Latin original · 36 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:3271–1:3306 (3306 verses in all)
And indeed, what is firmer than that chastity, or what safer, than the one which, begun by the resolve of two, is kept by both, or in common, and one party, not solicitous for itself alone, mutually exhorts the other to perseverance in virtue? For this, like other goods also, is to be praised not merely in the beginning but in the completion. For some while now, as you perceive, the discourse dwells upon a rocky and difficult place, nor does it dare to incline to either side, while it equally dreads both; but from our difficulty recognize your own peril. For we prefer perhaps to grieve you by speaking the truth than to deceive you by feigned flattery. It is a twofold evil, as you see, an equal and doubtful danger: from both sides you are hemmed in, from both sides you are constrained.
To despise the husband altogether and openly to scorn him is against the Apostle's judgment; but to betray a chastity of so long a time and not to render to God what you had promised is to be feared and dreaded. As is commonly said, you will easily make an enemy out of a friend to whom you do not render what was promised. For thus Scripture says: 'But if you vow a vow to the Lord your God, do not delay to render it, for the Lord your God seeking will seek it from you, and it shall be to you for sin.' He says therefore: render to your husband the honour due, that from both, to the Lord, you may be able to render the debt which you vowed. Of his conscience we do not despair, if you had waited a little:
not that we would draw you back from the good of chastity, but that we would with all our strength incite his mind toward the oracle of chastity, so that he may offer a voluntary sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness, so that the mind, stripped of all worldly restraints and bodily pleasures, may be, and you both may be able more fully to cleave to the Lord's precepts. Yet this — lest you should think anything to have been said by us carelessly — we have taught by the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, even as the Apostle also says: 'And the two shall be in one flesh; now not one flesh, but one spirit.' This is a great sacrament, and the way of chastity is arduous; but great are the rewards, and the Lord calls us in the Gospel, saying:
'Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' The same Lord himself says: 'Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is sweet and my burden light.' For the same Lord says to those who shall be at his left hand: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels. I know you not, workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
Assuredly all those shall wail and those shall mourn who so entangle themselves in the cares of the present life that they forget the life to come — whom, oppressed as it were by a sleep of ignorance and evil security, the Lord's coming shall seize like a flood. Whence he himself says in the Gospel: 'Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, lest perhaps that day come suddenly upon you; for as a snare it shall come upon all who sit upon the face of all the earth.' And again: 'Watch and pray, for you know not when the time is.'
Blessed are they who so await, so watch for that day, that they daily prepare themselves for it, who do not flatter themselves on account of past righteousness, but according to the Apostle are day by day renewed in virtue. For righteousness will not profit him from the day on which he has ceased to be righteous, just as neither will his iniquity harm the wicked man from the day on which he has turned himself away from iniquity. Neither, therefore, ought the holy man to be secure, so long as he is engaged in the contest of this life, nor the sinner to despair, who according to the aforesaid judgment of the prophet can in a single day make himself righteous. But — that you may be able to carry through the whole span of your life, toward which it tends, in righteousness, and not, confident of past righteousness, become the more slack — but, as the Apostle says:
'Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching myself forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the heavenly calling' — knowing it to be written that God is the searcher of the heart. And therefore he is busy that he may have a soul clean from sin. For which cause it is written: 'With all watchfulness keep your heart'; and again: 'The Lord loves clean hearts, and all the undefiled are acceptable to him.' Therefore act so that you may order the rest of the time of your life without offence, that you may be able securely to sing with the prophet: 'I walked in the innocence of my heart, in the midst of my house'; and again: 'I will go in to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth' — for it is not enough to have begun, but to have completed is righteousness. CXLIX. A DISPUTATION CONCERNING THE SOLEMNITIES OF THE PASSOVER.
Being about to speak, at the compelling command of your charity, concerning the solemnities and sabbaths and new moons which in the Law are commanded by the Lord to be observed — namely what ought to be rejected according to the letter, or what ought to be observed spiritually — we are first constrained to reply to the lovers of the letter and the adversaries of the truth. Although I could by my own right repel them, I rather desire, addressing them gently and mildly, that they may come to the acknowledgment of the truth — who, while they desire to chew the bitter bark of the roots, spit out the fruit, and, admiring the dust of gold, despise the fashioned metals; because, although they contend that all things are to be observed according to the letter of the Law, yet, the veil being placed over the face of Moses, they cannot be illumined by the light of the spirit of truth.
Whom, even if they do not acquiesce in the truth, yet after the manner of the scapegoat we wish (to bear) upon the shoulder of our patience — prepared to give satisfaction concerning the faith that is in us — to the wilderness of their own perdition, and afterward to wash our garments, lest they should remain polluted by the contagion of heretical understanding. But we, at the beginning of this little work, taught by the example of Jeremiah first to root up, to pull down, and afterward to plant and to build, propose from the Scriptures first to show how these festivals of the Lord, which are commanded by the Law to be kept, are celebrated not by a shadow but by spiritual observance.
And if any should wish to make little of the authority of our weakness, let them hear the prophets, who by their provident advocacy, foreseeing the rejection of these things in the time of the Gospel, foretold it with open voice — nay rather with the Lord speaking beforehand in them: 'My soul hates your feast days and new moons and sabbaths.' And the Lord declares that he did not command these things, whereas it is manifest that he himself commanded them in the Law. In which words what else is shown, than that, when with Christ the end of the Law has come, he did not command them to be kept according to the letter? But concerning the sacrifices he speaks through another prophet: 'I will not reprove you for your sacrifices.'
'But your burnt offerings are ever in my sight; I will not accept calves out of your house, nor he-goats out of your flocks,' and the rest, down to: 'or shall I drink the blood of he-goats?' With which words the Apostle, filled with the same Spirit, agreeing, says: 'Let no one seduce you in food or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or of a new moon or of a sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come,' and the rest. By which words he most clearly declares that in these — whether the temporally observed days or the carnal foods — one will be able to find nothing else than a most empty shadow and the sedition of error. And the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel declared the sabbath to be loosed, when he commanded the paralytic:
'Take up your bed' — which it is manifest was forbidden by the Law, namely to carry burdens on the sabbath. He also loosed the Feast of Tabernacles, when he said: 'I will not go up to this feast day,' as if he had said: 'In this observance of that festivity the glory of my honour shall not go up.' But being about to say something a little more at length concerning the Passover, as concerning the greatest sacrament of our salvation — even though it is not of this present time to discuss all things — I wish first to show by what, or by how great, reasons the Passover of the Lord is commanded to be kept. In the first month, on the tenth day of the month, a yearling lamb without blemish is commanded to be set apart and kept until the fourteenth, and on the fourteenth to be slain by the Lord through Moses, by the whole assembly of the children of Israel, toward evening.
These reasons the Lord himself, the true Lamb, when he goes forward to the Passover toward evening, wishing some to remain, kept; and others, desiring them not to be preserved, he changed. He who, when in the first month according to the precept of the Law he deigned to be immolated and by no means permitted the fourteenth to anticipate the times of his passion — yet the Gospel narrates that he did some things contrary to the figure, because, when he was betrayed to the Jews by Judas, he was not seized on the tenth day of the first month. And when he deigned to give the sacraments of his body and blood, in his lifetime and to his disciples, this is shown to have been done contrary to the figure, since that lamb which in the type of Christ is commanded to be slain at Passover, roasted by fire with head and feet and entrails after its slaying, was...
...commanded to be eaten by the people. But this, as it seems to me, the Lord is known to have done for two reasonable causes: lest, when he ate the Passover with his disciples, unless he had afterward changed the sacrifice, saying 'This is my body,' it should thus also afterward be believed that it ought to be observed. But this is the other cause, as I think: that, when they beheld the body of the Lord whole and containing his own blood in itself before the passion, they might believe themselves to be spiritually refreshed by this body — and that so also now it ought to be believed by us.
And this also we ought to consider: that not on the fourteenth day toward evening, as the Law prescribes, was that Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world and is our Passover, Christ, immolated, but on the fifteenth day — in which it is manifest that the feast day of the Jews with its sacrifice was loosed by the Lord. But what ought we to understand in this, that first he causes our apostles to eat the flesh of the figural lamb, and afterward refreshes them with the food of his own body, and that Christ was immolated after the typical Passover of the Jews?
This, as I think, was in order that not the truth should precede the figure, but the figure should precede the truth, because not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal, and then that which is spiritual. Whence the chosen and beloved Spouse of Christ, the universal Church, anathematizes those who determine to celebrate with the Jews on the fourteenth in the paschal festivity, and sabbaths and other things of this kind of shadowy observance; and the Lord deigned to observe only this, that in the first month, after the fourteenth day, he judged the paschal festivity to be celebrated on the first day of the week (the Lord's day) preceding, without any ambiguity — although in this the truth of the Church arose. Some believing it sufficient that they should not celebrate the Passover on the fourteenth with the Jews, but others strongly and cautiously keep this: that they dare not celebrate the immolation of the true Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, before the fourteenth, according to that legal precept which the Lord also, coming to the passion, in no way despised:
'You shall keep it until the fourteenth' — which the Church now especially observes, following the authority of the Apostolic See. But leaving these things aside, because it is not of this present time to discuss them one by one, we turn the keenness of our mind to the spiritual understanding — we who are commanded to eat the flesh of the paschal lamb in the month of new things, on the fourteenth day of the month, so that, being born again for the fruit of good works, when the words of the Decalogue have been fulfilled by us, standing in the perfection of the Gospel by the fourfold number, we may eat the flesh of our Lamb at the evening of the world, upon whom the end of the ages has come — not with darkened hearts, the Holy Spirit illuminating our night. Concerning the Sabbath.
It is commanded to labour for six days, but on the seventh, that is the sabbath, we are forbidden from all servile work. By the number six the perfection of works is designated, because in six days God made heaven and earth. But on the sabbath we are forbidden to do all servile work, that is, sin, because he who commits sin is a servant of sin; so that, when in the present age we have completed the perfection of works, not hardening our hearts, we may deserve to attain to the true rest which has been denied to the obstinate, the Lord saying through David: 'If they shall enter into my rest.' Concerning Pentecost.
From the day after the sabbath we are commanded by the Law to number seven full weeks, up to the day after the completion of the seventh week, that is, the fiftieth day, on which the firstfruits are offered; which numbering is full of perfection through the sevenfold number, and ten times five and five times ten. In this I think it is signified that, through the fiftieth (which contains in itself remission), and through charity (which, by the sevenfold Spirit of grace supervening, has been poured out in our hearts), and the five senses of our body, we may keep them subject to the law of God.
Which words contain in themselves the Decalogue 'and through charity,' as I have said, which charity covers the multitude of sins; and thus, yielding, we offer a new sacrifice to the Lord out of all our dwellings for the use of our priest, together with our peace offerings — if we have made peace with the Lord, offering spiritual victims acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, who, though leavened, yet as loaves of the firstfruits of our land consecrated to himself, ate them as high priest for himself — who, penetrating heaven, is able to be compassionate to our infirmities; and, since we have him as an advocate with the Father, the works which, leavened by the leaven of our frailty, are lifted up for the use of this priest by the hand of prayer and yield, he devours through the bowels of mercy, which offer an odour of sweetness to God, but rather demand indulgence.
Concerning the Feast of Tabernacles, and at the end of the solar year. Among the Hebrews likewise, in the seventh month, when the fruits are gathered into the granaries or into the storehouses, then it is commanded by the Law to celebrate solemnities: that is, on the first day of trumpets, on the tenth day of expiations they ought to celebrate sabbaths, and from the fifteenth day for seven days, until they be finished, the feasts of tabernacles are commanded to be for eight days.
By these things perhaps it can be signified that, because we at the end of the age have been consecrated by the sacrament of the threefold invocation, we should not cease, by the trumpet of the preaching of the Gospel, to proclaim the faith and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, in which is the true propitiation, the time of the Law being ended; and that, the fruits of good works being gathered, at rest from every evil work through the grace of the sevenfold Spirit, persecution being endured, we may deserve to attain to the number of the eighth beatitude. Which, however, there is no doubt is done through the labour of fasting and prayer, since the Law also commands that the souls be afflicted. Concerning the New Moons.
On the new moon it is commanded to sound the trumpet, that is, at the new moon, because he who has been illumined in the light of knowledge ought not to cease from preaching to others; which Paul, illumined by the splendour of the knowledge of Christ, in no way despised to observe, preaching in the synagogues of the Jews. Concerning the sacrifices I had resolved to say a few things, which, since they contain in themselves the figure of the victims of the true High Priest, ought also to be offered by us spiritually to the Lord.
For by the calf our labour, by the sheep innocence, by the he-goat the mortification of fornicating pleasure, by the she-goat which feeds in lofty pasture the contemplative life, by the ram the power of preaching which begets lambs for the good Shepherd, by the turtledove the chastity of a solitary mind joined to none but Christ, by the dove the perspicacity of insight into the sacraments, by the bread the solidity of the precepts, by the fine flour the sincerity of life, by the wine and salt the truth of preaching, by the oil the fomentations of charity — all these are understood. All which, whether feasts or sacrifices, the Law bids to be celebrated and offered in one place, because then all things profit, when they are performed in the unity of the Church without any error of schism.
Expounding these few things in the abyss of the many precepts of the Law, I, a poor man, have not feared to offer this little sup to the rich, a stranger to a citizen, because perfect love casts out fear — believing this also, O venerable Pope, that obedience with faith avails more than the resource of human ingenuity. But these things were both asked by you and said by me on account of those who, while they seem on the surface to be Christians, through the impiety of a Judaic understanding do not fear to rend the body of Christ, the Church, with their schisms. These things we have run through in brief, which, if they were treated in full, would require a great volume, such as the leisure of this present time does not demand. Pray for me, venerable Pope. CL.
As for the letters of Procopius of Gaza to a Jerome — not the one of Stridon, but a certain other Egyptian of a later age — written in Greek, there is no reason for me to explain why I have not received a Latin version of them into this edition. Nonetheless I have not deleted the number of the Vallarsian edition. CLI. TO RIPARIUS. To the truly holy and to be esteemed brother Riparius, Jerome. I have learned by the report of many who have come that you have fought bravely against the heretics and have won the Lord's contests.
For not only Gaul and Italy, but also the most celebrated city of Palestine, they stain with their frauds and perjuries, having as their patron and consort of their master, whom the Lord Jesus slew with the spirit of his mouth and left to all as an example of how perilous it is to resist the catholic faith and to desire to overturn the foundations of the Church. But where your Holiness is to be, or whether you still dwell in the city, I cannot know. That at least a rare piece of writing may not perish year by year, but that we may frequent with mutual letters the friendships begun in Christ:
The sudden death of the holy and venerable virgin of Christ, Eustochium, has grieved us deeply and has almost altered the whole tenor of our way of life; for indeed there are many things we wish to do yet cannot, and the weakness of old age overpowers the ardour of the mind. The holy brethren who are with me send you many greetings. I commend my holy son the deacon Theon to your esteem, and I beg you to send me familiar letters about your whole manner of life and condition, and about where you intend to live. May the mercy of Christ our God keep you unharmed and mindful of me, my truly holy lord and brother, to be received with honour. Letter 152. To Riparius. Jerome to his truly holy lord, and much to be received and longed for, brother Riparius.
The arrival of the holy and venerable presbyter Innocentius brought me much joy, for he both delivered your letter to me and, by his own words as well, showed you to be fervent with the warmth of faith. As for the fury of Julian and his associates, the dirges of Pelagius and the babbling of Celestius, do not greatly trouble yourself: of these men, the one blasphemes with his own verbosity, the other speaks in borrowed, begged-for words. Nor am I moved by their writings, which I do not know, since I am aware that their will to blasphemy is indeed most wicked, but that they have no force of prudence or eloquence, and above all no knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, which are the bulwark of faith, the law of the ecclesiastical forum, and the authority of the elders.
Nevertheless, if they should write anything and it should come into my hands, then—that I may not speak arrogantly, but only match their madness—I reckon that all their laboured-over volumes could be refuted with the same verbosity, perhaps by a single little night's study and a single dictation. But as for your exhorting me to write, you are laying a heavy burden upon an old little donkey. For both the keenness of my talent and the strength of my body have utterly deserted me, having been lost through the constant debility of illnesses. May the mercy of Christ our God keep you unharmed and mindful of me, my truly holy and much-longed-for lord and brother. Letter 153. To Bonifatius. Jerome to the most blessed Pope Bonifatius.
With how great a joy I received, over the ordination of your pontificate, both the message and the letters of your Blessedness, brought by the holy presbyter Innocentius, your Reverence cannot doubt, since we have long been bound to one another by mutual affection and began to love one another before we knew each other, and since the inner man is so joined to itself that it does not feel the losses of the outer man. This alone has softened our grief over the death of the holy and venerable virgin of Christ, Eustochium—except that in this too the sorrow is no less, that she has been deprived, together with us, of so great a joy.
For with what joy would she have exulted, had she been counted worthy to hear this while still established in the body! With what prayers and thanksgiving would she have implored the mercy of Christ, upon learning that her holy and venerable spiritual parent had become successor to the apostolic chair! The infant Paula, who was reared in your hands, has been laid upon our shoulders as a kind of pledge of the holy and venerable memory of Laeta; whether we are able to bear this burden, it belongs to the Lord to know, whom future things do not deceive, and in us there is no strength save a holy will, which is proved not by the effecting of deeds but by the desire of the soul. I beseech your Reverence to enroll us always as, so to speak, among your own, and to know that we too rejoice, in a particular way, over the advancement and honour of your Reverence.
Surely the holy and venerable presbyter Innocentius will be able to inform your Blessedness how great a joy we conceived in the very midst of our grief, and how, were it possible, we would long to cling to your embraces. (Likewise.) What I write in my own hand, I write to your Blessedness. Let the heretics feel that you are an enemy to their treachery, and let them hate you, that you may be the more loved by Catholics; and be an executor and fulfiller of the sentence of your predecessors, and do not suffer, under the name of a bishop, patrons and associates of heretics. Letter 154. To Donatus. Jerome to the holy lord Donatus, much to be received. It is written: many are the scourges of sinners—which we testify that we both deservedly have borne and do bear—provided only that they profit unto future salvation.
But that the hearts of heretics cannot be cleansed, I am a witness, to whom it has been decreed never to trust their repentance. For to this end they feign charity, that those whom they could not slay through enmity, they may kill through feigned friendships. Their hearts are full of poisons and—according to what you have so excellently said—'neither can the Ethiopian change his skin, nor the leopard his spots.' Nevertheless we trust in the mercy of Christ, that my lord, the holy and venerable bishop Bonifatius, will root them out by the Spirit of Christ; to whom we must grant pardon, if in their beginnings he offers charity and strives, through his own clemency and gentleness, to preserve those who nevertheless are never to be tended. Truly I will say what I feel:
upon these heretics that Davidic word must be carried out: 'In the mornings I slew all the sinners of the earth.' They are to be destroyed, spiritually slain, indeed cut down by the sword of Christ, who cannot receive health through poultices and gentle remedies. The death of the holy and venerable lady Eustochium has grieved us vehemently; know that she rendered up her spirit in the very ardour of confession, and that she chose more gladly to give up both her household property and her home and to endure honourable exile, than to be stained by communion with heretics. I pray you to greet my holy son Mercator on my behalf, and to admonish him to show the ardour of his faith and to detest those who are stained by any suspicion of the Pelagian heresy.
And above all I beseech you to greet my holy sons Marcus, Ianuarius, Primus, Restitutus, Traianus, and all my fellow-soldiers in the Lord, whose ruin, brought by another, was the cause of salvation. But I myself, worn out both by grief and by long age, and broken by frequent illnesses, have scarcely broken forth into these few words.