Praeparatio Evangelica (The Preparation of the Gospel)

THE Hebrew prophecy says to the princes of the people: 'O ye shepherds of Israel, do shepherds feed themselves? Do not the shepherds feed the sheep? Behold, ye devour the milk, and the fat ye slay, and clothe you with the wool, and ye feed not My sheep.... And ye sought not the lost, and the broken ye bound not up, and brought not back that which was going astray.' Moreover the Word of our salvation says: 'The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep: but he that is an hireling and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, forsaketh them.' Now listen also to Plato, in the first Book of the Republic, how he translates these sayings:

[PLATO] 'But as it is, Thrasymachus (for we must still look back upon our former statements), you see that though at first you defined the true physician, you did not afterwards think it necessary to keep strict watch over the definition of the true shepherd; but you suppose that, in so far as he is a shepherd, he fattens the sheep not with a view to what is best for the sheep, but with a view to the good cheer, just as a banqueter who is going to have a feast, or on the other hand with a view to selling them, as a money-maker and not a shepherd. But surely the art of the shepherd is concerned with nothing else than how to provide what is best for the flock over which he is set: for surely it has sufficiently provided all that is required for its own perfection, as long as it lacks nothing of the shepherd's art. Thus then I was supposing just now, that we must necessarily admit that every government, in so far as it is a government, looks solely to what is best for that which is governed and tended by it, in the case both of public and private government. But is it your opinion that the rulers in states, I mean the true rulers, hold office willingly?'