Latin original · 39 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:2560–1:2598 (3306 verses in all)
Whence also Paul says above: 'Let no man judge you'—concerning those who boast themselves to be masters of the law—'in meat or drink,' that some things are clean, others unclean; 'or in respect of a festival day,' that they think some days festal and others not festal—for to us who believe in the risen Christ there is a continual and eternal festival—'or of a new moon,' that is, of the calends and the new month, when the waning moon comes to an end and is covered by the shadows of night—for the light of Christians is eternal and is ever illumined by the rays of the sun of justice—'or of the sabbaths,' that they do no servile work and carry no burdens; for we are Christ's, endowed with liberty, and have ceased to carry the burdens of sins.
'All these,' he says, 'are a shadow of things to come' (Col 2:17), and images of the felicity that is to come, so that in those things in which the Jews, according to the letter, waver and are held down to earth, we, according to the spirit, may pass over to Christ, who, in distinction from the shadows, is now called the body. For as in the body there is truth and in the shadow of the body falsehood, so in spiritual understanding all food and drink is clean, and the whole festival and perpetual calends and eternal rest is to be awaited. We ask what he meant to say by 'in the humility and religion of angels,' or what sense it bears. From the time when the Lord spoke to his disciples: 'Arise, let us go hence' (John 14:31), and: 'Your house shall be left to you desolate' (Matt 23:38), and:
since the place where the Lord was crucified is spiritually called Egypt and Sodom (Rev 11:8), all the cult of the Jewish observances has been destroyed, and whatsoever victims they offer, they offer not to God, but to apostate angels and unclean spirits. Nor is it a marvel if they do this after the Lord's passion, since through the prophet Amos too it is said to them: 'Did you offer to me sacrifices and victims for forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? And you took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Rempham, figures which you made to adore them' (Amos 5:25-26). Which Stephen the martyr, expounding more fully in the Jewish assembly and unrolling the ancient history, spoke thus:
'And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifices to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. But God turned, and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets' (Acts 7:41-42). Now the host of heaven is not only called the sun and the moon and the gleaming stars, but also every angelic multitude and their armies, which in Hebrew are called sabaoth, that is, 'of powers' or 'of hosts.' Whence also in the gospel according to Luke we read: 'And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will' (Luke 2:13-14). For 'God maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire' (Ps 103:4).
And that we may know that those who worshipped idols always, though they seemed to offer victims in the temple, offered them not to God but to angels, we learn more fully through Ezekiel: 'I gave them ordinances that were not good, and precepts not good' (Ezek 20:25). For God seeks not the blood of goats and bulls, but 'the sacrifice unto the Lord is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise' (Ps 50:19). And therefore those who made the calf in Horeb and worshipped the star of the god Rempham—of which we have discoursed more fully in the prophet Amos—adored the figures which they themselves made, and God delivered them up to serve the host of heaven, which is now called by the apostle the religion of angels.
For 'humility' in the Greek is read tapeinophrosynē, that is, humility of mind or of sense. For it is truly a lowly sense and a pitiable notion, to believe that God is delighted by the blood of goats and bulls and by the smell of incense, which men often turn away from. But that which follows: 'If you are dead with Christ from the elements of this world, why do you yet decree, as though living in the world, "Touch not, taste not, handle not," which things are all unto destruction by the very use, according to the precepts and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in superstition and humility, and in not sparing the body, not in any honor unto the filling of the flesh'—this seems to us to bear this sense.
Let us run through the particulars, and, with Christ unlocking it, lay open the obscurity of the meanings and of the words. If you are baptized in Christ and dead with Christ in baptism, and dead moreover 'from the elements' of the world—in place of what is 'the elements'—why do you not say with me: 'But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world' (Gal 6:14)? Have you not heard the Lord saying to the Father: 'They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world' (John 17:16), and: 'The world hateth them, because they are not of the world, as I also am not of the world' (John 17:14)? But on the contrary, as though living in the world, you decree:
'Touch not the body of a dead man, nor the garment and the stool on which a menstruous woman has sat, neither taste swine's flesh, nor of hares, nor of cuttlefish, nor of squid, of the lamprey and the eel, and of all fish that have no scales and fins'—all which things are in corruption and destruction by the very use, and are voided as dung? For 'meat is for the belly, and the belly for meat' (1 Cor 6:13), and everything that enters through the mouth defiles not a man, but the things which go out of us (Matt 15:11). 'According to the precepts,' he says, 'and doctrines of men,' according to that which Isaiah speaks: 'This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me' (Isa 29:13).
'And in vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and precepts of men' (Isa 29:13). Whence also the Lord rebukes the Pharisees, saying: 'You have made void the commandment of God, that you might establish your own traditions. For God said: Honor thy father and mother; and: He that shall curse father or mother, let him die the death. But you say: Whosoever shall say to father or mother, "Whatsoever gift is from me shall profit thee," and hath not honored his father or his mother,' and the rest. To which he adds: 'And you have made void the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition' (Matt 15:3-6). How many the traditions of the Pharisees are, which today they call deuterōseis, and how anile the fables, I cannot recount. For the size of the book does not permit it, and very many are so shameful that I would blush to tell them.
Yet I will tell one thing, to the disgrace of the hostile nation: they set over their synagogues the wisest men, assigned to a foul task, that they may test by taste whether the blood of a virgin or of a menstruous woman is clean or unclean, if they cannot discern it with their eyes. Moreover, because it is commanded that on the sabbath days each one should sit in his own house and not go forth nor walk from the place in which he dwells (Ex 16:29), whenever we begin to press them according to the letter, that they should not lie down, nor walk, nor stand, but only sit, if they wish to keep the precepts, they are wont to answer and say:
'Barachibas and Symeon and Helles, our masters, have handed down to us that we may walk two thousand feet on the sabbath,' and other things of this kind, preferring the doctrines of men to the doctrine of God. Not that we say one must always sit on the sabbath and by no means withdraw from the place in which one has been engaged, but that what 'is impossible to the law, in that it was weak through the flesh' (Rom 8:3), must be fulfilled by spiritual observance. There follows: 'which things have indeed a show of wisdom.' In this place the conjunction 'indeed' (quidem) is superfluous, which we have found the apostle to have done in very many places on account of his lack of skill in the grammatical art;
for neither does 'but' follow, nor any other conjunction which is wont to answer that proposition in which 'indeed' has been placed. The Jewish observances, therefore, among the ignorant and the base common crowd, seem to have an appearance of reason and of human wisdom; whence also their teachers are called sophoi, that is, 'wise men.' And if ever on certain days they expound their traditions, they are wont to say to their disciples: hoi sophoi deuterousin, that is, 'the wise men teach the traditions.' For 'superstition' in the Greek is put ethelothrēskeia, that is, 'false religion'; and for 'humility,' tapeinophrosynē, which usually sounds a virtue rather than a vice; but here tapeinophrosynē is to be so understood, that they think things lowly and earthly.
Now apheidia sōmatos ('the not-sparing of the body'), whose name Latin speech does not express, is called among us 'unto the not sparing of the body.' The Jews do not spare their bodies in the taking of food, sometimes despising what they have and seeking what they have not—from which necessity they sometimes contract weaknesses and diseases—nor do they honor themselves; though 'to the clean all things are clean' (Titus 1:15), and nothing can be defiled that is received with thanksgiving, and which for that reason has been created by the Lord, that by the satisfying and filling of the flesh it may quicken and sustain the human limbs.
But by 'the elements of the world,' from which—nay rather, to which—we are dead, is to be understood the law of Moses and the whole Old Testament, by which, as by elements and the first beginnings of religion, we learn the Lord. For as letters are called 'elements,' by which we join together syllables and words, and by long meditation proceed to the weaving of discourse; and as the art of music too has its elements, and geometry begins from the elements of lines, and dialectic and medicine have their introductions (eisagōgai): so by the elements of the Old Testament, that they may come to the evangelical fullness, is the infancy of the holy man instructed.
Whence also the one hundred and eighteenth psalm, and all the others which are marked with letters, lead us through ethics to theology, and from the elements of the killing letter, which is destroyed, cause us to pass over to the quickening spirit (2 Cor 3:6). We therefore who are dead to the world and to its elements ought not to observe those things which are of the world, because in the one is the beginning, in the other the perfection. What does the same apostle mean when he writes to the Thessalonians: 'Unless there come a departure first, and the man of sin be revealed,' and the rest (2 Thess 2:3)? In the first epistle to the Thessalonians he had written: 'But of the times and moments, brethren, you have no need that we should write to you;
for you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord shall so come as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, "Peace and security," then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape' (1 Thess 5:2-3). For above he had written to them: 'This we say unto you in the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not go before those who have slept; for the Lord himself, at the command and at the voice of an archangel and at the trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven, and the dead who are in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive, who remain, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be always with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words' (1 Thess 4:15-18).
Hearing which, the Macedonians did not understand whom the apostle calls those living with him, and who are said to be the remnant, who are taken up with him in the clouds to meet the Lord; but they supposed that, while he was yet in the body and before he tasted death, Christ would come in his majesty. Hearing which, the apostle asks them and adjures them by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they be not soon moved, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by epistle as though sent from him, as if the day of the Lord were at hand (2 Thess 2:1-2).
That there are two comings of the Lord the Saviour, both all the volumes of the prophets and the faith of the gospels teach—that first he came in humility, and that afterward he is to come in glory—the Lord himself attesting what things shall come to pass before the consummation of the world, and how Antichrist shall come, when he speaks to the apostles: 'When you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place—let him that readeth understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house' (Matt 24:15-17). And again: 'Then if any man shall say to you, "Behold, here is Christ, or there," do not believe' (Matt 24:23).
For false christs and false prophets shall arise, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as to lead into error, if it were possible, even the elect. Behold, I have foretold it to you. If therefore they shall say to you, 'Behold, he is in the desert,' go not forth; 'Behold, he is in the inner chambers,' believe it not. For as lightning comes forth from the east and appears even unto the west, so also shall be the coming of the Son of man. And then afterward: Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and majesty. And he shall send his angels with a trumpet and a great voice, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the highest heavens even unto the ends thereof. And again he speaks of the antichrist to the Jews:
I am come in my Father's name, and you have not received me; if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. Therefore either the occasion of a misunderstood epistle, or a feigned revelation which had deceived the sleepers through a dream, or the conjecture of certain persons interpreting for that time the words of Isaiah and Daniel and the Gospels which foretold the antichrist, had moved and disturbed the minds of the Thessalonians, so that they hoped Christ was then about to come in his majesty.
The apostle heals this error and sets forth what things must be awaited before the coming of the antichrist, so that when they have seen those things come to pass, they may then know that the antichrist — that is, the man of sin and the son of perdition, who opposes and is exalted above all that is called God or that is worshipped, and who sits in the temple of God — is about to come. Unless, he says, there come the falling away first — which in Greek is called apostasia, that is, that all the nations which lie under the Roman empire withdraw from them — and unless there be revealed, that is, made manifest, the one whom the words of all the prophets foretell, the man of sin — in whom is the fountain of all sins — and the son of perdition — that is, of the devil;
for he himself is the perdition of all things — who opposes Christ and therefore is called antichrist, and is exalted above all that is called God, so that he may trample under his foot the gods of all the nations, or every approved and true religion, and may sit in the temple of God — whether at Jerusalem, as some think, or in the Church, as we more truly judge — showing himself as though he himself were the Christ and the Son of God. Unless, he says, the Roman empire be first made desolate and the antichrist have gone before, Christ will not come, who is therefore to come in such wise that he may destroy the antichrist.
You remember, he says, that these very things which I now write by letter, I used to relate to you in person by word of mouth when I was with you, and I told you that Christ would not come unless the antichrist had first gone before. And now you know what withholds him, that he may be revealed in his own time — that is: you know full well what the cause is that the antichrist does not come at the present time. Nor does he wish to say openly that the Roman empire must be destroyed, which those who rule it think eternal. Whence, according to the Apocalypse of John, upon the forehead of the purple-clad harlot is written the name of blasphemy, that is, 'Eternal Rome.' For if he had said openly and boldly:
'The antichrist will not come unless the Roman empire be first destroyed,' a just cause of persecution against the Church would then seem to rise up in the East. And that which follows: For the mystery of iniquity already works, only that he who now holds, may hold, until he be taken out of the way, and then shall that wicked one be revealed — this has this meaning: by the many evils and sins with which Nero, the foulest of the Caesars, oppresses the world, the coming of the antichrist is brought to birth; and that which he is to accomplish afterward is in part fulfilled in Nero, only that the Roman empire, which now holds all the nations, may withdraw and be taken out of the way.
And then the antichrist will come, the fountain of iniquity, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth — that is, by divine power and by the command of his majesty, for whom to have commanded is to have accomplished — not by a multitude of armies, not by the strength of soldiers, not by the aid of angels; but as soon as He shall have come, the antichrist shall be slain. And even as the darkness is put to flight by the coming of the sun, so by the brightness of his coming the Lord shall destroy and abolish him, whose works are the works of Satan; and just as in Christ dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, so also in the antichrist there shall be all powers and signs and wonders, but all of them lies.
For just as the magicians resisted with their lies the signs of God which He wrought through Moses, and the rod of Moses devoured their rods, so shall the truth of Christ devour the lie of the antichrist; but by his lie shall be seduced those who are prepared for perdition. And because a silent question might be raised: 'Why then has God granted him to have all power and signs and wonders, whereby even the elect of God may be seduced, if it were possible?' — he anticipates the question with its solution, and settles that which could be objected before it is objected.
He will do, he says, all these things not by his own power, but by God's permission, on account of the Jews, so that those who would not receive the love of the truth — that is, Christ, since the love of God is shed abroad in the hearts of believers, and He himself says: I am the truth, of whom it is written in the Psalms: Truth is sprung out of the earth. Those therefore who received not love and truth, that being saved they might have salvation, God sends upon them not a worker, but the very working — that is, the fountain of error — that they should believe a lie, because he himself is a liar and so is his father.
And indeed if the antichrist had been born of a virgin and had come first into the world, the Jews could have had an excuse and could say that they thought him to be the truth, and therefore received a lie in place of the truth; but now they are for this reason to be judged, nay rather, beyond doubt to be condemned, because, having despised Christ who is the truth, they are afterward about to receive a lie, that is, the antichrist. Letter CXXII. To Rusticus, concerning repentance. That I, unknown, dare to write to one unknown, was brought about by the entreaty of the holy handmaid of Christ, Hedybia, and of my holy daughter, your wife Artemia — nay rather, my sister through her marriage and my fellow-servant.
She, by no means content with her own salvation, both sought yours before in your homeland and now seeks it in the holy places, desiring to imitate the good will of the apostles Andrew and Philip, each of whom, having been found by Christ, longed to find — the one his brother Simon, the other his friend Nathanael — that the one of them might be counted worthy to hear: You are Simon, the son of John; you shall be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter; and the other — 'gift of God,' for this is what Nathanael means in our tongue — might be lifted up by the testimony of Christ speaking to him: Behold a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile.
Lot too once desired, together with his daughters, to save his wife, and, bursting forth from the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah half-scorched, to lead her out — her who was held bound by her former vices; but her fearful despair, looking back behind her, is condemned with the eternal mark of unbelief, while his burning faith, for the loss of one woman, delivers the whole city of Zoar. In short, after leaving behind the valleys and darkness of Sodom he ascended to the mountains, the sun rose upon him in Zoar, which is interpreted 'little one,' so that the little faith of Lot, since it could not keep the greater, might keep at least the lesser things.
For he who was once an inhabitant of Gomorrah and of error could not at once come through to the south, in which Abraham, the friend of the Lord, received God together with the angels, and Joseph feeds his brethren in Egypt, and the bridegroom hears from the bride: Where do you feed, where do you lie down at noon? Samuel of old mourned for Saul, because he would not heal the wounds of pride with the medicine of repentance; and Paul lamented over the Corinthians, who would not blot out with tears the stains of fornication. Whence also Ezekiel devours a book written within and without with song and lamentation and woe: with song over the praise of the righteous, with lamentation over the penitent, with woe over those of whom it is written: When the wicked comes into the depth of evils, he despises. These same ones Isaiah also points out, saying:
The Lord of hosts called on that day for weeping and mourning and baldness and girding with sackcloth; but they made joy and exultation, slaying calves and killing sheep to eat flesh, and saying: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. Of whom Ezekiel also speaks: And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus have you spoken, saying: Our errors and our iniquities are upon us, and in them we pine away; and how then shall we be able to be saved? Say to them: As I live, says the Lord, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that he turn from his way. And again: Return, you that turn away from your way; why will you die, O house of Israel?
Nothing so offends God as, in despair of better things, to cling to the worse — although despair itself is a token of unbelief. For he who despairs of salvation does not think there will be a judgment; but if he feared it, he would surely prepare himself for the Judge by good works. Let us hear God speaking through Jeremiah: Turn back your foot from the rough way, and your throat from thirst. And again: Shall not he who falls rise again, or he who is turned away not return? And through Isaiah: When you are converted and groan, then shall you be saved, and shall know where you have been. We cannot know the evils of our sickness except when health has been recovered, and how great a good virtue possesses, the vices demonstrate; and light is made clearer by comparison with darkness.
Ezekiel too, with the same words, because with the same Spirit, says: Turn yourselves and return from your iniquities, O house of Israel, and they shall not be to you a torment of impiety. Cast away all your impieties wherewith you have acted impiously against me, and make you a new heart and a new spirit. And why will you die, O house of Israel? For I desire not the death of the sinner, says the Lord. Whence also in what follows he says: As I live, says the Lord, I desire not the death of the sinner, but that he return from his way and live — lest the unbelieving mind despair of the promise of good things, and the soul, once destined to perdition, apply no cure to its wound, thinking that it can by no means be cured.
For this reason He says that He swears, so that if we do not believe God when He promises, we may at least believe Him when He swears for our salvation. For which cause the righteous man also prays and says: Turn us, O God of our salvation, and turn away your wrath from us. And again: O Lord, in your good will you gave strength to my beauty; you turned away your face, and I became troubled. For after I had changed the foulness of my sins for the beauty of virtues, you strengthened my weakness by your grace, and I shall hear you promising: I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail — so that I, who once fled from you and was your enemy, may be laid hold of by your hand.
Cease not to pursue, until I fail from my most evil way and return to my former husband, who gave me my linen and my oil and my fine flour, and fed me with the richest foods; who therefore hedged up and blocked my most evil ways, that I might find that way which says in the Gospel: I am the way and the life and the truth. Hear the prophet speaking: They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming they shall come with exultation, carrying their sheaves. And say with him: I have laboured in my groaning; every night I will wash my bed, I will water my couch with my tears. And again:
As the hart pants after the fountains of waters, so pants my soul after you, O God. My soul has thirsted for the strong and living God; my tears have been my bread day and night. And in another place: O God, my God, to you do I watch from the dawn. My soul has thirsted for you; how manifoldly does my flesh thirst for you! In a land desert and pathless and waterless, so have I appeared to you in the sanctuary. Although my soul has thirsted for you, yet much more have I sought you by the labour of my flesh, and I could not appear to you in the sanctuary unless first I dwelt in a land made desert of vices, and pathless to the adversary powers, and without the moisture and dampness of any lust.
The Lord too wept over the city of Jerusalem, because it had not done penance; and Peter washed away his threefold denial with the bitterness of tears, and fulfilled that prophetic word: My eyes have poured forth streams of waters. Jeremiah also mourns for the people not doing penance, saying: Who will give water to my head and a fountain of tears to my eyes, and I will bewail this people day and night? And why he mourns and weeps, he shows in the following passage: Weep not for the dead, neither bewail him. Weep with mourning for him that goes forth, because he shall return no more. By no means, therefore, is the Gentile to be bewailed, nor the Jew, who were not in the Church and have died once for all, of whom the Saviour says:
Let the dead bury their dead; but [weep for] those who through crimes and sins go forth from the Church and will not any more return to it through the condemnation of their vices. Whence also to the ecclesiastical men, who are called the walls and towers of the Church, the prophetic word speaks, saying: Walls of Zion, pour forth tears — fulfilling that word of the apostle: to rejoice with them that rejoice, to weep with them that weep — that with your tears you may provoke to weeping the hard hearts of sinners, lest, persevering in wickedness, they hear: I planted you a fruitful vineyard, all a true one; how are you turned into the bitterness of a strange vine? And again: they have said to the wood, 'You are my father,' and to the stone, 'You have begotten me,' and they have turned to me their backs and not their faces.