Then he admonishes that, when you ask pardon for yourself, you should know that it must then most of all be bestowed on others, so that you may commend your prayer by the voice of your own deed. The Apostle also teaches that we must pray without anger and disputing, so that your prayer be not disturbed nor interrupted. He teaches also that we must pray in every place, since the Saviour says: Enter into your chamber. But understand it to be, not a chamber enclosed by walls, in which your limbs are shut up, but the chamber which is within you, in which your thoughts are enclosed, in which your senses dwell. This chamber of your prayer is everywhere with you, and everywhere it is secret, of which no one is judge except God alone.
Furthermore you are taught that we must pray especially also for the people, that is, for the whole body, for all the members of your mother, in which is the token of mutual charity. For if you pray for yourself, you will be praying only for yourself; and if each one prays only for himself, the grace of the one praying is less than that of the one who intercedes; but now, because individuals pray for all, all also pray for individuals. Therefore, to conclude: if you pray only for yourself, you alone, as we have said, will be praying for yourself; but if you pray for all, all will be praying for you, since you too are among all. Thus great is the recompense, that by the prayers of individuals the suffrages of the whole people are gained for individuals. In this there is no arrogance, but rather greater humility and richer fruit.
But now it is time to pass to another matter, since concerning that offering which Cain brought after some days we have spoken fully, that it was a token of arrogant pride, since the very offering of a vow ought to be timely, lest we seem to have hoped for remedy more from human arts, that is, from skill in healing and the juices of herbs, than to have sought aid from God. For to him we must first flee for refuge, who is able to heal the passions of our soul. But men, in a preposterous order, first summon help to themselves from men, and when human aids have failed, then they suppose that the grace of divine favour is to be entreated. Therefore, with Cain shut out and his fault convicted, let us examine another defect of his offering. He offered of the fruits of the earth—not the firstfruits of his first fruits to God:
That is, he claimed the firstfruits first for himself, but offered to God what came after. And so, since the soul, like a mistress, is to be preferred to the body as to a servant, we ought assuredly to offer its firstfruits, that is, those of the soul before those of the body. The firstfruits of the soul are the first movements of good disciplines. Although these are later in time than the firstfruits of the body—which are food, growth, sight, hearing and touch, smell, voice (but mind and sense are partly of the soul, partly of the body)—yet they are prior in dignity to the disciplines. The first of these is thanksgiving offered to God with a pure heart and simple speech. These gifts Abel offered, and therefore God had regard to his gifts, because he offered of the firstfruits.
It is added, therefore, that it was of the firstlings of his sheep and of their fat. Consider that he offered not of insensible things, but of living creatures. For the animate is greater than the earthly, since the animate is next to the spiritual. For that which is spiritual is not first, but that which is animate, then that which is spiritual. That which is animate breathes, it has a vital spirit; not so that which is of the fruits of the earth. Then he offered not the second, but the first; not the meagre, but the fat. Such as the Law approved and commanded to be offered, as it is written: And it shall be, it says, when God brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to your fathers, and gives it to you, that you shall set apart everything that opens the womb, the males, to the Lord.
Everything that opens the womb of your herds and of your flocks, whatever males are born to you, you shall sanctify to the Lord. Everything that opens the womb of an ass you shall exchange for a sheep; but if you will not exchange it, you shall redeem it. What is so profound a mystery, so high and hidden a wisdom, as that which in certain veins of simple words you may apprehend and draw out the abundance of spiritual grace? For the Canaanites are restless and unquiet. When therefore you have entered into their land, those whom you perceive cast out of their possession because of the fickleness and unrest and instability of their manners, do you hold fast to constancy. Let no base reasoning, no fickle speech disturb you—for this is the Canaanite.
Shifting speech, unstable affection, and restless contention—but rather, being tranquil, preserve quietness of heart and serenity of mind, so that, as it were amid the swell of the sea, you may offer a safe haven for ships in a certain harbour of your mind. This possession the Lord promises you, and he pledges it with a certain bond of an oath, that he may confirm your constancy. For God does not swear because he needs the faith of one believing, or because, destitute of the corroboration of testimonies, he requires the support of an oath, as men do, who win faith for ourselves by an oath and therefore swear that we may be believed to have spoken the truth. But God, even when he speaks, is faithful, whose word is itself an oath;
for God is not faithful because of the oath, but the oath itself is faithful because of God. By what reason, then, does Moses represent God as swearing? Because we are shut in by a certain custom of mortals, and like sea-urchins we wrap ourselves in a certain shell of common opinion, or like snails, which cannot breathe unless they are within the covering of their shell, nor enjoy the free air nor endure it—so we dwell in earthly things only within certain hiding-places of human custom. Hence, because we are accustomed to believe more truly that which is confirmed by an oath, lest our faith should waver, God is written to swear, who himself does not swear, but is the judge of those who swear and the avenger of perjurers. Finally it is written: The Lord has sworn, and will not repent:
You are a priest for ever. He kept indeed what he swore: he gave us an eternal prince of priests, that you too might know that what you have sworn must so be kept, that, because you swear by him who does not lie, you may know that there will be an avenger if you lie. Therefore, when the restless and shifting thoughts have been expelled, God will give you an empty possession of heart and mind, that you may cultivate it with a certain tillage of tranquillity and gather fruit from it, and not suffer the Canaanites—that is, the turbulent senses—to return into it; that you may root out every hedge of the vices of the nations, and tear down their groves, by which the truth is overshadowed and a certain free heavenly sight of knowledge is hidden by the horror of darksome wrangling.
But this you cannot accomplish unless endowed with a divine gift. And therefore he says: God will give you, that is, the best thoughts, peaceful counsels, tranquil discoveries. When he has given these, you shall set apart everything that opens the womb, the male, and shall sanctify it to the Lord. God does not demand the whole from you, who gave the whole. For he bestows many things for the use of human substance, and this cannot be a divine sacrifice, where there is the use of nature. To eat, to drink, to sleep, and the other services of the body, are gifts conferred on you, not gifts rendered by you to God.
But whatever holy thing you have thought, this is God's gift, God's inspiration, God's grace; just as, on the contrary, those things which are in the use of human nature do not defile a man, but what comes out of the mouth—thefts, false testimonies, sacrileges—these are the things that defile a man. Therefore let us cleanse our inward parts, that the offering may not be displeasing. There let us seek everything that opens the womb, the male, that is, the just and the principal, which we ought to sanctify to the Lord. For it is not these bodily unions and conceptions and births that sanctify us, by which the womb of the woman is opened with the bloom of virginity's modesty deflowered.
For although a woman may sanctify a man and a man a woman, yet it often happens that a virgin's womb is opened even without the sanctity of marriage. Nor again is grace the man's alone, the woman being a stranger to sanctification; nor is the nature of either sex so confounded that both are poured forth in bearing offspring. Men have their own functions, women have the distinct duties of their sex. This generation of human succession befits the woman, and is impossible for the man. Therefore, if this sense does not fit the use of the flesh, let us examine the duties of the soul. This indeed I find to be distinguished by no sex; and since it has no sex, it represents the offices of both sexes—it marries, conceives, gives birth.
And just as nature gave to females a womb, in which the generation of each living creature is formed through monthly seasons, so there is a certain power of the soul, which, as it were by a secret of a generative womb, is wont to receive the seeds of our thoughts, to cherish the conceptions, and to bring forth offspring. For otherwise Isaiah would not have said: In the womb we have received and brought forth the spirit of salvation, had he not known of the womb of the soul. Of these generations, some are feminine: malice, wantonness, luxury, intemperance, unchastity, and other vices of this kind, by which a certain manly vigour of our soul is enfeebled.
Masculine are chastity, patience, prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, by which our mind and the flesh itself is strengthened and roused to undertake briskly the duties of virtue. These offspring that prophetic womb brought forth. And therefore he says: In the womb we have received and brought forth the spirit of salvation. He therefore both conceived and brought forth a male, who poured out the spirit of salvation. Let our soul bring forth these offspring, and not only bring them forth, but also give birth, and give birth in fulfilled days, lest the day of judgement overtake the offspring untimely. For of these offspring the Lord Jesus said: Woe to them that are with child and that give suck in those days.
Let this birth, therefore, be brought to completion the more maturely, and let our thoughts be unfolded by the progress of good works, so that our end may find nothing imperfect, the term of our life may meet with nothing unfinished, the use of our work may leave nothing behind as though set upon the anvil. Hasten then, O soul, to form your offspring, to bring them forth more speedily, to nourish more quickly those you have begotten. What sort of form the offspring should have, the Apostle shows, saying: My little children, of whom I travail again, until Christ be formed in you. Into this form let all the inward parts of our mind grow together, and in that generative womb of our soul let Christ shine forth. Let our offspring be faith, let our nourishment be the precepts of doctrine.
By these let a certain infancy of our heart be nurtured, let its boyhood be trained, let its youth grow into adolescence, let its old age grow grey; for the age of old age is an unspotted life. And so that at last is the good old age of the soul which no stains of faithlessness have defiled. And therefore Paul defends his offspring from this stain—I have begotten you, he says, in the Gospel—lest the savage whispering of anyone should tempt the infancy of their untried faith. He therefore begot males, who longed that the peoples whom he taught should run together into a perfect man in the unity of faith, and in the knowledge of the Son of God hold the perfect measure of the fulness of Christ. For he knew this to be a sacrifice acceptable to God, of which it is written: Everything that opens the womb, the male, to the Lord. And because he added:
Everything that opens the womb of your herds and of your flocks which are yours, the male, to the Lord—let us consider this, lest it should have any obscurity. He had spoken of the principal generations, that is, those full and capable of reason; he added also concerning the generations of the flock, that is, the remaining senses, as it were plebeian, which are compared to irrational beasts of burden. Yet these, when they are governed by some ruler, are easily tamed, and are wont to carry out commands, to bear the yoke, and at the master's voice either to quicken their pace, or to stop, or to turn aside, or to perform some duties of their work that are bidden, with a certain human-like service. So great is the power of training, that it overcomes nature.
And so those creatures which have no share in our substance nevertheless recognize the command of our voice, and although they have no faculty of their own nature's reason, they take on the reason of our nature and in a manner acquire it as transfused into them. We see horses spurred on by popular zeal, rejoicing in applause, delighting in the master's caresses. We behold fierce lions changing their natural ferocity by commanded gentleness, laying aside their rage, taking on our manners; and though they are themselves terrible, they learn to fear. A dog is beaten, that the lion may be made afraid; and he who is provoked by his own injury is restrained by another's, and is broken by the example of another.
How often, when prey is ready and food is at hand, do they choose to endure hunger, so long as they dread the master's displeasure! How often, driven by a sudden impulse, do they, when bidden, unclasp jaws already opened for the bite! Thus, while they obey our will, they forget their own. Not so those wild beasts, or those herds of horses, or every kind of cattle, which wander without any ruler and, being left destitute of all the governance of a tamer, grow savage. And therefore herdsmen, shepherds, and other keepers of flocks—certain masters of the herds—have been appointed, each shaping his own duties according to the condition of the living creatures entrusted to him.
There appears therefore also a certain kind of our senses, one tamed and gentle, another untamed, which by a certain herdsman-like motion of the mind, as it were sluggish and dissolute, rushes forth to the irrational delights of the body; but the tamed kind, which submits and subjects itself, as to some leader, to the moderation of the mind. Whatever therefore is governed by that nature, these are masculine and perfect; but whatever, without any leader, lords it with a certain plebeian presumption—as of some city which has been deprived of the counsel of its king and nobles—so they effeminate the whole condition and manly vigour of their body by a certain womanish dissoluteness. Of these is that law of the flesh, which, warring against the law of the apostolic mind, led it captive under a certain law of sin.
And therefore, that he might be delivered from that body of death, Paul placed all his hope, not in his own strength, but in the grace of Christ. Whence it is clear that those movements which are according to the law of the mind proceed from the divine favour, but the other senses from the will of the body. Those, therefore, which are holy are the firstfruits of our senses; those others are as it were of a certain flock and of plebeian baseness—which Moses seems variously to have signified to the Jews by names. For this also that mystical threshing-floor of the Law declares, of which he says: The first of your threshing-floor and of your wine-press you shall not make the last; the firstfruits of your sons you shall give to me. The holy movements of our senses, which are according to virtue, are themselves the firstfruits of the spiritual threshing-floor;
and therefore they are also compared to a rural threshing-floor, in which grain is winnowed. For just as in this rural threshing-floor the wheat and barley are threshed out, and, when winnowed again and again, are separated from the chaff—because the chaff and the other refuse of the harvest are scattered apart by the breath of a light breeze, while those parts which are more solid sink back into the same place when the dust is shaken off—so of our thoughts, those which are solid and excellent furnish the pure and sincere nourishment of virtue, as it is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God; but those which are useless and empty are dispersed like smoke and mist, because as smoke is to the eyes, so is iniquity to those who practise it.
And rightly is iniquity compared to smoke, which, as it were with a certain worldly mist, dims the keenness of the mind. And therefore the Lord says: When you enter into the land into which I bring you, and when you begin to eat of the bread of that land, you shall offer a separate oblation to the Lord, the firstfruits of your kneading, a loaf: as an oblation from the threshing-floor, so shall you take away the firstfruits of your mixtures and give them to the Lord. We are a mixture, composed of a certain commingling of diverse elements, since the cold is mingled in us with the hot, and the moist with the dry. This kneading has many enticements of the flesh, very many delights, but these are not the firstfruits of this body's senses.
And because we consist of soul and body and spirit, this is the principal mixture, in which the Apostle desires us to be sanctified, as he says: But may the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. The firstfruits of this mixture are spiritual, that is, the discoveries and generations of the senses which proceed from the vigour of the soul. But not all senses are firstfruits, except those which are free from malice and wickedness and all error. There are also necessary delights of the body, such as those of sleeping, eating, drinking, walking, and other senses of this kind, but in these are not the firstfruits.
And therefore the Lord's mystery is not in these, but in those others, where there is chastity, where piety, where faith and devotion. A manifest and evident example of this is the offering of the patriarch Isaac, whom his father offered after the manner of a sacrifice, bent by no movement of human passion, presenting to God a clean victim, empty of dread and immune from bodily desire, since the very piety of the father yielded to the devotion of the one offering. Now let us consider what is the force of firstfruits, and whether firstfruits are estimated by time or by holiness, that is, whether all firstborn have the sanctification of firstfruits. For the firstfruits of the crops are holy according to the Law, because in them is the sacrifice of an eager faith at its best; but they become holy by devotion, not by time.
It is not the produce that sanctifies, but the devotion. Finally, where the produce is early, if the devotion delays, offence is incurred. Therefore not all firstborn are holy, but all that are holy are also firstborn. Finally, Cain was firstborn, but not holy. Israel too is the holy people of God, but not first in age; and yet he is called firstborn, as it is written in the prophets: Israel is my firstborn. And Levi was holy, but not firstborn: for he is read of as the third son of Leah. And yet the Levites are named firstborn, from whom the name was derived to them. For it is written in Numbers: Behold, I have taken the Levites from the midst of the children of Israel instead of every firstborn that opens the womb among the children of Israel, and the Levites shall be mine;
for every firstborn is mine. In the day that I struck every firstborn of Egypt, I sanctified to myself every firstborn of Israel. The Levites, therefore, are named firstborn, who by sanctification were assuredly set before the other sons of Israel. By what reason they are firstborn, hear the Apostle saying: But you have drawn near to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the ten thousands of rejoicing angels, and to the church of the firstborn who are written in heaven. He made four orders: of Mount Zion, of the city of Jerusalem, of the assembly of angels, of the churches of the firstborn.
The Lord God therefore took the Levites from the midst of the people of Israel, because he did not will them to be sharers of human cares, but ministers of the divine religion; and he made them firstborn to himself, who open the spiritual womb, and therefore they were not from the womb of nature, like the sinners of diverse crimes, but are chosen, set apart from worldly things. Whence they have no fellowship with plebeian possession, nor are they reckoned in the midst of the people, because they possess the word of God in the midst of themselves, as it is written in the Gospel: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them; and elsewhere: There stands one in the midst of you whom you know not. Hence, therefore, we recognize that above all things faith ought to commend us to God.
When we have faith, let us labour that our works may be perfect, since this is the full and perfect sacrifice, as the Lord himself teaches, saying concerning his gifts and offerings: You shall observe to offer to me on my feast days, withdrawing nothing nor dividing, but offering things full and entire and perfect. But the feast day of the Lord is where there is the grace of perfect virtues. These are then perfect, if the mind, victor over worldly anxieties and bodily enticement, shuts out the allurements of pleasure—free from the world, given over to God, taking nothing from the path of its straight intention, nor dividing the seasons of its affection now to luxury, now to toil. The wise man alone, therefore, celebrates this solemnity, and no other;
for it is difficult to find a soul immune from passions of this kind. Divide therefore according to reason the principal and the obedient parts of the soul, and then you will discern what is masculine and what is feminine; for no virtue is without labour, because labour is the advance of virtue. This also the words of the Law itself signify, which says: Everything that opens the womb of an ass you shall exchange for a sheep; for the Law separated unclean animals from sacrifice, and commanded clean ones to be offered in their stead. The offspring of the ass, therefore, that is, the unclean, it bids to be exchanged for a sheep, which is clean and fit for sacrifice. This is according to the letter. But if anyone pursues the meaning of the spiritual law more deeply, he will consider that the ass is a laborious animal, the sheep a fruitful one.
He says, therefore, that labour is to be exchanged for fruit, so that the end of one's work may be fruit. Or certainly in this way: all your labour, all your industry you shall commend with a pure and simple affection. But if you will not exchange it, he says, you shall redeem it. It is commanded therefore, according to the letter, that another animal be offered for the unclean animal, or a price, lest among the tithes of the crops anything either lesser or unclean should seem to be offered. But the deeper understanding teaches that your soul is to be set free, that it may desist from those things which have no fruit; for he who redeems sets himself free and strips off a certain debt. Those works are to be abandoned which can have no true fruit and good progress, such as these worldly things are, whose use cannot be lasting.
In these very things a man is made naked and empty of truth, and although it has been sought with the utmost labour, it nothing profits the soul. For those things which bring servitude to the soul are all useless, even if the result be not lacking. Great seems the victory of those who fight, the glory of those who triumph; but frequently we see those very men who have conquered again subjected to the uncertainties of wars, and transferred to the enemy by the outcome of battle, and by that very thing in which they were before victors made more wretched. There is need, therefore, that you direct your works to God, and that his favour may breathe upon you.
The athlete himself, who contends by his own and not by another's strength, as often as he engages, believes that he undergoes doubtful chances; and when he has reached the crown, he understands that this glory of the world withers all too quickly like the leaves of the crown itself. The helmsman, when he has drawn the ship into harbour, scarcely thinks an end set to his toil, and at once seeks the beginning of toil. The soul is released from the body, and after the end of this life is still held in suspense by the uncertainty of the judgement to come. Thus there is no end where an end is supposed.
Wherefore let us cleave to our God with vows and a pure conscience and a spirit of charity, and let us win for ourselves the divine favour, praying that we may be loosed from worldly cares as from harsh and rustic masters, and stripped of them, and may go out from worldly servitude, being called into the liberty of the heavenly knowledge, which is the true and only liberty. And that we may establish the precept of the Law by an example: when the Egyptians oppressed the people of the Jews in various works and in clay and stone, the children of Israel groaned, and provoked the Lord's mercy upon themselves. And he said to Moses: I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, how the Egyptians oppress them into servitude, and I have remembered my covenant. Go and say to the children of Israel:
I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the power of the Egyptians, and will rescue you from their servitude, and will deliver you with a high arm and great judgement; and I will take you to myself for a people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who will bring you out from the power of the Egyptians, and will bring you into the land over which I have stretched out my hand. Behold how the people of the Hebrews exchanged labour for fruit, so that he who toiled in clay might work for the hope of the eternal kingdom. Therefore the Lord too in the Gospel, having pity on the vain labour of the Gentile peoples, who built bricks for a miry superstition and, given over to bodily pleasure, could not build the solid wall of faith—speaking as it were to certain offspring of an ass, said:
'Come to me, all you who labor, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.' By this calling I seem to myself to recognize more fully the words of the Law and its mysteries, since it taught that an ass must either be exchanged for a sheep or redeemed with money, so that we may not only exchange the offspring of the ass for a sheep — that is, the unclean for the clean — but may also redeem it. And this seems to be expressed: that if we first wash away the defilements of our sins by the sacrifice of purification and the mystery of baptism, we may also redeem our offenses by good works and by the price of faith and by mercy. Our price is the blood of Christ. Whence the apostle Peter too says:
'You were not redeemed with gold or silver, but with precious blood.' And Paul says: 'You were bought with a price; do not become the slaves of men.' Hence it is not without reason that in the Gospel men marvel that the Lord Jesus sat upon the foal of an ass, because the Gentile people, which under the Law was reckoned unclean, began to be the victim of Christ. Hence too it is written of the Levites that they are 'the redemptions' of the rest, in that by the holiness of their life and by prayer they would lift away the sins of the people. In them the figure of the lamb went before in the mysteries, prefiguring the true Levite who was to come, who by the passion of his own body would take away the sin of the world. 'Levite' signifies 'taken up on my behalf,' or 'he himself is light to me.' He himself possesses the mark of perfect virtue, of health to be imparted to the people.