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He is drawn by a certain authority of teachers, and it would have profited him not to have sought a teacher rather than to have found such a one. But even if some pagan receives the Scriptures, he reads: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; he reads also: If your right hand offend you, cut it off — he does not understand the meaning, he does not perceive the secrets of the divine word, and he stumbles worse than if he had not read. And therefore John taught in what manner they ought to investigate the word of God: not perfunctorily, not improvidently, but diligently and carefully. That which was, he says, from the beginning, which we have heard and which we have seen with our eyes, we have looked upon, and our hands have searched out concerning the Word of life; and we have seen and bear witness and announce to you.
You see that he first searched out the Word of God with certain hands, and afterward announced it. And therefore perhaps the word would have done no harm to Adam and Eve, if they had first touched it diligently with certain hands of the mind as they pondered; for the weak, by pondering and inquiring more diligently, can investigate the nature of each thing which they do not understand. Surely those weak ones ought to have searched out beforehand how they might touch that tree in which they had come to know that the knowledge of evil resided. For even the knowledge of evil can often profit us. And therefore we read of the devil's frauds either in this reading or in prophecy, so that we may learn how we can beware of his arts;
for his temptations are to be known, not that we may follow them, but that, taught and instructed, we may beware. There are some in this passage who hold a doubt: whether God so said that it should be tasted of every tree, that of every tree the tree of the knowledge of good and evil might also be tasted; or whether he said that of every tree it should be tasted, but that of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil alone it should not be tasted? These hold that it is not an idle reasoning that, although the food of this tree was noxious, yet if it were eaten with the rest, it could not be noxious — since the antidote theriac is said to be made customarily from the body of a serpent, which indeed, the venom and body of the serpent, when taken alone, harms, but when mixed with others, makes for health and salvation.
The knowledge of good and evil too, if one has wisdom, if one ever strives toward life, if one attains the other kinds of virtues, is by no means reckoned useless. By this reasoning, therefore, very many had thought that this also could be understood: that God seems to have forbidden the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to be tasted alone, apart from the rest, but not to have forbidden it with the rest. And they think it was said for this reason, because God says to Adam: Who told you that you were naked, unless you have eaten of the tree from which alone I had commanded you not to eat? This would seem to give some occasion for interpretation, were it not that the woman, above, when the serpent said, 'Why indeed has God said, you shall not eat of every tree that is in paradise?'
had answered: Of that which is in the midst of paradise, God has said: You shall not eat of it. In which, although the faith of the woman about to transgress may seem rather weak, yet I will not strip Adam of all virtues, so that he should seem to have attained no virtue in paradise, to have tasted nothing of the other trees, and to have fallen into guilt before he had obtained any of the fruits. I will not therefore strip Adam, lest I despoil the whole human race, which is innocent before it receives the sense of the knowledge of good and evil. For it is not idly said: Unless you be converted and become as this child, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
For a child, when he is reviled, does not revile in return; when he is struck, does not strike back; he knows not the temptations of ambition and rapine. Therefore I rather think that he commanded the tree not to be eaten even with the other fruits. For although knowledge is good for the perfect, yet it is useless for the imperfect. I would venture to call every man imperfect, since Paul himself speaks as though imperfect: Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect, but I follow after, if I may apprehend; and therefore the Lord says to the imperfect: Judge not, that you be not judged. Therefore knowledge is useless to the imperfect. In short, I had not known sin, except the law had said: You shall not covet; and below: For without the law sin was dead.
For what did it profit me to know what I could not avoid? What did it profit me to know what the law of my flesh assailed? Paul is assailed, and sees the law of his flesh warring against the law of his mind and himself brought into captivity in the law of sin; nor does he presume on his own conscience, but through the grace of Christ he trusts that he will be freed from the body of death. And do you suppose that anyone who knows is unable to sin? Paul says: For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. And do you think knowledge profits a man, knowledge which increases the odium of his fault? Yet grant that the perfect cannot sin:
in Adam God foresaw all men, and therefore it was not fitting for the human race indiscriminately to possess the knowledge of good and evil, which, through the vices of the flesh, it could not exercise as it ought. Let us learn, therefore, that the temptations of the devil are full of lying; for scarcely one thing of those he promised appears true, the rest he composed of falsehoods. For thus you have it: And the serpent said to the woman: You shall not die the death. Behold one falsehood; for man died the death, who followed the promises of the serpent. Then he added: For God knew, he says, that on whatever day you eat of it, your eyes shall be opened. This alone is true, because below you have it that they both ate and their eyes were opened — but this is the truth that would harm.
In short, it is not profitable for all to have their eyes opened, for it is written: They shall see and not see. But at once a lie is glued on, for he added: And you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. In which one may note that the serpent is the author of idolatry, in that by a certain craftiness the serpent seems to have introduced many gods into the error of men. And this too deceived, that man should be 'as gods'; for not only did men cease to be as gods, but even those who were as gods, to whom it was said: I have said, you are gods, lost his grace. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes to behold, and fair to look upon. A weak author of judgement, who judged about that which she had not tasted.
And therefore nothing should easily seem to be taken up for some work, except what we have pondered more diligently, what we have approved by inner affection. Taking, it says, of its fruit she ate, and gave to her husband as well. And they both ate. It is well that it is passed over where Adam is deceived, because he fell not by his own fault, but by his wife's fault. And their eyes, it says, were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And before, indeed, they were naked, but not without the coverings of the virtues. They were naked because of the simplicity of their character, and because their nature knew no garment of fraud; but now the human mind is veiled with many wrappings of pretences.
Therefore, after they saw themselves stripped of that sincerity and simplicity of an intact and uncorrupted nature, they began to seek worldly and hand-made things, with which they might cover the nakedness of their mind, stitching delights to delights and the shadowy pleasures of this world, as it were leaves to leaves, with which they might overshadow the secret of their generation. For how did Adam have the eyes of his body closed, who saw all living things in such a way that he even imposed a name upon them? How did they 'know' — that is, by an inner and deeper knowledge — that not a tunic but the veils of the virtues were lacking to them? And they stitched together, it says, fig leaves, and made themselves aprons.
What kind of thing we ought to understand by the fig in this passage, the sequence of the divine readings teaches us, since Scripture has recorded that those are holy who rest under the vine and the fig tree, and Solomon said: Who plants a fig tree and does not eat of its fruit? And the Lord came to a fig tree, but was offended for this reason, because he found not fruit, but only leaves. Adam therefore teaches me what leaves are, who, after he had sinned, made himself an apron from fig leaves, though he ought rather to have tasted of its fruits. The just man chooses the fruit, the sinner the leaves. What is the fruit? The fruit, he says, of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, modesty, continence, love.
He did not have the fruit who had not joy, he did not have faith who had transgressed the command of God, he did not have continence who had tasted of the tree forbidden to him. Therefore whoever transgresses the command of God is stripped and made naked, and becomes base to himself. He wishes to cover himself with certain fig leaves, perhaps with certain empty or shadowy words, which the sinner, stitching together with contrived lies and building word upon word, weaves to cover the conscience of his mind and as a veil for his deed, that he may conceal his shame. For he casts leaves over himself who, desiring to veil his fault, either recalls the devil as the author of his offence, or puts forward the enticements of the flesh, or betrays some other persuader of his error.
And he frequently produces examples from the divine Scriptures, by which he alleges that the just have fallen into fault, saying, if perchance he has been caught in fornication: 'Abraham too lay with a handmaid, and David coveted another's wife and took her to himself': for he stitches to himself certain examples from the sequence of the prophetic Scriptures, and thinks their fruit need not be sought. Do not even the Jews seem to you to stitch leaves, while they interpret carnally the words of the spiritual law? Whose interpretation loses all the fruit of its greenness, condemned by the curse of eternal dryness. Good therefore is the interpretation, that is, the spiritual fig, which is fruitful, under which the just and holy rest. And whoever has planted it in the souls of individuals, as Paul says:
I planted, Apollos watered — he shall eat of its fruit; but a bad interpretation cannot bear fruit nor keep its greenness. What therefore is more grievous, Adam girded himself with this interpretation in that place where he ought rather to have girded himself with the fruit of chastity. For in the loins, with which we are girded, certain seeds of generation are said to be; and therefore Adam was badly girded there with useless leaves, where he should signify not the future fruit of the generation to come, but certain sins, which remained even until the coming of the Lord the Saviour. But after the Lord came, he found the fig untended. Being asked that he should not order it to be cut down, he allowed it to be tended.
And therefore we are now girded not with leaves but with the divine word, for the Lord himself says: Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning. Whence he also forbids money to be carried in our belts; for our belt ought to keep not worldly but eternal things. And they heard, it says, the voice of the Lord walking in paradise toward the evening. What is the walking of God, who is everywhere always? But I think there is a certain walking of God through the sequence of the divine Scriptures, in which a certain presence of God is engaged, when we hear that he himself beholds all things and the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, when we read that Jesus knew their thoughts, when we read: Why do you think evil in your hearts?
Therefore, while we review these things, we recognize God as it were walking. The sinner had fled, therefore, not that he could be hidden from the sight of God, but he desired to hide within his own conscience, he was unwilling that his works should shine forth. For the just see God face to face, because the just mind is not only present to God, but even disputes with God, as it is written: Judge for the orphan and justify the widow, and come, let us dispute, says the Lord. Therefore when the sinner reads these Scriptures, he hears the voice of God as it were walking toward the evening. What is 'toward the evening,' except that he comes to know his fault late, and there comes late a certain shame of past error, which ought to have forestalled the error?
For while guilt rages in the body and the soul is agitated by the passions of the body, the sense of the erring man does not think of God — that is, it does not hear God walking in the divine Scriptures, walking in the minds of individuals. For God says: For I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God. Therefore when the dread of the divine power returns into the sense of the soul, then we blush, then we long to hide ourselves, then, set amid the thoughts of our sins in the midst of the tree of paradise where we sinned, we are caught desiring to hide and supposing that God does not search out hidden things. But the searcher of souls and thoughts, penetrating even to the division of the soul, says: Adam, where are you? How does God speak?
Was it with a bodily voice? Not at all, but by a certain power more excellent than the voice of the body can be, he pours forth his oracles. This his voice the prophets heard, this voice the faithful hear, the impious do not understand. In short, in the Gospel you have it that the evangelist heard the Father saying: I have both glorified it and will glorify it again, but the Jews did not hear. In short, they were saying: It thundered. There, therefore, as you have above that God was perceived walking who did not walk, so God was heard speaking who did not speak. But let us consider what he says: Adam, where are you? There is still in these words a remedy of health for those who hear the word of God. In short, the Jews, who closed their ears that they might not hear, even today do not deserve to hear.
Next, they have a remedy who have hidden themselves. For he who is hidden blushes, he who blushes is converted, as it is written: Let them all be confounded and converted very quickly. Then this very thing, that he calls, is a sign of one about to heal, because the Lord both has mercy on and calls those whom he wills. But by saying, Where are you? he does not seek a place, who knows the secret thing; for God did not have his eyes closed, so as not to see one hiding. In short, for this reason he said: Adam has become as one of us, because he opened his eyes. And this one indeed opened his eyes, that he might see his own fault, which he could not avoid;
for the more, after we have sinned, somehow we recognize our offences, and then we understand to be sin what, before we sinned, we did not think to be sin — certainly we did not think it to be condemnable as sin; for if we condemned it, we would not commit it. But God sees the faults of all and knows the offences of all; over the soul of all, over the hidden things of all he has his eyes. What then is, Adam, where are you? — that is, not 'in what place,' but 'in what state are you?' It is therefore not a question, but a rebuke. From what goods, he says, from what blessedness, from what grace into what misery have you fallen back? You have forsaken eternal life and have been entombed in death, buried with error. Where is that confidence of yours, so well aware of itself?
This fear confesses guilt, the hiding-place confesses the transgression. Where therefore are you? — that is, I ask not in what place, but in what condition. To what have your sins brought you, that you flee your God, whom before you used to seek? Perhaps it may trouble one why Adam is rebuked first, when the woman tasted first. But let the weaker sex have begun from the transgression, the stronger from shame and excuse, so that the woman was the cause of error, the man of modesty. And the woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I ate. A pardonable fault, which a profession of offences follows. Therefore the woman was not despaired of, who did not keep silent before God, but rather confessed her sin, whom a curable sentence followed.
It is good to be condemned in one's sin and to be scourged in one's offence, that we may be scourged among men. In short, Cain, because he wished to deny his crime, was judged unworthy to be punished in his sin, but was let off without a fixed penalty — perhaps not so much for the greater crime of parricide (for that he committed against his brother) as for sacrilege, in that he thought he might lie to God, saying: I know not; am I my brother's keeper? And therefore his accusation was reserved for the devil his accuser, so that he might be scourged with his angels, he who was unwilling to be scourged among men. In short, of such it is said: There is no relenting of their death, and they shall not be scourged among men. The case of the woman, therefore, is another, who, although she had fallen into the fault of transgression,
yet she still had from the trees of paradise the food of virtue, and therefore she confessed her sin, and it was reckoned to her unto pardon. For the just man is the accuser of himself at the beginning of his discourse; nor can anyone be justified from sin unless he has first confessed the sin. Whence the Lord says: Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified. Therefore, because Eve herself confessed her offence, a milder and more profitable sentence follows, which would condemn the error and yet not deny pardon, so that, turned toward her husband, she should be subject. First, lest error easily delight her; then, that being placed under a stronger vessel she should not lead her husband astray, but should rather be governed herself by her husband's counsel. In which indeed I clearly recognize the mystery of Christ and the Church.
For there is designated the Church's future conversion to Christ, and a religious servitude subject to the Word of God, which is far better than the liberty of this world. In short, it is written: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. This servitude of God, therefore, is a gift. In short, among the blessings is reckoned the homage of this servitude; for Isaac too gave it to his son Esau in place of a blessing, that he should serve his brother. In short, Esau was begging for a blessing. Although he had learned that one had been snatched away from him, yet he asked for another, saying: Have you but one blessing, father?
Through this servitude, therefore, that man who through his gluttony had earlier sold his birthright, and through his eagerness for wild hunting had lost the grace of the blessing, believed that he himself would become better if he venerated the figure of Christ in his brother. For by this servitude the Christian people prevails, just as the Lord also says to his disciples: 'Whoever among you wishes to be first, let him be the servant of all.' Lastly, this servitude is wrought by charity, which is greater than hope and faith. Whence it is written: 'Through charity serve one another.' This, then, is the mystery of which the Apostle speaks, in Christ and in the Church.
For this generation truly was formerly in transgression, but it shall be saved through the bearing of children in faith and charity and sanctification with chastity—the race of men, having transgressed indeed in its fathers, being saved through its sons, so that what it had offended in the Jews it might correct in its Christian posterity. 'The serpent,' she says, 'persuaded me,' and this seemed pardonable to God, because he knew that the serpent had many ways of deceiving, since it is transfigured into an angel of light, and its ministers are as ministers of righteousness, imposing false names upon individual things, so that it calls rashness a virtue and gives the name of industry to greed. For the serpent deceived the woman; the woman led the man away from truth into transgression.
Bodily pleasure took on the figure of the serpent. The woman is the symbol of our sense, the man of the mind. Pleasure, then, moves the sense, and the sense transmits to the mind the passion it has received. Pleasure, therefore, is the first origin of sin; and so do not wonder why the serpent is condemned first by the judgment of God, the woman second, the man third. According to the order of the fault, the order of condemnation too was preserved; for pleasure is wont to take captive the sense, and the sense the mind. But that you may know the serpent is the figure of pleasure, observe its condemnation: 'Upon thy breast,' it says, 'and upon thy belly shalt thou go.'
Who are those who walk upon their belly except those who live for the belly and the gullet, whose god is the belly and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things and, laden with food, are bent down to earthly things? Fittingly, then, he says to pleasure, which, intent upon food, seems to eat the earth: 'Upon thy breast and upon thy belly shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' Every excuse of the devil must be taken away, lest perhaps he be able to put forward something of his malice, so as to say that his iniquity came to him by condemnation, and that therefore he stubbornly strives to harm men because he was condemned for the very purpose of harming. This seems near to that opinion, if we take that sentence as one of condemnation;
For God did not condemn the serpent to this end, that it should do harm, but he showed what was to come. And indeed we have demonstrated above that that temptation profits men the more; provided, however, that we have recognized that it is written, God saying: 'Those who honor me I will honor, and he who despises me shall be deprived of honor'—we may from these words form some estimate. For God works what is good, not what is evil; therefore let the divine words teach you that he works glory, and leaves punishment to follow. 'Those who honor me,' he says, 'I will honor,' declaring the honor of the good to be the result of his own operation. 'And those who despise me,' he says—he did not say 'I will deprive of honor,' but 'they shall be deprived of honor,' not attributing their injury to his own operation, but showing what was to come.
Therefore here he did not say: 'I make thee go upon thy breast and upon thy belly and eat earth all the days of thy life,' but: 'Thou shalt go,' he says, 'and thou shalt eat,' so that he might seem rather to have foretold concerning the serpent what was to come than to have prescribed what it should do. 'Earth,' he says, 'shall be thy food,' not the soul; for this too is profitable to sinners. Whence also the Apostle delivered such a one to the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he says the serpent creeps upon breast and belly, not so much because of the figure of its body as because, through earthly thoughts, it fell from that heavenly blessing; for the breast is often taken as a certain recess of wisdom.
And therefore the Apostle reclined his head upon the breast of Christ, and did not cast it down to earth. Therefore, if the wisdom of the devil is compared to the most monstrous beasts, whose breast lies between their feet—if even men who mind earthly things and are not lifted by inner affection to heaven seem to creep upon their belly across the earth—then surely we ought not to fill the belly of our soul with the corruptible things of this world, but rather to satiate it with the word of God. Well, then, David, taking on the person of Adam, says: 'My soul is humbled in the dust, my belly has cleaved to the earth'; for it cleaved while it is conformed to the serpent, which is fed with earthly iniquity. And therefore the Apostle says that we ought to be conformed to Christ, so that the power of Christ may be displayed in us.
This sentence is not thought heavy against the serpent, since even Adam, who sinned more lightly, is condemned with such a sentence. For it is written: 'Cursed is the earth in thy works; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.' There seems indeed to be a certain likeness of sentence, yet in that very likeness there is a great distinction. For it makes a difference whether one eats earth as it was said to the serpent, 'thou shalt eat earth,' or rather as it was said to man, 'in sorrow shalt thou eat.' For that addition, 'in sorrow,' makes the distinction; consider what force the distinction has. It is good for me rather to eat earth in sorrow than in pleasure.
That is, that in some act and bodily sense I should seem to be saddened rather than to take delight in sin; for many, on account of their excessive iniquities, feel no consciousness of sin. But that man who says, 'I chastise my body and bring it into servitude,' is saddened over the penance for our sins, since he had not such great offenses of his own as to be saddened over them. Lastly, he also persuades us that this sorrow is useful, which is according to God, not according to the world. 'You ought,' he says, 'to be saddened unto penance according to God; for sorrow according to God works salvation, but the sorrow of the world works death.'
But from the Old Testament too, learn that those came to grace who were saddened in bodily labors, but those remained for punishment who took delight in such works. Lastly, the Hebrews, who groaned in the labors of Egypt, obtained the grace of the just, and because they ate their bread in sorrow, they were given spiritual food; but the Egyptians, who celebrated such works with exultation, serving a detestable king, obtained no pardon.
But there is also this distinction, that to the serpent it is said, 'thou shalt eat earth,' but to Adam, 'in sorrow,' he says, 'thou shalt eat the grass of the field,' so that we may understand a certain progress in these things: when we eat earth, we seem to be in a certain malice; when grass, in a certain progress; but when bread, then will fortitude have been consummated. Therefore let us too have a progress in this life, as Paul also had, who says: 'Yet now I live, not I'—that is, not I who formerly ate earth, not I who ate grass, for all flesh is grass—'but Christ lives in me'; that is, there lives that living bread which came from heaven, there lives wisdom, there lives grace, there lives righteousness, there lives the resurrection.
Next, consider that the man was not cursed, but the serpent was cursed; nor is the earth cursed in itself, but 'cursed,' he says, 'in thy works'—it was said to the soul. Then is the earth cursed, if you have earthly works, that is, worldly works; and it is cursed not universally, but so that it brings forth thorns and thistles, unless it has been tilled by the diligence of human labor. But if we have tilled it, in toil indeed and sweat, yet we shall eat bread. For the law of the flesh wars against the law of the mind, and we must labor and sweat, that we may chastise the body and bring it into servitude and sow the things that are spiritual. For if we sow carnal things, we shall reap the things that are carnal;