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ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
'The judgments of God are true and justified in themselves, more desirable than gold and much precious stone'; and this: 'Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and immortal is he who beholds prudence. For it is better to acquire her than treasures of gold and silver; she is more precious than the finest stones, no evil resists her; she is well known to all who draw near to her, and to those who consider her diligently. Nothing precious is worthy of her'; and this: 'For this cause I made my choice, and understanding was given to me; and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came into me. And I set her above kingdoms and thrones, and I esteemed high estate as nothing in comparison with her.
Nor did I compare precious stone to her, for all gold in comparison with her is but a little sand, and silver beside her shall be reckoned as clay.' If these men either read these things, or read them without impiety, they would see that all things in the Scriptures of both Testaments — whether for seeking or for shunning, for taking up or for casting off — agree with one another and are set in order according to their proper degrees. Concerning that which is written in the law: 'If you walk in my law and keep my commandments, I will give rains in their season, and the earth shall bring forth its fruits, and the trees their apples, and your vintages shall follow upon your harvests, and your sowing upon the vintages: and you shall be filled and shall sit in peace in your land, and you shall sleep, and there shall be none to terrify you;
and I will destroy every wild beast from your land, and you shall pursue your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword; five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall pursue ten thousand, and your enemies shall be cut down before you by the sword; and I will come and bless you and multiply you and establish you. You shall eat of the old store that has grown old, and you shall cast out the old before the new.' There is now no need for anyone to demand of us that we show how fittingly God promised these things to that people, for we have said much on this matter. And to one for whom these things are too little, he is far too slow of understanding. Yet as to what they say is contrary even in this place, drawn from the New Testament — namely that which the Lord says:
'Carry neither gold nor silver nor coins in your belts, no wallet for the journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staff; for the labourer is worthy of his hire' — what wonder if he granted these things to the evangelists? Was the Jewish people called to this ministry? Yet all these things are to be searched out spiritually, lest the Lord himself seem to have acted against his own precepts toward impious men — he who even had money-bags in which cash was carried for necessary sustenance. Unless perhaps they will say that to have money in belts is a sin, but to have it in money-bags is not a sin.
But that these were not commands, but permissions granted to the apostles, is understood from this: that the apostle Paul, working with his own hands, sought his sustenance, not abusing that power which — as he himself says — the Lord gave to the evangelists. For what is permitted by the Lord one may also refrain from doing; but what is commanded, unless it be done, is sin. They add also the case of that rich man to whom God had said: 'Fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee; whose then shall be the things which thou hast prepared?' And they say that this passage too is no less contrary to the law, since in the former the emptiness of vain gladness is mocked, because it held uncertain things for certain; whereas to the people of Israel the omnipotence of the one promising made that promise certain.
Whence too the apostle Paul, writing to Timothy concerning the rich of this world — whom he knew to have their place among the members of the Church — speaks thus: 'Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who gives us all things abundantly to enjoy: let them do good, let them be rich in good works, let them give readily, share, and lay up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold of true life.'
Who here does not understand that it is not blameworthy to possess these things, but to love them and to place one's hope in them, to prefer them or even to equate them with truth, justice, wisdom, faith, a good conscience, love of God and neighbour — by which every devout soul is rich in its inmost being before the eyes of God? But in order that God may be loved — he who bestows on those who love him all these invisible and eternal things, that is, gives himself, full of all these gifts, to those who love him — in order therefore that he himself may be loved, even in that time when the carnal soul, entangled indeed in the affections of the flesh, knows how to desire nothing but earthly and temporal things, it must be persuaded of him that God gives these things too to man, since this is both true and most usefully believed.
This was done for the people of Israel through those promises which the wretched men most ignorantly deride, so that even in the lowest things, in whatever way they could, they might grow accustomed to loving God — although fear worked there more. Yet all these temporal gifts are figures of eternal gifts, and that victory over enemies prefigures the victory over the devil and his angels. And as for what these men added as if contrary to the Old Testament — that the apostle says God delights not in strife and dissension, but in peace — let them know that in those Scriptures such a God is proclaimed as one from whom no one can take away his peace, not such as they themselves proclaim;
who, fearing lest war should break in upon his religious domains, sent his own members far away to bear foreign wars, and afterward, once vanquished and defiled, they could not be set free or purified. But in human nature, which by sin has flowed down into lower things, God so delights in peace that he does not abandon the balances of justice, nor does he wish the peace that he loves to be trampled by sinners, but to be loved by those who strive, and laid hold of by those who conquer — and to promise these things figured under carnal forms, while displaying them openly to the spiritual. Concerning that which is written in Deuteronomy: 'Cursed is everyone who has hung upon a tree.' Although this question has often been ventilated by the Manichaeans, I do not however see
what it has that is contrary to this sentence, which Adimantus thought should be set against it from the Gospel, where the Lord says: 'If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you possess and distribute to the poor, and take up your cross and follow me.' Here, apart from the fact that he names the cross, he notices nothing contrary to what was said: 'Cursed is everyone who has hung upon a tree.' As though indeed anyone can take up such a cross and follow the Lord; but that cross is taken up when we follow the Lord, of which the apostle speaks: 'Now they who are of Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.'
For by such a cross the old man — that is, the old life which we have drawn from Adam — is put to death, so that what in him was voluntary might in us become natural. This the apostle shows when he says: 'We too were once by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.' If therefore the old life is from Adam — whence also by the name of the old man the old life is signified — what absurdity is there in that a curse was pronounced upon the old man, whom the Lord hung upon a tree, since from that very succession he bore mortality, having been born mortal of the Virgin Mary, having flesh not sinful, yet bearing the likeness of sinful flesh, because he was able to die, and death is from sin? Hence too is that saying:
'Knowing that our old man was crucified together with him, that the body of sin might be done away.' Not therefore did the Lord, through the tongue of Moses the servant of God, but death itself deserved the curse — that death which our Lord did away with by taking it upon himself. That death, then, hung upon the tree, which came to man through the woman by the serpent's persuasion. Wherefore Moses too, as a sign of that very death, lifted up the serpent upon a tree in the wilderness. And because we are healed from deadly desires through faith in the Lord's cross, by which cross death was hung upon the tree, therefore those who were poisoned by the serpents' bites, once they beheld the serpent that had been fixed and lifted up upon the tree, were immediately healed. To this sacrament the Lord himself bore witness, saying:
'For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.' Now by taking upon himself the most ignominious kind of death among men — that is, the death of the cross — our Lord Jesus Christ commended to us his love, so that the apostle might rightly say, kindling us to love of him: 'Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree' — so that Christian liberty might dread not only no death, but not even any kind of death, as Jewish servitude did. Concerning the man whom God commanded to be stoned because he was found gathering wood on the Sabbath.
The Lord in the Gospel, where he healed the man's withered hand on the Sabbath day, did a divine work, not a human one; nor did he depart from rest, he who commanded and it was done. And therefore this deed is not like that of the man gathering wood, for which — when the man was found doing it on the Sabbath day — he was stoned by God's command. But concerning the servile observance of the Sabbath and the punishment of temporal death, many things have already been said. For just as in the time of love the goodness of God, so in the time of fear the severity of God is chiefly commended. And since, before the Lord's coming, it was not yet fitting to lay bare to the people the mysteries of the lawful figures, those men were not invited to understand the things signified, but were compelled to fulfil what was commanded;
for they did not yet cleave to God through the spirit, but served the law through the flesh. But I marvel that these men bewail the man stoned by God's command because he gathered wood against the law's injunction, yet do not bewail the tree withered by Christ's word, which had done nothing against any precept — since they believe the soul of a tree to be such as that of a man. Concerning that which is written: 'May your wife be as a fruitful vine, and your sons as young olive-shoots around your table, and you shall see your children's children; and you shall know that thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord.'
That this was said figuratively through the prophet and pertains to signifying the Church, the Manichaeans do not understand, and they think it contrary to what the Lord says in the Gospel about eunuchs who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. But we have already discoursed sufficiently, in the third chapter, both about husband and wife and about eunuchs. Concerning that which is written in Solomon: 'Imitate the ant, and behold her diligence, for from the time of summer until winter she gathers food for herself.' Neither do the Manichaeans understand that this too is to be taken spiritually, and they think it a precept that we should lay up treasure on earth or even take care of these barns, which without any precept men hasten greatly to fill.
And therefore Adimantus says that saying from the Gospel is opposed to this sentence, where the Lord says: 'Do not be anxious about tomorrow.' But neither do they understand that this pertains to our not loving temporal things, nor fearing that necessities may fail us, and for the sake of acquiring these very things serving either God or men.
For if this was said in order that bread should not be kept for the morrow, then the vagrants of the Romans, whom they call 'pasgivi,' fulfil it more — those who, having filled their bellies with the daily dole, either at once give away what is left or throw it away — than the Lord's own disciples, who, walking on earth even with the very Lord of heaven and earth, had money-bags; or than the apostle Paul, who, though a despiser of all earthly things, yet so governed the things necessary for the present life that he even gave a precept concerning widows, saying: 'If any of the faithful has widows, let him provide sufficiently for them, that the Church be not burdened, so that it may suffice for the true widows.'
Yet that saying about the ant is so set down that, just as she gathers in summer whence she may feed in winter, so let each Christian, in the tranquillity of affairs — which summer signifies — gather the word of God, that in adversity and tribulations — which are signified by the name of winter — he may have whence to live spiritually. For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. But if this moves them, that the ant stores in the earth what she gathers, let them be angry too with that treasure which the Lord says was found in a field. Concerning that which is written in Hosea: 'Give them a barren womb and dry breasts; make dead the seed of their womb, that they bring not forth.' And this prophetic utterance too is certainly figurative.
For they understand the belly as not fleshly in the Gospel, when they read: 'Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly.' And the apostle had certain breasts, when he said: 'I gave you milk to drink, not meat'; and again: 'I became a little one in the midst of you, as if a nurse cherishing her children.' And he travails in birth again over the Galatians, who were turning aside to other things, until Christ be formed in them. And therefore this prophetic sentence is not opposed by what Adimantus set down from the Gospel, that in the resurrection from the dead they neither marry nor take wives nor die, but are as the angels of God. For this indeed is what the eunuchs also receive, of whom Isaiah speaks:
'A named place far better than that of sons and daughters, an everlasting name, I will give them,' he says. Let not these men therefore suppose that such a reward is promised to the saints in the Gospel alone; and as for the barren womb and dry breasts and the deadened seed that it bring not forth, let them understand that it was said concerning these men, of whom the apostle says: 'For as Jannes and Mambres withstood Moses, so these also withstand the truth, men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; but they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifest to all, as also theirs was.' When therefore they shall proceed no further, then shall they have a barren womb and dry breasts and a deadened seed. In which sentence let these men deign to inspect themselves as in a mirror.
Concerning that which is written in the prophet Amos: 'Is it possible that two walking on the way should not know each other, and that a lion should return to his cub without prey? Shall a bird fall to the ground without a fowler? Do they set a snare without cause, that they take nothing? Shall a trumpet give a sound in the city, so that the people be not terrified? Thus also shall no evil be perpetrated in a city which the Lord will not do.' Evil in this place is to be understood not as sin, but as punishment. For evil is called by two names: the one that a man does, the other that he suffers; what he does is sin, what he suffers is punishment. Of punishments, therefore, the prophet was speaking when he said this. For, with divine providence moderating and governing all things, so does a man do the evil that he wills,
so that he suffers the evil that he does not will. But these men accuse the prophet who says these things, as though they had not read in the Gospel: 'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of them falls to the ground without the will of your Father?' So then God does the evil which is not evil to God himself, but to those on whom he takes vengeance. And so he himself, as far as concerns himself, does good, because everything just is good, and that vengeance is just. And therefore it is not contrary — what Adimantus objects that the Lord said: 'A good tree bears good fruits; but a bad tree bears bad fruits.' For although hell is evil to the damned, yet the justice of God is good, and it is itself a fruit from a good tree.
But that man, by the evils of his sins, laid up for himself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works. Although these two trees are most plainly set down in the likeness of two men — that is, of the just and the unjust — because unless a man change his will, he cannot work good. That this lies within our power he teaches in another place, where he says: 'Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.' For he says this to those who thought they could speak good things while they were evil — that is, bear good fruits while they were bad trees. For thus he subjoins: 'Hypocrites, how can you speak good things, when you are evil?'
A bad tree therefore cannot bear good fruits; but from bad it can become good, so that it may bear good fruits. 'For you were once darkness,' he says, 'but now light in the Lord.' As though he said: You were once bad trees, and therefore then you could bear nothing but bad fruits; but now light in the Lord — that is, now made good trees, give good fruits — which he follows up by saying: 'Walk as children of light — for the fruit of light is in all justice and truth — proving what is well-pleasing to the Lord.' For in that very chapter of the Gospel, if Adimantus were not raging with zeal of malevolence, he could have noticed how God is said to do evil. For there the Lord says what this man too has mentioned:
'Every tree that does not bear good fruits shall be cut down and cast into the fire.' These are the evils which God does — that is, punishments for sinners, in that he will cast into the fire the trees which, persevering in wickedness, refused to become good, since this is an evil to those very trees. But God, as I have often said, does not give bad fruits, because the fruit of justice is the punishment of sin. Concerning that which is written in the prophet Isaiah: 'I am God, who make peace and create evils.' This too is resolved by the same rule. For Adimantus does not reprehend that God said: 'I make peace,' but that he said: 'I create evils.' Whereas the apostle Paul has treated these two similarly, even more at length, in one place, saying: 'See therefore the goodness and the severity of God:
toward them indeed who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in goodness; otherwise you too shall be cut off. And they, if they do not continue in unbelief, shall be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again.' In this apostolic discourse the goodness of God sufficiently appears, according to which Isaiah said: 'I am God, who make peace,' and the severity, according to which he said: 'I create evils.' At the same time he also shows that it is within our power, that we may deserve either to be grafted in by his goodness or to be cut off by his severity. The Gospel therefore is not contrary to Isaiah, as Adimantus thinks — or rather desires it to be thought — where the Lord says: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.'
For even from this very part he ought to have recognized that Isaiah too knew the children of God to be peacemakers, since through him God said: 'I am he who makes peace.' But while in one part he fixes his eye on understanding evilly, in the other he has blinded himself. But if another, similarly blind, should wish to say that the Old Testament is good, where the Lord says: 'I will not the death of the sinner, so much as that he turn back and live,' but that the New Testament is evil, where Christ says: 'Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels' — would he not, falling into the pit, with doubled malice hurl down together with himself into the blindness of ignorance all who followed him, unlearned and ignorant of the Scriptures?
But he who reads with a devout eye finds in the New Testament also what these men accuse in the Old, and in the Old what they praise in the New. Concerning that which is written in Isaiah: 'And it came to pass in that year in which King Uzziah died: I saw the Lord sitting on a most lofty throne; and the house was full of his glory, and round about stood the Seraphim, having six wings each, and with two indeed they covered his face, and with two his feet.' To this passage Adimantus opposes that which the apostle says: 'But to the King of the ages, the invisible, honour and praise unto the ages.' In which question it must be asked what seemed good to him — either in that vision of Isaiah to pass over the two wings with which the Seraphim were flying as they said:
'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts,' or in the apostle's words not to say the whole. For thus said the apostle: 'But to the King of the ages, the invisible, the incorruptible, the only God, be honour and glory unto the ages of ages.' Or did he perhaps fear lest the mention of the Trinity should commend the prophet to the reader, and he suspect that something great lay hidden there? For it is said thrice: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts.' But in the apostle he perhaps saw that, if he had said 'to the incorruptible God,' it would be answered him what we now say to these men: What then was the race of darkness going to do to the incorruptible God, if he had not wished to fight with it? Or, if perhaps he had read faulty manuscripts, or this man is himself faulty.
Since we ourselves read Adimantus himself, there is no need to discourse longer on a doubtful matter, but it must now be asked how both the prophet said he saw God on a most lofty throne, and the apostle Paul truly called God invisible. I ask these men, therefore, whether invisible things can be beheld. They say they can. Why then do they slander, if the prophet beheld the invisible God? But if they say they cannot, let them rather slander the apostle himself, if they dare, who says: 'For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made.' For he himself said they are invisible, and he himself again said: 'they are clearly seen.' Are they not here compelled to confess that things invisible to the bodily eyes are visible to the mind?
Thus therefore the prophet also saw God — who is bodily invisible — not bodily, but spiritually. For many kinds of vision are found in the holy Scriptures: one according to the eyes of the body, as Abraham saw three men under the oak of Mambre, and Moses the fire in the bush, and the disciples the Lord transfigured on the mountain between Moses and Elijah, and other things of this kind. Another according to the spirit, by which we imagine those things which we perceive through the body; for that very part of us also, when it is divinely taken up, has many things revealed to it, not through the eyes of the body or the ears or any other carnal sense, yet things similar to these: as Peter saw that vessel let down from heaven with various animals.
Of this kind is also that vision of Isaiah, which the impious most ignorantly reprehend. For a bodily form does not circumscribe God, but just as figuratively — not properly — many things are said, so also figuratively many things are shown. But the third kind of vision is according to the mind's intuition, by which understood truth and wisdom are beheld; without which kind, those two which I have previously set forth are either fruitless or even lead into error. For when those things which are divinely shown, whether to the bodily senses or to that part of the soul which receives the images of corporeal things, are not only perceived in these ways but also understood by the mind, then is the revelation perfect.
Of this third kind is that vision which I mentioned, the apostle saying: 'For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made.' By this vision, that God may be seen, hearts are cleansed through the piety of faith and through the practice of the best morals in the working of God. For what did it profit King Belshazzar that he beheld the hand writing before his eyes upon the wall? To which vision, because he could not join the mind's gaze, he still sought to see what he had seen. But with such a keenness of light, by which these things are understood, Daniel, being endowed, saw with the mind what that man had seen with the body. Again, with that part of the soul which receives the images of bodies, King Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream:
and because he did not have a suitable eye of the mind for seeing better what he had seen — that is, for understanding what he had seen — therefore, to interpret it, he sought another's gaze upon his vision, namely that of the same Daniel; to whom, however, as he opened it, in order that he might attach sure faith, he demanded that the dream itself also be told to him. But Daniel, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, both saw with that part by which the images of bodies are received what that man had seen in his dreams, and beheld with the mind what it signified. But he is not a prophet of the true and most high God who sees the visions divinely offered either with the body alone, or even with that part of the spirit by which the images of bodies are received, and does not see with the mind.
But for the most part in the Scriptures things are found set down just as they were seen, not also as they were understood, so that the vision of the mind — in which the whole fruit lies — might be reserved for the exercising of readers. But from many things which are plainly written, it is made manifest to us how those men understood the things which they set down in this way, as they were figuratively shown to them. For figurative demonstrations pertain to the two kinds of vision; but to the mind — that is, to the vision of the understanding — pertains the simple and proper revelation of things understood and certain. Yet all these kinds the Holy Spirit of the highest and unchangeable wisdom exhibits and moderates by marvellous and ineffable dispensations.
But these men are wretched, who slander the prophet who says that he saw God, objecting the apostolic sentence where he called him invisible. For if another should object to this apostolic word the evangelical word, since the Lord says: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' how will they answer that the invisible can be seen? For with a word they press the unlearned, and to what extent God was called invisible, even if they know, they fear to know. So great is the ruin of minds which, when they wish to conquer a man, are conquered by error.