Sermons & Tracts 1 part 32/37

but of those in which either one or the other is lacking, they were not to eat (Deut. 14:6-7). Now by these animals certain men are signified who do not belong to the fellowship of the saints: for the parted hoof pertains to conduct, but the chewing of the cud to wisdom. Why does the parted hoof pertain to conduct? Because it slips with difficulty; for a slip is a sign of sin. And how does the chewing of the cud pertain to wisdom and doctrine? Because Scripture says, 'A desirable treasure rests in the mouth of the wise man; but a foolish man swallows it up' (Prov. 21:20). He therefore who hears, and through negligence becomes forgetful, as it were swallows what he has heard, so that it no longer has savor in his mouth, burying the very hearing of it in oblivion.

But he who meditates in the law of the Lord day and night, as it were chews the cud, and in a certain palate of the heart delights in the savor of the word. This, then, which was commanded to the Jews, signifies that those do not belong to the Church—that is, to the body of Christ, to grace, and to the fellowship of the saints—who are either negligent hearers, or have evil morals, or are reprehensible in both faults. So the other things which in this manner were given as precepts to the Jews are shadowy significations of things to come. After the Lord our Jesus Christ, the light of the world, has come, they are read only that they may be understood, not also that they may be observed.

Liberty, therefore, has been granted to Christians, that they should not act according to this empty custom, but should eat what they will with moderation, with blessing, with giving of thanks. Perhaps, then, it was said to Peter also, 'Kill and eat,' that he might no longer keep the observance of the Jews: yet gluttony of the belly and foul voracity was not commanded him. But nevertheless, that you may understand this was shown to him figuratively, there were serpents in that vessel. Was he to eat serpents? What, then, does this signification mean to you? 2. The animals, the Gentiles. Peter bears the figure of the Church. That vessel signifies the Church;

the four corners by which it hung, the four quarters of the world through which the Catholic Church is extended, which is everywhere diffused. Whoever, therefore, shall wish to go off into a faction, and to be cut off from the whole through some heresy, does not belong to the sacrament of the four corners. But if he does not belong to the vision of Peter, neither will he belong to the keys which were given to Peter. For this reason that vessel was let down by four corners, because God says his saints are to be gathered from the four winds unto the end (Mark 13:27): because now over all these four cardinal points the faith of the Gospel is spread abroad. Those animals, then, are the Gentiles:

for all the Gentiles who were unclean through errors and superstitions and their own lusts, before Christ came—when he came, their sins being forgiven them, were made clean. Whence now, after the remission of sins, why should they not be received into the body of Christ, which is the Church of God, whose person Peter bore? Peter in many places appears to bear the person of the Church. If Peter bore the figure of the Church, and the Church is the body of Christ, let it receive into itself, as into its own food, the Gentiles now cleansed, whose sins have been forgiven. 3. The slaying and eating of the Gentiles. Whence Cornelius, a Gentile man, and those who were with him, sent to him, whose alms, being accepted, cleansed them up to a certain point:

it remained that, as clean food, he should be incorporated into the Church, that is, into the body of the Lord. But Peter was afraid to deliver the Gospel to the Gentiles: because those who had believed from among the circumcision forbade the Apostles to hand on the Christian faith to the uncircumcised; and they said that these ought not to come to the participation of the Gospel unless they received circumcision, which had been handed down to their fathers. That vessel, therefore, took away Peter's doubt; and so after that vision he was admonished by the Holy Spirit to go down and go with those who had come from Cornelius, and he set out. For Cornelius and those who were with him were counted as of those animals which had been shown in the vessel:

whom nevertheless God had already cleansed, who had accepted their alms. They were therefore to be slain and eaten: that is, that he might put to death in them their former life, in which they had not known Christ; and that they might pass into his body, as into a new life of the Church's fellowship. For Peter himself, when he had come to them, briefly recalled what had been shown to him in that vision. For he said: 'You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to associate with and to approach strangers: but God has shown me to call no man common or unclean.' Which indeed God then showed, when that voice sounded: 'What God has cleansed, do not thou call unclean.' 4. The sheet, a symbol of incorruption.

Thrice let down from heaven in the mystery of the Trinity. Four corners, the four quarters of the world. Perhaps it may also be asked why it was a sheet in which those animals were. Not without cause, surely. For we know that the moth does not consume linen, which corrupts other garments. And therefore, whoever wishes to belong to the mystery of the Catholic Church, let him shut out from his heart the corruption of evil lusts; and so let him be incorruptibly established in the faith, that he be not penetrated by depraved thoughts as by moths, if he wishes to belong to the sacrament of that sheet by which the Church is figured.

But why was it let down from heaven thrice, except because all the Gentiles are baptized in the name of the Trinity—Gentiles who pertain to the four quarters of the earth over which the Church is disseminated, which the four corners signified by which that vessel was bound together—and believers are renewed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that they may belong to the society and communion of the saints? The four corners, therefore, the four quarters of the world, and the threefold letting-down shows the mystery of the Trinity. Which matter also shows forth the number twelve of the Apostles, as it were three reckoned by four: for four times three make twelve.

And because through the four quarters of the earth the twelve Apostles were to preach the mystery of the Trinity, therefore the four corners were let down from heaven a third time. 5. Recapitulation. As, then, has been said above, the blessed Peter held the type of the Catholic Church. But that he went up to the upper chamber signifies that the Church was spiritually about to ascend on high from earthly desires, and to have her heart lifted up, according to that which the Apostle said, 'But our conversation is in heaven' (Phil. 3:20). And that Peter hungered, this signified that the Church would hunger for the salvation of the Gentiles. That sheet which was let down from heaven signified the Church.

The animals which were in the sheet bore the image of all the Gentiles. The four corners by which that vessel hung seem to have signified the four quarters of the world in which the Gospel of Christ is preached. That the vessel was let down a third time signified the mystery of the Trinity and the sacrament of Baptism. And that it was said to Peter, 'Kill and eat,' by this it was signified that the Catholic Church would first slay all who believe in Christ, and afterward eat them; that is, would slay unbelief, that she might graft in faith. For no one can believe in Christ unless he first dies to what he was;

according to that which the Apostle says, 'For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God' (Col. 3:3). For as those who are ensnared by heretics are devoured alive by death, so those who come to Christ die to the things of the past, that they may live to the things of the future; they perish to the devil, and are gained to Christ; they die to death, and are happily grafted into life. That divine goodness may deign to fulfill and confirm this same thing in us also, let us make supplication with assiduous prayers, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns unto the ages of ages. Amen. SERMON 102. On the words of the Apostle, Romans chapter 7, verse 15: 'For not the good that I will, do I;'

'but the evil which I hate, that I do.' 1. Care must be taken lest this passage of the Apostle be ill understood. Whenever the divine lesson which is recited from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul is read, it is to be feared lest, being ill understood, it give occasion to men who seek occasion. For men are prone to sinning, and scarcely restrain themselves. When therefore they hear the Apostle saying, 'For not the good that I will, do I; but the evil which I hate, that I do,' they do evil, and, as though displeased with themselves because they do evil, they think themselves like the Apostle, who said, 'For not the good that I will, do I; but the evil which I do not will, that I do.'

For it is sometimes read, and even now it imposes on us the necessity of discoursing, lest men, taking amiss this wholesome food, turn it into poison. So let your Charity attend, until, by what the Lord shall grant, I speak to you; that where you see me laboring stealthily in the difficulty of some obscurity, you may help me with an affection of piety. It behooves us, therefore, to measure the meaning of the virtues from the inmost affection of the speaker, and to discuss what the blessed Apostle called good, or what he pronounced evil by comparison with it, not by the bare signification of the words, but with the same regard as he had, pronouncing also according to the dignity of his understanding, and to search out its merit.

For then shall we be able to grasp the sentences uttered by God's inspiration according to his purpose and will, when, weighing the state and character of those by whom they were promulgated, we clothe ourselves with an affection equal to theirs, not by chance, but by experience; according to whose quality, without doubt, either all meanings are conceived or sentences are uttered. What that good was which the Apostle could not accomplish. The merit of contemplation. Goods, when compared to a greater good, cease to seem goods. Wherefore let us more diligently investigate what is chiefly that good which the Apostle could not accomplish when he willed. For we know many goods which we cannot deny that the blessed Apostle, and all

men of his merit both possessed by nature and acquired by grace. For chastity is good, continence praiseworthy, prudence admirable, generous kindness, circumspect sobriety, modest temperance, pious mercy, holy justice; all of which there is no doubt were so full and perfect in the Apostle Paul and his companions, that religion was led from them rather by the teaching of virtues than of words. What of the fact that they were always consumed with the continual care of all the churches and with ever-watchful solicitude? How great a good of mercy is this, how great a perfection, to be burned for those who are scandalized, to be made weak with those who are weak?

Since, then, the Apostle abounded in such great goods, we shall not be able to recognize what that good is whose perfection he lacked, unless we advance into that same affection with which he himself spoke. All those virtues, therefore, which we said he possessed, although they be like the most splendid and precious gems, yet if they be compared to that illustrious and surpassing pearl which that evangelical merchant, seeking, desires to purchase by selling all that he possesses, so does their merit grow cheap and be despised, that, they being disposed of without hesitation, the possession of one good alone enriches the seller of goods innumerable.

What, then, is that one thing which is so incomparably preferred to those goods so great and so innumerable, that, all being spurned and cast away, it alone ought to be possessed? Doubtless it is that best part, whose magnificence and perpetuity Mary, having left aside the office of receiving and of hospitality, had chosen; so that it is thus proclaimed by the Lord: 'Martha, Martha, thou art solicitous and troubled about many things; but few things are needful, or even one. Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her' (Luke 10:41-42). One, therefore, and sole, is the contemplation of God, to which deservedly all the merits of justifications, all the pursuits of the virtues, are postponed.

And indeed all those things which we foretold shone in the Apostle Paul are not only good and useful, but even great and illustrious. But just as, for example, the metal of tin, which was thought to be of some usefulness and grace, becomes most vile in comparison with silver; and again the merit of silver vanishes in comparison with gold; gold itself too is despised in comparison with gems; and nevertheless the multitude of gems, however distinguished, is surpassed by the whiteness of one pearl: so all those merits of ability, although they be not only good and useful in the present, but even acquire the gift of eternity;

yet if they be compared with the merits of divine contemplation, they will be reckoned vile and, so to speak, saleable. 3. Why created things are very good. Why nevertheless vanity. And that the authority of the Scriptures also may confirm this same comparison, does not Scripture say generally of all things which were created by God, 'And behold, all things which God made were very good' (Gen. 1:31); and again, 'All the things which God made are good in their time' (Eccli. 3:11)?

These things, therefore, which in the present are pronounced not only good simply, but even with the addition 'very good' (for they are indeed, to us who sojourn in this world, suited either to the use of life, or to the medicine of the body, or to some cause of usefulness unknown to us; or certainly they are even 'very good' in this, that they make us behold the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, understood by the things that are made [Rom. 1:20], and to contemplate his eternal power also and divinity from so great and so ordered a construction of the fabric of the world, and of all things which subsist in it):

yet all these things will not retain even the name of good, if they be compared with that future age, where there is no change of goods, no corruption of true blessedness to be feared. The blessedness of which world is thus described: 'The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold, as the light of seven days' (Isa. 30:26). Great, therefore, and illustrious and marvelous to behold are these things, but if compared with the future things promised out of faith, they will straightway appear vanity, as David says: 'All things shall grow old as a garment, and as a covering shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail' (Ps. 101:27-28). Therefore, because nothing is of itself stable, nothing immutable, nothing good,

except the Deity alone; and all creatures, in order to obtain the blessedness of eternity or of immutability, will attain it not through their own nature, but through the participation and grace of their Creator; they cannot hold the merit of goodness as conferred upon their Creator. 4. Human goodness is evil in view of the divine. But if we wish to establish the reason of this sentence by yet more manifest testimonies, do we not read that many things are pronounced good in the Gospel—both a good tree and a good treasure? For also a good man, and a good servant: because, he says, 'a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit' (Matt. 7:18); and, 'A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things' (Id. 12:35); and, 'Well done, good and faithful servant' (Id.

25:21): and although it is doubtless that all these are in themselves good, yet if we look to the goodness of God, none of them is pronounced good, the Lord saying: 'None is good but God alone' (Luke 18:19). In view of whom even the Apostles themselves, who by the merit of election had surpassed the goodness of the human race in many ways, are said to be evil by the Lord thus speaking to them: 'If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him' (Id. 11:13)? Finally, as our goodness in view of the supernal goodness is turned into malice;

so also our justice, compared to the divine justice, all our justice is reckoned like a menstruous cloth, as the prophet Isaiah says: 'All our justice is as the cloth of a menstruous woman' (Isa. 64:6). 5. The Law good in itself, but not good in view of the Gospel. Those who sin less, Scripture justifies by comparison with the impious. And that we may adduce something yet more evident, the vital precepts also of the Law itself, which are said to have been ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator (Gal. 3:19), and of which the same Apostle says, 'So then the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good' (Rom. 7:12); if they be compared with evangelical perfection, are pronounced by the divine oracle to be by no means good:

for he says, 'And I gave them precepts that were not good, and judgments in which they shall not live' (Ezek. 20:25). The Apostle also thus affirms that the glory of the Law is dimmed by the light of the New Testament, so that in comparison with the brightness of the Gospel he pronounces it not to have been glorified at all, saying: 'For neither was that glorified which was made glorious, by reason of the surpassing glory' (2 Cor. 3:10). Which comparison Scripture preserves also in the contrary part, that is, in weighing the merits of sinners; so that it justifies those who have sinned much less, in comparison with the impious, saying: 'Sodom is justified above thee' (Ezek. 16:52); and again, 'For what has thy sister Sodom sinned?' (Ibid. 48).

and, 'The backsliding Israel has justified her soul in comparison with the treacherous Judah' (Jer. 3:11). So, therefore, also the merits of all the virtues which I comprehended above, though they be in themselves good and precious, yet in comparison with the clarity of contemplation are darkened. For the earthly pursuits, however good in works, greatly draw back and retard the saints from the contemplation of that highest good. SERMON 103. On the words of the Apostle, Romans chapter 7, verses 24-25: 'For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man,' etc. 1. Even the saints themselves do not lack cause for continual groaning. The struggle of the inner and outer man.

Since, therefore, the saints daily feel themselves, weighed down by the burden of earthly thought, to fall from that sublimity of mind, and against their will—nay rather, even unknowingly—to be led over into the law of sin and death; and, to pass over other things, to be called away, at least by those things which I comprehended above, good indeed and just, but nevertheless earthly, from the sight of God by their works: they have assuredly reasons for which they continually groan to God, reasons for which, in truth humbled and pricked in conscience, they pronounce themselves sinners not by words only, but by affection;

so that, continually asking of the Lord's grace pardon for all the things into which they daily fall, overcome by the frailty of the flesh, they unceasingly pour out the tears of true penitence: seeing indeed that, involved in those very heats over which they are vexed with continual sorrow and even groan continually unto God, they cannot offer even their very supplications without the anxiety of thoughts. Having therefore experienced that by human powers they cannot attain the desired faith, the burden of the flesh resisting, nor be joined according to the desire of their heart to that chief and highest good; but that they are led captive from the sight of it to worldly things:

flying to the grace of God, who justifies the impious, they protest with the Apostle: 'Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' For they feel that they cannot accomplish that good which they will; but that evil which they do not will, and which they hate—that is, the mutability of thoughts and the care of corporeal things—they always fall into. And they delight indeed in the law of God according to the inner man, who, transcending all visible things, strives to be always united to God alone: but they see another law in their members—that is, one inserted into the nature of the human condition—which fights against the law of their mind, and drags the sense along by the violent law of sin;

compelling them, namely, to leave that principal good and be brought down to earthly thought. Which, although it seem necessary and useful to the body, when it is expended on the dispensation of some religious necessity: yet in comparison with that good which delights the gaze of all the saints, it is judged evil by them and to be fled from, seeing that by it they are in any way, even for a little time, drawn back from the joy of that perfect blessedness. 2. The law of sin. It is universal. For truly it is the law of sin, which the transgression of its own author brought upon the human race, through the fault of him upon whom that sentence of the most just Judge was passed: 'Cursed is the earth in thy works;

thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread' (Gen. 3:17-19). This, I say, is the law inserted into the members of all mortals, which fights against the law of our mind, and shuts it out from the divine gaze: which cursed earth in our works, after the knowledge of good and evil, began to bring forth the thorns and thistles of thoughts; by whose prickles the seeds of the blunted flesh are choked, so that we cannot eat that bread of ours which came down from heaven, and which strengthens the heart of man, without the sweat of our face. All the human race, therefore, is generally subjected to this law without any exception.

For there is no one, however holy, who does not receive the aforesaid bread except with the sweat of his face and the anxious intention of his heart: whereas, as we see, many rich men feed upon this common bread without any sweat of their face. Which law also the blessed Apostle asserts to be spiritual, saying: 'For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin' (Rom. 7:14). For the law is spiritual, which commands us to eat that true bread which came down from heaven in the sweat of our face: but that sale under sin has made us carnal. 3. Adam sold liberty. Hence his descendants are born slaves. What, I ask, is this, or whose sin is it?

Without doubt to Adam, by whose transgression, and (so to speak) by whose ruinous bargain and fraudulent traffic, we were sold. For, seduced by the serpent's persuasion and drawn aside by the tasting of the forbidden food, he consigned all his offspring to the yoke of perpetual servitude. For this custom is wont to be observed between a seller and a buyer: that he who desires to make himself over to another's dominion receives from his buyer some price in exchange for the loss of his own liberty and the surrender of himself to perpetual servitude. And this we see most plainly fulfilled also between Adam and the serpent.

For he, taking from the serpent the price of his liberty in the eating of the forbidden tree, departed from his natural freedom; and he chose rather to sell himself into perpetual servitude to that one from whom he had obtained the deadly price of the forbidden fruit. Bound thereafter by this condition, not without reason did he subject all the progeny of his posterity to a perpetual bondage under that same one whose slave he had become. For what else can a servile union rightfully bring forth than slaves? 4. Yet the Lord did not by this forfeit His own right. But to free man against his will, and one both unjust and evil. What then? Did that crafty and cunning buyer wrest away from the true and lawful Lord His right of dominion? It is not so:

for that one did not so seize upon all the property of God by the deceit of any fraud that the true Ruler should lose the power of His dominion — He who keeps even that very buyer, however he flees or rebels, still restrained under the yoke of servitude. But because the Creator had granted to all rational creatures the freedom of the will, He was not bound to recall the liberty of devouring concupiscence against right. For whatever is contrary to goodness and equity is abhorrent to that Author of justice and piety. For it would have been an evil, had He revoked the benefit of the liberty He had granted; and unjust, had He, oppressing and taking captive a free man by His power, not suffered him to exercise the liberty he had received as his privilege;

whose salvation He then reserved for the ages to come, that in due order the fullness of the appointed time might be accomplished. For it was fitting that his offspring should endure so long under the ancestral condition, until, having freed that same offspring from its original bonds, He might, by the grace of its former Lord, restore it to the ancient state of liberty at the price of His own blood — which offspring, by the prompting of His piety, He could even then have saved; yet He would not, because equity did not permit Him to break the sanction of His own decree. 5. The iniquity of our sale is the cause, and the obstacle to redemption. Would you know the cause of your sale? Hear your Redeemer Himself proclaiming most openly through the prophet Isaiah: 'What is this bill of your mother's divorce, whereby I put her away?'

'or who is my creditor, to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your crimes I put away your mother.' Would you also plainly recognize why He was unwilling to redeem you, consigned to the yoke of servitude, by the might of His power? Hear what, following upon the earlier words in which He reproaches those same servants with the cause of their voluntary sale, He added: 'Is my hand shortened and become little, that I cannot redeem? or is there no strength in me to deliver?' (Isaiah 50:1-2). But what has ever stood in the way of this most mighty mercy of His, the same prophet shows: 'Behold,' he says, 'the hand of the Lord is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither is his ear grown heavy, that it cannot hear:'