'that they may deceive of vanity into the same.' Men are vain, either because they themselves hope in vain things, or because to hope in them is vanity; deceitful also, because through the sense of their own impiety they are either deceived or deceive: and deceitful in this, that they deceive in the balances, carrying out injustice, that is, under the name of justice. For where they promise a scrutiny of temperate prudence concerning themselves, there they exercise the zeal of immoderate impiety, entangling themselves in the very error which they professed to drive away from others: and therefore they themselves pass from vanity into the same, falling back, that is, into that from which they boast to be free. But the root of iniquities above all is in the desire of money; and whoever craves it will be sunk in the shipwreck of a most grievous storm. For there follows:
'Do not hope in iniquity, and do not covet robberies. If riches abound, set not your heart upon them.' For there are in these great allurements of desire and of love: they seize the mind and lay hold of wavering thoughts. Therefore not only must their robberies not be coveted, but even if they are offered and flow to us, our will must be turned away from them, lest, being desired and craved, they domineer over us. For these things are not co-eternal with our hopes, nor do they descend with us into hell or rise again with us from hell. Faith, piety, continence, kindness are to be sought after, and above all the knowledge of God is to be pursued. But these vain things, ensnaring by their very nature toward every necessity of iniquities, are to be shunned.
And because that was rather to be sought which pertains to the hope of eternity, the prophet added, saying: 'God hath spoken once, these two things have I heard, that power is God's, and to thee, O Lord, mercy, for thou renderest to every man according to his works.' Once God spoke, and he heard two things; and it is necessary that these be joined together for him, which are known under the signification of one utterance. For at the opening of the psalm he had referred his prophetic confession to God, saying: 'Shall not my soul be subject unto God? for from him is my salvation.' Therefore the fury of Jewish impiety was to be utterly driven away: so that it might be taught that in God the Father the Son also is signified, as now in the one the other likewise is shown.
For he testified that this was the faith of a soul subject to God, that from him came its salvation. And it has often been treated that the salvation is Jesus. But once God speaking, two things were understood and heard, just as that saying: 'Father, I have manifested thy name unto men' — signified in the Father the Son also, so that when God spoke once he heard these two things: that power is God's, and to thee, O Lord, mercy, for thou renderest to every man according to his works. Paul knew both in one, that is, to confess neither without the other, saying: 'There is one God, and one Lord,' because both the Lord is signified in God, and God in the Lord. Thus, in God speaking once, these two things are heard: that power is God's, and to thee, O Lord, mercy.
For from him is his salvation; and the Son received all things from the Father: and therefore in him the power of God is either received or born. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath given all judgment to the Son. He therefore is the requiter of each one, who is the judge. But his is the power, from whom the only-begotten God was born as judge; and his power is from God, who received judgment from the Father: and thus neither does he who is judge lack power, nor he who is God lack mercy. Certainly it is necessary that he who does not confess both in one remain liable to eternal judgment, though nonetheless he is not to be understood as one who is both, saying: 'The Father in me and I in the Father' — our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen.
PSALM 62. A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Edom. 'O God, my God, unto thee do I watch from the dawn,' and the rest. That David dwelt in the wilderness is contained in the Book of Kingdoms, so that he who prefigured the sufferings of the Lord might prophesy them even then, when he dwelt in the wilderness — since the only-begotten God likewise was to sojourn in the wilderness. But as befitted a holy man and was worthy of so great a prophet, when, turning aside from the hatreds of the impious, he had given himself to solitude, he is occupied with the greatest mysteries of heavenly things, and, removed from every company of human impiety or ignorance, he directs his mind to those things by which the knowledge and merit of eternity were acquired.
Not occupied, not hindered by the cares of common affairs and of the age, but in that quiet and leisured seclusion of his solitude, where nothing of offence ran into his eyes or into his mind, he is busy only with divine studies. And let us see whence the discourse of the psalm took its beginning. 'O God, my God, unto thee do I watch from the light.' Clearly for him the day has begun unto the thanksgiving and knowledge of God, for whom the very beginning of praying to God is the beginning of the light. He indeed entreats the God of the universe, yet through the science of knowledge, his own God. But prayer belongs not so much to words as to affection; and therefore he added: 'My soul hath thirsted for thee, how much more also my flesh.'
'In a dry and pathless and waterless land.' To God therefore, with whom is the fountain of life, his soul thirsts, intent with the desire of drinking. And indeed the mind of every man is borne by a certain natural instinct toward the knowledge and hope of eternity, since it is, as it were, implanted and impressed upon all to believe that there is in us a divine origin of souls. For the mind itself recognizes no small kinship of heavenly race within itself; but on the other hand these earthly bodies, which have been compacted for the matter of vices, while they are infected by those things in which they naturally, as it were, take delight, despair of being able to attain the fellowship and gift of heaven:
as if the vices of the body, in which it delights, did not also infect the nature of the soul, or as if, when the delight of the body redounds to the mind, the body did not also draw the mind back with itself to the affection of pleasure. And it is necessary that that be in the same condemnation of pleasure which is in the same pleasure. But we, instructed by spiritual teachings, know that salvation has been granted by God both to the soul and to the body, if only after the grace of regeneration the sense of the body be imbued with the joys of the mind — that is, if we live not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit; for the works of the spirit and of the flesh, according to the Apostle, are distinguished by the pursuits of vices and of continence. But it is arduous, yet most true, so to hope for the eternity of the body as of the soul.
And so to the soul's thirst the prophet added: 'My soul hath thirsted for thee, how much more also my flesh' — retaining in itself nothing uncertain under the ambiguity of unbelief: but as simply as the soul thirsts for God, so also may his flesh thirst. For he thirsts, thirsting not for the body, but for God. For although the very necessity of nature, while he remained in the wilderness and pathless and waterless place, held him to the thirst of the body, yet even through these sufferings of hunger and thirst he knows that the faith of believers is to be tested, so that the soul may thirst for God more than for the body, though thirsting also for the body: since neither famine nor distress nor any kinds of sufferings shall separate the Apostle from the love of God which is in Christ. The holy one therefore thirsts for God.
And what he thirsts for he testified in another psalm, when he says: 'My soul hath thirsted for the living God: when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' This is the desire of the soul, this is the thirst of his hope, that the sight of God may come to him, that as soon as possible, caught up in the clouds, he may appear, raised up to meet Christ the God. And the affection of this desire the prophet now also declares. For after the protestation of thirst, after the want of the wilderness and pathless and waterless place — because in these, as it were, is the warfare and victory of faith — he added: 'So in the sanctuary have I appeared before thee, that I might see thy power and thy glory: for thy mercy is better than life.' It is the science of prophecy to relate as done the things to be done.
And hence there is frequent authority: when they gave him vinegar to drink, that was still to be drunk in the passion; when they divided the garment, which was afterward to be divided; so now, in the thirst of the body, thirsting for God, he appears to him such in his sanctuary — in the simplicity of the flesh, in the thirst of the soul, in the prayer of the dawn, because not except through these will men be held as approved or taken up by Christ, or caught up to meet him in the clouds. But in the sanctuary of God they will not appear to God otherwise than according to that saying: 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also,' and that saying: 'I and the Father are one.' For in the nature and name of the Son is contained the signification of the eternal nature and name: he who appears to the Son, or is taken up by the Son, will appear to the Father in the Son.
And so, as one who was to appear to God in the sanctuary — whose sanctuary's desire he showed in this signification of his thirst — he added: 'that I might see thy power and thy glory' — namely that he might see him who, according to the Apostle, is both the power of God and is in the glory of God — about to see him for no other end than to merit the fellowship of eternity and to obtain the eternity of the heavenly kingdom, because these things are prepared through the mercy of God beyond the blessedness of this life. For this follows: 'because thy mercy is better than life.' Great indeed is the gift of God, that we came into life, and with nature herself as our guide we rejoice to be born. But because our whole span of age is full of anxieties and griefs, there is more of hope in the mercy of God than in life:
because death follows this life by the law of sin, but this mercy will restore eternity out of death. Just as the sowing and the very dissolution of the wheat is more excellent than the preservation of the wheat — for this God clothes, as he wills, in the ear — so great is the gift of the mercy of God, if, having died together with Christ, we live in Christ. For even the very death of Adam, lest he should remain in the punishment of eternity, was appointed under the signification of mercy, and the Apostle judges that to be dissolved is better for him. And the prophet shows the joy of the death that is to abide, saying: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints,' because through it, when we are released together with the law of sin, by the advance of a glorious transformation the eternity of soul and body will now be repaid without the body of sin.
Being therefore assured of the mercy of God, which is better above life, the prophet carries out the office of thanksgiving, saying: 'My lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee in my life, and in thy name will I lift up my hands.' Both by word and by deed he praises God and blesses him; for in his life, blessing, in his name he will lift up his hands — in the lifting up of the hands we have often taught that not the posture of praying, but the indication of a lofty work is signified. In this life of his, therefore, he will praise God, because his mercy is better above life. For there is also a life after life, in which one must live in the bosom of Abraham, in which also the name of God is blessed in the rest of the poor man, according to that saying of the prophet:
'The dead shall not praise thee, O Lord, nor all they that go down into hell; but we who live bless the Lord.' Above these lives, therefore, is that mercy, which — 'that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath ascended into the heart of man' — has been prepared for them that love the Lord. This, therefore, he praises and blesses, not now expecting the sacrifices of the law from the holocausts of cattle and the fatness of fat, but establishing himself as a victim to God in the confession of the soul alone and in the praise of blessing, according to that saying: 'The sacrifice of praise shall honour me,' and that: 'Offer to God the sacrifice of praise,' and that:
'For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would surely have given it; in holocausts thou wilt not delight,' because, when the prescriptive allegory of the letter and of the law has ceased, God is to be honoured by the praises of a living and understanding victim. For he added: 'Let my soul be filled as with fat and fatness, and my lips of exultation shall praise thy name.' Nor does he condemn those things as though to be abominated, but confirming these as rather to be expected, when he demands that his soul be filled with the praise of exultation as with fat and fatness, which were held to be the first-fruits of sacrifices. But these are offices not so much of words as of the mind, so that the sacrifice of praise may proceed from the holiness of works. And so immediately he added:
'If I have remembered thee upon my bed, in the mornings I meditated on thee.' The nightly recollection completes the morning meditation; and therefore from the light he watches unto God, because it is out of the purity of the bed, that is, of the couch, and out of the confidence and conscience of morning prayer. And so the thoughts creeping in under the secret of the night he suppressed by the recollection of God, and the fear of the name of his God aided him as he struggled against the incentives of the flesh. For there follows: 'because thou hast been my helper, and in the covering of thy wings will I hope' — with the meditation of God, through which he is a helper to himself, protecting him. For he has no other care than of pleasing God: him only he remembers upon his bed, on him in the morning he meditates out of the nightly recollection;
he is his own helper and exults under the covering of his wings, that is, he is safe under the covering of the protector. But of all these the starting-point, the cause, is from this: for there follows: 'My soul hath cleaved after thee, thy right hand hath upheld me.' This is the force of love, that we cleave to those whom we love, even if they are absent, since neither place nor time by any means tears away the innate affection. The prophet therefore cleaved to God, with neither the blandishments of the age nor the vices of the body drawing away his love and charity from him, because, according to the Apostle, he that cleaves to God is one spirit, and the Lord prayed for his disciples: 'Father, as we are one, that they also may be one in us.' Cleaving therefore to God, he was upheld by the right hand of God:
that is, through the power of God, which is signified in the right hand, he was taken up by him who is the power and wisdom and Word of God made flesh, being now about to be conformed to the glory of his body. And because, taken up by the right hand of God, he cast from himself every fear that might come from his enemies, he did not keep silent the security of his confidence, nor is he ignorant of the severity of the just judgment of God, saying: 'But they in vain have sought my soul; they shall go into the lower parts of the earth, they shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be portions for foxes.' In vain, therefore, do they seek his soul. For, according to the Gospel, man does not destroy the soul together with the body, and the mercy of God is better above life, and this man is now taken up by the right hand of God.
But the lower parts of the earth they shall enter, because by a pathless chaos they are separated from the saints; and into the hands of the sword they shall be delivered, because, according to the rich man, the power of punishment, which is signified in the edge of the sword, shall be exercised upon the impious; portions also for foxes they shall be, about to obtain the lot of deceitful little beasts: for both Herod is a fox, and foxes lay waste the vineyard of the bridegroom, and they have hidden in the hearts of the impious a den for themselves, the Son of Man having nowhere to lay his head; and there is no doubt that the wickednesses of demons are signified in these, for whom, with their prince, the fire of Gehenna is prepared. But among these things he shows the joy of him who, for the joy of human salvation, frequently exulted unto the Father:
'But the king shall rejoice in the Lord; every one that sweareth by him shall be praised: for the mouth of them that speak iniquities is stopped.' He signifies the cause why the king rejoices: because whoever shall swear by him will be praised in God, by the religion of this oath: he, namely, who knows that Jesus is king, who is also God over all, who, according to Paul, testifies to the coming of the great God our Saviour, who, according to Isaiah, swearing by him will swear by the true God.
For the mouth of them that speak iniquities is stopped, because it is preached from the law and from the prophets, and by the Apostle it is taught that the Father both chose us in him before the foundation of the world and blessed us, and that he himself raised us up together and set us at the right hand of God in the heavenly places, when they shall see him in his majesty judging the living and the dead. Through these things, therefore, the mouth of them that speak iniquities shall be stopped. For he himself is king forever, and at the name of the Lord Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. PSALM 63. Unto the end, a psalm of David. 'Hear, O God, my prayer, while I make supplication unto thee:'
deliver my soul from fear of the enemy,' and the rest. The superscription of the psalm contains no history. It is simple and set forth in the prophetic spirit: only through this, that it is prescribed 'unto the end,' it testifies that it contains matters not of its own time, in which it was written. But it must be asked from what person it is spoken, or what it declares itself to mean; for without doubt it is to be thought spiritual.
For since even those very psalms which, according to the inscriptions of their titles, are believed to contain deeds done, in very many places disagree from the propriety of their title and of the events and persons, and rather, through the setting forth of names and deeds, signify the effects of spiritual operations — what is to be understood of that psalm in which only the simple inscription of understanding 'unto the end' is contained, except that the form of spiritual doctrine is established in it? Moreover I remember that there are many who think that all things which are written in the books of the psalms are to be referred to the person of our Lord, the only-begotten God the Son, and that nothing else is contained in them than what is proper to him. Their opinion cannot be censured.
For all this sense arises from the affection of a religious mind; and it is free from fault to fit all things, with a more inclined zeal, to him through whom all things themselves exist. For although this very thing is sometimes done unskilfully, yet through this, that all things are referred to him, it is necessary that those things which are proper to him be truly and faithfully proclaimed. But care must be taken lest, while we think all things fit him equally, through the zealous intention of this assertion much be detracted both from the dignity of his divinity and from the sacrament of his incarnation and from the power of his operations and from the virtue of his passion and from the glory of his resurrection.
A measure therefore must be kept, and it must be diligently and cautiously determined what was prophesied concerning the nativity of his divinity, which is his from the Father, when the person of that man whom he assumed is treated, where his operation, passion, and resurrection are proclaimed, and what indeed is fitting to each time — when the faith of the Gentiles is announced, when the sins of the former people are censured, when the doctrine of the fear of God and the instruction of confession is furnished from the prayer of the prophet. For in these consists the spiritual order of prophecy. And if the Lord is preached, the advance of this knowledge is useful for faith.
If we are taught unto the fear and confession of him, we are formed by the Lord, we advance, we are gained, so that, as we are redeemed through his passion, so we are to be pleasing to him through the ordinances of his teaching. But I understand that there are certain things in the present psalm which seem able to be fitted to that man whom the Lord assumed, where it is said: 'They have searched out iniquities; they have failed in searching with the search.' For perhaps in it will be reckoned to be signified the conspiracy of the Jews, when testimonies by which he might be accused are sought and not found, and all the devices of the searchers fail;
then, that by the arrows of little ones, that is, by the doctrines of the apostles, they are wounded, against whom they found no cause of just persecution, and therefore their tongues failed against them. These things indeed we do not pass over as though improbable, but there are certain other things in the psalm which impede the order of this understanding. Yet the discourse of our exposition will not disagree far from these. For we judge that not only the confession of the apostles, who were the first, but of every saint hoping in the Lord, is contained in the present psalm.
For we are set amid the greatest storms of the age and the most grievous impieties of the human race against God, whose faithful and true confession through us now philosophy derides, now the fury of heretics assails, now the pursuits of avarice condemn, now the favour of ambition disturbs. For dissembling, tolerating, avoiding, and refuting all these, our mind does not suffice unless it be instructed through God. For with how great and how troublesome stings of disputations does philosophy assail the providence of God and his principal and beginningless dominion over the world created by him, granting the name of God now to the waters, now to the earth, now to atoms, now to the sky! But with how ingenious a use of craftiness does the heretic feign the doctrine of faith!
With how great a danger, moreover, to his hearers does the greedy man affirm the glory of riches! With how great a ruin of continence, too, does the asserter of pleasures pursue the joys of the body! But how pestilent is the eloquence of the ambitious in exhortation to honour! Against all these, watchful care, night-long prayer, and eternal confession to God will fight back. On account of these, therefore, these ruins of our faith and eternal salvation, the prophet will be understood to pray in the psalm, from his own person, showing to what extent it behoves us to hope in God. For he says: 'Hear, O God, my prayer, when I am troubled; deliver my soul from fear of the enemy.'
When those things assail which we mentioned above, through which our faith and hope are imperilled, let prayer be referred to him who alone can heal these. For there is fear lest the surge of enticements creeping in on every side should swallow up the soul, weak through its nature and its fellowship with the flesh. For daily they are present and fight with deceitful blandishments, bringing up certain engines of ruin. And so through the doctrine of heavenly instruction we are admonished to expend watchful care upon our faith, to fear always the plotting enemy, lest, himself placed on the lookout, he assail our incautious security.
Therefore we must watch in prayer to God and always pray, so that, when the soul begins to be wearied and afflicted by the stings of creeping enticements, God, being always entreated, may hear us and deliver us from those things which we fear. For he says: 'Deliver my soul from fear of the enemy.' For God is to be prayed to not only then, when the things that are feared have assailed — and those things are to be feared which, when they begin to be present, dominate — but always and with unwearied prayers he is to be entreated, that he deliver us from the fear of those whose dominion we dread. For it is written in Proverbs: 'When I called, ye did not hear; and when I stretched forth my words, ye did not attend; but ye made my counsels void, and to my counsels ye did not attend. And I will laugh at your destruction.'
'It shall be, when ye call upon me, that I also will not hear.' The prophet therefore, though earlier in time, is nevertheless not ignorant of those things which were to be said afterward, but, anxious amid ever-impending tribulations and solicitous at every fear of the enemy, prays to God on account of those things which he fears, and beseeches that he may be with him in tribulation, that he may hear him. For it is not our fear, but faith, that merits the mercy of God; and there is need of the proof of long preparation, that we may deserve to be heard. The prophet therefore remembers that he is freed by prayer from all these things, and teaches that his prayer arises not from the dominion of those things which he feared, but from the fear of their dominion. For he says:
'Thou hast protected me from the assembly of the malignant, from the multitude of them that work iniquity, who have sharpened their tongues like a sword; they have bent their bow, a bitter thing, to shoot in secret the immaculate.' Here the prophet dreads not weapons of war, nor the sword, nor darts, nor engines, nor the bow. For all his fear is in the tongue; its swords, its arrows he fears. From these indeed he is safe by his faith; for he says: 'Thou hast protected me from the assembly of the malignant'; but the bow of the murderous tongue is ever bent, and the sharpness of the sword is ready in his tongue. And its lethal arrows fly, and it is not doubtful what they effect, namely, to shoot in secret the immaculate. And the propriety of the word must be understood.
They shoot not the holy man, not the faithful, not the just, but the immaculate — him whose stains and defilements of old crimes have recently been washed away through the sacrament of baptism, whose faith is not yet strengthened, who is not yet instructed in spiritual doctrines, who does not yet contend against these things with the weapons of a combative tongue, but who is simple and tender from the infancy of his new birth. Him therefore, without the fear of any contradiction, with the bow long since bent, placed in obscurity through ignorance of things, they will wound. For he says: 'Suddenly they will shoot him and will not fear' — a simple nature, unskilled through the newness of the immaculate one. For this they deceive, to this they hold out hidden snares of ambushes, glorying in their secret hiding-places. For there follows: 'They have made firm for themselves an evil word;'
'they have discussed how to hide snares; they have said, Who shall see them?' The time is distinguished both of inflicting the wound and of the counsel made firm. For when it is said, 'Suddenly they will shoot,' the work of a future time is taught; but when, 'They have made firm an evil word,' now from the past the counsel of a will long since made firm is shown. For ruins against the faith are always at hand, and by hidden and deceiving ambushes the deceits of a pestilent exhortation lie in wait, which they suppose to be seen by very few. And therefore it is said: 'They have hidden snares, and have said, Who shall see them?' For if a heretic attempt to pervert the faith, it is incredible with how great deceits he strives to subvert it;
Should the philosopher assail the hope of our eternity, he will, in a strange manner, place every good of the present life in the body; both parties searching out, with all the eagerness of their wit, those means by which the ordinance of the heavenly teaching might be undermined. But what is human perversity against God? What is the ingenuity of the workmanship against its Maker? Let them ferret out the ruin of the truth with all the little questionings of their reasoning; yet in the destruction of the truth the assertion of falsehood shall fail. And therefore it follows: 'They have searched out iniquities; they have failed in their searching.' The failure of the searchers shows the failure of a vain exhortation against God. For what talents shall not be shaken when they are bent upon contradicting the truth?