'For from the Father I came into this world, and if you see a man, believe him to be the Son of God; but when the Paraclete shall come, whom I will send to you from my Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from my Father, he shall bear witness of me.' Both the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from him; concerning the unity therefore of the Godhead there is no ambiguity. And therefore David desired this salvation of God to be given to us, because it is itself eternal life, if we acknowledge both the Father as true God and the Son, who it is certain came for our salvation, but 'thought it not robbery to be equal to God.' He sets aside the assertion of his own divinity and presents the office of the human dispensation. And therefore he immediately added:
'For he himself is my God, my helper, my defender; I shall not be moved any more.' These things indeed he speaks as a man, because we ought to place our hope in God, lest we easily slip; although in that which he said, 'I shall not be moved any more,' he shows that he has the marks of divine power. For you have him saying elsewhere: 'Yet once more I will move the earth.' He moved it by the flood, when, except for Noah's ark, all flesh perished; he moved it when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by sacred fire. These are the signs of supernal indignation.
But because the Lord chose rather to save the race of men than to destroy it, he will not be moved any more unto indignation, he who came unto mercy, came that he might redeem us by his own blood, not that he might pour out ours, came that he might offer himself for us and, like a good merchant, might keep his merchandise by the passion of his own body. And when he said this, he lifted up his eyes and saw on this side persecutors, on that side spiritual wickednesses gathering together into one, and he said: 'How long do you rush upon a man, slaying all together?' — that is: 'Why do you hasten to destroy the human race? Do you not know that I have come for the redemption of all? I have offered myself for all, that I might protect all by my oblation.'
'A man,' therefore, we take either for all human multitude or, if we take it of one, we understand it said of him: 'You rush upon — but upon a man, because upon God you cannot rush,' as you have elsewhere: 'Why do you seek to kill me, a man?' For neither could the divinity be subject to death, but only the human assumption. 'If therefore you rush upon me and wish to hold me, why do you wish to kill those who are with me? It is enough for you to have him whom you seek. I do not seek a companion of the passion, I who for the salvation of all have no need of a helper. I do not require a deputy, I send no messenger ahead, but I myself, a messenger, have offered myself to those who sought me not, I have handed myself over to those who held me not, that I might free those who had been held in the snares of death.'
'You rush therefore upon me as upon a leaning wall and a battered fence, ignorant that I came not to make the wall lean and to thrust against the fence, but to dissolve it. For I came, the peace, that I might make both one, dissolving the middle wall of the fence which divided flesh and soul, so that they could not have one mind. And therefore the flesh fought against the soul and could not be subject to its command, because, through the obstacle of the wall set before it, it could not obey its government.' The law therefore of the flesh was opposed to the law of the mind. This wall of ancient enmities the Lord Jesus took away like a rampart, and made the meetings of mind and flesh passable, so that, coming together into one, they might follow that which was salutary to both.
The wall therefore is a certain prominence of transgressions, whence Paul says to the high priest of the Jews: 'God shall begin to strike thee, thou whited wall'; for a wall is built of mud and mortar. From this the Egyptians built cities, when the Jews were compelled to make bricks. In Egypt the mud was made up and the people of God wrought sin there; therefore it groaned, therefore it was heard and freed from sin: therefore the law was given, grace promised, that the law might cut back sin in part, that grace might forgive all. And when he conferred these things upon us, when he underwent these things for us, we rejected his price, whence he says:
'Nevertheless they purposed to reject my price,' when, Judas the betrayer returning the price, the Jews refused to put it into the treasury, saying: 'It is not lawful for us to put it into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.' Here the betrayer is condemned by his own judgment, who poured back the price which he had received — weak as a witness to the sacred office, but strong as a witness to his own crime; for everyone is the heavier accuser of himself and bears against himself an inexcusable sentence. The chiefs of the synagogue condemn themselves by their own judgment; for they profess that the price they gave is the price of blood, while they accuse him who pours it back. For if it ought not to have been received, neither ought it to have been paid. And would that they had either not given it, or, since they had given it, had not received it back!
For they repudiated what they refused to put into the treasury and bought from it a field for the burial of strangers. Rightly therefore the Gentiles, for whom the field of him who was bought by the death of Christ availed as a burial-place, are now no longer aliens and strangers, but are made fellow-citizens of the saints and of the household of God, because they are buried together with the Son of God; but the Jews, who repudiated the price of his passion, are exiled from Christ. The betrayer is more tolerable than they even in this, that he confesses his error, whereas they embitter their crime by excusing it; for confession after the offense is more modest. Shamelessly therefore they refuted him who confessed the common sacrilege, saying: 'What is that to us? See thou to it'; for what did the betrayer say but this:
'I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood'? What was the crime of the one who betrayed, how could it not be the sin of the one who received it, since crime was joined to crime, so that him whom they wickedly bought they might still more wickedly slay? 'I have run,' he says, 'in thirst.' It is indeed true that our Lord Jesus thirsted. Blessed is the Lord's thirst, because he thirsted for us and most of all in the passion; finally he said: 'I thirst.' And so he thirsted then, when from his own side he poured forth the streams of living water to quench the thirst of all. Finally it is written: 'Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly.' But in the Greek it is set in a middle form, because edaphos signifies both the singular and the plural number.
Therefore, because, according to the Greek, we can understand both 'I have run' and 'they have run' — and we have said what 'I have run' expresses, that is, 'I hastened to take up the thirst of all, that I might satisfy all with the abundance of the perpetual fountain; for to whomever I shall give water, he shall not thirst either here or in the future, as was said to the Samaritan woman' — now let us say what is signified by 'they have run in thirst,' that is, 'they hastened, so that, denying the living fountain by the heat of their faithlessness, they parched their own throats with eternal aridity,' as the Lord himself says: 'They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have made for themselves broken cisterns.' Nor is it any wonder if they thirsted who could not hold the water of the eternal fountain, slippery as they were through the chinks of their own faithlessness.
They thirsted therefore, because they deprived themselves of the spiritual drink which they had drawn from the rock that followed. Whence also Symmachus says: ode edoxe, that is, 'it pleased them in falsehood,' when they cast forth false things in place of true. Every falsehood has thirst, but truth has abundance which endures forever. And how quickly he proved that they had run in falsehood: 'with their mouth,' he says, 'they blessed and in their heart they cursed.' Wretched is the thirst of the faithless, who held one thing in their heart and spoke another with their mouth. But where the abundance of faith overflows, with the heart it is believed unto justice, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. But how they blessed with the mouth and cursed with the heart, the course of the passion shows, when they said: 'Let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him' — fools!
He rose from death and they did not believe: how, if he had come down from the cross, would they have believed? — 'He hoped in the Lord, let him deliver him; let him now free him, since he wills him,' because they were saying these things in mockery rather than in wishing, and were asking whether he was the Son of God, speaking peaceable things with their words while in their heart they were plotting the accusation of sacrilege. But these things are mystical; let us come to the moral.
For indeed, since Christ is assailed not once — he was assailed once in his own body which he took on in the Virgin, he is assailed frequently in that body which is the Church, for we are the body of Christ and its members, he is assailed also in his individual saints and innocent ones who have dedicated themselves to the Lord — let us recall someone recently assailed by all, abandoned and betrayed by his own; one who, lately set on the platform of command, suddenly destitute of all from those very men whose hereditary service he had obtained by lot, began to be pressed by those rushing in to his destruction, bringing death. With no helper, with no ally now of his own, with no companion. What better could he say than what he had received from the very one to whom he had devoted himself: 'Shall not my soul be subject to God?'
That is: 'Why do you persecute, why do you rage, why do you insult? You can kill the flesh, you cannot kill the soul. This life of the body you can snatch away, the merit you cannot extinguish'; for it is written: 'Fear not those who can kill the flesh but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.' The soul therefore which is subject to God is not subject to human power; for from him it hopes for the fruit of eternal life and the help of perpetual salvation. He therefore, to whom I have handed myself over, will both guard the slain and raise up the dead and avenge the murdered. 'The just man was snatched away, lest malice should change his heart.' This death therefore is rather a flight from sin than a loss to the one dying.
For he himself is my God, my helper, my defender; I shall not be moved any more. He who slips is shaken, because he falls away from a certain firm standing of his integrity and innocence. For once a man has been set upon the rock of Christ, he ought to have no slippery footing, but to keep the firmness of his own standing; whence he is called unmovable who keeps an unmovable will and pursues some resolve with the steadfast intent of a faithful mind. For we read also of God's unmovable will, as you have in the Letter to the Hebrews: 'wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his will, interposed an oath.' Rightly therefore is the will of God unmovable, which is moved by the enticements of no sin;
Men are movable, slippery towards transgression, prone to err. So it was said of the Jews: 'And they that passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads,' and the Lord himself says in the Psalm: 'All they that saw me laughed me to scorn; they spoke with their lips and wagged the head.' Christ is the head of all; it is therefore better that Christ abide in us than that he be moved by any agitation of ours. Whence the Jews, wagging their heads, said: 'Take such a one away from the earth'; the Gerasenes asked that he would depart from their borders; but the Church held him fast and did not let him go. Therefore she who held him possesses him, but they who moved him cannot hold him.
And the Evangelist says beautifully that 'they that passed by wagged their heads' — those that passed by, not those that stood. We stand in the holy courts; we pass by in the streets. The priest passed by, the Levite went on; but he who healed the inflicted wounds stood still. And therefore those who passed by did not say along the way: 'The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord'; for the feet of those who bless are feet that stand, not that pass by. So too those who pass by, not those who remain, plunder the vineyard whose hedge is broken down; those who pass by hiss, as we read in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: 'All that pass by the way have clapped their hands at thee; they have hissed and wagged their head at the daughter of Jerusalem.'
Therefore the priest could not be crowned, nor could the Levite, because they passed by and went away like a shadow; but Stephen was crowned with martyrdom, because he saw the Lord of the laws standing, unmovable, not passing by. Unmovable therefore in faith, Stephen saw the unmovable Christ, and was stirred by no fear of death; Stephen did not move himself, neither did Christ move. The sons of the traitor were shaken, of whom it is said: 'Let his children be continually moved out and beg'; for he who is moved has need of a physician. The sinner is poor, the righteous is rich, because he who ever seeks the Lord lacks no good thing. And because the discourse was drawn from this — because he said, 'I shall not be moved any more,' since to be moved is unto fault — David himself shows it, saying:
'who hath set my soul unto life, and hath not suffered my feet to be moved.' Whence also it is said to the saint by the Lord our God: 'But stand thou here with me'; since he who is near to God cannot be near to falling. For every fault is wont, as by the effort of an adversary, to cast the mind down from its place and to move it from its proper standing; which seems drawn either from a foe or from a wrestling match. Anger disturbs, lust inflames, envy goads, avarice torments, fear casts down, grief afflicts. And it was said to Peter by the Lord Jesus: 'Come after me.' He did not say, 'Come, go back' — for that he said to the devil alone — but: 'Come after me'; for he is not behind who is after Christ. But because Peter was erring, as the Lord himself said to him:
'because thou savourest not,' he says, 'the things that are of God, but the things that are of men, therefore come after me, that thou mayest begin to mind not human but divine things.' Therefore this righteous man also, about to be snatched from the earth, says: 'I shall not be moved any more'; for 'to be dissolved and to be with Christ is far better.' For he who has begun to be with Christ cannot slip, since for the righteous man death is not the end of nature, but of fault. Amid these words he suddenly sees the bands of his pursuers, and, set amid dangers, anxious not for himself but for those whom he desired to deliver, he says: 'How long will you rush upon one man, killing everyone? If you seek me, why do you wish to slay others? I offer myself for the many,' since for all only he could offer himself who is the author of all.
As imitator therefore of him whom he followed, he says: 'If you seek me, let these go their way,' that the word might be fulfilled which Jesus spoke: 'For I have lost none of them, save one' — for thus the saying of the Lord includes it in another book — who nevertheless perished rather by his own will than, as he says, was punished by my severity. 'And though I offer myself willingly, you rush in and press upon me as upon a leaning wall and a shattered fence' — that is: the once-noble summit of the August seat, and the once-mighty wall of empire encompassed by the whole Roman world, collapses like a leaning wall or a fence thrust down. But be it so: they sought me even unto death, they sought to slay me, saying:
'Let us take away the just man, let us take away the merciful man, for he is grievous unto us even to behold': but they also thought to wound my reputation, my chastity, with false slanders. For this is the meaning: 'They thought to reject my price,' since our price is purity, which separates us from beasts and joins us to angels; our price is mercy, which, when it is bestowed on the needy, redeems us from death; our price is faith, which gained for Christ all men oppressed by gentile error and servitude; our price is good repute, by which the series of each one's merits is weighed; our price is cleanness and simplicity, since it is written: 'A clean man is a precious possession';
for nothing is more precious than a simple man. Whence the Apostle says beautifully: 'He abounded,' he says, 'in the riches of his simplicity.' For what is richer than simplicity, which, like a good householder, has abundance enough for itself, and, content with its own purity, neither seeks another's nor gnaws at it, but pours forth from itself upon others? For the innocent man believes every word and does not often change himself into various arts, as cunning does, which, in order to be wary, fears everything and does not trust itself to its own counsels, but keeps turning over its own opinions; but simplicity knows not how to fear. By this kind, then, they tried to reject the price of the just man — though it may also be understood thus: that they received his gold in their hands, but rejected it in their inmost heart, holding the booty, denying faith. Whence he also says:
'I ran in thirst,' because he sought faith and could not find it, forsaken by his companions, abandoned by his own. So we read in the Gospel that the Lord of the laws both hungered and thirsted, when he hungered for our faith, thirsted for our works, and seemed to seek what was another's. Or, to refer it to bodily thirst, with what indignity he says: 'I ran in thirst!' — that is: 'I thirsted while others belched up my wines, and from that lofty eminence of sovereign power and royal opulence I was brought down to the utmost thirst by a kind of plebeian meanness.' And because the Greek has 'edramon,' which signifies both 'I ran' in the singular and 'they ran' in the plural, it may also be understood thus:
'They ran in thirst,' whose throats were parched with too great a heat for the shedding of my blood. For just as there is a thirst of faith, so also is there a thirst of faithlessness. The just man thirsts that thirst, who says: 'My soul thirsted for thee, O God'; but the faithless thirst that other thirst, whose tongue was parched with thirst — the thirst with which that man thirsted who, set amid the dishes and cups of a banquet, was contriving the murder of an innocent guest, an Augustus. Did it not seem to you, impious one, when you ate, that you were preparing slaughter — that human bones crackled beneath your teeth? When you drank wine and plotted parricide, that you were pouring into those cups the blood of the innocent for yourself? So utterly estranged were you, not only from imitation but even from the reading of divine things, that there did not come into your mind that little verse of the Psalms:
'But thou, a man of one mind, my guide and my familiar friend, who didst take sweet food together with me'; and that other, of whom the Lord Jesus himself makes mention in the Gospel: 'He that did eat bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.' What shall I do to thee, Ephraim? What shall I do to thee, Judah? You have left us many heirs of your treachery and fraud; for this may also be applied by apostrophe to Judas the traitor. You betrayed the life, the kingdom, to the Lord. But the Lord Jesus is betrayed once in himself, and frequently in his little servants; for 'what you have done to one of the least of these,' he says, 'you have done to me.' You took up the purses entrusted to you and the money of the poor; that man took up the provinces committed to him;
you took the honour of an apostle, he the dignity of military command and the insignia of office. I count up his honours in order to magnify the crime. You both violated the fellowship of the banquet; yet you rose from the banquet to betrayal, he to murder; that is: you, though in guilt, were the more modest, who denied it because you believed you were bringing death upon the Lord whom you betrayed — you who gave back the price, lest the wages of parricide should seem to remain with you; but he not only retained what he had received, but even extorted the unoffered wages of betrayal; he was not only deceived by another's lie, but deceived by his own, and deceived in order to kill.
And while that man refused the banquet, seeing that he was to be slain, this one offered the sacrament, lest any part of the crime he was heaping up should be lost to him. Lastly, the money of the former traitor went to the burial of strangers; this one denied to his own prince an intact burial. Nor was one lacking who washed his hands, saying: 'I am innocent of the blood of this just man'; wherein Pilate did not cleanse himself, but defiled and entangled himself — he did not put it off. For although there is no weight in the judgements of the lost, yet there is a greater bond in their confessions. For it is not another's sentence that absolves the just, but their own life; the unjust bind themselves more strongly by their own words, who cannot bind others. Yet, lest a confession of his own should seem to be lacking even to this man;
he swore, so as to commit perjury; he washed his hands while he touched the Gospel, lest anything should be lacking to the example; he washed his hands with water, so as the more wickedly to defile them with the blood of the innocent. Nor was Herod lacking, to whom the second Pilate believed he would be pleasing, if he handed over the captured prince. What of this too shall I say — that this man also was clothed in a whitened garment to be mocked, and afterwards was decked in royal raiment to die, lest he should seem to have lost the honour due him? For although he perished by crime, yet even dead he kept the right of the power conferred upon him, by the very ones by whom it was denied him, whether by their service or by their consent.
To so great a crime there would have been added a funereal pomp, had not he who was lamenting these things impatiently, when he learned what was being prepared for the just man, moved by grief, rebuked the proud victor: that such things are wont to be inflicted upon tyrants, not upon kings. Thus, roused by horror at the outrage, he laid aside the apparatus of that most foul crime. So a seeker of burial was not lacking, even though that Joseph who was called just was lacking. But Maximus, far more savage, denied what Pilate himself could not take away. In him a parricide's humanity was lacking; yet to the innocent man grace was not lacking, and by patience assumed for a time, vengeance was a little while deferred. And therefore he says: 'Yet my soul is subject to God, for from him is my patience.'
'For he is my God and my salvation, my upholder; I shall not be moved away.' That is: 'Has the burial denied to my body taken from me the dwelling of eternal rest? I have my habitation in the Lord's tabernacle, and I shall rest in his holy mountain. I shall not be moved away by human crime, because I am upheld by the Lord's favour, for neither death nor sword nor tribulation shall be able to separate me from the love of Christ.' For it is not the innocent who is moved out from the dwellings of the just, but the sinner. The heirs of Judas the traitor are moved out, of whom and of their like it is rightly said: 'Let his children be moved out and beg; let them be cast out of their habitations.' Which is also well referred to the Lord Jesus Christ, who, when he had descended into the earth,
was crucified and buried, yet did not move away from the Father, but abode in the Father: 'I was delivered up, and I did not go forth.' Nor did he lay aside what he was, but kept it; nor did he cease to be in the form of God, but persevered; and the glory of God was not diminished by the assumption of a body, but, while it remained, he gained a triumph and did not lose his power. Whence he himself says: 'Henceforth you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power.' Whence he exhorts the peoples of the nations, called together and gained for his Father by his own blood, unto faith, saying: 'Hope in him, all the assembly of my people' — that is, not Israel alone, but 'all,' he says, nor the remnant only, but also the fullness of the nations, nor the nations only, but Israel;
for 'when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then all Israel shall be saved.' Who can comprehend the divine mysteries? Of which so great is the multitude that Paul rightly marvels and deservedly says: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' The Gentiles were rejected, that Israel might be chosen; afterwards Israel was blinded because of the calling of the Gentiles, and the remnant of blinded Israel, according to the election of grace, were made saved, after the fullness of the Gentiles entered in. Thus the fault of Israel profited the Gentiles, and the faith of the Gentiles delivered the people of Israel. 'Pour out,' he says, 'your hearts before him.' He who puts on faith ought first to put off faithlessness, to empty his heart of every stain of malice, that his heart may become capable of spiritual grace.
And therefore the Apostle says: 'Be renewed in the spirit of your mind'; for when the old malice is poured out, new grace is taken up, by which each one is renewed. The Son of God therefore says: 'Pour out your hearts before him,' because he knew the Father was about to say: 'I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.' There is also that tradition, that we are seen to pour out our heart when we lay open all the thoughts and wishes of our heart to someone. Therefore let us cast our thoughts upon God, and let us believe that nothing is hidden from him. We pour out our heart before him when we empty out human disputings. 'Yet vain are the sons of men, lying are the sons of men in the balances, that they may deceive.'
If the sons of men are vain and the sons of men are lying, can the sons of God not be vain, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God? For the sons of men seem to themselves to weigh equity and to examine justice by the gravity of a more severe judgement, hard to others, lenient to themselves, unjust in their works, censorious in speech. Whence Solomon says: 'A double weight and a deceitful, dishonest balance are abominable to the Lord.' Whereby he signifies those who plot robbery with an insatiable heart and put forward sobriety on their brow.
Such are the scribes of the Jews, who lay heavy burdens of a harsher observance upon others, not having the right yoke of their own soul, but bowed down by inclined iniquity, while they themselves are deserters of their own precepts. And so it is found that in avarice, as in the root of all vices, lies the head and tinder of iniquity, which a man who renounces the world and is buried together with Christ through the sacrament of baptism, who has died to the age, ought to shun and flee. 'Do not,' he says, 'hope in iniquity, and do not covet rapine; if riches flow in, set not your heart upon them.' You see that they flow in abundance; do you not see that they flow past? Naked you were born, naked you will die. Why do you seek to take out what you cannot carry away with you?
What you admire are flowing waters; as they come, so they pass and recede. The Jordan alone was turned backward, into which you descended; it admonishes you to return to that very fountain and origin of nature, which brought you forth naked, not clothed with a garment, that you might learn not to seek superfluous things. That you blush to be naked, fault taught you, not nature; for there would be no shame of the genitals if there were no fault. Nor are the other animals clothed in order to be covered, nor clothed in order to be protected; all are sufficiently protected by the covering of their own nature. But we, while we seek superfluous things, have lost the covering of nature and forfeited the common right.