Works (CSEL) 14 part 19/28

But the help of the Law would still have been infirm, had not Jesus Himself come into the lands — He who would take up our infirmities in Himself, whom alone our sins could not weigh down, nor bend down His hands, He who bowed Himself even unto death, the death of the cross, on which, stretching out His hands, He raised up the whole world that was about to perish, lifted up those who lay fallen, and drew to Himself the faith of all the nations, saying to the man: This day you shall be with Me in paradise. This, then, is to destroy and to plant: that the vicious things be rooted out and better things planted in the breasts of each one. Of which Moses in the Song of Exodus beautifully says:

Bringing them in, You planted them in the mountain of Your inheritance, in Your prepared dwelling — praying that the Lord might bring His people into those nurseries of most sublime virtue and wisdom, and that there he might be planted in his own works and instructed by the disciplines of the heavenly precepts, and that in him He might prepare for Himself a dwelling of His own sanctification; which the Lord deigns to confer not indeed by hereditary right nor in regard of our merits, but according to His own grace. For how, when we could not remain there, could we return thither, except upheld by the privilege of eternal redemption? And therefore the prophet beautifully said:

For they did not gain the land by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them, but Your right hand and Your arm and the light of Your countenance, because You took pleasure in them. What land, then, is this, which is not seized by the arm nor possessed by the sword, except the land of promise, of which this same prophet here said: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living? Not without reason, then, is so glorious a possession His, in which the adversities of the world do not bear rule, but the eternal good things of the Lord bear fruit. And therefore it is not acquired by the sword, but possessed by meekness, as the Lord Jesus testified, saying: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.

Let no one, then, be unpeaceable, no one arrogant or proud, but meek and humble in heart, who claims nothing for himself but refers the whole to grace; who does not glory in his own strength, but believes himself protected by the right hand of God, saying: The right hand of the Lord has wrought power, the right hand of the Lord has exalted me; and let him remember too that he has been preserved by the sword of God and enlightened by the countenance of the almighty God. In all these things Christ is the protector, the right hand, the defender, and the sword. Whence Simeon also said to Mary: And a sword shall pierce through your own soul. For the sword of God is the Word, which, sharper than every sword, pierces even to the divisions of the soul and the thoughts, so that no hidden things escape His knowledge.

Christ is also the splendor of the Father's countenance, and therefore He says: He who sees Me, sees the Father also — as the brightness of His glory and the image of His substance. To Him, then, all things are rightly to be referred. To Him Moses, to Him Aaron, to Him also the fathers consecrated all that they had done, that they might triumph over their enemies. For Joshua son of Nun did not say in his own self-confidence: Let the sun stand still over Gibeon; but because he presumed in Christ, whom he acknowledged as the leader of the heavenly host and humbly adored.

And therefore he merited to root out the savage nations and to bring the people of the fathers into the land of promise, because he reckoned nothing to his own works, believing that the works of men were unworthy of so great a recompense of heavenly glory, which the Lord determined should be conferred on those who believe in Him out of His mercy rather than in regard of our deeds. Whence Abraham also unwearyingly believed God, so that he found with Him the grace of justification rather than placing it as the wage of his own work; for the gifts of the giver are more abundant than the wages of the worker. Therefore to that man too who had begrudged the equality of the wage the Lord answered: If I am good, why is your eye evil?

Our fathers, then, as the nearest kin and heirs of the patriarchs, planted in the land of promise, did not claim this by their own merits. Therefore neither did Moses bring them in, lest this should be reckoned to be of the Law, but of grace; for the Law examines merits, grace looks to faith. Whence the Apostle, following the faith of the fathers, beautifully said: But neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. For it was not Joshua son of Nun — because he brought them in or because he planted them — but God, who gave the increase to the people, that holds the chief place of glory. And let it not move you that above he said: Your hand has scattered the nations, and You have planted them.

For from this you gather that not everyone who plants or who waters gives the increase, but he who can give the increase can himself also plant — as the Lord is said to have planted the nations. For He Himself planted who gave effect to the planting, yet in those who through faith in Christ have merited to please the Lord, to whom alone it is said by the Father, God: You are My Son, in You I am well pleased. Those, therefore, who are partakers of Christ, obtain from Him the grace of pleasing. And He beautifully says: He was well pleased with them, so that the distinction may be seen rightly preserved. For God is rightly well pleased in the Son, because He is equal to the Father and is found in nothing degenerate, since He is well pleasing by the right of the divine nature and the unity of substance.

And rightly does the Father take pleasure in the Son, because the Father is honored in the Son, just as the Son in the Father. But in us God was well pleased, because He Himself granted to us that we might be able to please Him. And Scripture has taught us that this was granted to man in a special and pious way, not arrogantly usurped. For it is fitting that He should take pleasure in those whom He made to His own likeness, and whom He willed, through His own image, to have the prerogative of heavenly grace. In His image, then, God takes pleasure; and in those who are according to His image, God is well pleased. But in them is His own gift and His own bounty, which will then be revealed when that perfect thing has come — because, when it shall appear what we are, we shall be like Him, as it is written.

Therefore he who presumes not in his own arm — that is, in his own working — but in the grace of God, believing that not their deeds justify each man but ready faith, says to the Lord: You Yourself are mine and my God, who command salvations to Jacob. It is no perfunctory word when you say: You Yourself are my king. Not whoever says this, but he in whom is the kingdom of God; and in whom God reigns, surely in him sins do not reign, for God has no kingdom in common with crime. And who calls Him his God except one who shows toward Him a full affection of reverence and piety? For to the righteous man it is said: I am your God.

Finally Thomas too, when he touched the side of Christ with his own hand and found clear proofs of the undoubted resurrection, answered: My Lord and my God — Lord, because He redeemed His servants; God, because He not only rose again but Himself also raised Himself up. And He commanded salvations to Jacob, because in each of the oracles there is salvation, in each also of the dwellings there is salvation, salvation in the ministries of the angels who are appointed for the protection of men. From the command of God, then, salvation is conferred on man, not from his own working. For God preferred that salvation should be sought by man by faith rather than by works, lest anyone should glory in his own deeds and incur sin.

But he who glories in the Lord acquires the fruit of piety and escapes the charge of boasting. This, then, is he who can say: In You we shall toss our enemies. What is it to toss? The Lord gave horns to many living creatures, that they might be able to defend themselves from the onset of wild beasts. And so the ox too often resists the lion and tramples the bear; the stag also, although it is timid, yet defends itself with its horns; the ram too butts the wolf. Therefore those animals that have horns are said to toss. But man has no horns: how then does he toss? Whence see what Scripture says: In You, it says, we shall toss our enemies.

You are our horn, Lord Jesus, and therefore, just as we presume not in our own arm, so neither have we in our own horns the safeguard of tossing, but in Christ. For faith has its own horns, which it borrows from Christ. Indeed, not idly do we read in the blessings of Moses: Let Him who appeared in the bush come upon the head of Joseph and upon the crown of his head, glorified among his brethren, the firstborn. The beauty of the bull is his; the horns of the unicorn are his horns; with them he shall toss the nations together unto the end of the earth. These are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and these the thousands of Manasseh. Who was seen by Moses in the bush but the firstborn Son of God, who says: I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob?

For this reason He showed Himself to human sight, because He was about to come, that He might be seen by all. For this reason the bush was burning and was not consumed, because He was disposing to burn, through the discipline of self-restraint, this earth which was bringing forth for us thorns and briars — to consume it through the hardship of death. Whence the prophet says: Burn my reins and my heart. He revealed, then, a certain future token of bodily splendor, by which this flesh would shine through the resurrection. For what did the harmless fire signify but the lights of those who rise again? Whence the Apostle presumed to say that, just as star differs from star in brightness, so also is the resurrection of the dead.

Let Him, then, it says, come upon the head of the tribe of Joseph, that He may exalt the head of His people; let Him come also upon the crown, that He may go over the crown of the hair, about to cut away the superfluities of sins and to sanctify the ornaments of the virtues. This is He who is glorified among His brethren, as He Himself says: I will declare Your name to My brethren. What greater glory is there than to pour the knowledge of the Godhead into the breasts of the nations? Him Joseph saw in a vision, that his brothers' sheaves adored his sheaf, and that the sun and moon with the stars adored him. That sheaf is taken as a figure of the flesh; for all flesh is grass. He took up this grass of ours, that He might bring forth His own wheat and yield the fruit of the resurrection. Do you seek a testimony?

Hear Him speaking of Himself: Unless a grain of wheat falling into the ground dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Finally, that you may know that Moses speaks of the Son of God, he says: glorified among his brethren, the firstborn. Now Joseph was certainly not the firstborn among the sons of Jacob, but Reuben; for Joseph was after very many. But He is called the firstborn who was to come, that He might gather together the peoples of the nations. Whence Scripture beautifully says: The beauty of the bull is his. For just as the bull leads the herd, so Christ led the people of the Gentiles to the Church, brought them into the pastures, that He might say: In a place of pasture, there He has set me; beside the water of refreshment He has established me.

The herds, according to the capacity of our frailty, followed the beauty of this bull as he went before them, that they might obtain eternal life. This bull bellowed and death fled away. The lion roars, and who shall not fear? Truly the bull is the greatest victim — to take our testimonies from the adversaries: for what greater victim than that which cleansed the sin of the whole world by its own blood? Hear that the holy prophet Jacob too calls Him a bull, when he revealed the Lord's passion, whom the Jews afterward persecuted: In his fury, he says, he hamstrung the bull. And, that he might make plain that he spoke of the Jews, he added: I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.

This is the man who wrestled with Jacob and touched his thigh, by which touch the patriarch's sinew became numb — signifying that from Jacob's succession according to the flesh He would come who was to be hamstrung by the Jewish people in the passion of His own body. Not understanding this mystery, they decreed that the sons of Israel should not eat the sinew. And therefore they defrauded themselves of the redemption of the sacred blood, and also disowned for themselves the benefits of the salvation-bearing passion, so that they do not merit eternal life — because it is written: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you shall not have life in yourselves. But he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood shall have eternal life. Receive another instance.

What is the sinew but that by which the whole body is bound together? The body of Christ is the Church, which is drawn tight by the bond of charity. What else did the Jews loose in Christ but the whole bond of charity? Deservedly is Peter chosen as priest, who bound himself with the threefold bond of divine charity. Receive yet further that Moses signified this same One. He added: The horns of the unicorn are his horns; with them he shall toss the nations. But fear not because he tosses; for He said: I will strike and I will heal. Good are the horns with which He enclosed the whole circle of the earth; good are the horns with which He tossed that lion, our adversary;

good are the horns with which He brought it about that we need not fear the horns of the adversary, because Satan too has his own horns, as Daniel testified, saying: I beheld, and that horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came. This is the Ancient of Days. But who is the Unicorn except the only-begotten Son of God and the only Word of God, which was in the beginning with the Father?

Which Word by His own horns put to death and made alive the peoples of the nations, that they might become the ten thousands of Ephraim unto the ends of the earth and the thousands of Manasseh — because the people of the nations was to believe in Him, the people that would fill the whole circle of the earth; and afterward the people of the Jews too was to believe, turned back from forgetfulness to grace; for he forgot his own salvation, who would so late be converted to Christ. Therefore Saul among the thousands, David among the ten thousands, because he is hard in the few, gentle in the many. Yet I do not refuse it, if anyone supposes the words to be spoken as if to Joseph: The firstborn, the beauty of the bull is his, and thinks it should be so distinguished, because He gave horns also to His saints.

For He exalted the horns of His people; and Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, says: My heart has exulted in the Lord, my horn has been exalted in my God. Joseph too surely had spiritual horns in the Lord. Let Joseph, then, be taken — provided that in him there be a figure of Christ — to whom it is said: Joseph, my enlarged son, my younger son, return to me. For it is not Joseph who returns to Jacob, but Christ, raised from the dead, who returns to God the Father, as it is written: His going forth is from the highest heaven, and His circuit even to the height of it. Yet it may be that it is understood of Joseph: Return to me — because the people returns to the land of the Canaanites, in which the patriarchs had dwelt before. Whence Isaac says to Jacob:

You shall not take a wife from the daughters of the Canaanites; and he sends him into Mesopotamia, that he might find a wife for himself there. Did the lords of arrows lie in wait for him? Was he himself — on account of the blessing of his mother's womb — blessed in the whole world, and not the Lord Jesus, whom a virgin brought forth? And therefore He is blessed not only above men, but also above the angels and archangels and above every sublimity of the heavenly powers, as Scripture testifies, saying: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; the Lord is God, and He has shone upon us. For the Lord God Himself is the King of kings and the Lord of lords among those things that are held in the heavens.

On account of these horns of the Lord Jesus, David also, sounding with the voice of the horn-trumpet, was heard by Christ; and Moses taught that the rites of the sacrifices were to be celebrated with the sound of the trumpet, as it is written: Sound the trumpet at the beginning of the month. For whom is this written, if not for us? For the ancients were accustomed to observe the months from the beginning of the moon. But the moon is the Church, which is exalted by spiritual and evangelical preachings in the abundance of peace, as the prophet said. In Christ, then, we shall toss our enemies, and in His name we shall despise those who rise up against us. What is a name but that by which each one is properly designated, which is not common to him with the rest? For man is a common term; unless you add who is called, it cannot be made clear.

A name, then, is the property of each individual, by which he can be understood. Whence I suppose that Moses too, wishing to know something proper to God and something special about Him which would not be common with the heavenly powers, asked: What is Your name? Finally, knowing his mind, God answered not a name but a matter — that is, He expressed a reality, not an appellation, saying: I am who am, because nothing is so proper to God as always to be. Those, then, who deny that Christ is coeternal with the Father, let them see that they are denying God, whose property it is always to be and never at any time not to have been.

With this knowledge, then, of the divine property, Moses wished to despise those who rise up against him — or, as Aquila or Symmachus put it, to trample down those who resist him, like serpents and scorpions, which the Lord too says in the Gospel are to be trodden under spiritual feet, so that they cannot block our way which leads to the secret places of paradise. We have, then, within us the pursuit of divine knowledge; we have the Word of God, which is the name of the Father. This is truly the property of God, that He is the Father of Christ; and therefore He came in the name of the Father who came to do the Father's will. And therefore He says: I came in the name of the Father, and you received Me not;

if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive — signifying that the Jews would believe in Antichrist, who refused to believe in Christ. Therefore he who believes in Christ hopes not in his own bow nor in his own sword, but places the hope of victory in His name. And therefore he says: For I will not hope in my bow, and my sword shall not save me — and yet one must hope in a bow, but in the bow of God, which He set in the cloud, that the human race might cease to fear a flood. With this bow He protects us, with which bow He also shoots arrows, with which He may strike our enemies and adversaries. Whence he also says: For You have delivered us from those who afflict us, and have put to shame those who hate us;

in God we shall be praised all the day long, and in Your name we will give thanks for ever. Hear how He delivers us: because by the arrows which He shoots from heaven the inward parts of our earth are pierced, so that every earthly motion may perish and grow still, as He says in what follows: From heaven You hurled judgment; the earth trembled and grew still. Thus, then, are we delivered, while the hostile and adversary powers are confounded; or the wisdom of this flesh, beaten back by the heavenly commands, blushes in its own crimes and is confounded with shame at its own disgraces:

the adulterer in the flames of his own lust and the burning of frenzied love, the greedy man in the heat of immoderate covetousness — who by seizing what belongs to others, the more he has invaded, the more he desires — the drunkard in his intoxication, the criminal in his wickedness. These are confounded even here most grievously, but they will be confounded far more when they shall see the saints of the Lord rising again, and that Gospel word fulfilled which the Lord spoke: Many of those sleeping in the graves of the earth shall rise again, these unto eternal life and these unto reproach and everlasting confusion. When, therefore, those shall begin to be raised up unto everlasting confusion, the saint of the Lord shall say: In God we shall be praised all the day long, and in Your name we will give thanks for ever.

The wealthy man is praised in his riches, the voluptuary in his banquets, the fornicator in the night, the powerful man in this life which has its nights; but the saint is praised not in this life, but in God — he who longed to please the Lord in all things, who can say: My strength and my praise is the Lord. He shall be praised all the day long, because he acted honorably and did not hide his works and his crimes, but laid them open to the eternal King, walking in the day, not in darkness and in hidden things. Whence the Apostle also says:

Let us walk honorably as in the day — that is, not in revelings and taverns, not in chambers and shameless deeds, in which the disgraceful man supposes himself covered by walls so that he can escape the knowledge of God, although before God all shameful deeds are unveiled and the hidden sins of men cannot be unknown to the divine knowledge. Therefore the saint shall be praised in the future, because he sought not the praise of present things, but the grace of things to come. Yet observe the difference: while he is here, he glories in the Lord; there he shall be praised in the Lord; for a brief time he shall receive the reward of eternity. Aquila, however, put it: In the Lord we shall glory all the day long; Symmachus says: To God we shall speak a hymn through every day.

The sense of all agrees, that we should not cease concerning the praises of God, whether by speaking a hymn or by singing together the divine glory through every moment. For he who speaks a hymn speaks it with a pure heart and spiritually, and excludes every kind of human passion, so that by no grief, by no bitterness of any pain is his service hindered or his disposition exasperated, but, in speaking a hymn to God, he perseveres unmoved and unshaken — like David himself, who says: I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall ever be in my mouth; like Job, who, having lost his sons, all his cattle slain, his goods plundered, says: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

But now You have cast us off and have not poured us out, and You will not go forth, O God, in our virtues. Since the holy David himself said in another place: For the Lord will not cast off His people, how does he say in this place: You have cast us off — especially since he says this of a people for whom he enumerates no slight marks of its own virtue? For it is no slight thing to say that storms and various trials had come upon them, and yet they had not forgotten the Lord their God, and had not dealt unjustly against His covenant, and the rest that follows. Whence the holy Apostle too interprets it and says that the Lord has not so far cast off His people, when he set Him speaking:

All the day long I stretched out my hands to a people that did not believe and that contradicted. Supported by the authority of this saying, he says: I say then, has God cast off His inheritance? God forbid; for I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast off His people whom He foreknew. But it can be said in this place that He therefore did not cast off the people, because a remnant according to the election of grace has been saved. And He seems indeed not to have cast off the people in the few, yet, though not the whole people, to have cast off very many of it. Whence he added, setting down God's answer, that He had not only preserved the people in a few, but had also reserved for Himself seven thousand men who had not bent the knee before Baal.

This may indeed have been said by the Apostle according to the Gospel, since the Lord had passed over to the Gentiles; but the time of the divine answer may be referred to a zeal of faith still fervent, when the grace of the prophets also still overflowed to the people of the Jews. Whence, if in the time of Elijah the Lord denied that His people had been cast off by Him, much more in the time of David or of the sons of Korah, when the faith of the elect people still shone forth. Yet, that we may also question the holy David himself, that we may gather how the Lord did not cast off His people: for since God is one who draws near, not one who removes far off — as the Scripture of the Old Testament has it — surely He who draws near does not cast off.

For it belongs to the divine mercy that He be to none a cause of death, and that He deems all worthy to be redeemed. But beware lest he be cast off who removes himself far from the Lord, as David says: For behold, those who remove themselves far from You shall perish; You have destroyed all who go a-whoring from You. What is it to go a-whoring from You? It means that by the mockeries of their own baseness they forsake You and withdraw from You and stray from Your precepts. Finally, you have it written elsewhere: But God judges the adulterers, destroying them from Himself — that is: by alienating them from You, You have destroyed them. Therefore he who separates himself from the Lord is himself separated from the Lord; and he who does not know the Lord is not known by the Lord; and he who is ignorant is ignored, as the Lord Himself said:

'Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. I know you not'; for he does not deign to know the ministers of injustice and the authors of iniquity. The sinner, therefore, is not cast off, since he casts himself off. In this sense, then, it says: 'But now you have cast us off and put us to confusion.' Yet how God casts off, the verse that follows explains, for it says: 'You will not go forth, O God, in our hosts.' When God does not help, he seems to cast off; for each one who does not perceive that the aids of the divinity are granted to him by God's succor thinks himself cast off and forsaken. But what does it mean when it says: 'You will not go forth, O God'? And what does it intend, that God is at times said either to go forth or to come out or to rise up or to descend?

For God is not moved bodily, nor does he depart from any place or pass to another—he who is above all things—nor does he truly rise up as though he lay in some bed or sat bodily upon some seat; but these things are said so that you may understand when and to whom he is said to go forth and to whom to rise up. For we read in this very psalm: 'Arise; why do you sleep, O Lord?' And it must be considered: lest at any time, through our reprehensible deeds, he should seem to sleep. As we read in the Gospel, when the apostles were still imperfect, that Jesus Christ slept for them. But when they were struck with fear of shipwreck and dread, they awoke Christ who was sleeping. For the faithless, then, the Lord Jesus sleeps; for the faithful, he keeps watch.

In short, he who is faithful enters in to God, and from him who is negligent God seems to go out and depart. Yet surely the Lord draws to himself those who are imperfect and still weak, as you have read of the young maidens saying: 'Draw us; we will run after the fragrance of your ointments.' But Moses, who was already stronger and chosen by the Lord, is said both to ascend and to enter in to the Lord his God, as it is written: 'For Moses went up into the mountain, and the light encompassed the mountain. And the majesty of the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, and a cloud covered it for six days; and on the seventh day the Lord called Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the appearance of the majesty of the Lord was like a burning fire upon the summit of the mountain before the children of Israel. And Moses entered into the midst of the cloud.'