Works (CSEL) 16 part 17/34

'The Lord shall give the word to those who preach the gospel with much power' — that is, that they may be able to preach the gospel with much power. It is therefore proved that in the preaching of the gospel there is power; and the preaching of the gospel is the speech of the saints. So no doubt remains that in holy speech there is power. There follows the third verse: 'For I am become like a wineskin in the frost; thy justifications I have not forgotten.' This voice is the voice of the righteous man who has mortified his body. For the righteous man is rightly called a wineskin, who is found stripped, not naked; for a wineskin is made from the hide of a dead animal. Therefore let us also die to sin, that we may live to God.

Filled with the gladness of the Spirit and the sweetness of joy, we shall be spiritual spoils, free from bodily infirmity and, with the whole bosom of the mind, keeping the grace of the divine mysteries poured into us. Of these wineskins it is said that 'they put new wine into new wineskins' who wish to preserve both — both the vessel and the grace. Let this your wineskin therefore not leak out, let it not be full of cracks, let it not grow stale with earthly mould, lest the new wine burst the old wineskins, the wineskins be split, the grace be spilled. Let them not again be dried up by the sun of iniquity and the excessive force of heat, but let the diverse cravings of the boiling inward parts be tempered by a certain snowy cold.

Let the heat of lust grow cold, and, restrained by a certain frost of continence and of fasting, let it be cooled through by morning prayer, when, as dew, so the words of God descend upon our earth, as the rain upon the grass and as the snow upon the hay. This snow knows not how to harm the good wineskin — the snow which shines with the splendour of divine eloquence. This snow refreshes, it does not scorch; it makes the crops fruitful, it does not destroy them. This snow is the precept of continence, which makes the bodily heat grow cold and quenches every ardour of the inner nature.

And perhaps for this reason, when Jesus was showing forth the glory of his resurrection, his garments were white as snow, so that not only might he himself be deemed a stranger to the contagion of sin, but that whoever is raised up might be seen to rise cold, with the cravings of wedlock frozen; for in the resurrection 'they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but shall be as the angels in heaven.' Good wineskins, therefore, are cold — that is, bound fast in the frost by the hoar-frosts, not loosened by the heat of lust. And although this body may be called a wineskin from many passages, yet understand it also from this, that Adam and Eve, when they laid aside the image of the heavenly which they had borne before and put on the image of the earthly man, are said to have been clothed with garments of skins;

for the sin committed had made them carnal out of spiritual beings. Nor is it absurd to understand this also, that David says he was made like a wineskin in the frost in this sense, that, although set amid a glacial harshness, he nevertheless mortified his body, lest he should feel the harshness of that winter which the Saviour says will be grievous for those who flee.

For just as the wineskin does not feel the ice, because it is the hide of a dead beast, so the prophet, being dead to sin, could not feel the cold of sin; or at least it means that he is not broken by necessities, nor does the flesh resist the mind, but, more pliant, it bends itself to the leadings and commands of the soul and does not dry up in this world's frost; or because we are the body of affliction and must always carry about in our body the death of the Lord Jesus. This is the wineskin that chastises its own body, not like that fattened and gross people who 'sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.' This is the wineskin that is made drunk not with wine but with the Spirit, in which there is no cluster of bitterness, no fury of dragons, no rage of asps, but 'the inebriating cup, how excellent it is.'

In this, then, David glories, that he is become like a wineskin in the frost, not feeling the working of sin. And sin is well compared to frost. For just as frost is useful for no use, for no operation, so guilt profits no use, no operation; and therefore, like frost, it is to be avoided, lest it harm and scorch. It is good for me, then, to become like a wineskin in the frost, that I may not be able to forget the justifications of the Lord, that, drenched through with their moisture, every fervour of inward craving may be cooled. This wineskin ought therefore not to be empty but full — full of the Spirit, full of justifications, that I may myself confess my sins, that I may restrain the wantonness of my flesh; for one must die to the world, that we may live to God.

But if we live to the flesh, the prudence of the flesh is surely death; we cannot live to God, because this carnal wisdom is enmity against God, and the life is worldly. There follows the fourth verse: 'How many are the days of thy servant? When wilt thou execute judgment for me upon those who persecute me?' It can be taken thus: 'How many are the days of thy servant?' as if he said: 'How many are the days of a man, how much the time, how much the span? Why is so brief a life begrudged, that we may not enjoy the calm course of this age? Why in so brief a span are so many snares of our persecutors stretched out? Let there now be present the judgment in which is the punishment of the faithless, in which to the persecutors are rendered the due rewards of their impiety.' Or thus:

'How long will they be able to insult, how long to ride roughshod, who in diverse ways seek to afflict us?' The end will not be late; for the prophet, as it were, measures the swiftness of running through this life not by the reckoning of years but of days, saying: 'How many are the days of thy servant?' And he well said 'days,' so that he might not only run through the year-long delays by prophetic vision, but might also declare the bright course of this life by the light of the virtues. And deservedly, secure, he says: 'When wilt thou execute judgment for me upon those who persecute me?' 'For me,' he says, 'wilt thou execute judgment upon my persecutors; thou wilt not grant judgment to those persecuting me,' since 'the ungodly rise not again in judgment.'

'But for me,' he says, 'grant judgment, that, when thou rewardest innocence, advancest faith, crownest mercy, the ungodly persecutors may be judged by the rewards of merits promised through the prophet's mouth.' Nor is that absurd: that, because the days of this life are brief and few, the Lord should not longer defer his grace toward his prophet, but should himself execute judgment upon the persecutors. For here too there is a judgment upon the persecutors, since 'he who believes not in Christ is already judged.' And this is the judgment which the Lord Jesus gave to his little servants, saying: 'You shall have power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy.'

And it is a true judgment, in which the enemy is tormented, as he himself confessed, saying: 'Why hast thou come before the time to torment us?' This, then, the prophet, grounded in the stability of the virtues, demands: that there be made subject to him not man, but that one who has claimed for himself a place in man. Hence the Apostle too thought that he rather should be condemned in the sin of man, that he should be made subject, of whom he says: 'May God crush Satan under your feet speedily.'

From this persecutor, therefore, he longs that judgment be done for him, that by the footsteps of prophetic faith the adversary may be crushed, and that the prophet may grind him small under his feet like dust; and, set in this warfare of his body, although the days of life are brief, he may yet win a triumph over the adversary, whereby he may sigh out into liberty as a man re-formed into the ancient grace — a man whom before he held bound fast in the chains of sins and wearied with the heat of seething lust — and may feel the power. The adversary, then, is made subject according to the Lord's sentence. For the Lord Jesus, coming into this world through the birth from the Virgin, has subjected to our soul all the opposing powers, that by your faith, by your word, by your conduct and by your works they may be crushed.

If, then, you do not crush the adversary, it is your own fault, who do not use the power granted you. It lies, then, in us whether the adversary is made subject or rebounds. For if our conduct displeases, the adversary begins to grow proud; but if we cleave to good works, if we exercise the pursuits of chastity, righteousness, and continence, we tread upon the serpent and the scorpion. For we tread upon him with the feet of chastity; we crush the scorpion, that it may not be able to strike; we tread upon it with the footsteps of continence, with the steps of modesty and of righteousness. We can therefore, even in this brief life, have a perpetual triumph over our adversaries. There follows the fifth verse: 'The unjust have told me their exercitations, but not as thy law, O Lord.'

Well does he wish judgment to be done for him upon those persecutors who tried not only to hinder the works of the righteous, but even his faith by superfluous narration. For he says they recounted to him as it were the dirges of some fable, ἀδολεσχίας, that is, superfluous loquacities. For superfluous narrators, like swallows, corrupt the sweetness of discourse by the unbroken continuance of their native loquacity, as is the maxim of Aristotle. The heretic, therefore, speaks superfluous things, who does not speak the truth, who does not speak according to the law. But he who is grounded in the law knows how to discern the false from the true, and by the learning of spiritual doctrine to separate heretical dogmas from evangelical ones. And therefore, lest many be deceived, the sinner is commanded by the Lord to be silent;

for to the sinner God said: 'Why dost thou declare my righteousnesses?' Let the faithlessness be silent, then, which knows not the path of truth, which keeps not the precepts of God. For why do sinners take up through their own mouth the gospel of truth, in whose mouth there is no truth? Now all the precepts of God are truth, and Christ is the truth. Christ, therefore, is not in the disputations of the faithless, who says to the faithless one: 'Thy mouth has abounded in wickedness, and thy tongue has framed deceit'; for the tongue which wishes to build up a lie surely weaves deceit into its assertions. But such a one is a thief and runs together with the thief.

For there are many thieves who steal and seize the word of God not for their own profit but for fraud, and who twist a certain patrimony of the heavenly Scriptures into their thieveries, gathering for themselves adulterated gains sought by deceit rather than by truth. But these are they who 'mingle water with wine' like the worst tavern-keepers, adulterating the word of God and offering it impure — whatever they have brought forth with faithless and as it were drunken mouth — and therefore speak things alien to the law. Hence the prophet rightly shuns them and rebukes them, knowing what he has received by the prescript of the law. Rightly then he says in the following verse: 'All thy precepts are truth: they have unjustly persecuted me, help me.'

Like a good soldier he does not flee battles, nor does the warrior, accustomed to them, grow pale at the clashes of however grievous combats, but, faithful and provident, he prays that divine aid may breathe upon him, and demands for himself the faithful supports of pious devotion. And therefore he does not ask that the persecutions cease, but asks to be helped amid the persecutions. For he knew that 'all who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus suffer persecutions.' He prefers, then, to suffer persecutions, that he may be able to live godly in Christ. And well did he say not one persecution but many persecutions, nor did he name the names of his persecutors, because there are many persecutors, not only those whom we see but also those whom we do not see.

Spiritual wickednesses persecute; the heretic, the Jew, the Gentile persecute. All, then, who wish to live godly are under persecutors, because, where there are many persecutors, no time is free from persecutions for one eager to live godly. And perhaps, when we do not suffer persecutions, we are held as it were condemned, because we by no means wish to live godly in Christ. For surely, since the sentence is fixed that 'all who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus suffer persecutions,' he who suffers no persecution seems to be disowned, as not being of pious intent in Christ; for combats persecute the devotion of faith; and if the contests be lacking, I fear lest he who has ceased to contend may seem to be lacking. 'All thy precepts,' he says, 'are truth.'

What precepts but these: 'If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you'? These precepts David, though prior to the sacrament of the incarnation, yet already heard in the spirit, and like a disciple of Christ did not withdraw himself from sufferings, but offered himself to the contests. He knew this to be fruitful for his glory, this to be safe for the keeping of his salvation, that by frequent exercises the piety of the righteous might be confirmed; for faith unexercised quickly languishes, and being idle is tempted by frequent troubles. The cunning ambusher breaks in upon relaxed watches, but the man accustomed to war is equipped against external fraud and is advanced to the palm of glorious victory. Peace, therefore, is for the faithful a material of corruption. How fairly the times of persecution went forward for us!

The affection of the mind, intent toward God, was like a physician of the inmost parts. It clung to him, and the praying soul felt no thoughts clamouring against it. With all the inward parts prayer was poured forth, and a certain converse was mingled with the Lord. Daily meditation already held contempt of danger, and had taken up the practice of treading death underfoot. The exercise which we have lost, ease now tempts those whom wars had not broken. Dangerous, therefore, are even the leisures of peace; in peace more persecutions have begun to be. In the time of persecution there was no flatterer to tempt the mind with cunning flattery. There was no leisure for the soul to be dissolved by the delight of the body and to admit such passions as are wont to be stirred up by prosperous circumstances.

Therefore the apostles, when they were beaten and shut up, exulted, because by those injuries they were gaining the merit of eternal grace, who had been worthy to endure injuries for the name of Christ. They had no care for patrimony, no zeal for powers and honours, none for precedence — which is wont to harass even the just — but each thought himself preferred who had been scourged with the more stripes. Deservedly, then, David seeks occasions of triumphing, and does not fear the abundance of contending for the schooling of devotion, who had known that the persecutions of the wicked profit toward the increases of virtue. For he did not say, 'Because I suffer persecutions, help me,' but: 'They have unjustly persecuted me, help me.'

For one can also suffer persecutions, but not unjustly, because there is also a just persecution: if we hate the obscene, if we are hostile to the unjust, if we wish to crush the wicked lest they harm the many, if we strip the avaricious of the profits of his fraud, if we execrate the insolence of the proud. But he who suffers persecution for faith, for righteousness, for chastity, well does he say: 'They have unjustly persecuted me, help me.' There follows the seventh verse: 'They have almost made an end of me upon earth, but I have not forsaken thy commandments.'

Not in vain did he seek divine aid, who knew that he had a contest against strong foes and that more battles were prepared for him as one about to fight — now against the spiritual wickednesses which are in the heavenly places, now against the heat of the blood and the innumerable enticements of this body, by whose varied entanglement and long-drawn-out struggle, wearied, he would have collapsed in a shameful contest, had he not held himself by the root of faith. Let us learn to beware of him whom we carry. This is our domestic foe, this the grievous enemy of our very own body.

It is inflamed by wine, it burns with lust, it is kindled by the beauty of a woman who meets it, it is nourished by hope, it is scorched by despair, it is consumed by enticements, it does not evaporate by gratification, it is troubled by fear, it is broken by dread, it is softened by luxury, it is dissolved by wantonness, it is afflicted by toil, it is wearied by anxiety, it is worn down by passion. Do you marvel if, amid so many adverse turns of the passions, even the righteous man can scarcely hold himself, when we are unequal even to the contest of single passions? Whom does not lust alone overcome, whom does not avarice subjugate, whom does not fear shake, whom does not luxury evaporate, whom does not wantonness soften, whom does not drunkenness trip up? As one therefore conscious of carnal infirmity and an explorer of the enemy's persecution, he says:

'They have almost made an end of me upon earth' — upon this earth, surely, on which Adam first fell and, cast down by a shameful lapse, bent aside the step of all his future posterity; on this earth, on which Cain, grieving that his brother's gifts were preferred to his own, was laid low by the ruin of envy; and at last the voice of a brother's blood cried out from the earth. On this earth holy Noah, whom the deluges of the whole world in such storms and waves proved ever-watchful, where nevertheless he relaxed his cares with an idle body, met with the sleep of drunkenness, incurred insult to paternal reverence, teaching that idle leisures are dangerous to secure virtue.

On this earth Lot, the imitator of his revered forefather, whom the impurity of the wantoning Sodomite populace did not discolour, whom the flame of burning Sodom did not enwrap, did not escape — though of a pardonable ignorance — the incest of a shameful coupling; he is burned by the flames of women whom the sulphurous flame did not burn. On this earth David too said he was almost made an end of, since he felt his feet were nearly moved and his steps almost poured out, because he reckoned worldly riches and the success of bodily prosperities to abound to sinners in place of blessedness. For which cause he was also scourged; but scourges to the righteous are remedies of salvation; for 'the Lord chastises whom he receives.'

Hence too David, turned to the love of the Lord and instructed in his precepts, not ignorant — because to perishable things perishable things are borne by a certain fortuitous outcome, and because the worthy merits of a praiseworthy life are weighed not by abundance of riches but by the grace of virtues — loved rather than forsook the commandments of God, by which alone he was able to overcome the assailing spiritual wickednesses and the rising appetites of this body in the infirmity of so frail a nature. Great, then, is the virtue which, set under such great persecutions and almost overwhelmed, yet did not forget its own safeguard nor forsook the commandments of God. And therefore, because he knew that God alone had profited him, directing prayers to the Lord he says in the following verse:

'According to thy mercy quicken me, and I will keep the testimonies of thy mouth.' What kind of quickening he asks for himself, we have said above: that he prayed not for that which he had, but for that which he desired — namely, that he might live forever — understanding that the blessedness of life cannot be in this fluctuating and faithless body of ours, whose weakness abandons the purpose of the soul. There is need, then, of God's mercy, that there may be in this body a continual and perpetual quickening, that daily the righteous man may live to God and die to sin. For if guilt die in us, there will be a life living to God and a persevering keeping of the heavenly precepts, which surely he keeps who is quickened by the Lord.

In short, he first asks to be quickened by the Lord and afterward promises the keeping of the heavenly testimonies; for it is not this common life that keeps the heavenly commandment, but that life which is upheld by the eternal gift through the operation of spiritual grace. We can also understand it thus: that, since the prophet had already recognized the things that were of the law, he longs for the mercy of the Lord's coming, that he may receive the precepts by which the law is fulfilled — that he might know not only adultery to be avoided, but even the desire of adultery to be shunned. For the mouth of the Father, the Lord Jesus, spoke in the gospel that he who shall have looked upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery in his heart.

How greatly did the pursuits of chastity advance by the gospel, whereby the reproach not only of the baser deed but even of the degenerate inclination is banished! But who are they of whom he says that they have almost made an end of him upon earth, save the persecutors? Of one of whom the Lord Jesus says: 'Go, tell that fox' — that is, of Herod. And elsewhere, when he perceived that he was being questioned fraudulently, he said: 'The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests where they may rest,' because they fraudulently linger in certain lurking-places of earthly passions.

Hence too Samson bound a pair of foxes together for himself, to whose tails he tied torches, and let them go through the harvests of the Philistines, signifying by this figure that wicked and fraudulent men, and especially heretics, have a tongue free for barking but hindered exits, or quarrelsome beginnings but the end of their fraud consigned to burning. And therefore he let loose three hundred foxes also, because the faithless desire to commend themselves by the preaching of the cross, but cannot hold its mystery — who by this composed and false and feigned preaching strive rather to burn up the fruits of others, whereas surely the true cross of the Lord does not burn up the merits of others, but makes them fruitful. And deservedly it is written in the Song of Songs:

'Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards, that our vineyards may flourish.' Whereby it is shown that either the Lord Jesus or the Church commands that the deceits of the fraudulent be exterminated from their vineyards, lest they harm the tiny vineyards, since they cannot harm the vines now grown up. For the heretic can tempt the imperfect, he cannot supplant the perfect. XII. THE LETTER LAMED. The letter Lamed, the twelfth, begins, whose interpretation is 'heart,' or, as another interpretation has it, 'I serve.' Whence it seems to admonish that these precepts are either to be wisely understood or carefully kept. For this the very first verse straightway admonishes;

for the prophet, as we read, asked above that a clean heart be created for him, and the son of this Solomon prayed the Lord that a prudent heart be given him. He, then, who has a clean heart, who has a prudent heart, himself understands the sequence of the verses set under it, and their virtue. Hence elsewhere also we find 'a heart alone' — that is, either singular, or such as no enticement of this world hinders and the wisdom of the flesh cannot disturb. But he who has a heart keeps the commandments of God, just as you have read of Mary, who 'kept all the sayings or deeds of the Lord and Saviour in her heart.' Let us therefore circumcise our heart; let us seek nothing bodily, nothing vile; and every earthly thing is vile.

Let us therefore set down nothing earthly, nothing worldly, nothing bodily, nothing light and mutable in the heavenly oracles — for 'the words of the Lord are chaste words' — that in these the spotless and chaste sincerity of the heavenly mysteries may shine forth by spiritual interpretation. Let us not mingle the earthly with the divine by some adulterous opinion, nor violate that inviolable sacrament of prophetic vision or of the eternal oracle by the estimation of our own nature. For this reason he added:

'Silver tried by fire, purged of earth, refined sevenfold' — that, like good money-changers, we may by the prophetic spirit assay the silver of prophetic speech, separating out the Lord's coin and purging it from all earthly stain by the infusion of the saving fountain, that we may be seen to think worthily of Christ, who says: 'Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where rust and moth destroy, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven.' Your treasure is faith, piety, mercy; your treasure is Christ. Do not estimate him from the earth — that is, from creatures — because the Lord is of all creation. 'Cursed,' it says, 'is the man who has hope in man,' but to me salvation has come through a man. Yet see what the old Scripture has said:

'And he is a man, and who shall know him?' That man, therefore, forgave me all my sins not by human but by divine power — God in the body, the Lord Jesus, reconciling to himself the world which he was redeeming from guilt. Our precious treasure is the understanding. If the understanding be earthly, if frail, the heretical moth and the rust of impiety will consume it. Let us therefore lift up and raise our senses, and let us not judge it impossible that this infirmity of the human body be advanced to the knowledge of the heavenly mysteries, since the Lord Jesus, in whom were hidden the treasures of knowledge and wisdom, has already by his divine compassion descended to us, to unlock what was shut, to open hidden things, to reveal what was concealed.

Come, therefore, Lord Jesus, and open for us the gate of this prophetic discourse as well; for to many it is shut, even if at first sight it seems to lie open. 'For ever, O Lord,' he says, 'your word abides in heaven.' You see that what abides even in heaven ought also to abide in you. Keep, then, the word of God, and keep it in your heart, and so keep it that you do not forget it. Keep the law of the Lord and meditate upon it, lest the Lord's ordinances slip from your heart. The plain meaning of the letter teaches you to keep it diligently; the prophet teaches you in the words that follow, when he says: 'Unless your law had been my meditation, then perhaps I should have perished in my lowliness; I will never forget your ordinances.'

The meditation of the law, then, brings it about that we are able to endure and bear the times of tribulation, the times in which we are humbled by various adversities, so that we are broken in spirit neither by being too greatly humbled nor by being cast down. For indeed the Lord does not will that we be broken by humiliation unto despair, but only unto correction. Hence also the prophet Jeremiah says under this same theme in the Lamentations: 'To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the judgment of a man before the face of the Most High, to condemn a man when he is judged — the Lord did not approve'; and further on: 'From the mouth of the Most High shall not proceed evils.' The humility, then, that comes from the Lord is full of righteousness, full of equity, because no evils proceed from the mouth of the Lord.