head is to the body occupying the pre-eminence of situation, not more for the sake of glory than for that of advancing the interests of those that see. For continual appearances of good models stamp impressions closely resembling themselves on all souls which are not utterly obdurate and intractable; (115) and I say this with reference to those who wish to imitate models of excellent and admirable beauty, that they may not despair of a change for the better, nor of an alteration and improvement from that dispersion, as it were, of the soul which vice engenders, so that they may be able to effect a return to virtue and wisdom. (116) For when God is favourable every thing is made easy. And he is favourable to those who display modesty and due reverence, and who seek to pass over from intemperance to temperance, and who reproach themselves for all the blameable actions of their life, and for all the base images which they have stamped upon their polluted souls, and who aim at a tranquil state of the passions, and who keep constantly in view, as the proper object of their pursuit, a calmness and serenity of life. (117) As therefore God, by one single word of command, could easily collect together men living on the very confines of the earth, bringing them from the extremities of the world to any place which he may choose, so also the merciful Saviour can bring back the soul after its long wandering, after it has been straying about in every direction, and been ill-treated by pleasure and desire, most imperious mistresses, and guide it easily from a trackless waste into a regular road when it has once determined to flee from evil without ever looking back, a flight not liable to reproach, but the cause of its preservation, which no one will do wrong to pronounce more desirable than any return.
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