Furthermore, according to the letter, let it seem violent to no one that, after the Savior's death, Jerusalem is called the holy city, since the apostles always entered the temple until its destruction, and, for the sake of avoiding scandal to those of the Jews who had believed, they observed the ceremonies of the Law. But the Lord loved Jerusalem so greatly that He wept and lamented over it, and hanging on the cross said: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
And so He obtained what He had asked, and many thousands of the Jews at once believed; and a time of repentance was granted, up to the forty-second year, after which, as they persisted in their blasphemy, two bears came forth out of the forests of the Roman nations, Vespasian and Titus; and — as the boys who mocked Elisha as he went up to the house of God (for this is what 'Bethel' is interpreted to mean), with one accord jeering, were killed and mangled — from that time Jerusalem is no longer called the holy city, but, losing both its holiness and its ancient name, is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, that in its place there might be built a new city, which the rushing of the river gladdens, and from whose midst goes forth a spring that has sweetened the bitterness of the whole world; so that miserable Israel bewails the ruins of the temple with bared arms, and the throng of those believing in Christ sees daily the roofs of the Church rising anew, and Zion says:
'The place is too narrow for me,' and there may be fulfilled that which is written in Isaiah: 'And His sepulchre shall be glorious.' How is it that, according to John, the Savior breathes the Holy Spirit into the apostles, and, according to Luke, says after the ascension that He will send Him? — The solution of this question is very easy, if, with the Apostle Paul teaching us, we recognize the diverse graces of the Holy Spirit. For he writes in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who works all in all. And to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for that which is profitable.'
'For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another the graces of healings in the one Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of words. But all these one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as He wills.' Therefore the Lord, who after His resurrection had said according to the Gospel of Luke, 'Behold, I will send the promise of My Father upon you;'
'but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high,' and according to the same author in the Acts of the Apostles charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to await the promise of the Father, 'which you have heard from My mouth; for John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence' — He is again narrated, at the end of the Gospel according to John, on the very day on which He had risen, that is, the Lord's Day, to have entered to the apostles through closed doors and to have said to them a second time: 'Peace be to you,' and to have added: 'As the Father sent Me, so I also send you.' When He had said this, He breathed on them and says to them: 'Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall remit, they are remitted to them, and whose you shall retain, they shall be retained.'
Therefore on the first day of His resurrection they received the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which they might forgive sins and baptize and make sons of God and bestow the Spirit of adoption on believers, the Savior Himself saying: 'Whose sins you shall remit, they shall be remitted to them, and whose you shall retain, they shall be retained.' But on the day of Pentecost more was promised to them, that they should be baptized with the Holy Spirit and clothed with power, by which they might preach the Gospel of Christ to all the nations, according to what we read in the sixty-seventh psalm:
'The Lord will give the word to those who preach the good tidings with great power,' so that they might have the working of miracles and the grace of healings, and, about to preach to many nations, might receive kinds of tongues, so that even then it might be known which of the apostles should announce to which nations. Finally the Apostle Paul, who preached from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum, and from there through Rome hastens to go to Spain, gives thanks to God that he speaks with tongues more than all the apostles. For he who was to announce to many nations had received the grace of many tongues. This promise of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled on the tenth day after the Savior's ascension, as Luke relates, who writes:
'And when the days of Pentecost were fulfilled, they were all together in the same place; and suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to utter.' Then was fulfilled that which is read in Joel: 'And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions.'
Now the word 'outpouring' signifies the abundance of grace, and it sounds the very thing that the Lord promised: 'But you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence.' For they were baptized with the Holy Spirit to such a degree that the whole house where they were sitting was filled, and the fire of the Holy Spirit found in them its longed-for resting place and divided the tongues, and, according to Isaiah, who had said that he had unclean lips, purified their lips, that they might preach the Gospel of Christ more purely. And in Isaiah indeed the lintel of the temple is said to have been shaken, and the whole house filled with smoke, that is, with error and darkness and ignorance of the truth.
But at the beginning of the Gospel the Church is filled with the Spirit, that by His grace and fervor the sins of all believers may be purged, and by the fire of the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord had said He would send, the tongue about to preach Christ may be healed. Therefore John and Luke are not at variance, as though what the one signifies to have been given on the first day of the resurrection, the other describes as having come on the fiftieth day; rather it is an apostolic advance, that those who had first received the grace of forgiving sins should afterward receive the workings of miracles and all kinds of gifts, which we have recounted as described by the Apostle, and — what was more necessary — the diversity of tongues of all the nations, so that, about to announce Christ, they might need no interpreter.
Hence too in Lycaonia, when they had heard Paul and Barnabas speaking in their own tongues, they believed that gods had been changed into men. And in very truth the garment of power is the grace of the Holy Spirit, possessing which they did not fear the tribunals of judges and the purple of kings. For the Lord had promised, before He suffered, and had said: 'But when they deliver you up, do not take thought how or what you shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.'
I declare boldly and with all freedom that from the time when the apostles believed in the Lord, they always had the Holy Spirit, and could not work signs without the grace of the Holy Spirit, but according to measure and portion. Hence the Savior cried out in the temple, saying: 'Whoever thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.' But this He said of the Spirit, whom those believing in Him were to receive. And in the same place he adds: 'For the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified' — not that there was no Holy Spirit, since the Lord and Savior says:
'But if I by the Holy Spirit cast out demons' — but rather that He who was in the Lord did not yet wholly abide in the apostles. For which reason they are frightened away at His passion, and deny Him, and swear they do not know Christ. But after they are baptized in the Holy Spirit and the grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out upon them, then they speak freely to the rulers of the Jews: 'We ought to obey God rather than men.' They raise the dead, they rejoice amid scourgings, they shed their blood and are crowned by their own torments. Therefore the Spirit was not yet in the apostles, nor did spiritual graces flow from their belly, because the Lord was not yet glorified. But what that glory is, He Himself declares in the Gospel:
'Father, glorify Me with the glory which I had with You before the world was.' The Savior's glory is the gibbet of the triumphant One. He is crucified as man, glorified as God. Finally the sun flees, the moon is turned into blood, the earth trembles with an unwonted quaking, the underworld is opened, the dead walk, the rocks are broken. This is the glory of which He spoke in the psalm: 'Arise, my glory; arise, psaltery and harp.' And glory itself, and the dispensation of the assumed flesh, answered concerning itself: 'I will arise at dawn,' that the title of the twenty-first psalm might be fulfilled: 'For the morning taking up.'
We say these things not because we believe there is one who is God and another who is man, or make two persons in the one Son of God, as a new heresy slanderously alleges; but He is one and the same Son of God and Son of Man, and whatever He speaks, we refer part to His divine glory, part to our salvation. For our sake He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, becoming obedient to the Father even unto death, and death on the cross. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. But I marvel at Montanus and his mad women, those abortive prophets, seeing that the Lord promised and said:
'I go, and I will send you another Paraclete'; and afterward, when the evangelist Luke narrates that the apostles received what was promised, they say that this was fulfilled in themselves much later. For it was to the apostles that the promise was made: 'I will send the pledge of My Father upon you, and you shall sit in the city until you are clothed with power from on high'; and, rising, He breathed upon the face of the apostles — and not upon that of Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla — and said to them: 'Whose sins you shall remit, they shall be remitted, and whose you shall retain, they shall be retained.' To the apostles, I say, He gave the charge not to withdraw from Jerusalem, but to await the promise of the Spirit. And afterward we read that what was promised was fulfilled:
They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to speak. For the Holy Spirit breathes where He wills; and when the Lord says, 'I will send you another Paraclete,' He also shows Himself to be the Paraclete, who is called 'the Consoler.' Whence God the Father too is designated by this name: the God of mercies and of all consolation. Now if the Father is the Consoler, and the Son is the Consoler, and the Holy Spirit is the Consoler, then believers are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which is understood to be God. Since 'Consoler' is the one name of their divinity, therefore their nature also is one.
This Holy Spirit was present not only in the apostles but also in the prophets, concerning whom David prayed, saying: 'Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.' Daniel too is recorded to have had the Spirit of God; and David, speaking in the Spirit, said that the Lord had said to his Lord: 'Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.' Nor did the prophets prophesy without the Holy Spirit, and 'by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the breath of his mouth.' And whatever belongs to the Father and to the Son, this same also belongs to the Holy Spirit; and the same Spirit, since He is sent by the Father and comes on behalf of the Son, is called in one place and another the Spirit of God the Father and the Spirit of Christ.
Whence in the Acts of the Apostles, those who had been baptized with John's baptism and believed in God the Father and in Christ, but did not know the Holy Spirit, are baptized again — nay rather, then they receive the true baptism, for without the Holy Spirit the mystery of the Trinity is incomplete. And in the same volume Peter is recorded to have said to Ananias and Sapphira that in lying to the Holy Spirit they had not lied to men but to God. As for what the Apostle Paul argues in writing to the Romans: 'What then shall we say? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid,' down to the place where he says: 'Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we should have become as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah.'
— Indeed the whole epistle to the Romans needs interpretation and is wrapped in such great obscurities that in understanding it we need the help of the Holy Spirit, who dictated these very things through the Apostle; but especially this passage, in which certain persons, wishing to preserve God's justice on the ground of antecedent causes, say that Jacob was chosen in Rebecca's womb and Esau rejected — just as Jeremiah and John the Baptist are chosen in the womb, and the Apostle himself is predestined unto the Gospel before he is born.
But nothing pleases us except what is of the Church, and we are not afraid to declare openly in the Church that we may not, after the manner of Pythagoras and Plato and their disciples — who under the Christian name introduce the doctrine of the heathen — say that souls have fallen from heaven and, according to the diversity of their merits, atone for the sins of their former life in these or those bodies. It is far better simply to confess our ignorance and, among the other things we do not know, to shun also the obscurity of this passage, than, while we wish to prove God's justice, to defend the heresy of Basilides and Mani and to follow Spanish nonsense and Egyptian monstrosities.
Let us then say, as best we can, and, following the footprints of the apostolic intention, let us not depart from his opinions even by a point, as it is said, nor by a nail's breadth. He had wept above and had called the Holy Spirit to witness his grief and his conscience, because his brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh, that is, the Israelites, had not received the Son of God — theirs was the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promise, of whom also Christ Himself according to the flesh was born of the Virgin Mary — and he is tormented by such continual anguish of heart that he himself wishes to be anathema from Christ, that is, to perish alone, lest the whole Israelite race perish.
And because he had said this, he immediately foresees a question coming from the opposite side: 'What then dost thou say? Have all who are of Israel perished? And how didst thou thyself and the rest of the apostles and the countless multitude of the Jewish people receive Christ the Son of God?' — which he resolves thus: Israel in the holy Scriptures is called by a double name and is divided into two sons: into one who is according to the flesh, and into another who is according to the promise and the Spirit. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael, who was born according to the flesh, did not receive the father's inheritance; Isaac, who was begotten of Sarah according to the promise, is called the seed of God. For it is written: 'In Isaac shall thy seed be called,' that is:
not those who are the children of the flesh are the children of God, but those who are the children of the promise are reckoned as the seed. And we prove that this happened not only in the case of Ishmael and Isaac, but also in the two sons of Rebecca, Esau and Jacob, of whom the one was rejected, the other chosen. And he says all this in order to signify, by the elder brothers, Ishmael and Esau, that the people of the Jews was rejected, and by the younger, that is, in Isaac and Jacob, the chosen people of the Gentiles or those who from among the Jews were to believe in Christ. And since, wishing to prove this, he had set forth the testimony of the twins Esau and Jacob at their birth, of whom it is written, 'the elder shall serve the younger,' and in Malachi we read:
'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,' he sets forth after his manner a question arising from the side, and discusses it, and, this resolved, he returns to the matter which he had begun to argue. If Esau and Jacob were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, so as either to earn God's favor or to offend Him, and their election and rejection shows not the merits of each, but the will of Him who chooses and rejects — what then shall we say? Is God unrighteous? — according to that example which He speaks to Moses: 'I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy,'
'and I will show mercy to whom I show mercy.' If, he says, we accept this, that God does whatever He wills, and without merit and works either chooses someone or condemns him, then it is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy — especially since the same Scripture, that is, the same God, speaks to Pharaoh: 'For this very purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.'
If this is so, and according to His own will He has mercy on Israel and hardens Pharaoh, then in vain does He complain and bring charges that we have either not done good or have done evil, since it lies in His power and will, apart from good and evil works, either to choose someone or to reject him, especially since human frailty cannot resist His will. This weighty question, woven together by the reasoning of the Scriptures and almost insoluble, the Apostle resolves in a brief word, saying: 'O man, who art thou that repliest against God?' And the meaning is:
From the very fact that you reply to God and make accusation and inquire so much from the Scriptures, so as to speak against God and to question the justice of His will, you show that you are of free will and that you do what you wish, whether to keep silent or to speak. For if you think that you have been created by God in the likeness of a clay vessel and cannot resist His will, consider this: that the clay vessel does not say to the potter, 'Why hast thou made me thus?' — for the potter has power out of the same clay and the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another indeed unto dishonor — but God begot all by an equal lot and gave them freedom of will, that each one may do what he wishes, whether good or evil.
So greatly, moreover, did He give power to all, that the impious voice may argue against its Creator and pry into the causes of His will. But if God, willing to show His wrath and to make known His power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, that He might show the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy, which He prepared unto glory, even us whom He also called, not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles — as He says in Hosea: 'I will call that which was not my people, my people, and her that was not beloved, beloved; and it shall be in the place where it was said to them, Ye are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God,' and the rest that follows.
If, he says, God's patience hardened Pharaoh and long deferred the punishments of Israel, that He might more justly condemn those whom He had borne with for so long a time, then it is not God's patience and boundless clemency that are to be blamed, but the hardness of those who abused God's goodness to their own destruction. Otherwise, the heat of the sun is one, and according to the natures underlying it, it melts some things, hardens others, dissolves some, binds others tight; for wax is melted and clay is hardened, and yet the nature of the heat is not diverse.
So too God's goodness and clemency hardens the vessels of wrath, which are fitted for destruction, that is, the people of Israel; but the vessels of mercy, which He prepared unto glory, which He also called, that is, us who are not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles, He does not save irrationally and apart from the truth of judgment, but on the ground of antecedent causes, because some did not receive the Son of God, others willingly chose to receive Him. Now these vessels of mercy are not only the people of the Gentiles, but also those who from among the Jews were willing to believe, and there was made one people of believers. From this it is shown that it is not nations that are chosen, but the wills of men; and so it came to pass that what was spoken through Hosea might be fulfilled:
'I will call that which was not my people, my people' — that is, the people of the Gentiles — and those to whom it was formerly said, 'Ye are not my people,' shall now be called sons of the living God. And lest he should seem to say this only of the Gentiles, he also calls those who believed out of the multitude of the Israelites vessels of mercy and of election. For Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: 'If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved' — that is: even if the multitude has not believed, yet a few shall believe. For God, having completed and shortened His word, has weighed it in His own equity, that by the humility and incarnation of Christ He might save those who were willing to believe in Him. This very thing Isaiah says also in another place:
'Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we should have become as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah.' And when he had set forth the testimonies by which the double calling, both of the Gentiles and of the Jewish people, is foretold, he passes on to the connected argument, and therefore says that the Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, laid hold of righteousness, because they were not proud but believed in Christ; whereas a great part of Israel therefore fell, because it stumbled at the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense, and was ignorant of the righteousness of God, and, seeking to establish its own righteousness, would not submit to the righteousness of God, which is Christ.
I have read in someone's commentaries that the Apostle so answered as rather to entangle than to resolve the question. For he says that, to what he had proposed — 'What then shall we say? Is there unrighteousness with God?' and 'It is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy,' and 'On whom He wills He has mercy, and whom He wills He hardens,' and 'Who can resist His will?' — the Apostle answered thus: 'O man, who art earth and ashes, dost thou dare to raise a question with God, and, a fragile vessel of clay, dost thou rebel against thy potter? Can the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Or has not the potter of the clay power out of the same lump to make one vessel indeed unto honor, and another unto dishonor?'
'Be silent therefore with eternal silence, and know thy frailty, and raise no question with God, who did what He willed, that He might show Himself merciful toward some and severe toward others.' As for what the Apostle writes in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: 'to some the savor of death unto death, and to others the savor of life unto life; and who is sufficient for these things?' — Let us set forth the whole chapter of this passage, so that from what precedes and what follows the middle parts, which are woven together out of both, may be understood. 'When I had come,' he says, 'to Troas for the Gospel of Christ, and a door was opened to me in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them I set out for Macedonia.'
'But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ Jesus and makes manifest through us the savor of the knowledge of Him in every place; for we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved and in them that perish: to the one indeed a savor of death unto death, to the others a savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as very many, who peddle the word of God, but of sincerity, but as of God, before God, we speak in Christ.' He recounts to the Corinthians what he had done, what he had suffered, and how in all things he gives thanks to God, that by his own example he may spur them on to strive. 'I came,' he says, 'to Troas, which was formerly called Troy, to preach the Gospel of Christ in Asia.'
'And when a door was opened to me in the Lord' — that is, when very many had believed, whether through the signs and mighty works which God wrought in me there was hope of a faith being born and growing up in the Lord — 'I had no rest for my spirit' — that is, I could not find the hoped-for consolation — 'because I did not find Titus my brother,' whether the one whom I thought to find there, or the one whom I had heard to be dwelling there, or who had said that he would come there. But what was so great a consolation, and what rest for the spirit in the presence of Titus, that, because he did not find him, taking his leave of them he set out for Macedonia?
We have said several times that the Apostle Paul was a most learned man, educated at the feet of Gamaliel, who harangues in the Acts of the Apostles and says: 'And now what have you to do with these men? For if it is of God, it will stand; if it is of men, it will be destroyed.' And although he had knowledge of the holy Scriptures and possessed the grace of speech and of diverse tongues — whence he himself glories in the Lord and says, 'I thank God that I speak with tongues more than you all' — he could not unfold the majesty of the divine meanings in worthy Greek eloquence. He had therefore Titus as an interpreter, just as the blessed Peter had Mark, whose Gospel was composed with Peter narrating and Mark writing.
Finally, the two epistles which are ascribed to Peter differ from each other in style and character and in the structure of the words; from which we understand that, according to the necessity of matters, he used different interpreters. Therefore the Apostle Paul too is grieved, because he had not found in the present circumstance the pipe and organ of his preaching, through which he might sing to Christ; and he went on into Macedonia — for a man of Macedonia had appeared to him, saying, 'Come over and help us' — that there he might find Titus and visit the brethren, or be tested by persecutions. For this is what he says: 'But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ Jesus' — instead of, 'He triumphs over us,' or 'He conducts His triumph through us' — He who in another place had said: