there that Pontic Aquila was then a teacher, a man bearing many instruments of praise, to whose friendly hospitality Paul betook himself, deigning to approach the home as a companion through love of the craft; for both were tent-makers, mighty in the pursuits of the work and in the doctrine of the law. Christ says: 'Now teach, Paul; no one stands in your way, with Me accompanying you; what a crowd I have within these walls, you see; press on speaking; I strengthen hearts.' These things warn that no one can ever complain of slow gifts, since the mercy of Christ gives them freely. Lest the dwelling lie hidden under an ambiguous figure, by what reasoning it shall be given I will sing; the sacred Scriptures sang that arguments are often drawn from a name, and that the greatest proofs are begotten:
It profits therefore to seek more deeply who this guest is, dear to Paul, joined and made a companion in the craft, under whose image the cause was so named, and with what excellence he is adorned, pleasing in this part also: the eagle's faithful nature of its own accord bears what its form holds; for the bird, weak with age and with sight now dimmed by old age, lies beneath the flame-vomiting sun, and in its fire warms its heavy wings, and opens its nocturnal eyes, and thrusts its ailing eyes against the burning rays, about to return to the old day; thus the languid bird takes the gifts of heat, from whose kindling it receives strength, and repairs the losses of the former age.
And lest those things alone be its lot which the fervid heat strikes upon it, to be cleansed by the ford of waters, three times it is plunged in the waves, and lays aside old age in the waters, and raises from the fountain the youthful image of its beauty. What act of religion could be plainer? When we are touched by the light of the true Sun, we dissolve the contagions of the ancient age, our faith being kindled: soon reborn of the water as mother, we are beheld fresh in newness: infancy again becomes recurrent for the old man; for those who flow from a twofold origin, here a better birth is present, well conscious of this bird's example, whom the Spirit moved to ply his rich hand upon the lyre: 'You shall be renewed,' he said, 'after the manner of the eagle.' By which law it is granted to the approved to feel that they please by the praise of the type, which the songs of the just confirm.
Nor is Paul's craft idle, celebrated under that same companion, by the virtue of a hidden good, for he used to fashion strong tents with movable coverings upon a heap. The pilgrim traveler, going farther, everywhere sets these up, and wards off the winters and suns with these skins. We too, driven from our first seat through fault, are cast into the exile of the world; a way is at last given back by which we may seek again our fatherland's journey; our defenses are in your camp, Paul, lest the worldly tempest bring the rains of crime, and the fiery tempter drive the vapors of wickedness; under such a covering safe salvation receives no stroke of peril, nor, laid low, does it succumb to the powers of the fierce enemy. The leaders send mystic signs ahead with the praises of the craft. Peter, driving the fish, captures men;
the guest of the sea persists in the sacred waters; Paul, while he raises earthly dwellings, teaches how to found heavenly ones, and what was often made by hand he now builds by word as halls. Following on farther, having traversed the borders, Paul, coming to Ephesus, teaches the fields, and there, seeing certain men standing by, the inquirer asks: 'Has the kindly Spirit come to these?'—men who say they had long ago been wetted at the fount of John; for being without this name they had been drawn thus far, whom he washes in the sacred stream, and soon the Holy Spirit filled their mouths, and gave the shower of words with the accustomed powers.
Often the profane move their arms from this quarter, and prepare to wage war, against whom that I may pour forth opposing weapons by speaking, do you now, kindly Spirit, water my mouth more abundantly, that the doctrines I speak may be worthy of you, which you shall have given! You are the way of the voice, you the path of life, you the One who is to speak—come! who through your gifts always work in us what we may render, and again take back the gift's use. As forerunner in the world by the name of the one to come, John displayed his own baptism, and himself prepared the way for the Lord, recalling to all the baptism to come, after which another is rightly given, which the threefold Power is wont to illumine;
but because Christ rather chose to touch these waters of His, He makes a pattern for all to run to Himself, lest mortal kind any further forsake the sacred wave of the pious fount, than which the Lord too had deigned to be cleansed in the stream with clean body, while God immersed Him through His servant: now, the river being touched, this work passed to the disciples, whom songs proclaim to have baptized many; it was right that the servant's washing should cease when God came, the forerunner from whom He had spoken these things before; at the time when Jesus made full baptism to be performed, as John before—why should he give the accustomed and proper one?
What rule compelled Paul that they ought to be reborn at Christ's fount, whom John, intimating with his finger not as one to come but as already come, disclosed to be the heavenly Lamb, singing that He takes away sins from the whole world? Why do you desire to feign a twofold baptism, O profane one? Things that differ are not repeated; repetition holds the very thing, not another, and it would be twofold that which first began to be, and itself returns; for since the origin of the beginning and the following end are in discord, both that single things are said and that it is clear they exist once, and they are burdened by no error, things which, brought together at once, can be proven distinct.
Yet when anyone full of heretical blackness is polluted in the lake of Avernus, if he wishes to have the light of the Church from the pious fount, our faith does not compel this man to go again to the water, because under the threefold name they draw perverse doctrines; nor is it wont to explore who, but what they could give—the truth which placed hands instituted him to confess; and error alone is repelled, drawing into divers ways, which the Spirit makes one. These too the Scripture records to have been twice six. O sacred and happy measure of number! When in the poured-out throng they earned to be born from the seed of losses, the broad glory of the apostolic law was given to so many vessels. Now Paul, mighty in speech, had converted the city of Ephesus, and the glory shone with heavenly signs.
And when bodies, wounded by countless diseases, tottered, nor did the physicians' medicine, wrought by the hand of craftsmen, restore the wretched sick; the absent sought sacred coverings for themselves, to whom the burning one was present, that that vapor of fever might fall, and another flame give an end to the heat; in short, Paul's aprons and handkerchiefs offered openly, spread over the limbs, pressed down the hearths of languors, and the plagues, laid back from the members, flowed away to nothing: the touch was a vigor curing all things, and no houses ceased from the gift which they bear from the healing garment.
Under that same power the threatening throng of spirits too, like an idle part of smoke through the void, flees, lest the fair fabric of the Creator—which, formed from soil after the likeness of the heavenly image, draws and bears the Maker's appearance as a pledge—be polluted by its guest, and the robber's stench infect the temple of beauty; at which time seven men of the Jewish stock attempt new battles. Thus addressing him first: 'Whom Paul preaches by the name Jesus, Him we likewise set before you; quit the place you have invaded.' The voice given back in answer: 'Who Christ is,' it says, 'who Paul is, I perceive, for you I am allowed to shun as unknown; know your madness, hostile race!'
The demon confesses Him to reign whom you deny to have come, and by this very thing you are convicted, by whose goading you rush headlong—Him to whom it is not granted to please with the mouth what he moves by terror; the cause of God forbids speaking contrary things, which the law accompanies with love. This is the true faith. What spectacles were then given to the people, and what triumphal crown, with the Lord conquering, it befell to be won thence! When with raving murmur the demon's gnashing wrath, well harmful to its own, tears the garments, cuts the faces, and the perils of the vanquished flee, and they turn their bared backs in headlong dread. Why, fierce Judaea, will you now no longer fear from disaster? You who thus perish with the enemy as ally, for whom there is the same author of crime and punisher, lest he be cast out by you as judge, in him who is at once a sinner and guilty.
Soon rumor, flying through the city, scattered everywhere that the demon uttered a voice that the power of God is supreme; they rejoice to run together to enter the pious waters, and to wash old stains in the new fount, and to grow bright with holy streams. Of these one is given, an age at once harmless to all. But others set fires to their magic books, that they might earn the waters and shun fires by fires. The flame is too lofty, whose gleam flies above the air, and such embers sought the heaven. They set also the price of fifty thousand pieces of money upon the books, since, being guilty, they earned thus to abolish wickedness; this is the cause of this figure: the sacred number lawfully dissolves offenses, as once David washed away his crimes in the whole Psalm, and puts to flight the contracted ones;
for the fiftieth year, when the Jubilee is at hand, the alienation of one's own land is restored to its ancient owner; lost liberty seeks back those compelled to serve; the creditor remits evil debts, and the exile beholds his fatherland's threshold with eager wishes. In fifty cubits too the ark is stretched out, which, found amid the shallows and safe upon the sea, conducts salvation by its number of piety, and being preserved it grows through the aid of the sparing span, because Christ everywhere founded the Church, capacious through pardon's fashioning, which, thus begun amid the seas, is poured most broadly over the fields. Unhappy Demetrius of Ephesus by his craft placed silver shrines in sacrilegious spots, accustomed to discharge vows for his Diana at a greater price; seeing all the monuments of ancient frenzy yield, he groans, and stirs up various wraths with these words:
'Does it not shame us, O comrades, that our Diana has fallen, whom the honor of the world looked up to? What salvation beyond is to be hoped for by mortals, if the gods cannot be free of an end through the ages? What images now, what incense shall they be able to give to the shrines' hearths? Whom this stranger Paul terrifies, and whatever we wield for the deity of the gods he calls mute metals, from whose world religion departs, and the expelled household gods have sought flight. And now I see the shrines long established about to fall in sudden ruins, and the very fane of the noble temple to be given over to ash and overthrow! What citadel do we grasp, what wealth do we hold? to whom the faculty of works is barred, and it would be a crime to have made Diana. Press on! the time is at hand! the final labor has all things with it, if it despairs;
the only way for the conquered to conquer is to fear nothing; a sure lot of triumph remains, to have moved hands for the gods above; rise up with weapons, and let arms demand back her whom vows celebrate as goddess!' At these words the moved people roar, and call upon great Diana with common clamor, and with swift course they go with sedition into the obscene theater. It befitted to handle the causes and merit of Diana in no other forum than a lascivious one; the base hall takes up the deformed work of the assembly; yet the senseless impulse flowed like one who, gliding into the empty air with the eyes, slips away, and dispersed smoke retains no traces. O pitiable band! for whom do you toil to provide? Why do you think her to be perpetual? With you as witness she is torn fugitive from her own shrines; by what right do you tremble?
For her, by whose perishing you grieve and try to join to heaven her whom you deny to remain on earth? Now the order of the figure must be explored, and seen with the hidden places laid open. Demetrius is said to have, of the soil, madly set up halls of silver for the goddess, when nature brought forth more in her capacious bosom, with which metals he might fashion these things; and from molten countenances the bronzes are animated, and the hands of genius promise that the rocks live. But if we turn over the holy-speaking books from their order, we shall find the way, because Scripture compares gold to pure senses, silver to gleaming speech. For though the Psalm sing these things, yet, O illustrious Moses, you recall them more loftily, when you dictate such words to the people:
'Bring gold and silver for the adornment of the temples,' which lies within for the mind: not the hard matter of metal lurks beneath the heart, but more openly that thing stirs which Christ loves; the mind has offered gold, to whom faith shall have been precious, and likewise it ministers silver, to whom the good timbrels of the heart sound with the voice, that two joined may worship the Lord—from the breast sense, from speech sound; thus gold the doctrines of the law, and silver these things seek to be prepared for the pious temples. We, because we are temples, if all crimes recede, the prescient words admonish, which the Apostle himself reveals: 'With the heart shall be the salvation of the believer, confession with the voice.' For the sacrilegious one there was one thing only;
Demetrius built the houses with silver, whose eloquence moved these minds, so that it might prove by a norm, without the judge of sense, that vain deities are worshiped, and that this work does not come from the virtue of the heart, to which this part alone is dedicated, which, destitute of reason, sows bare speech with the mouth. You too, bearing signs, set down your titles in our song, O Troy, and add to the praises your triumphs, which shine for you more truly and clearly by deed than those which your colonizing tongue resounds in pompous buskin. When the tongue of God scattered seeds teeming for salvation, it prolonged the times into late night, about to make more day for souls; the lamps gleamed flashing, that the faithful might shine with the fire of the word. Eutychus alone, an exile from the living watches, committed his limbs sunk in heavy sleep to the window.
O ill-gotten rest! O hearts ever given to sleep, bare of good! to how great ruins lies he open whom night alone holds, and never raises up his sick head to better things! He knows not to watch in danger who suffers himself to sleep before God! Why, grown one, do you seek the empty chaos of the window, or why do you rest in this part where you shall fall? It is a thing hostile to salvation to follow lofty things hanging, and to wish to pluck stealthy dreams on a downward couch; you could have reclined on a better bed in the word of God, and, as Paul admonishes, willed His entrance, in whom by a right threshold there is the name of a door open and passable, through which the sheep, raised from the fount, walk to life;
Seek this, all of you, if it is profitable to avoid the raving jaws and the bloody bites of the wolf, by whose mouth the fugitive shall be torn from the Shepherd, who calls the scattered lambs with His voice, and does not allow the flock, redeemed by His own death, to be captured again by snares and by the wound of the bitter tooth from the enemy. The hall was loosed in mournful tumult; the crowd, pitying with frequent groaning, runs together to see the place, which, sad with bitter death, shall be about to make joy; clinging to whom, Paul says: 'He lives in his breast'; which voice life followed, and death, repelled, fled: how much, O Christ, does your power, wrought in your servants, accomplish! You, restored to the stars, and equal to the Father in everlasting majesty, rule the supernal laws;
but because the flesh, sprung for you from the body of a virgin mother, despoiled the realm of Avernus, and you recalled living members from your own sepulcher, and, proving that you willed to die, in the part where you rise again, and where you were born, you now loose the firm chains. Alternating light returns to others by your authorship, and likewise granted by your example, who long ago compelled the subjected things, and bid the underworld yield to the elect's servants. Meanwhile the happy corpse rises from death, and by a better way is conducted safe through the three upper rooms to Paul, in whose sight the harmless boy began to be present, now worthy of life's honor, when he turned the journey of death, where the glory of the deed instructs us to open the causes to the old figure. Noah's ark is described as propped with three chambers, bearing the lessons of the Church;
in the first order stood the part of men, and the cattle held the step of the second; the third lot was assigned to the wild beasts, all which the four-cornered ark bore through the waves, just as in the baptism of the fount there is now one salvation for all, but for characters one place cannot suffice, for Noah is said to have built nests in it, whom the Hebrew calls just and a rest, because Christ is therein, who as an equal divides the sure rewards of His own: whoever is a lover of virtue is joined to Noah seeking the heights; he stands next below, of lesser genius, less; the lot given to the savage holds the lowest, Tartarean bosom of the deep:
thus Eutychus therefore, falling from the first part, perished and clung to the mouths of hell, and, empty of human reason, began to hold the place of beasts; over whom after Paul leaned with his breast, and wisdom poured forth its own word, lifting up by the mouth the soul slain by the carnal law, he returns from death to the Lord, which the Epistle proclaims: 'You who sleep, now rise quickly!' and again it urges: 'And, watchful, lift yourself from death!' Above the three lofty rooms the boy now earned to stand, because by the threefold doctrine he learned what is the substance of eternal life. And now, the stations of the world traversed, Paul was about to come to Jerusalem, whither the Spirit often warns him to go, desiring on the well-known shore to recall a perpetual farewell; at once he summons from all sides the sacred ones, rendering these words from his dear breast:
'O beloved band, that wars with Christ's arms! O people born to the most high God! you remember the proofs of my love and zeal; readily I bore Gentile ranks and Jewish furies without end, that I might give the precepts of life, and that no faith narrated might lie hidden among the people; I shall ever be clean from your blood, nor as a debtor of a greedy mouth shall I pay closed talents, and the barren field shall blame the one who fasts in the seed of the word; thence usury convenes you to render a pious return; when the author shall come, who is the examiner of merit, and shall demand back from the servants the increases of His measure; my ardor was to bear seeds to the senses; which, sown everywhere upon the furrows, the bad earth shall grieve over the slender fruits.'
'I go—behold the city of the cross, venerable to the nations, whither commands call me; here will be given the struggle of a varied contest, to strive thither, for he shall undergo all things who wishes to complete the course; most gentle is the lot of punishments which vows bear, and the faculty of the kingdom is to suffer perpetually for the King: keep, O ministers, the Church of Christ, the price which He made for us with His blood in His own world; let the servants labor to retain what the Lord gave from death; you shall not behold my face and countenance any further—I pray more watchfully—survey the committed flocks, because with ravening tooth the wolves will come to the sheepfold; the guard sins when the robber departs with spoils; by the fraud of the slothful shepherd he seeks what he seizes as prey;
but a fiercer enemy will be within, and discord carries a graver evil, which it creates by vices under peace; do not yield to fictions—rest is harmful to virtue, and no secure honor crowns anyone in the stadium; his own glory shall be the cause of labor to the brave, and rare is the soldier toward the prizes for whom peace alone was; victory takes its seed from the enemy; thence it arises. The Lord can make your plantings fruitful, who through His own gifts causes one to come to His own gifts, and what He aids, He Himself ministers. I bore not riches, proud with deceiving luxury, by alternating reward, nor did I take gifts, seeking you rather than your possessions; you know me, how these hands fed me with my companions; accustom yourselves to bring forth treasures into the ways of light, and to lay up the treasures of works in the seat of heaven.'
It will profit nothing to have sought gold in buried places, if the miser shuts away what the earth concealed: what does not rise up for the poor man lies in the ground and is rolled about in a blind cavern, hidden by a sinning hand. Open your hearts, I pray, to the admonitions from on high, and let no one refuse to provide shelter for the needy flock, for in that guest he receives Christ. When he had spoken thus, he gave them the kiss of peace; then, praying together, he bent his knee to the ground, and all, tight-bound with sorrows, melted into pious tears, and far across the waves, with attending gaze, they were granted to follow the ship. They strain their eyes against the hard, opposing clouds; a path is added to their sight upon the sea, and the vessel, snatched by the gusts, is still recognized, and soothes their minds with its image, and the measure of seeing grows with the heart's affection. But as for what he says:
These precepts of salvation, night and day, I gave for three years: by this reckoning the figure stands plain. He who proclaims the threefold teaching of the Church often sets forth the historical sense, sounding likewise the moral and the typical volume. For thus the six water-jars each hold three measures, which from the old Law glowed red with the new wine. The ancient form of the perfect sacrifice commands three loaves to be offered in the basket; to which is joined that word which Christ spoke to the disciples, when one asked at night that three loaves ought to be given him: that night, in truth, is the world, so that here, if anyone hungers for the food of the word, you may, when sought out, set forth the feast and instruct the willing one, that the Father and the Son, that the Holy Spirit are one God, and that the simple substance triples the number. Nor do the holy commands proclaim this but once. He compels, says he,
whoever asks you to go before him one mile as a guide, go the other two thousand paces with him: do not the commandments seem to speak this? If anyone wandering and ignorant of the way consults you as to what God is, you would do better to bring it forth: set forth the Father, and gladly add that there is the Son, and that there is the gracious Spirit, three in number, and yet one. Hence Judea, lying idle, which is called the barren tree, when awaited for three years brought forth no fruit, because, scorning to handle the volumes in the threefold sense, in these mystic numbers she knows not how to give gifts to Christ. Now Paul had begun to approach the noble temple of Solomon, and to render the solemnities of the old Law.
The Jewish mob seizes him, and in raging tumult they cry out that he is guilty of death; but the tribune flies forth with arms, and orders him bound to go in twin chains, which nevertheless press hard upon his fettered arms. Yet the torments do not bind his soul, as the Epistle of Paul, full of light, proclaims, that ministers can be bound, but faith cannot be bound, and that the word is not given over to be held by punishments. And he took his stand upon the very steps, speaking to the people in the Hebrew tongue: O brothers, and you fathers, men! you know me to have come a novice to these shores; devoted to all learning, I was filled with love of the Law. Now I take you for witnesses, you whose writings I bore when I burned to punish the Christ-worshiping flocks with the slaughter of Damascus, and to forbid this faith from the ends of the world:
but mortal things cannot contend with their Author. A light came down from the stars to close my eyes, and the day, driven off by the flashing fire, lay hidden, and darkening shadows pressed upon my eyeballs, in whose hour a radiance grew for me, coming with the night: the outcome is wont to make things discerned after the deeds. Well did we see the shadows, who were soon to enjoy a new sun. But a cry also clung to my ears from the mouth of God: with my name repeated, 'Saul, Saul,' Christ shakes me with terror, lest as a standard-bearer I should dare to wage war against him any longer. By what right shall I refuse? By whose stroke I fall, by whose gift I am lifted up, cast down, onto a better way, and through steep places I rise, and lofty I follow the happy gifts of my ruin. Now it is enough, O fellow-citizen! we have waged cruel war. That portion teaches nothing doubtful, which, blessed, performs its office with its own enemy as witness:
why does it still please you to be guilty? Shine forth out of my darkness, you to whom faith granted sight from the waters of the font, and the image of death began to live in the waters: alas, O stony earth, never fruitful with your own seeds! and vain are the labors of those who endure a barren soil! At last, afterward, Jesus, appearing, said this to me: Prepare to go far, Saul, far from this city left behind; this people has no faith in our name; rather, to the gentiles sing the words of salvation. At once the complaining phalanxes snatched up this word. They fling off their garments, and, casting dust further off, they roar with windy fickleness, and with varied din the raging crowd resounds against Paul's peril. O guilty Judea! when you longed to destroy the Author of life, thus you gave your words:
there was a choice, O clamorous one, which prisoner you would wish released to you; but from your bloody mouth you demand the sad, ill-counseled outrage, and, the robber being chosen, you keep the joys of the Passover, and you double your fury, savage toward the holy man, appeased toward the guilty. In the whole contest you strip yourself bare and leave yourself empty, when, harder still, you hurl torments upon Stephen, you lay aside your cloak, and now you lack a garment, because the punishment of the first parent is kindred to you, and in your body you bear the burden of the old transgressor, lest you be renewed by the waters that are the font's honor: Adam, at the rise of his crime, knew that he was naked, and thence the proofs of his guilt lay open to the wretched man; upon you the origin of death comes again and again, into whom wrath, full of evils, weaves twice the garment which guilt creates.
Now the tribune, seeing the strife blaze up with these cries, added fierce chains to Paul, and sent him to the wicked camp to be tortured. How a well-known difficulty in those passages is to be overcome, we shall sing. Paul, relating the deeds, says that his companions had at once beheld the light there with their own eyes, yet did not drink in that voice with their ears; but at that time, when he fell blind, the companions are read to have heard the voice. Thus the narrator's account varies: yet it is necessary that both, beyond doubt, agree, for then they are said to have heard, to have received the sound, now indeed not to have heard. This will be the simple path of reason: a confused voice is rightly said not to speak, nor is that believed to be conveyed by speech which the receiver does not store in his heart;
stirred only by a doubtful ear, the ambiguous din strikes the empty air alone; thus they are read both to have heard and not to have heard. One part is of sound, the other part is of a sure voice, and one and the same thing bears and brings back a twofold figure. The cause prompts me to unroll in verses the boiling ranks of punishment upon Paul's body, and the grievous wraths of his penalties; but my tongue is afraid: let us flee deceits from that side, and, fearing so sad an outrage, let us restrain our speech, lest perchance the reader fill his face with tears as he reads, and the page grow wet with copious drops. Yet not even these things could satisfy the bloodthirsty souls; the love of crimes burns, and they desire to ply their sacrilegious hands in Paul's blood. What hard vows of the wicked!
Forty nurslings of the frenzied stock bound themselves to take no drink or food at all until, slaughter accomplished, there should be a feast — that thence the banquet might be greater. O pallid image of the heart! The cups of gore, O Judea, are sweeter to you than of water, and willing to touch no tables, you hunger for the crime, and you seek to have a famine sated with the corpse of the just man. Not such fasts did Moses establish by his example, completed in so many days as you recall — as many days as the weapons you wield; and over so many years you behold that secret ways lay open, where from a rich cloud foods flowed down with the dew, and the dry rock in turn poured forth waters, in which our fathers were granted to enjoy the divine goodness and to nourish their souls with heavenly gifts:
from that very number you come cruel to rage, and you join the polluted covenants of the band, so that one death may make many men guilty. Lysias learned these things, Paul's kinsman revealing them, and in what place they prepared their ambush; therefore he swiftly orders that his commands be secretly concealed, and in the time of night, cautious, he forestalls the dark work, and to chosen companies he commands that they escort Paul under safe honor. Glory from your merits, O honorable informer, would not be foreign to you, and — what is rare for rewards — you win favor by betrayal; nor does steadfastness harm you, which you fear to keep for crime. In a crime, virtue will be a crime, and when the wicked are allied to a deed, loyalty is a fault in you, which true honor then adorns with praises, when the cause is holy.