and I find that this, that they were smitten, availed them unto a reconciliation of mercy, since it shall be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment than for those cities in which the dust was shaken off from the feet of the apostles. The synagogue of Dathan and Abiram also was known to have been smitten with a most fitting plague, but in their souls those very things by which they had chiefly sinned were sanctified as works. And that I may not run through the many individual instances, since the Apostle also delivers unto the destruction of the flesh for the salvation of the spirit, the Lord Himself shows what He accomplishes by smiting, saying: 'See, see, that I am, and there is no God beside me. I will slay, and I will make alive;'
'I will smite, and I will heal,' that He might show that the cause of smiting proceeds from the cause of healing. The Lord too, therefore, was smitten, taking upon Himself our sins and grieving for us, that in Him, smitten even unto the infirmity of the cross and of death, health might be restored to us through the resurrection from the dead. And that He was smitten He Himself testified, reminding the disciples of this saying: 'I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.' But the Apostle also confirms the meaning of this saying not dissimilarly, saying: 'Who spared not His own beloved Son.' He spared not, then, His beloved Son, whom, not ignorant that the husbandmen of the vineyard would slay Him, He appointed. But He had not spared that first man either, made of the mud of the earth, Adam;
whom, after the fault, He cast out of paradise, lest, touching the tree of life, he should remain in the eternity of punishment, so that Adam the second, assuming from heaven the nature of his body and smitten with a like death, might recall it again unto life eternal, now without the eternity of punishment. This one, then, thus smitten by God, they persecuted, adding, to the pain of His wounds, the pain of this persecution. For He grieves for us according to the prophet, and therefore was reckoned to be in griefs. For that they afterward conceived hatred of His name, in that they bought the silence of the resurrection with money, and with what terrors and injuries they harassed the apostles, is known. And because they added these things to the pain of His wounds, iniquity shall be laid upon iniquity.
But the penalty of the iniquity thus added is, that they enter not into the righteousness of God — that is, that they become not of the same body and partakers with Christ, who according to the Apostle was made unto us righteousness and sanctification and redemption from God. And being excluded from the entrance of righteousness, they must needs be blotted out of the book of the living. For they had been written in the blessings of Abraham, whose seed was to abound as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea upon the shore of the shore. And when Moses feared that all the people should be blotted out of that book, he entreated that he himself be blotted out first, wishing, as I suppose, according to the Apostle, to be anathema for his brethren.
And because, adding to the pain of His wounds the pain of persecution, they lost the recourse of repentance, being blotted out of the book of the living, they deserved not to be written even afterward with the just: so that it may be understood that the book of the living is one thing, and the book of the just another. Nor is it doubtful that they are in the book of the living who, before, without any knowledge of Christ, having lived piously in the Law, fulfilled all the precepts of the Law — concerning whom the Apostle thus taught according to the Law: that 'he who shall do these things shall live in them.' But those are written in the book of the just, unto whom Christ was made righteousness. For 'the just shall live by faith.' Of which book the Lord thus speaks to the apostles, saying: 'Rejoice and exult, because your names are written in heaven.'
And therefore there was a twofold signification, of being blotted out of the book of the living and of not being written in the book of the just, because after the book of the living there was left the book of the just. But to the apostles hence a cause of great rejoicing is supplied, because it is more to be written in the book of the just than not to have been blotted out of the book of the living. But He holds in Himself that manner of confession which ought to be in us for our faith, that in Him both the nature of man and the nature of God may be known. For coming in the form of a servant He emptied Himself of the form of God. For who, remaining in the form of God, could exist in the form of a man? But the form of God could not be abolished, so that there should be only the form of a servant.
For He Himself is both the one emptying Himself of the form of God and the one assuming the form of a man, because neither is that emptying of the form of God a destruction of the heavenly nature, nor is the assumption of the servile form the nature as of a native origin and condition, since that which was assumed is not an inner property, but an external accession — which very thing He teaches in what follows, saying: 'I am poor and sorrowful; and the salvation of Thy countenance, O God, hath received me.' Poor is He who, according to the Apostle, being rich in all things, made Himself poor that we might be enriched; sorrowful is He who, according to the prophet, grieves for us. But this poor and sorrowful one was received by that salvation which is the countenance of God. Form and countenance and face and image do not differ.
For it is the common understanding that the same thing is signified in either of these. This poor one, then, He received into the salvation of the countenance of God, who is the form of God — that is, the only-begotten God, who is the image of the invisible God, placed the man assumed by Himself into the life of His own eternity, which is understood to be the salvation in God. For 'every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father' — that is, the assumed man received into the nature of divinity. But that the end of the Law and a sacrifice of praise is in Him is the evangelical confession, so that, the blood and oblation of victims ceasing, the sacrifice of grace and of praise is set before it. For, this poor and sorrowful one being received into the salvation of the countenance and form of God, this is continued and follows:
'I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with praise. And it shall please God above a young calf that bringeth forth horns and hoofs.' This praising of the name of God, then, and the magnifying of the praise itself, shall please above a young calf. For such a one was formerly offered under the Law for sin, whose age He signifies by the tender growths of the hoofs and horns. Therefore the honor of praise shall please above the calf of sin, according to that word: 'The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me; and there is the way whereby I will show them the salvation of God.' The way, then, of showing the salvation of God is in the sacrifice of praise. And this very thing the psalm shows in what follows. For after the magnificence of praise that shall please above the young calf, it added:
'Let the poor see, and rejoice. Seek God, and your soul shall live: for the Lord hath heard the poor, and hath not despised His prisoners.' Let them, that is, rejoice, seeing this time whose sacrifice is in praise, because there the salvation of God shall be shown. And therefore God shall be sought by these unto the life of the soul. For He forbade the judge of flesh and body to be feared, because God alone is powerful to send the soul into Gehenna. But the cause of seeking God unto the life of the soul is this: that God hath heard the poor — that one, namely, who made Himself poor that we might be enriched, whom He received into the salvation of His countenance, in whom He forgave us our sins — not despising His prisoners, whether those who are the prisoners of Christ, as
Paul glories in his bonds, or those whom Satan, as one armed and mighty, held bound in their sins, according to that word: 'Thou hast burst my bonds asunder; to Thee will I sacrifice the sacrifice of praise.' The poor, then, rejoice in the things which they see, because it is written: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' And because, when these who are poor in spirit are set in the kingdom of heaven, all creation, groaning and grieving, is to be freed unto the glory of the sons of God — being subjected to vanity not of its own will — now also, on account of the poor rejoicing and seeking life, and the poor one heard and His prisoners not despised, that very creature, awaiting the revelation of the glory of the poor, is summoned unto the praise of God:
'Let the heavens and the earth praise Him, the sea and everything that creepeth therein': under the commemoration of these elements signifying the sense and mind of all the creatures to be freed, so that, while heaven and earth and sea are named, there may be recognized things heavenly and earthly and infernal bowing the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. For in those things which creep in the sea — although in water-creatures there is swimming by nature rather than creeping — are taught those which dwell in the nether regions, since we understand the depth of the sea to be the abode of hell. But the reason why heaven and earth and sea should further praise God, He shows, saying: 'For the Lord hath saved Sion, and the cities of Judah shall be built up. And they shall dwell therein and inherit the land.'
'And the seed of his servants shall possess it, and they that love his name shall dwell therein.' All praise arises from the wonder we feel at things. For a thing seems worthy of praise when the work itself is so grand and glorious that it displays at once the providence and power of its maker and the beauty and usefulness of what has been made. And so whatever surpasses the perception and judgment of ordinary intelligence earns, through the admiration it awakens, its own praise. Shall the heavens, then, adorned with such great ornament, filled with such glory, and preserving such vast movements and courses with incredible constancy yet variety, so as to govern and mark out the year by the tempering of autumn and spring between winter and heat — and the earth also —
which, overshadowed by the powers above, whether embracing within itself or receiving in its bosom the seeds, both holds and nourishes and makes them fruitful, and according to the nature of each kind consolidates their use to maturity; the sea also, which, after the manner of our own life, is quickened now by drawing in breath and now by breathing it out again, and endures, and amid such variety in itself governs its motion by the laws of the moon's waxing and waning, and by its deep and boundless barrier surpasses the mind of human opinion, so that our perception cannot grasp either what lies beyond it or what lies within — shall the heavens, the earth, and the seas, amid such great and admirable powers of things and natures, praise God for this: that Zion is saved and that the cities of Judea are to be built?
For these are human works, both perishable and destined to be dissolved by time itself and by age! And if the building of them were worthy of praise, would not their being preserved from destruction contribute even more to praise? Are then these greatest and most excellent of all things — or rather those by which all things are held together and nourished, the natures of sea, earth, and heaven — summoned to the praise of works almost empty and trivial: namely, that Zion has been saved and the cities of Judea built, which after the victory of the Babylonians and of Antiochus the war of the Roman king would also consume? Furthermore, the knowledge and reason of common experience likewise condemn this poor and impious opinion.
For the prophetic word declares that the cities of Judea are to be built for this reason: that in her who has been saved, in Zion, they may dwell. What place is there here for an understanding according to human buildings and the constructions of cities, since there is no praise in building things that are afterward to be destroyed, nor does reason and nature allow cities to be built for this purpose — that men should dwell in a city? But a praise truly worthy of God is to be rendered by the confession of heaven, earth, and sea: namely, that that daughter of Zion, who was borne into Jerusalem with so great a retinue of those going before and following after, has been saved by God;
into whom the angels long to look, toward whom every groaning and grieving creature gazes forward, in whom we behold the glory and praise of our eternity, in whom the cities of the churches that have been built shall abide. For Zion, although it is a little hill joined to the temple which was in Jerusalem, nevertheless, according to the interpretation from Hebrew into Latin and Greek, is called 'watchtower' (or 'contemplation'). Therefore in this body of the Lord, in which he rose from the dead, in which he sat down at the right hand of Power, in which he is in the glory of God the Father, we contemplate our hope and life. And because all creation itself awaits the revelation of our brightness in him, and awaits to be set free into the same, it praises the salvation of this Zion under the figure of heaven and earth and sea;
because all things in heaven and on earth have been made peaceable and reconciled to God through her, because in the glory of the resurrection — the hope of which we contemplate in him who rose from the dead — sin, death, and corruption have been devoured and swallowed up by life and immortality. For if over the repentance of a single sinner there is great joy of the angels in heaven, how much greater must the gladness be in the reconciliation of the whole world? And because for the end, on behalf of those who shall be changed, the psalm is, the cities of Judea also are praised as needing to be built, that men may dwell in Zion. And who doubts that the cities themselves are assemblies of men? But it is well known that the Church is formed from an assembly of peoples.
Therefore in this Zion, which has embraced within itself that city of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, our dwelling is perfected — we who abide as the seed of Abraham and likewise as the seed of Judah. For not he who is a Jew outwardly, but he who is a Jew inwardly, and who is so in the spirit. On which account, in these our assemblies we too are the cities of Judea. And lest impious Israel should claim for itself the glory in the cities of Judea, on the ground that it is according to the flesh the seed of the servants of God, he shows that the inheritance, that the dwelling in Zion belongs to those who love the name of the Lord:
so that it may be a matter more of piety than of the choice of lineage, because the love of God which is in Christ excels all things — and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is blessed for ever and ever, Amen, asks Peter nothing other than whether he loves him. PSALM LXIX. Unto the end, for a remembrance, that the Lord saved me. 'O God, be attentive unto my help,' and so forth. This is another psalm 'for a remembrance'; for the thirty-seventh has the same inscription. And from the very meaning and common usage of this word we are taught what is to be understood as prescribed in a 'remembrance.'
For the prayer of remembrance suits one who fears lest he fall into forgetfulness by him from whom he expects either aid or pardon, and who desires either that a remembrance of himself be made unto salvation, or a remembrance of those who are always hostile to him unto punishment. And indeed in the psalm of the earlier inscription of the same title, the subject was pardon and salvation, which consists wholly in the person of the Lord grieving on our behalf and bearing our sins. But in this one the necessity of asking pardon is not left, since the earlier psalm, adjoining this one, was concluded with the praise of Zion made safe and the cities of Judea built up. Rather, in it there is a remembrance of vengeance upon the impious and of recompense upon the saints.
And because the psalm is unto the end, not of that David, but concerning that David, according to the principle set forth in the earlier passages from the property of the name, it will be treated in the person of the Lord, as will be recognized from the very end of the psalm. 'O God, be attentive unto my help.' This is the voice of pious confession, to hope for help from the Lord and God; but here the language signifies something more than is customary in prayers for the hope of aid. For it can seem that he who has been set as a help over the mighty one now prays to be attended to in the help unto which he has been set. And who this is, is not doubtful from the psalm in which it is written: 'I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of my people. I have found David my servant.'
And lest anything of this could be referred to that David the son of Jesse, he added: 'And I will make him the firstborn, high above the kings of the earth.' And lest, because he is firstborn, this could be drawn to the first-fruits of a kingdom granted to him by God, he showed that which was proper to the Lord Jesus Christ alone, saying: 'And his throne shall be as the sun in my sight, and as the moon perfect, it shall abide for ever, and the faithful witness in heaven.' Now therefore he who has been set as a helper against the mighty one, and who prays to be attended to in his help, demands punishment upon those who oppose him, saying: 'Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek my soul: let them be turned backward and blush that think evil against me. Let them be turned away immediately, blushing, who say to me:'
'Aha, aha.' From the words of our own speech and language the divine word must be weighed. Shame and confusion come from disgrace; turning away comes from being repulsed; but a return is into no other places more than into those from which the departure was made. Those, therefore, who seek the soul of this holy one, who prays to be attended to in his help, will first be confounded, then also turned away, and thereafter turned away not into other places, but backward. And the order of the words is the same as that of the events. For they shall be confounded in seeking his soul, whom, when they have slain him, they shall know to live: because the Lord is the God of life and resurrection. Then afterward they shall be turned away, lest they meet Christ together with the saints, caught up to meet him in the clouds. Finally, the turning is into nothing else but backward.
For those who rise again from the dead will return once more to the judgment of punishment and vengeance, into the lowest parts of the earth, from which they had emerged. For all flesh shall rise again, but not all shall be changed; and it is appointed that each one receive in the flesh, whether good or evil, according as he has done. Therefore both those who seek the soul, and those who think evil, and those who say 'Aha, aha,' shall both be confounded and turned away and shall return, confounded by the resurrection, repulsed from the meeting, recalled into the lower regions. Now 'Aha, aha' is the voice of those who mock, namely of those who said: 'He saved others, himself he cannot save.' But after this prayer concerning the impious, since it was a psalm of remembrance, prayer had also to be made for the hopes of the saints. For there follows:
'Let all that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee, and let such as love thy salvation say always: The Lord be magnified.' As there is confusion and shame for those who seek the soul of the righteous, so there is exultation and gladness for those who seek God, because according to the prophet some shall rise again unto confusion, others unto gladness. And as those who think evil, who say 'Aha, aha,' are turned backward blushing, so those who love the salvation of God advance unto the confession of the magnifying of God, so that from the grace of the exultation granted to them by God the confession of praise may be increased. For God, who is the same and eternal, needs nothing, nor is there anything in the natures of things and the opinions of minds that he awaits.
For what is changeable by increase is often changed also by loss. But God, who is himself the origin and cause to all things that come into being, being sufficient unto himself for the nature of eternal blessedness, leaves nothing outside that is lacking to him, that he should await it from elsewhere. Yet he is magnified through the increases of his benefits together with us, when his magnificence is heaped up both by our sense and delight in his benefits and by the praise of rendering thanks. Therefore, as often as we say 'be magnified,' so often either there are our prayers for a gift to be desired from God, or there is the confession of a gift taken and received, the praise of his magnificence being born together with us through the increase of our advantages.
But it was fitting that the psalm which is unto the end for a remembrance should be concluded with an end worthy of the remembrance itself. For there follows: 'But I am needy and poor; the Lord helpeth me. Thou art my helper and my deliverer, O Lord, make no tarrying.' Neither to the dignity of a king nor to the opulence of a kingdom does the profession of poverty and want belong, but to him who, that we might be enriched, made himself poor, for whom there was not even for the supper of the Passover a house except one sought and belonging to another. And so he asks to be helped. For in the form of a servant he became obedient unto the death of the cross. He prays also for swift aid, that he may be delivered, that there be no delay of remembrance — he who, not enduring even those very delays of the passion, said to the betrayer:
'What thou doest, do quickly,' while our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever, Amen, hastens to deliver the infirmity of the flesh assumed upon himself by the power of a resurrection soon to come. A psalm of a canticle on the sabbath day. 'It is good to give praise to the Lord, and to sing to thy name, O Most High,' and so forth. After the times of the Law and the knowledge of the truth, it is fitting to behold the body itself rather than the shadow of the body. For the Law embraces the appearance of those things which were to be fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ; not the truth itself, but in it a meditation on the truth, useful by faith rather than by effect, by imitation rather than by kind.
For those things which were commanded to be observed were useful not by the power of the efficacy itself, but were salutary by the faith of those observing them: such as the diversities of sacrifices, the religious rites of holocausts, the care of circumcision, and the rest of the sabbath. For all these things, if omitted, incurred guilt, and when done under the faith of things to come were profitable, as the blessed Apostle says: 'But before faith came, we were kept shut up under the Law, unto that faith which was to be revealed. Therefore the Law was our schoolmaster in Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But when faith came, we are no longer under a schoolmaster; for you are all sons of faith.'
Therefore, as often as anything is read again from the Law, a mirror of things to come is to be beheld in the work of the present commandments. And it would indeed have been fitting to bring forward an explanation concerning the individual matters comprehended above, so that, according to the Apostle's doctrine, all things might be understood to have profited by faith in things to come rather than by the power of the efficacy itself; yet, lest all these things heaped together should bring to the hearers not so much knowledge as a burden, let us take up again one portion from those above, namely that which is necessary for the occasion — that is, the sabbath day — because the psalm is thus inscribed:
'A psalm of a canticle on the sabbath day,' so that when, through the authority of the heavenly Scriptures, we have come to know what principle is contained in the rest of the sabbath, we may perceive the like efficacy of the other matters as well which are in the Law. And indeed concerning the rest of this day many things have been commanded. For on it the Lord rested when the solidity of this world was perfected; for it is written: 'And God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had begun to make.' And again this same day is sanctified in the Law by him, so that all work is forbidden to be done, as it is written in Exodus: 'Remember to sanctify the day of the sabbaths: six days shalt thou labour and do all thy works; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God:'
'thou shalt do no work on that day.' Therefore on the sabbath there is both the rest of God and the leisure of men. But what will this profit toward the psalm, in which there is joy in the making of God, and his deep thoughts, and the sinner is to be burned up like hay, and the just man is to flourish like a palm tree and be multiplied like a cedar? Here no rest of the seventh day, no leisure from human works is sung. Therefore, since nothing in the psalm is contained concerning the rest of this sabbath, the property of the rest and of the sabbath which is prescribed in the Law must be sought in the Psalms. And so we read said concerning the impious: 'As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest.' God confirms, in the sanctity of an oath, that they shall not enter into his rest;
not, as I think, does he signify the rest of this sabbath, on which, after the building of the world, he is written to have rested. For all the Jews, glorying in the solemnity and gladness of this day, enter into it, even those who must needs pass and live much of their life in sins: for they honour this day as a kind of testimony of God's regard toward them. If, then, this is God's day of rest — which, be it said with allowance, would make God a liar, since those who are defiant against him, the parricides against the Son, obtain the rest of this day. Furthermore, since all without any exception whatsoever were commanded to do no work at all, but to rest in leisure, how does the Lord in turn loose the sabbath, saying:
'Do you not know that the priests in the temple violate the sabbath and are without fault?' Therefore this is not the rest of the sabbath, nor is this its leisure, since... those not resting on the sabbath were cursed... receiving under the law of stability. If the sun and the other constellations run their courses and have from him — by whom they were arranged into these courses and into these offices — the substance of remaining in those things in which they are; if the earth brings forth its fruits, taking day by day the material of its fecundity, through which a certain nature of fertility is made subject to it according to the changes of the seasons; if daily the origins of souls and the fashionings of bodies proceed by the hidden and, to us, unknown working of the divine power:
and it is a great thing to feel the gifts of so great a bounty, though nevertheless their institution is unknown. But these things, although they are the work of God, yet in them there is no labour. And although they have from their Author and Governor that they are such, yet they do not weary him from whom they arose and through whom daily they are such. And these indeed are great works of God — to hold together the heaven, to give light to the sun with the other stars, to supply the increases of the earth's sowing, to strengthen man, to convey the soul onward: but works far greater than these have been accomplished. For Moses narrated only the creations of visible things to the untrained minds of men, bringing forth for the knowledge of God those things which could be understood and seen.
so that through this greatness of the visible works the power of him who wrought them might be known, and the might of the Creator might be understood through admiration of the creature. But Paul, the interpreter of the New Testament, feeding now not the food of milk but of bread, thus handed down concerning the Lord: 'who is the image of God, the firstborn of all creation, because in him were established all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers: all things were made in him and through him, and he is before all, and all things consist in him.'