講道與書信 第 78 章 第 1/6 段

CHAP. I.—Today, dearest brethren, we solemnly keep the day of him, namely, who, governing all things with the Father, created every day; the Word, I say, who in the beginning said: 'Let there be light, and there was light' (Gen. 1:3). His flesh today was made bright upon the mountain, as the Gospel text relates. Upon the mountain, before two prophets and three disciples, the Lord was transfigured; namely, that he might grant us hope of his Divinity, he willed to show them his face whiter than snow. But if anyone wishes to know who these prophets were, let him run to the most sublime utterances of the evangelists.

But if to anyone Luke seems to differ from the two former evangelists, because he reports that this brightness of the Lord was shown not after six days but after eight (Luke 9:28), let him run to the trope of the grammarians. For there is among them a trope which is called syllepsis, where for one many, and for many one is comprehended, and the whole is taken for the part, and the part for the whole; and let him know that Luke nonetheless wrote figuratively of the day when the promise was made, and comprehended in his Gospel that day too when it was fulfilled. That is to say, when the Lord had promised this, it was evening; and when he was transfigured, it was nevertheless appearing morning.

But Matthew and Mark, passing over the days of the promise and of the transfiguration, chose to hand down to perpetual remembrance only the six whole intervening days. CHAP. II.—Nevertheless, if anyone should ask why he willed to be transfigured before two prophets and three disciples, let him recall the very brilliant first discourse of the Lord; he himself says to the Jews: 'In your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true' (John 8:17). And that he might show himself to be the one who said to Moses, 'I am who I am, and thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you' (Exod. 3:14):

and who had sent that same Moses to Pharaoh for the deliverance of the children of Israel, and had given him the law on Mount Sinai, and had carried the prophet Elijah in a fiery chariot into the aerial heaven, he brought these witnesses, by divine power, along with the disciples, to contemplate the transfiguration of his brightness; recalling, namely, one of them from the threshold of death, the other from the translation of paradise. For no one could know the sepulcher of Moses, save he who commanded and brought him to himself; and no one had known whither Elijah was translated, save he who had called him to himself. For this is the Only-begotten of the Father, who for the redemption of the human race willed to be made the firstborn of a mother.

For in this today's transfiguration he willed to unite the concord of both pages [of Scripture]. For that he might show himself to be Lord of the law and of the prophet, he willed to bring these to the testimony of the evangelists. In this transfiguration indeed it pleased him, the dispenser of the Father, to show the dispenser of the Son, namely Peter to Moses, and he willed to demonstrate the chaste old man to the chaste new, Elijah to John. Two suns the disciples beheld on the mountain today: one which was contemplated by them all in the firmament, and another which, shining more splendidly than it, was seen by the prophets and disciples—the face of Jesus. But this Sun, which glowed on the mountain, illumined by its power the one which is in the firmament.

For this is the Sun of justice, burning and shining; for by burning it kindles the faithful in itself, by shining it illumines all. For concerning this Sun John says: 'He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world' (John 1:9). CHAP. III.—But that his brightness might be instilled in us more surely than sure, after his countenance was transfigured into another form, and he was overshadowed by a bright cloud with the apostles, he was truly glorified by the Father: 'This,' he said, 'is my beloved Son, hear him' (Luke 9:35). But the disciples, not bearing so great a voice, fell upon their faces; and when Moses and Elijah withdrew, there remained alone the divine offspring, who, raising them up, said, 'Do not fear,' which is to say:

Let those fear who do not believe, let those fear whom phantasms delude. You, who obey the Son of the Father, and are present at his hidden secrets, for what reason are you afraid? Yet the holy disciples, looking up, saw no one but Jesus alone; so that it might be clearly demonstrated that the voice which had been sent was fitting not to Moses, not to Elijah, but to the Only-begotten Son alone. Concerning this vision indeed a certain most eloquent poet marvels and praises together the merit of these three apostles, saying (Sedulius, Book III, v. 284 ff.): 'O sublime merit of the three, to whom it fell to see in the world those things not believed by the world! What? that they saw both Elijah and Moses illustrious in virtue, unknown to the eyes, by the light of the heart.'

'That our faith may be the greater, that he is throughout the world the Beginning and the End, this one, namely, the Alpha and: whom such prophets shone round about in the midst. The one still living, the other standing in the light of life: and with a starry sound, saying, This is my Son, the Father's voice showed Christ begotten by his word.' Hence indeed to Moses beseeching and saying, 'Show me thy glory,' the Lord says: 'You shall not be able to see my face: for man shall not see me and live. Behold,' he says, 'there is a place with me, and you shall stand upon the rock; and when my glory shall pass, I will place you in a cleft of the rock, and I will protect you with my right hand, until I pass by, and I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back parts, but my face you shall not be able to see' (Exod. 33:18, 20 ff.).

What then, most beloved, is this? What indeed is this? Has no one ever seen the Lord? Has one of these lied, who said: 'No one has ever seen God, except the Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, he himself has declared him' (John 1:18)? Is the almighty Father, incomprehensible and immense and invisible, believed to be corporeal, or are bodily members ascribed to him, so that he is reported to have back parts? Great is this, deep is this; and for such little ones it is not easy to search out a thing so deep. But it is to be opened only by him who, when he wills, opens the mouth of brute animals to speak. O Holy Spirit, unlock for us this supreme utterance of the Father.

Attend more diligently, attend more cautiously, most beloved, and together with me prepare your minds. CHAP. IV.—'When I shall have passed by,' says the Lord, 'you shall see my back parts, my face you shall not be able to see' (Exod. 33:23). For the face of the Lord is his incomprehensible Deity; but his back parts are to be believed to be the assumed humanity of the Son. Assuredly by the face, which is the first part of the body, is intimated the Divinity before all ages; but the back parts are the humanity of Christ, which came to us in the last times through the inviolate Mary. On this day indeed, what he promised to his servant Moses, the Father faithfully fulfilled through the Son. Concerning this solemnity of this day David says:

'You have put on confession and beauty, clothed with light as with a garment' (Ps. 104:1). Christ put on confession and beauty when he was glorified with the glory of the paternal voice; he was clothed with light as with a garment when with the splendor of the sun he showed to the disciples his glittering countenance. Concerning this solemnity too the prophet Habakkuk marveled, when it was chanted by him: 'Lord, I have heard your report and I was afraid, I have considered your works and was terrified' (Hab. 3:1). Did he marvel and grow terrified at the fabric of the world? No. But at what did he marvel and grow terrified? Hear what follows: 'In the midst,' he says, 'of two living creatures you will be known.'

O most beloved, what is it to be known in the midst of two living creatures? Unless it be either in the midst of the two Testaments, or in the midst of Moses and Elijah conversing with him today on the mountain. For this is the cornerstone, in which each wall deserved to be joined together, namely the Old Testament and the New. The Old was signified by Moses and Elijah, by whom the law and the prophets are designated. The New by Peter and James and John, by whom the holy and venerable Gospel is designated. Or by Moses and Elijah that former Jewish people, by Peter, James, and John the Gentile people is designated. But this is the people walking in darkness, which saw a great light;

to which light may the Only-begotten of the Father lead us to contemplate in that fatherland, in which the just shall shine like the sun, and God himself shall be all in all, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns and is glorified as God through all things. 1. To these words of Leo, sermon 3, chap. 2: 'The solidity of that faith which was praised in the prince of the apostles is perpetual,' Quesnel appended this annotation: 'He explains the words of Christ the Lord, that what was praised in Peter is that rock upon which he promises to build his Church, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, because it is perpetual; and as he says in chap.

3, it received the firmness of the rock, which could be shaken by no impacts, so that neither could heretical depravity ever break through it, nor pagan perfidy overcome it.' In the same sense he expounds the same words in sermon 3 (now 4), chap. 2 and 3, and in sermon 60 (now 62), or On the Passion 11, chap. 2. Thus far he. But lest this interpretation, which accommodates the name of the rock to the faith praised in Peter, be believed to favor those who—expounding the testimony of Christ, 'Upon this Rock I will build my Church,' not of Peter but of the faith—contend that it in no way pertains to establishing the prerogatives of Peter and his successors, Leo's mind must be more exactly explained. 2. When the holy

pontiff explained the rock, upon which Christ promised to build his Church, of the faith or of the solidity of that faith which Christ himself praised in Peter, we shall most clearly show that Leo understood not faith in general, nor the private faith of Peter, but that faith which he preached, whose deposit he left in the Roman see, and transmitted to his successors with an equal privilege of solidity: hence indeed it will be plain how accurately Quesnel wrote in the postil appended to sermon 65, chap. 2, in general terms: 'The rock, upon which the Church is built and against which hell does not prevail, is solid faith.' 3.

That indeed the faith preached by Peter is to be understood according to Leo's mind, the same pontiff openly declares in the aforementioned sermon 62, chap. 5. For he affirms that Peter, by God's revelation, went before all the apostles in the profession of faith, so that, being prepared for the government of the whole Church, he might first learn what he would teach, and for the solidity of the faith WHICH HE WAS ABOUT TO PREACH, might hear: 'You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' Behold, he attributes the solidity and the name of the rock, upon which the Church was to be built and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, to that faith which Peter was about to preach, and by preaching which he was about to build the Church.

But lest hereby the name of rock be taken away from Peter, the Author testifies that, on account of this solidity of the faith to be preached, Peter himself too was constituted a rock, in sermon 4, chap. 2. For thus he introduces Christ speaking: 'You too are a rock, because you are made solid by my power'; and therefore he calls not so much the faith of Peter as Peter himself the rock of the catholic faith, in epistle 119, to Maximus of Antioch, chap. 2. 4. But since the same Peter chiefly left the deposit of this faith in the Roman Church and see, and transmitted it to his successors the Roman pontiffs, Leo openly discloses that the same solidity of faith which was in Peter perseveres and shall persevere in this Church, and in the successors of Peter by a peculiar privilege, until the end of the world, in these words of sermon

3, chap. 2: 'For the solidity of that faith which was praised in the prince of the apostles is perpetual: and just as what Peter believed in Christ abides, so what Christ instituted in Peter abides.' Christ instituted, namely, that his faith, upon which the Church was to be built, should be so solid that against it the gates of hell should never prevail, which requires a perpetual solidity of faith. But he who thus affirmed this solidity of faith to be perpetual, assuredly acknowledged that it did not cease in Peter, but passed over into his successors: whence in sermon 5, chap. 4, he says: 'For that solidity, which he (Peter), himself made a rock, received from the Rock Christ, transfuses itself also into his heirs.'

Into those heirs, namely, it has been transfused, in whom he indicates in several places that Peter lives, and still governs and teaches the Church. Wherefore in sermon 3, chap. 3, attributing to blessed Peter the ever-persevering solidity of the rock, he says: 'The disposition of truth therefore remains, and blessed Peter, persevering in the received strength of the rock, has not abandoned the helm of the Church which he undertook.' We could bring forward concordant testimonies of other Fathers, which we have collected in another treatise to be published someday, if it please God. But it was our purpose here to disclose the opinion of Leo alone. And how much this opinion contributes to establishing the prerogatives of the Roman see, no one fails to see. 1. On the described testimony Quesnel noted these things.

'So excellent an opinion, although already illustrated by the observations of many, the plan of our undertaking does not permit us to pass over untouched. After St. Leo asserted at the beginning of the chapter that the edifice rises upon the firmness of the faith asserted through Peter, and that, in view of this confession, the power signified by these words was handed over to him: "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven," etc. (Matt. 16:19); he subjoins that it was given not to Peter alone, but that the right of this power passed also into the apostles: yet that it was intimated singularly to Peter, so that in one all the rulers of the Church might learn what was entrusted to them, and the whole form of Peter might be set forth as a model.

For just as the prince of the apostles had uttered the confession of faith on behalf of all, and all had answered in him and through him; so also on behalf of all he received the power of the keys, and all received it in him and through him. Hence again Leo asserts that, just as there is a power common to all, so also there is a privilege common to all, the honor of the primacy excepted; and that that privilege of Peter remains wherever throughout the lands, through the bishops the successors of the apostles, judgment is passed according to the equity of Peter; and accordingly that the privilege of Peter does not remain wherever judgment is not passed according to his equity.

By which sentence, says Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, in a letter drawn up in the style of Hincmar of Rheims, it is established that the privilege of Peter does not remain where judgment is not passed according to his equity. For since it is said 'wherever,' just as no place, so no ruler of the Church passing judgment according to the equity of Peter is excepted, or one pronouncing against his equity is commended. And because 'wherever,' without any exception, the privilege of Peter does not remain where judgment is not passed according to his equity, shall we obey a command, or receive a judgment, which shall not have been pronounced according to the equity of Peter, and shall through this have been destitute of his privilege? (Epistle of Charles the Bald, to Pope Hadrian, among the Hincmarian letters of the last edition).

To the same words of Leo the same Hincmar, and also other Gallican bishops, allude in the synod of Troyes of the year 878, who, confirming by the vote of Pope John VIII, in the present synod, the condemnation of Lambert, enemy of the Roman Church, excommunicated (as they say) by the privilege of blessed Peter and of the apostolic see, seem to interpret that privilege and equity of the apostolic see as concerning judgment pronounced according to the sacred canons founded by the Spirit of God and consecrated by the reverence of the whole world; and again, according to the path of the Scriptures, and the decrees of the sacred canons. See Peter de Marca pursuing these things more fully in book 4 of On the Concord of the Priesthood and the Empire, chapters 6 and 8.» Thus Quesnel, where toward the end St.

Bending Leo's words gradually more to his own purpose than to the mind of the holy pontiff, he insinuates that only those judgments of the Roman pontiffs themselves enjoy the privilege and the equity of Peter, and are ratified, which are pronounced according to the norm of the canons. He drew out so lengthy an annotation, perhaps, with this design: that Leo himself, once this testimony had been so explained, might seem to favor those things which he was meditating to establish in the case of Hilary of Arles (Dissertation 5), wherein he contends that Hilary rightly resisted Leo when Leo exercised judgment against the rules of the canons, as he himself invents, and this because it was not hidden, he says there (Part III, ch. 1),

the prerogative of the chief prelates over the lower bishops is inert and idle, since nothing is claimed by them except according to the norm of the canons. This is not the place to discuss Leo's judgment in the case of Hilary of Arles, which was undertaken and held at Rome both from natural equity and from the rules of the canons, as will be fully demonstrated in the Observations on that same Quesnellian dissertation. Here only, lest the testimony of the holy pontiff be dragged into a sense foreign to him — one that favors disobedience and impugns the prerogatives of the Roman See — the genuine meaning of Leo's proposition must be explained from Leo himself. 2. When therefore the holy

pontiff declares that the privilege of Peter abides wherever judgment is pronounced from his equity, he is speaking of judgments concerning persons and especially concerning crimes, as is clear from what he immediately subjoins in the same sermon about excessive severity or excessive laxity, and also from Sermon 5, ch. 5, where he says: 'While the right of binding and loosing remains with us, through the governance of the most blessed Peter both the condemned is led to penance and the reconciled is brought to pardon.' Now this is the privilege of Peter: that whatsoever he shall have loosed or bound on earth may be loosed or bound in heaven.

But in those judgments which are pronounced by the princes of the Church concerning offenders, Leo teaches that this privilege of Peter abides if the judgment is pronounced from the equity of Peter himself — namely, if it be as upright and just as the judgments of Peter were upright and just. For 'equity' in this place is taken for real justice, so that the one who is bound, that is, condemned, is truly a sinner, and the one who is absolved is truly a penitent. For those who are of this kind, when they are bound or loosed on earth, are bound or loosed also in heaven.

But if through some error or through anyone's fraud there be bound or condemned one who, though judged guilty in the external forum, is yet truly innocent; and if, on the other hand, there be absolved one who is believed penitent but in truth approaches feignedly and is not converted before God — who would believe that to be bound or loosed in heaven which is thus loosed or bound on earth? Nothing further can be drawn from the whole context of Leo. The whole passage regards the judgments of the Church held on earth in relation to the divine judgment in heaven. 3. There is here nothing about the canons or about a method of canons; those who think Peter's equity must necessarily be derived from these ought to indicate which canons Peter followed in order to pronounce judgments from equity.

The canons indeed had regard to natural equity when they prescribed certain rules for judgments. But the equity of Peter which is here indicated must be referred to natural justice or equity — which is what the substance of the canons regards — and not to the discipline or method of the canons, without which Peter most equitably bound or loosed. 4. So long as the judgments of the Roman pontiffs preserve this natural justice and equity, it makes no difference whether they are pronounced according to a fixed method and discipline of the canons, or otherwise by that supreme authority whereby, not in the substance of natural equity but in the method and discipline of the canons, they can sometimes dispense or alter, and this from equity itself:

for they will always enjoy the privilege of Peter, and whatsoever they shall have loosed or bound by the authority of Peter will be loosed or bound in heaven. Just as, on the contrary, if any judgments were pronounced by them even according to the rules and method of the canons, which yet lacked real equity and justice — a thing that can happen especially through an error of fact and the deceit of witnesses or documents — then the method and discipline of the canons, though observed, would profit nothing.

For although they ought to be held ratified and observed by the Church so long as the error is not detected and the judgment is not retracted (as many theologians and canonists teach, drawing from the very institutions of the Fathers and the rules of the canons), yet God in heaven would not bind or loose one who on earth was bound or absolved through error and deceit. This is the genuine and open interpretation of Leo's principle, from which the use or abuse of that same principle will easily be discerned; so that there is no need to discourse further about the testimony of Charles the Bald, which — being something to be weighed from its whole context and from peculiar circumstances — would require a longer disputation by no means necessary to the present matter.

We have reserved for this place Quesnel's longer annotation concerning usury, appended to Sermon 17 against a newfangled error. 'So evidently,' he says, 'is the novel dogma about the free faculty of lending at interest to the rich here overturned (a dogma into which, grievous to say, some among Catholics are swept away), that it is worth the trouble to consider Leo's doctrine more attentively. It is clear, then, that he assails not only that usury which is exacted from the poor, but absolutely all usury — as do those who condemn all usury and have nothing peculiar to say about the poor. Secondly, he condemns him who seizes upon the necessities of laboring men in order to multiply his own wealth by immoderate increases: which scarcely happens with a small sum received from the poor;

but rather from copious gains, which are reaped while someone seizes upon the necessities of laborers — that is, of businessmen — and receives back money lent that has been augmented with immoderate profits. Thirdly, he refutes the reasoning of those who contend that they are conferring a benefit when they give their money at interest to businessmen; for such a benefit he calls deceitful services, deceitful profit, unjust and shameless avarice, which claims to confer a benefit while it deceives — a lust for unjust gain, etc. Fourthly, he declares in general that the interest of money is the death of the soul;

that the iniquity of usury must be utterly fled, and that he is a stranger from the holy mountain of God who seizes deceitful gain from the interest of his money. Fifthly, he says that the moneylender is either wretched by losing what he gave, or more wretched by receiving what he did not give. Here he shows that the iniquity of usury is properly reckoned to consist in this: that one receives what he did not give, against the general sentence of God which, as St. Ambrose writes in the book On Tobias, excludes every increase of the principal. For usury, as Jerome defines it, is to receive more than one gives. Sixthly, gather from these words how feeble are the petty reasonings which moneylenders hold out to excuse their avarice:

'Whatever the outcome may be, the account of the moneylender is always evil, for whom both to have diminished the money and to have increased it is a sin.' Hence, according to Leo's mind, whether this interest seem to turn to the advantage of the one who receives the loan, or to his loss, or with peril and loss to the giver, or with profit — the account of the moneylender is always evil. See also his Epistle 3, alias 1 (now Epistle 4), chs. 3 and 4, where, with no mention made of the poor, he condemns by a general sentence all who ply usurious money and wish to grow rich by interest; and he grieves that this falls upon those who desire to be called Christians.' So far Quesnel.

But many things disputed on this matter against the same error will be found in several works most recently published, and especially in the celebrated work of the supreme reigning pontiff Benedict XIV, On the Diocesan Synod, book VII, ch. 47; who moreover condemned the same error by apostolic authority in the Encyclical issued on the 1st of November in the year 1745, and inserted in tome I of the same pontiff's Bullarium. 1. To those words of Leo in Sermon 20, ch. 1: 'Rightly did the apostolic ordinances arrange that the usefulness of the ancient fasts should remain, and although the custom of the Church had learned to exercise itself with more prolonged chastisements, it should nevertheless embrace the sanctification of continence coming from the law,' etc., Quesnel appends this annotation:

'Let the theologians of a later age see by what reasoning they can reconcile their doctrine with the documents of the holy Fathers — those who, from the perfection of the law of grace, prefer the shorter chastisements of today's fasts to the longer ones. Thus argues Alexander of Hales, Part IV, question 28, on fasting, member 7: The hour of fasting is the ninth hour, which... up to evening.... The Church ought to keep a mean, so that in the time of fasting we might be refreshed at the middle time. St. Thomas treads in the footsteps of his master, 2-2, question 147, article 7, ad 1: To the first, then, he says, it must be said that the state of the Old Testament is compared to night, but the state of the New Testament to day; according to that saying to the Romans 13: The night is far spent, but the day is at hand.

And therefore in the Old Testament they fasted until night, but not so in the New Testament.' Our Leo philosophizes otherwise in the present sermon: 'The moral commands and precepts,' he says, 'remain as they were promulgated, since they insinuate nothing other than what they say, and among Christian devotion they grow by increase, they do not fall away by cessation.' And below: 'Although many things have been added by the newness of grace, yet nothing has been diminished from the antiquity of justice.' Consequently, he shows by this excellent reasoning that to exercise longer chastisements is the custom of the Church: 'For to those to whom it was granted to be able to do what is greater, it was unbecoming not to celebrate what is less.' In the same sense he writes in Sermon 14, On the Passion, ch. 5: