Works (CSEL) 16 part 1/34

PROLOGUE. Although David the prophet sounded forth mystically as it were with the blast of a trumpet, yet, as a great master of morals, the surpassing grace of this psalm declares how greatly ethics excel in him; for while all moral teaching is sweet, it most of all delights the ears by the sweetness of song and the pleasantness of psalmody, and soothes the soul. And rightly in very many places he poured out the maxims of the moral psalms like the lights of stars, which shine forth and stand out.

But the hundred-and-eighteenth psalm he set, as it were, a sun of full light glowing with noonday heat, in the advanced age of the book, so that neither the half-formed beginnings of a morning sunrise nor a certain senile failing of the evening's setting might pluck away anything of perfect splendour from its brightness. This he arranged according to the several letters of the Hebrews, so that, just as the minds of little children grow accustomed to take up the practice of learning by the first elements of letters, so we too might learn the practice of living by elements of this kind. And to each single letter he assigned eight little verses, that he might at once both teach unity, not plurality — for unity restrains and rules all things, and all things are subject to it — and the purgation of lawful sanctification.

For on the eighth day there is solemn purgation, either from the Law, because the solemnity of circumcision was appointed to be fulfilled on the eighth day; or because the whole world had been defiled by our sins and polluted in those seven days. But when the day of resurrection came, having been quickened together with the Lord Jesus, we rose again and were raised up in newness of life, bearing before us the grace of cleansing. And rightly we offer the firstborn of living creatures as a figure of the firstborn Son of God, a spiritual sacrifice of chastity and simplicity acceptable to God, not on the fourth or fifth day, lest the sacrifice be unclean or incomplete, but on the eighth day, on which we have all been not only raised but also confirmed in the resurrection of Christ.

Whence, although in baptism there is at once a full purgation, yet, because the baptized person ought to know the reason of that very cleansing and of the sacrifice, he does not offer the sacrifice until he enters upon the eighth day, so that, having been formed by the knowledge of the heavenly sacraments, he may then at last offer his gift upon the sacred altars not as an untaught victim, but as one capable of reason, when he has begun to be better instructed, lest the ignorance of the offerer should defile the mystery of the oblation. Now the title of the psalm is 'Alleluia,' that is, 'praise of God.' For in these hymns God is truly praised, in which there is remission of sins. Finally, in the preceding psalm the Passion of the Lord was set forth, which washed this world, that it might make peoples worthy to praise God with an unstained mouth.

The very elements of the letters too — for all Hebrew names are not void and devoid of reasonable interpretation, whose meanings we shall disclose in their proper places. The hundred-and-eleventh psalm is arranged through these letters in the Hebrew at the beginnings of the verses, and is wholly ethical; and the hundred-and-tenth seems to me to be written likewise. In fact they have twenty-two verses, and in each single verse single maxims are unfolded; whence they are also asserted to have been composed in metres. I. THE LETTER ALEPH. The first letter is called 'Aleph,' whose interpretation is 'doctrine.' Therefore, careful hearer, you must presume that the verses which follow are full of doctrine.

'Blessed are the undefiled in the way,' he says, 'who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that search his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart.' How beautiful the order, how full of doctrine and grace! He did not say first, 'who search his testimonies' — for that might have agreed with the letter — but first, 'Blessed are the undefiled in the way.' For life is to be sought before doctrine. For a good life, even without doctrine, has grace; but doctrine without life has no integrity, for 'wisdom shall not enter into a malevolent soul.' And therefore he says, 'The wicked shall seek me and shall not find me,' because by the wickedness of the mind the eye is blinded, and amid the darkening of iniquity it cannot find the deep mysteries.

First, therefore, the warfare of life must be practised, and morals must be corrected. When we have set these in order toward the due course, so that there may be correction of offence and the grace of purity, then let us come, in our own order and way, to the pursuits of acquiring knowledge. The moral things, therefore, come first; the mystical, second. In the former is life, in the latter knowledge; so that, if you seek perfection, there be neither life without knowledge nor knowledge without life, but each support the other. And therefore the Scripture says: 'Sow for yourselves unto righteousness, gather the vintage unto the fruit of life, enlighten for yourselves the light of knowledge.'

He did not say first 'enlighten,' but 'sow'; nor only 'sow' first 'unto righteousness,' but also 'gather the vintage,' he says, 'unto the fruit of life,' and so 'enlighten the light of knowledge,' so that perfection may be approved not only from things planted, but also from fruits received. In the first psalm too he kept this order, so as to teach that one must first walk in the way, and then meditate on the law. For he who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly has surely not departed from the way of piety and the path of righteousness, and is rightly pronounced blessed as walking in the way, and as practising meditation on the law day and night he has the grace of blessedness. Following this instruction, Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs, in which he expressed the moral subject more abundantly.

The natural subject he treated in Ecclesiastes, the mystical in the Song of Songs. Yet if you examine carefully, you will find both very many mystical things in Proverbs and the sweetness of moral things in the Song. For surely this is mystical: 'Wisdom has built herself a house and has set up seven pillars; she has slain her victims,' and the rest. This too is in the Song, though as much mystical as moral, in which the sweetness of endearments and the affection of the lover is expressed: 'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, for your breasts are better than wine, and the fragrance of your ointments is above all spices.'

Picture, then, a virgin betrothed for a long time and burning with a just love, who has come to know through the assurance of approved witnesses the many illustrious deeds of her beloved; held in suspense by her longings, often put off, no longer enduring the delays; who had done all things that she might see her bridegroom; at last, having gained her wishes at the bridegroom's unexpected coming, troubled with joy, she does not seek the preliminaries of greeting, nor the exchange of words, but at once demands what she had desired. So also the holy Church, who, betrothed in the first beginnings of the world, prefigured in paradise, foreshadowed in the flood, announced through the Law, called through the prophets, had long awaited the redemption of men, the beauty of the Gospel, the coming of the beloved; impatient of delay, she rushes into kisses, saying:

'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth'; and delighted with the kisses she added, 'for your breasts are better than wine.'

And to speak more morally, understand for me that flesh which had been steeped in Adam with the serpent's venom, which was rotting with the stench of its crimes, which went forth among the daughters of Sion with haughty neck and wanton glances of the eyes and mincing gait, trailing its tunics and sporting with its feet, with curled and arranged tresses and composed countenances and ribbons and every affected adornment, the more unseemly for it — yet that same flesh, taught by very many oracles that One would come who, having shut out the serpent's enticements, would pour in the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that 'all flesh might see the salvation of God,' that all flesh might come to God, had blazed up with desire, yet fearing lest, as impatient, as wanton, as luxurious, as querulous, as she had been before, she should give offence; although shaken by an expectation of the Lord's coming, now lingering, longer than she could bear, yet not murmuring nor transgressing, but lifting up holy hands in every place without wrath and dispute, in ordered demeanour, adorning herself with modesty and sobriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly apparel, but with those things which befit the grace of chastity and good conduct, praying and saying:

'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, for your breasts are better than wine.' Now the flesh wished to cleave to Christ, now it hastened to be wedded, that it might be one spirit and become the flesh of Christ — that flesh which before was a harlot's. 'Let him kiss,' she says, 'me' — the Word of God kisses us when the spirit of knowledge enlightens our understanding — and as though despising all her pleasantnesses and delights, desiring to cleave to heavenly things, she says: 'For your precepts' — that is, the precepts of your testaments — 'are above all appetite of the flesh and pleasure of the world.' For she remembered that she had fallen thus before in Eve, while she prefers bodily pleasure to the heavenly commandments. 'Your name is as ointment poured out,' that is:

This whole world, all unclean, stank with the impurities of diverse crimes; now everywhere the sweetness of chastity breathes forth, the ointment of faith, the flower of integrity. And from the moral things she comes to the mystical, saying: 'The King has brought me into his chamber. Let us exult and rejoice in you; let us love your breasts above wine.' For the kiss is simple, but the secret of the chamber is full of business. In the Gospel too there is a most beautiful passage concerning moral things, that each one should cleanse his own vessel, the Lord saying: 'Blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and the platter, that the outside also may be made clean.'

For unless each one cleanse himself within, even though outwardly he appear comely and righteous, he will be like whited sepulchres, so that outwardly indeed he may seem righteous, but within be foul. Such is doctrine without innocence of life. But neither can doctrine itself have any reward where innocence has no grace. And to the sinner God said: 'Why dost thou declare my justices?' But let us return to the psalm proposed. 'Blessed,' he says, 'are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that search his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart.' The first verse is moral, the second mystical. Who says this?

The prophet, surely, who was performing the office of the flesh's discourse; and he says this after that psalm in which the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ was described. There, therefore, the divine sacraments were revealed to him, and he put on the joy of the Lord's resurrection and tasted the grace of the Passion; he saw the congregations of the just, the peoples of the redeemed, the salvation of the lost, the resurrection of the dead, the sanctification of the sacraments, and cried out, saying: 'Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord' — that is: behold, the earth, accursed in Adam, has begun to have blessedness, if only it forsake not the law of the Lord; behold, the man who was before polluted is undefiled.

How precious it is now to keep the Lord's commandment, how precious also to know the mystery of that very commandment! But who is the undefiled? Surely not he who walks in any way whatsoever, but he who walks in Christ. For he himself said: 'I am the way.' He who walks in this way knows not how to err, provided he never depart from this way. The law too is a way, and therefore, while he is undefiled, he walks in the law of the Lord; nor let him cease to walk in this way, lest he cease to be undefiled. Let him not turn aside to the right hand or to the left, let him not waver, not resist, not wait, but walk, forgetting the things behind and reaching forth to those which are before, let him follow toward the appointed goal, let him hasten toward the prize, let him strive even to the end; for 'the end of the law is Christ.'

Many wish to walk in the way, but not all the way to the end. The Jews do not walk to the end, who do not walk all the way to Christ; the Manichee does not walk in the way, who rejects the law; but the true faith walks, which both receives the law and acknowledges the fullness of the law. If anyone, therefore, walks in the way, let him search the testimonies of the Lord. And although this be mystical, yet it also has moral things in itself, since he is the better able to walk in the way who searches the testimonies of the Lord. For take a most intemperate man, seized by the heat of adulterous lust and overcome by passion, or indulging in vile deeds, who is unwilling to resist the appetite of his flesh, turning this way and that — if perchance he should see no one,

he rushes into the crime; yet even he, though an occasion of gaining his end be ready, carefully explores all things, careless of righteousness but anxious for his reputation, often turning his eyes another way, blushing at a witness of his error — he who blushes not at the error itself; and if he chance to recognize some spectator of his crime, out of shame he sets aside his intemperance, and though it be with a maidservant or a common harlot, where there is no danger of being caught, when he plots the temptations of lust, yet out of shame he abandons the undertaking. How much more, if a man lift up the eyes of his mind and consider that all things are full of angels — the air, the lands, the sea, the churches, over which the angels preside — for the Lord sends his angels for the defence of those

who are to be heirs of the heavenly promises — how much more can he renounce the sin conceived! Whence this multitude of the innocent, save out of those sinners? The nature of all is the same, but the discipline diverse. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God increases the grace of nature itself. Or does he change his deserts who says, 'Darkness is round about me, and the walls cover me; the Most High will not be mindful of my sins'? Would you not have reverenced the presence of the angels, if you believed them present? Would you not fear, I will not say to do, but even to speak or to think what is evil, if the divine Scripture had persuaded you that God is the judge of thoughts, the truthful witness of secrets, as he himself says:

'Be ye my witnesses, and I am a witness, says the Lord God, and my servant whom I have chosen'? Do you reverence a man present, and do you not reverence the presence of God the Father and the Son? But you are unwilling to believe, that you may not be able to beware; you are unwilling to hear, when it is read, that God knows the secret things of men, lest you should begin to know what you should fear, and to fear lest you sin. Hear, therefore, the divine Scripture, that you may be converted from the crooked and evil way.

Do not, like one blind in his bodily eyes, or like one deaf, who, because he cannot see or hear those present, believes himself alone, and in a crowd of many, while he thinks none is present, sets about perpetrating what he judges to be secret — for he who does not see cannot see those who are seeing — in like manner do you also, blinded in the eyes of your mind, do not suppose that you sin without a witness. Because you were able to escape the presence of a man, there are more who would convict you than those you were able to avoid. Your own accuser, yourself, you cannot flee, whom your own conscience confronts; and if you deny it to others, you do not deny it to yourself; and if you disavow it to man, you confess it to God; and if you wish to deny it, your own thoughts convict you.

Angels stood by Elisha, whom he saw, and therefore he feared not the hosts of the enemy; but his servant feared, who did not see the angels. The grace of God opened the servant's eyes at the prophet's word; he saw the armies of angels and believed them present, whom before, because he did not see them, he thought absent. And do you read the prophet, that you may see; read, that he may open your eyes, lest the hostile legion terrify you and you believe yourself besieged who are free, who are fortified with spiritual troops, if only you forsake not the prophet. When the prophet speaks to you, because God has said, 'I fill heaven and earth'; when the prophet says to you:

'Because they that are with us are more than they,' because round about us are angels — lift up the eyes of your mind and you will see not only the angels, but also God, who says to you: 'Open to me, my sister, my neighbour.' He knocks at the door even while you sleep; if only, whether awakened you rouse yourself, or being called you open the door of your breast, he will come in. But if you flee the prophetic reading, if you read not at home, if you are unwilling to hear in the church, do you not, like that man who turns away and closes his eyes that he may not see what he could see, shut your eyes that you may not behold, you who have the power of seeing? — or as in frenzy very many have laid hands upon their own eyes, so do you too first turn away, breaking off rather by dissimulation than by open refusal, with eyes closed against the truth?

For when you come to the church and assert that you are a Christian, you seem sound, you open your eyes with which you might see; but while you feign not to hear the things that are read, you close them, that you may not see for yourself, even though you seem to others to see; you lay even certain hands of treachery and intemperance upon the eyes of your soul, and bring blindness upon your heart — which is more grievous — a voluntary blindness, so that seeing you see not, hearing you hear not. Do you suppose yourself alone when you fornicate, and do you not remember that the eyes of the Lord behold the whole world? Do you not hear him who says: 'Behold, the hour comes that you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; but I am not alone, because the Father is with me'?

The Father, therefore, is present, and the Son of God is present, the ministers are present, the Cherubim and Seraphim are present, who say: 'Holy, holy, holy; the earth is full of your majesty.' The world is full of holy powers, because it is full of wickednesses; the globe of the earth is full of remedies, because it is full of snares. Do you suppose that Christ does not see you in the brothel, whom he sees entering the brothel? Do you suppose that he does not catch you in adultery, whom he sees thinking of adultery? Surely he does not shun walls, who looks upon errors, and turns away from the secret of the crime, he who beholds the scene of the crime? Or do you suppose that you then first enter the brothel, when you enter the harlot's stew? You have already entered.

When the harlot entered your thoughts, you had already entered; when with the step of the mind you entered into the lust of possessing the prostitute, you had knocked at the doors of the brothel; when you opened the eyes of your mind to the beauty of the woman to be coveted. And if you will hear the truth, how did Christ not see you in the brothel, when he saw you, because by committing adultery in your heart you made your very self to be a brothel? In fact the Lord Jesus himself says: 'Whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Whence then are you so religious in repute, who are so shameful in crime? But I yield to you: that Jesus is unwilling to see you, that he is unwilling to convict you who is unwilling to accuse, that even the angels are unwilling to see;

but the devil sees, who entered in with you, nay rather who brought you in; his ministers see, who surrounded you that you might not see the angels of God; Belial sees, the legion sees, who impelled you, that none might call you back, that none might hold you. Do not suppose that he grants you the collusion of silence who wishes to have you as a partner in punishment. He is eager to see many like himself, and herein he has his glory, that he has made many to perish. He himself is the instigator, he the accuser; he entered into Judas, he impelled him to betrayal, he sent him to the noose. How many will there be who will say against him in that day: 'You encompassed us, you impelled us!' Do you seek an example? Hear Eve declaring that the serpent was the author of her transgression.

But she implicated him, she did not absolve herself; to whom the Lord answered: 'Had I not commanded that you should not taste of the one tree only which is in the midst of paradise?' He will therefore answer to the many also: 'You listened to the devil persuading harmful things; could you not listen to me commanding the things of life?' And therefore let us work justices. For 'they that work iniquity have not walked in his ways.' 'You have commanded your commandments to be kept exceedingly. O that my ways may be directed to keep your righteous justifications! Then shall I not be confounded, when I shall look into all your commandments.' He says not only 'you have commanded to keep your commandments,' but also 'to keep them exceedingly.' When did he command this? In paradise indeed he commanded Adam to keep the commandments:

but perhaps he had not commanded him to keep them exceedingly, and therefore he fell. Therefore, bent by the voice of his wife, therefore deceived by the serpent, thinking that if he departed in some part from the commandment, he would not wholly err. But because once he departed from the path of the commandments, he forsook the whole way; the serpent found him outside the way and despoiled him of all things, left him naked. Therefore the Lord, because he who was in paradise had fallen, afterward through the Law, through the prophets, through the Gospel, through the apostles admonished that you should keep exceedingly the commandments of the Lord your God. 'Every word that you shall have spoken, you shall render an account for it,' he says. Do not make light of it; from no commandment shall one jot or one tittle pass away. Do not depart from the way.

If, walking in the way, you are scarcely safe from the robber, what will you do if he find you wandering outside the way? Let your steps be directed, and, lest you be too weak to direct them, pray that the Lord may direct your ways. Here he wishes: 'O that my ways may be directed!' Elsewhere he says: 'With expectation I have waited for the Lord, and he heard me; and he set my feet upon a rock and directed my steps.' Ask therefore, you also, that the Lord may direct the footsteps of your mind, that you may be able to keep the justifications of the Lord. You shall not be confounded when you have looked into all the commandments; for before you were confounded in Adam and Eve. In fact you were made naked, you covered yourself with leaves, because you were confounded; you hid yourself from the face of God, because you were ashamed, so that God said to you: 'Adam, where are you?'

When he says it to him, he says it to you; for 'Adam' in the Latin rendering means 'man,' that is: 'Man, where are you?' And Adam answered: 'Fearing, because I was naked and confounded in my whole mind, I dared not come before your face.' Therefore, lest we be confounded, let us keep the commandments of the Lord, and let us keep them all; for if anyone keep one commandment and transgress another, it profits him nothing. Someone has kept himself from bloodshed, but has not kept himself from adultery; surely, convicted in the one, he is punished even by the secular laws, nor does abstinence from the other crime profit him, if he be caught in the one. 'I will confess to you, O Lord, in the direction of my heart' — do you mark what ways you direct? —

'when I shall have learned the judgments of your righteousness. I will keep your righteous justifications; O forsake me not utterly.' In this place he testifies that he desires to know the mystical things more fully, that he may enter the inner recesses of the heavenly mysteries, and that there may be opened to him the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ. Whence Solomon too says: 'Draw us; after you we will run in the fragrance of your ointments. The King has brought me into his chamber.' And perhaps that which he said above, 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,' signifies the grace of the Holy Spirit coming upon her, as the angel said to Mary: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you.'

But when the King brought her into his chamber, the time of the Passion, the piercing of the side, is declared, the shedding of the blood, the ointment of burial, the mystery of the resurrection; so that she received the kiss as a bride, but was brought into the chamber of Christ as the Church, no longer as one merely betrothed, but even as one wedded; and not only entered the bridal chamber, but also obtained the lawful keys of the union. And therefore, as though placed in the bridal chamber, she says: 'A cluster of myrrh is my beloved to me; he shall rest between my breasts.' But if we seek the chamber, let him himself instruct us, who says: 'But you, when you pray, enter into your chamber, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret.' The chamber of the Church is the body of Christ;

the King brought her into all the inner mysteries, gave her the keys, that she might open for herself the treasures of the knowledge of the sacraments, might throw open the doors closed before, might come to know the grace of rest, the sleep of the dead, the power of the resurrection. In that chamber the bride found the justices of the Lord Jesus. What are those justices? Surely the sacraments of baptism, as we read; for when, to him coming to baptism, John said, 'I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?', Jesus answered, 'Suffer it now; for so it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.' In that chamber she learned the justifications, she knew the counsel of God, as it is written, that 'all the people hearing, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John';

but the Pharisees and the lawyers despised within themselves the counsel of God, not being baptized by him. What they despised, we have chosen, and we follow the counsel of God, because nothing can be more sublime; for this is divine, by which the remission of sins comes to pass. When therefore she shall have learned the justices of the Lord, fearing God she shall not be confounded. In fact Paul too says: 'In nothing shall I be confounded.' And because no one can be perfect without the favour of God, nor secure, he ought therefore to pray that God may not utterly forsake him. For above David prayed that he might not be forsaken, saying: 'Forsake me not, O Lord my God'; here he says: 'O forsake me not utterly,' that is, 'greatly.' Above, perhaps as one still imperfect and set in great disturbances.

he feared lest he be forsaken; but this man, now stronger, does not fear to be forsaken so that he may be tested, but rather prays that he be not utterly forsaken. For very often God forsakes those whom He wishes to be proved, but He utterly forsakes those whom He abandons. He utterly forsook Judas; but He did not forsake holy Job, into whose patrimony and into whose body He gave power to the devil, yet He did not give power over his soul; for had He given power over his soul, He would have utterly forsaken him. Was not Job left precisely for this, that, being left, he might be proved, and, being proved, might be crowned? He therefore forsook Judas, to whom He said, 'What you do, do more quickly'; for He utterly forsook him, whom He surrendered to the working-out of his own crime. But when He saw that the other apostles were troubled, because He had said: