講道集 第 284 章

That the author is Saint Maximus of Turin, the same Vallarsius writes in the place cited above: with no one now denying it, although Saint Agobard, a writer of the ninth century, in his book Against Felix, chapter 20, transcribing a passage from it which we shall note in its proper place below, does not doubt that it is Jerome's. He says: 'The reader has, on this same matter, an opinion of blessed Jerome sufficiently full and clearly worked out, when he treated of that passage of divine Scripture where it is said: I will set,' and so on. Erasmus, on the contrary, says: 'This letter was indeed the work of an eloquent and learned man, and carefully elaborated; but it so differs from Jerome's manner of speech that neither could this man have imitated Jerome's diction had he wished, nor Jerome this man's.'

In most codices it bore no name; in certain ones the name of Ctesiphon was added. Nor in the letter itself is any mention made of him to whom it was written. The author, moreover, mentions Saint Ambrose and the finding of the bodies of Saints Gervasius and Protasius. But how unworthy this letter too is of Marianus, we have shown in the preface to the appendix. The variant readings of this letter, which we have appended, have been excerpted from codex 9, Plut. XIX of the Laurentian Library at Florence, page 337. CHAPTER I. — Behold, again I write to you, and I find nothing worthy that it should befit your prudence to read.

And is it any wonder if, in your absence, my talent grows cold like a heart deprived of the sun, and my mind, an exile from the light, grows numb, smothered by the cloud of folly, and I am the less wise the more widely I am parted from you? But if for the present anything in my discourse has pleased you, it will be granted to me by your prayers. Finally, that you may more diligently take note of all my folly: even my stomach, after the wax-plaster I had applied, I then tended in your absence — from you I deserve to suffer worse; upon it, after your holy ministry and angelic service, I laid the hands of physicians, as though there were no prophet in Israel, whereas, if I suffered anything, it ought to have been easier for me to return to you than to think in a pagan fashion;

and it were better to endure the toil of even the most difficult journey than to be cheated of so precious a sight as your countenance, so that any recompense whatever should rather follow than that I should betake myself to the fly of the religion of Ekron. These things this world suggested to me in your absence — the world which, when you are present, has no counsel in me. For you had made me a court of the prophets, not a conventicle of sirens. But now, entering into me for the destruction of the holy work against me, the whole senate of folly deals with me in a fourfold manner. For it exacts usury from one absent, which in your presence it did not presume to do, that you may understand that if I had any savour of God about you, it was yours that I so savoured. Thus in Moses' absence the people of Israel commit fornication (Exod. XXXII);

thus in the ship, while the Lord slept, the apostles are tossed by the tempest (Matt. VIII). Thus in the porticoes of Bethesda the man who has no one to put him into the healing pool is unknown (John V). Here too I mark another kind of fault. I tended the little body while the soul languished; I cherished the outer man while the inner was sick; I came to the aid of things human while things divine were in labour, bent as I was by the vice of common custom, whereby we are all cautious in the least matters and negligent in the greatest. And this happens because we do not know where the true life lies. This sun deceives us, of course, this day beguiles us, this span of time circumvents us. The world leads us astray, while we suppose that there is nothing greater than ourselves, and reckon that to be light which we see with our eyes;

and we judge that to be man which we behold, and believe that the world makes life, ignorant of where man is, and what man is, and what the life of that man is. But if we understood this, we should not have been begotten for one thing and live for another. Thus, having forsaken the source of life, we have lost also the reason for living. And first let us hear where that man is of whom we speak. CHAPTER II. — Since the very division has generated for us a certain disputation: whom you are to understand to be contained within this body, which was formed by the hand of the divine Craftsman from the mud of the earth, as it were within a vessel, the Apostle saying: We have this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. IV); who, poured everywhere throughout this body, has borrowed from the flesh a vital feeling which does not fail him.

He himself rules, and is not ruled; he possesses rather than is possessed, so that he does not receive life but administers it. For when the liquid spirit gave life to that earthy and sluggish matter, taken up for the use of ministry, he becomes lord of the body, not a man beneath the bodily. In short, this vessel of which I spoke lives while he is present, and dies when he departs. This visible and perishable thing, then, is either the dwelling, or the minister, or the sheath of that inner man. But he himself, who is truly man — since he is the second, he is the place of the division that has been made — as he is himself invisible, so all his belongings must of necessity be invisible. To him, if he is sick, the hand of physicians cannot reach; if he fails, he is not restored by the juices of herbs.

Nothing bodily can enter into him; only the likeness of his own substance descends to him; he is cured by the word, he regains strength by obedience. In short, when in the church of Laodicea he seemed, according to the outer man, both blessed and rich, and well-eyed and well-clothed, he is rebuked by the Lord, and it is said to him: Do you not know that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked (Rev. III)? He who, as I have said, was reckoned neither without clothing, nor without eyes, nor without riches. But that invisible God of ours saw that invisible man to be in poverty, in blindness, in nakedness; and to him He deigns even to give counsel, that

he should buy from Him gold refined by fire, and a white garment with which he may be most gloriously clothed, and eye-salve by which he may recover sight. He has therefore his own eyes besides these carnal ones, which he can either lose or heal; and beside himself he is naked, so much so that he needs clothing: but in a wondrous manner the Lord speaks to the physician, as He himself says, and bids him procure riches from Him. With what wares, if he is both naked and poor, will he buy either that most noble garment or that gold now purged by fire? Whence can the outlay for such commerce come? Namely, if either he warms into life the emoluments of the outer man, or by not using the very things by which he outwardly seemed rich, he grows wealthy;

and let him blind the eyes of the body, by which he was carried away with desire for worldly things, through contempt of the corrupt universe. Thus that invisible man, who truly, as we have said, is man, is both exalted in the contempt of this outer man, and clothed with nakedness, and enlightened with blindness. So Jacob discerned, by a bodily blindness, not only the places but also the merits of Ephraim and Manasseh, his grandsons (Gen. XLVIII). For when his son Joseph, who was presenting the aforesaid little ones, judged that he could not see them before his feet, he perceived in the father's answer that he foresaw even the things that were to be. But just as that inner man makes this outer one live by his own life, and gives it life by irrigating it from the fount of his own nature:

so, on the other hand, the outer man, through the corruption of his own death-bearing matter, kills the inner man, if he has bound him with unlawful desires. And since each seems of a nature different from the other, each passes into the substance of the victor, so that either the spiritual man renders the carnal also spiritual by his own virtues, or the conquering flesh makes his soul carnal. Finally, when the Lord in wrath resolved to blot out the human race, He said: My Spirit shall not remain in men, because they are flesh (Gen. VI). And since indeed we are all clothed with flesh, and yet without doubt we who do not walk according to the flesh are not in the flesh, it comes about from this too that man is not always reckoned by this name of appellation.

For according to his virtues or vices he takes on both forms and names. Thus the prophet says: Do not become like the horse and the mule (Ps. XXXI). There are therefore men who in the Lord's sight are horses and mules. And the Lord says: Do not cast your pearls before swine (Matt. VII). There are therefore men who are also swine. And again the Lord Himself: Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt. X). There are therefore men who are also wolves; and on the contrary there are men who are also sheep. And the Lord still says to Peter: Feed my sheep (John XXI); and He said before: Come after me, and I will make you a fisher of men (Matt. IV). There are therefore men who are also fish. But these appear to be forms of actions, not of bodies.

For the condition of our body is fixed, as of all living creatures; but since before God we are judged not by the condition of our body but by the merits of our life, it appears that every man forms for himself, by his own mind, his condition and name. And this indeed is furnished either by the fault or by the virtue of that invisible man whom we are describing. For it is his very vice, if, being made subject, he suffers himself to be subject; if, contrary to the divine disposition, there is servitude in ruling, and lordship in servitude.

But lest I seem — since, having as it were pulled down a bit of the wall, I have arrived by discussion at that invisible man — to be destroying the body altogether, which is of so great a sacrament that in this very body, that is, in our frail and infirm one, the Lord came, I have not done this, nor am I doing it; but I have attempted to show that the life of this outer man consists in the life of that inner man; that again the death of the inner descends from the death of this one; that where poison has been administered through vices, this outer man has nothing of life; that unless he has been irrigated by the inner, he holds nothing; and that the one passes into the nature of the other, as I have said, either infected by vices or cleansed by virtue.

Therefore, since I have now shown, so far as is permitted, both where man is and what man is, let us see what the life of that man now is. For if that worldly life, which holds evils for goods and goods for evils, which the whole world follows and cultivates — this life is not in the affluence of riches, not in the height of power, not in the cunning of jurisdiction, not in the pomp of eloquence, not in strength glorious in battles, not in merchandise increasing by the exchange of provinces and by its own travels, not in the allurement of beauties, not in the canvassing for offices, not, in short, in all these things which we see; since all these things pass away, and even according to the world a blessed life is wont to be lived without them.

But that is the true life, the venerable life: to know God, to fear His power, to love His mercy, to marvel at the world in its Maker, to despise the tempter, to be content with modest fare according to nature's necessity, to be clad in cheap clothing whether for the sake of modesty or against the harshness of the season. Thus to touch the rest of creation not out of its abundance, nor for a vital reason, but for the support of this present light. For whatever is more than this is of evil:

to love every man as a brother, to injure no one, to serve all, to bear the form of a servant along with the Lord, who — besides the ministry which is contained within — daily serves us in the world by bringing forth the sun, sending out light, pouring down rains, varying the seasons, both begetting and ripening the crops. For He serves us in the face and abundance of all creation, since He generated all things for us. But, to return to man's duties: to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to give the thirsty drink, to visit the sick, to grieve with the sorrowful, to bury the dead, to keep nothing by him as his own, but to judge all his goods common with all, and then rather to live for himself

when he is deemed to live for others, and to lay up for himself when he is believed to give out along with others. And yet these things still touch upon the lineaments of the outer man. CHAPTER III. — But that life of the inner man consists in the knowledge of divine things: not by what part of the sky the earth is revolved, not by what contrary course the dry things are swept along, not whether in the Ocean the fullness of the sea begets increase, not whether the very roundness suspends the globe of the world, or binds it fast with four-formed projecting corners, not whether the world itself is one, or whether there are many. For these things do not tend to the soul's benefit, and before God are judged foolish; but in those sound thoughts, when at any time it dwells, then it lives and is nourished. But what are these sound thoughts?

Those, without doubt, when our mind remembers its Author; when it venerates and contemplates its Maker, as it were through a certain coming to itself; when it marvels at His works, about to see Him Himself in His works, as blessed Paul says: For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, being understood through the things that are made, are clearly seen, and His eternal power also and Godhead (Rom. I):

that is, when from the immense visible things of creation we are stretched out toward the universality of the invisible Creator, and while through these we learn Him to be inestimable, we do estimate Him; when, unrolling His height through the gift of the Holy Spirit (since He alone admits us into Himself, who is from Himself), we look upon all the beginnings of rising creation as though we were prior, cast forth from Him; and when we behold the things that God made as though He were still making them; and, running through the whole origin of the world, we become as it were more ancient than we are in age; and although the universe was made before we existed, yet we reckon the nature of all things as though begotten through us, while we are engrafted into the Author: into which we entered not that we might serve, but that we might rule:

separated therefore from worldly wisdom, which ascribes the universe either to chance or to atoms; uplifted by divine meditations, and separated by His own help from those who have said that matter always existed and would have God to be only the craftsman of things; or from those who have worshipped these very elements as gods; or from those who have introduced families of gods, by sexes, by ages, by regions, as it were like some populace subject to the senses — set apart by the Holy Spirit, and drawn up into higher things, living the true life, that is, being wise with true wisdom, of which this folly is destitute: let us remember that the world was made out of nothing by God, and that all living creatures came, called forth through God, the Word being craftsman, which were not from nature.

For to Him alone is it lawful to call the things that are not, as though they were; and man himself, for whom so great a possession was being prepared, He deigned to make in His own image — not some Prometheus out of a fable, but that Founder of the universe — with His own hand also, from the mud of the earth, lest any part of him be lacking in us: which thought, as I have said, is the life of the soul; since this is the first principle of living, that the soul should not be ignorant to whom it owes itself; lest, deceived, it venerate another besides Him; lest it adore the ministers of its life as though they were the authors of life; lest it marvel so greatly at the elements that it judge unworthy the things which are believed to be made, when He rather is to be admired who produced things so marvellous. O how august is this divine thought, and how full of life!

O how greatly it kindles man himself to every pursuit of uprightness! O how greatly it commends to him the majesty of his Author, when he considers that nothing else in all creation, besides himself, was formed by the hand of God; not the earth, not the sea, not heaven, not, in short, the stars so bright, so pure, so luminous; that man alone, formed of a certain mud, and of a heavier and baser element, was fashioned by that right hand whose palm measures out heaven by measure; whose fist encloses the spaces of the earth lying so boundless — of such worth was it that he once existed. Yet let us see how greatly, besides, the kindness of the Creator applauds him, in that He did not make him from the stars:

since, if he had been created from thence, he would have prevailed rather by the brightness of his material than by the graciousness of the Craftsman, seeing that he would himself seem lesser than the origin of his own body. If, made from heavenly things, he were led down to the tilling of the earth, to the lands — for whom it would soon be more glorious to be roused from the soil and set among the stars. His own, I say, our God willed to be His own in a special sense, this that we are, that we should owe nothing to matter, nothing to the elements, nothing to any principles whatever, whether great or small.

All which things if the mind reconsider, and, turned in upon itself, ponder, they become more moderate and narrower than our first beginnings. But when, formed by the touch of God's hand, we ceased to be what we were, and, submitting to a new quality of matter, our nature was made glorious for its Craftsman through the transformation of the element, and there began to be a new element of our body among the elements — if it is lawful so to say — at once we were made more sublime than all the bodies of the world, not by the substance of our nature, but by the power of the Founder, through which there arose, from that which lay beneath the other creatures, that which should command all creatures.

In short, if you look upon the metal of our flesh and body, you will find nothing humbler, nothing baser, nothing more subject to every injury and suffering. Earth alone seems the handmaid of the other elements; alone it feels within itself the powers of all, not without harm to itself, whether when it is scattered dusty by the winds, or when, moistened, it is swallowed up by the floods, or when, baked by the fires of the stars, it is devoured: so that man cannot only not boast that he is from it, but can even blush. But truly, if we contemplate our condition, since it is more excellent than the other living creatures — inasmuch as God brings it in, formed after His own image — you will find that very earth to be the seed of our body.

If there were any feeling in it, it could have rejoiced that, for our sake — in whom it received the image and likeness of the Creator — it was made happier by being transformed than it was by being brought forth. For the hand of God touched it, whose touch, for its own sake, while it was coming to pass, it did not deserve. For what is more illustrious than this condition? What could we know more sublime? What so carefully digested into limbs? What so gracefully bent through the joints? What so loftily raised up into face and eyes? What so vocally modulated into words? What so vivaciously animated in the heart? What richer in sense? What more secret in thought? What more copious in speech? What stronger in genius? What better furnished in disposition? What more tenacious in memory?

What more soothing in affection? What more sublime in thought? So that it may evidently appear that He adorned into this body that first-formed man, already then graced with all dignities — nay rather, the condition of His Son, our God, who was to come at the end of the ages for our redemption; to whom, at that time also, He gave paradise under the law of death, as it were a most delightful estate, both beautified with city-charms and planted with rustic growths: which that fore-sower begrudged him, and, by deceiving the credulous newness of the first men, secretly plunged his own poison into our bodies, and, out of two substances, cut apart the single and perfect nature of man by a certain discord of division:

so that, whereas we had one mind — that is, the one which the kinship of soul and body begot — it might, through the corrupted nature, bring forth another will against the soul. Finally, the Apostle also says: I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members (Rom. VII). And elsewhere: The flesh lusts against the spirit, but the spirit against the flesh. These are contrary to one another, so that you may not do whatever things you will (Gal. V). CHAPTER IV. — Hence also this our Founder, who had made both us for ourselves and the world for us, offended by those first men, poured out curses upon each one, according as the greatness of the crime required.

And although angered, He nonetheless soon revealed, like a loving father, the mystery of our salvation. Nor would it have been fitting to think of the remedy of our salvation at any other time than that in which death had been discovered. Thus by the more prudent a physician is applied to death at the very first onset, so that, the seat of the sickness being detected, the saving remedy may more easily come to the rescue. Not then only, therefore, was the Lord and our Saviour promised, when Isaiah cries out: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son (Isa. VII), and then when it was said to Abraham: At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son (Gen. XVIII).

For this was now almost late, and so many thousands of patriarchs seemed to have died without hope, for whom there could indeed have been no life, if they had not hoped that the Lord was to come, the Apostle saying: For by hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; but that which is hoped for (Rom. VIII). And what hope could there be, if it had not been promised beforehand? Nay rather, as for the first man that beast, wiser than all the beasts, savoured death, so it behoved that Lord, the true Wisdom, even then at that time to savour the vital succour, which He also did. Nor did He cease to make it public, lest so great a work of His, driven back by the single battering-ram of the enemy, should seem to have been begotten for a fall rather than for glory, without any protection:

and at the same time lest he should be reckoned stronger, who could have overwhelmed so great a work of another's power, than He, if He had either been unable to preserve, or unwilling to repair, His own work, which He had ineffably made above all creatures. He defended Himself, I say, against this reproach. He, our Founder and Redeemer, defended Himself, and showed alike that He both could and would: since neither was the strength of power lacking, nor the graciousness to His mercy. These things are the more to be adored by us, in that under the very tempest of our error He did not halt, but, when provoked, broke forth even greater; in that where we deserved punishment, the hope of redemption is shown, and, while in the bitter peril of shipwreck, the harbour of salvation is opened;

so that, in a new manner, that which had been the matter of wrath began to be the source of clemency. If, by a hidden working, He was making manifest that He willed our infirmity to be the proof of His own power, and would show how greatly He loved us, even while we sinned against Him, whom He could not forget even after our errors — nay rather, whom He would redeem more preciously than He had made. Let human cruelty now seek out for the guilty either private punishments or public prisons, and, wrathful, sigh with iron manacles and hard fetters upon the rigid beam, and let loose its ingenuity in devising punishments of many kinds; and let every judge prove the chastity of his own mind by the peril of another's uplifted head — the more a friend to atrocity, the more he is a stranger to crime.

For those very men are wont to be more truculent toward the accused who are the purer from guilt. These, more zealously pursuing evildoings, or the contagion of criminals, have the less and the more negligently avoided fellowship with wicked deeds. O wretched men, endowed with every blindness, who adorn good with evil, who exalt continence under the guise of cruelty, and commend their own cruelty by another's misery — when by their own virtues they lend support to the destruction of the wretched, and, in the innocence of the judge, applaud the torments of the guilty. CHAPTER V.

— But our God, against all hope, against almost all belief, out of the riches of His mercy finding good in evil, begetting and confirming pity in wrath, willed the seed of sinning to issue in the fruit of compassion; and He who ought to have destroyed us on account of our transgression, promised, on account of His own mercy, that He would restore us. And at that very time when we deserved punishments, He showed the proof of salvation: that we might be able to understand how much He would avail to bestow when not praised, who bestowed so much upon those who were angered.

In the first man, therefore, as He spoke, He at once promised us judicial help, at once brought forth good things out of the good treasure, at once made public the sacrament, unknown even to the angels themselves, which was to be fulfilled in the last time, and to the earthly Adam He promised an Adam from heaven. For when He struck the serpent with a curse for its deserving, He bids it have the earth for food, and creep upon its belly; and since it had itself wrought that death, He added, saying: And I will put enmities between you and the woman, and between your seed and the seed of the woman. She shall tread upon your head, and you shall watch for her heel (Gen. III). Do you not consider, do you not perceive, what He then threatened against the same one in Christ?

For no seed of the woman do I at all understand except that of which the Apostle says: Made of a woman, made of flesh (Gal. IV); that of which, as the Evangelist says (Luke III), Joseph was thought to be the father, but was not — that, indeed, which was the Word made flesh (John I). For if we consider that common and natural manner of begetting, women do not have seeds; finally, none conceives without a man, and through this, since even then in Adam the seed of human generation was corrupted by transgression, a heavenly seed is promised, as the Apostle holds, not from the corruption of a man, but from God:

which, when it became flesh in the woman, would also naturally fit to itself those elements of bodily substance — that is, of moisture and blood — in that very vessel in which those very elements are placed. The Mother, therefore, of our Lord Jesus Christ was promised even then in that woman. She was set in enmity against the serpent: I will put, He says, enmities between you and the woman (Gen. III); certainly He does not say I put, lest it should seem to pertain to Eve. It is a word of promise, which is transmitted into things future. I will put, He says, enmities between you and the woman: that woman, assuredly, who should bring forth the Saviour, not who should beget a fratricide.

'I will put enmities,' He says, 'between thee and the woman' (Gen. 3) — a woman who, having renounced all readiness to believe too easily, would not so much as hearken to thee, even shouldest thou display the sweetness of the apples as a means of opening the eyes, or promise that she should become like unto the gods; nay, even when Gabriel himself bore the word to her, she would demand a reason for the newness of the promise, saying: 'How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?' (Luke 1). She indeed, whom at the vision of the angel a golden modesty set trembling, was yet by the ardor of faith and by a constancy that knows no falling made bold to seek out the reason; and she who by her silence rendered to the one arriving the tribute of modesty, did not, out of wonder, withhold from the one making the promise her inquiry. For she was anxious, and searched out that which was being announced.

Finally, the angel too did not rebuke her for unbelief, as he did in the case of Zacharias, but instructed her concerning the newness of the divine working, saying: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee' (Luke 1). Behold that seed of the woman, which was not to be poured into the womb through the succession of generative offices by the intermingling of the two sexes, but was to be found in the womb of an undeflowered virgin, her cloister remaining closed. And so the prophet, while promising in a new word a thing new and full of miracle, sets it forth: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son' (Isa. 7). Assuredly, day by day, in the necessity of begetting, we both see and hear; yet of none is it said, 'she conceived in the womb.'

For the substance of the man that is to be, poured forth through the man, grows together in the woman, and the womb of the woman is not the origin of the man about to be born, but the nourishment of that which is deposited there. But Mary conceived in the womb not so much as the first, but as the only one to do so; and the unimpaired state of her modesty brought forth a conception of the womb without loss of virginity — she who alone bore for us that which she did not receive from us, as the Lord says: 'Ye are from beneath, I am from above' (John 8). She who alone is a mother to her son, though she be a virgin to her husband; whose conceiving her virginity did not know, yet the birth acknowledged; who alone is called a woman not by conceiving, but by bearing.

From her, then, was promised the seed of the woman, who according to His manhood is the Lord our God, who was not poured into the womb but found there, as the evangelist confirms when he says of Mary: 'She was found with child in the womb' (Matt. 1). Behold, that which had been announced does not depart from the very word of the preceding prophet: 'A virgin shall conceive in the womb'; but even in the newness of the mystery it agrees with the like sense of the wording, and by that same style is the history of the deed set down by which it foretold what was to be done. And the prophet Isaiah says: 'A virgin shall conceive in the womb'; Matthew reports: 'She was found with child in the womb' (ibid.).

The effect answers to the very word of the promise, in that the evangelist speaks no otherwise than the seer, nor is he thrown into confusion by any difficulty of finding words to express the newness of the deed. Where are the grammarians? Where are the counsellors? What school produced these men, that they should speak beyond common usage? What master showed forth so openly the newness of a doctrine thus sealed? They do not declare by human sense that which they speak, because it is no human work. And yet a thing new and never before done they so note that thou mayest understand that, together with the marvellous deed, marvellous also was the word begotten. Let us then go back over the holy women of the patriarchs, and see whether it is so written of any of them. We read of Sarah: 'And the Lord visited Sarah, as He had said.'

'And God did unto Sarah as He had spoken to her, and she conceived and bore Abraham a son' (Gen. 21). In the case of Isaac, the divine favor is shown by these words: 'And God heard him, and Rebecca his wife conceived' (Gen. 25). Then likewise it is set down of the wives of Jacob: 'And Leah conceived, and bore Jacob a son' (Gen. 29), and so forth. Of none of these, assuredly, is it written 'she conceived in the womb,' though whatever they conceived they could not conceive outside the womb; but because they knew themselves to conceive from the embrace of a man, to whom conception did not come with virginity preserved; whereas Mary alone conceived in the womb, when, with the seminal entrance unopened and the womb closed, she conceived.

To the seed of this conception, if we reason rightly and handle the divine things inwardly, there went before in figure, for its time, that sentence which bound the firstborn with blessings or with obligations, the Lord saying: 'Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord' (Exod. 13). But what is this 'male that openeth the womb,' since it is not the necessity of childbearing that opens the wombs of all women, but the marital act of knowing? Indeed, no one is called a virgin after her husband — a name which seems fitting to the mysteries yet to come. And above we have shown that the Scripture says of Rachel: 'And God heard her, and opened her womb, and she conceived.' Certainly it did not first say 'she conceived,' and afterward 'He opened her womb';

but it first opened it: that is to say, so that the husband, the doors of the womb having been opened, might enter like one about to sow a ploughed field with seed. Then it adds, 'and she conceived.' And so it was not by the bringing forth, but by the conceiving; nay rather, the conception was disclosed; and it designated not the one to be born as he is being born, but him who was to sow the one about to be born. And if the womb was unbarred even before the conception — indeed, in order that she might conceive — assuredly he who was born could not for long unbar it, since he is said to be about to be born who could not even be conceived while she was closed: 'Every male,' it says, 'that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord' (Luke 2). What is this reasoning, which does not seem even according to the plain sense to be fulfilled?

Jacob fraudulently seizes the place of his firstborn brother, yet is neither hindered by the order of birth nor condemned for his craftiness. The sons of Joseph are marked by their grandfather with a blessing preposterous as to the degree of birth; yet it was not blindness in the one who foresaw, nor did the son who warned bend the right hand of his parent, which was watering the younger with the juice of a richer blessing. All of which things are surely contrary to reason, if we suppose that of these it was said, 'Every male that openeth the womb' — those who are born first from women by the seed of a man. But because that sentence holds another meaning within, therefore these firstfruits of this kind give way and lose their blessings.

Jesse's son David, neither first, nor second, nor third, but last of all, is anointed by the prophet, and though the most contemptible of them all, is chosen to be king. Nor does the sentence of the law promulgated concerning the firstfruits flatter that first or second son against David; for surely it would have judged the greatest of them, had it judged that by these the wombs of their mothers were opened: whereas, in whom or in what case do we say it was fulfilled — that which surely could not but be fulfilled? Who is she whose womb the offspring, not the husband, unbars? What virgin conceives who did not cease to be a virgin in order to conceive? Certainly not she of whom Scripture says: 'Adam knew his wife, and she bore him a son' (Gen. 4); but she of whom the evangelist marks:

'And Joseph knew her not, until she had brought forth a son' (Matt. 1). Therefore in Mary this was without doubt perfected: whose womb no deflowering of virginity unbarred, but the birth poured forth — she who as a virgin bore, who as a virgin conceived, who was made a mother before she was made a wife. From her went forth that male which was truly to be called holy; and he unbarred the womb as a birth brought out according to promise, not according to common custom and nature when it is conceived by the seed of a man. CHAP. VI. — But since we cannot swiftly unfold the rich meanings of God, so great being the movements of the Scriptures that array themselves against a single point, so that it is easier to be wearied than to escape:

since all Scripture is a single track of all its meanings, which who shall be strong enough to run along in human speech — no, not even if the Spirit should ascribe angelic wings to the tongues of mortals — it is fitting to return to our purpose, and with a little vessel not to spread sails toward the deep, lest daring should run into peril, but, for the solace of our weakness, to sail within sight of the shore, so that if any fear should arise, there may at least be hope that what is seen can easily be laid hold of. We were saying that the seed of the woman is the holy Lord, because according to the flesh He would have no man for a father, and that He is already hostile to the serpent, whom the Spirit of God, not a material moisture, had begotten in the virgin's womb. Then that which follows brings forth from the virgin an effect greater than from a man:

'She herself shall bruise thy head' (Gen. 3). Who doubts that, save our Lord, no one has trodden upon the head of the serpent? For He alone has walked upon dragons and scorpions; He Himself has led captivity captive: 'and thou shalt bruise His heel' — to what other do we believe this to pertain? The heel indeed is the extreme part of the footstep. And the Lord, after the baptism of John, after the fast of forty days, when He is tempted by the same serpent, as victor over that third piece of craft cries out: 'Get thee behind me, Satan' (Matt. 4). What else does He command but that Satan, being placed or cast behind, should watch His heel?

These things I said above, and the discourse itself has led us thence to this: that the inner man, when he thinks not of this world but above this very world, seems to live with that Maker of things as with his own, as David says, 'Blessed are they that search out His testimonies' (Ps. 118) — so that it is almost this, if it be lawful to say it, to become God: to meditate on divine things; and that He, our Lord, already then made known the mystery of our salvation; whence in the Psalms He says: 'In the head of the book it is written of me' (Ps. 39). The head of the book is the beginning of Genesis, since all Scripture is one book, and one is He of whom it is written, God; and thus we see the promise concerning Him to be even at the very head, and the head of our life is hope, and therefore in the head of the book was made, through God, the vital hope.

Him, I say — that Founder, as we have often said — now that the world grows old, He has bestowed what He had promised in the first age of the world. Whence the prophet says: 'Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me' (Ps. 22). The rod is the mother of the Lord, from which came forth that staff which should sustain the world now wearied with age. Him, therefore, having glided down into the virgin's womb — that we may weave anew the whole history of our redemption — He showed Himself made man by birth on behalf of man, and made His own creature out of the Creator. He took the form of a servant, but emptied Himself by the will of His power, not by the nature of His deity, whereby He could not but be what He had been. He earned curses in place of saving miracles.

Him it was who endured the spittle, the wounds, the crown of thorns, and at the last the cross; who penetrated the nether places, who on the third day rose again into that body which had been fixed to the cross; who, a man after death, God the living, sought heaven as victor, to sit at the right hand of God, to come in His own time to hold judgment; who is celebrated by the Spirit of God through the mouths of His saints. To have thought upon these things is to have lived; this thinking is the food of the soul; to slip back or run back into these things is to be joined with the Lord; and through these to be humbled with Him is to suffer with Him, to die with Him, and with Him also to be raised up. What shall I say of the resurrection itself, in which, though we be mocked by the heathen, we are not separated from Christ?

although even many who call themselves Christians exclude the resurrection of the flesh. But let those be without a body to whom perchance it is granted — if it be lawful to say so — to be presented to the Lord otherwise than the Lord Himself returned to the Father; but let us believe, and speak, as we do. CHAP. VII. — What, I ask, is more joyful than this thought? What could be more uplifting than this, or ought more firmly to cling and be fixed in our souls, than that we, one day, when we depart from here, shall return to our bodies; and that the separation of soul and body meanwhile does not so work that we should be nothing at all, but that we may be reformed into something better through the Spirit of God, since we have already received here that the Lord has promised us this pledge?

And this body, which in its own nature is perishable, and deservedly weighed down by reason of the former transgression, and is borne by the divine curse 'shall go to the earth' (Gen. 3); this same body again, after long ages — that is, in the end of the ages, when it shall be the smallest particle of ash, or perhaps none at all — shall be raised from that same earth which corrupts it into nothing (since the earth itself is to be delivered from the bondage of corruption), into the whole soundness of its members, and shall be renewed into a state of beauty and comeliness. Whom would such a thought not delight, together with wonder?

The remains, I say, of our bodies — whether none at all, or at most the smallest and least, yet foul, and never beheld by the mind without horror — shall be recompacted again into their own man: not that, as the lying and raving Pythagoras would have it believed, one should exist in a Euphorbus, but into one's own proper body and name, through bones and sinews, through veins, through all the vital parts, yea even joint by joint. And this is no narrow thing, since the seeds of all crops or plants return in the grass greater and fairer than they were sown in the earth by men, or fell of their own accord. Who would not rejoice, so to speak, to be sown in the earth, which gives us back better than it had received us, as the Apostle says:

'The resurrection of the dead: it is sown in corruption, but it shall rise in incorruption' (1 Cor. 15). What possession of present things could be compared to this hope? Or what else could there be that would lift a man to a contempt of death, than this meditation, unfolded by divine promises and by the voices of the prophets? What such thing had Cleombrotus of Ambracia learned in the book of Plato's disputing — he who did not fear to be his own murderer, and hurled himself from a very high wall, supposing both that there was no judgment after death, and that all souls, without any distinction of merits, were borne equally to heaven after they left the body?

This error so many held for truth, and one such cloud of this delusion enveloped all those wise men of the age, that even that so praiseworthy teacher (as they think), Socrates, killed himself privately as his own murderer, that he might not be publicly put to death. Far otherwise had the blessed Apostle premeditated and thought — he who had received what he taught 'not from men, but through the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Gal. 1), being covered not by the dark shades of a leafy Academy, but illumined by heavenly light; nor imbued in some grammarian's school among gaping little boys, but in the third heaven among the flashing angels; and in contempt of the present life he cries out: 'For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain' (Phil. 1).

Assuredly he seeks not a wall from which to hurl himself to death, but Christ the Lord, through whom this mortal may be swallowed up by immortality. For he understands that it is gain for him to die, whose life to come is with Christ. But without the Lord nothing profits, even if a man should gain the whole world, but would suffer the loss of his own soul. He believed, therefore, manfully, that vessel of election, that through Christ our Lord he would be borne from this earth — which never returns what it receives without interest, but sometimes with a smaller, most often with a greater increase, as thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold, the Lord Himself in the Gospel so reading the seeds He had planted — from which earth also comes the truth which Pilate knew not, which none of the princes of this age saw:

'For had they known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory' (1 Cor. 2). From this earth, I say, the Apostle declares that he, transformed, would return into shining members conformed to the body of the Lord's brightness; and Wisdom too promises this through Solomon, when it says: 'They shall shine forth, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds' (Wisd. 3). And therefore into this word — 'For me to live is Christ' (Phil. 1) — he securely burst out, in which assuredly what things had been merits shall be victors; but those who were far off, as they knew Him not, so also shall they not be known. Now, if it seem good, let us inquire what that Solomonic sentence promised: 'The just shall shine forth, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds.'

What means it, that to those to whom the brightness of flames is granted, so lowly and abject a place is offered wherein to run to and fro; so that they should seem to shrink by the meanness of the place, who had grown by the light of their bodies? What means it, I say, that likened to the stars they shall flit through the reeds, and in the form of a starry splendor shall pass through the most wretched stalks of the earth: when splendors and reed-beds are joined together far incongruously — either splendors to reed-beds, or reed-beds to splendors? Mark, I pray thee, the words of the divine mystery: for which, as He has no care for oxen, so neither has He care for a reed-bed. Or what do reed-beds do at the resurrection, save that He labors to show us through the forms of all things, whether of cattle or of plants; and through this, as the Apostle says, all things were written for our sakes (Rom. 4)?

Understand that through the images of the reed-bed are shown unfaithful and unbelieving men, and their bodies pleasing on the surface but inwardly empty of virtues; which, as soon as the spirit of vanity has inflated them, imitate the hissings of the serpent, and, instead of sound offspring, yield the brood of vipers. 'Sparks,' it says, 'among the reeds.' The saints, therefore, are among sinners, since not all flesh is the same flesh. 'Among the reeds,' it says — that is, bodies empty of light, and to be burned by another's brightness, for whom the coming brightness of the saints is as a punishment: for God is a consuming fire, and the just shall come into the image of the Deity. 'For God made man; He made him after His own image' (Gen. 1); and the Apostle testifies that he believes

that man shall of necessity be like unto Him. For if he was like unto God when he was made, he shall also be like unto Him when he rises again: since whatever now appears in us unlike our Author is all stamped by the fault of transgression; and the craftsman of lies, with his scrofulous needle, has deformed the living form of the truth, and has inscribed his own depravity even upon our members, while he has corrupted our minds; which things, ill added or diminished, shall through the glory of the resurrection be washed away, and that alone shall shine forth which renders back the Author of things as in a mirror: so that the falsifier may grieve that he has lost his work, and man may at last glory that he is made whole. Yet not all, as we have already said, but only the just, shall be in the light.

For 'we shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed' (1 Cor. 15); for the diversity of merits shall make a distinction of persons. For even if among the saints themselves there shall be some difference as to their working, the Apostle saying, 'star differeth from star in glory' (1 Cor. 15) — what diversity shall we feel concerning the impious or concerning sinners, of whom some rise in the judgment, others in the council of the saints? And if at the very time of the resurrection they are separated, what shall we say concerning their raiment and form? Which, as it seems to me, shall be found not in any woven garment, nor wrought by the spinning of women, but in their own merits and prayers: the blessed John showing this in the Revelation, who says he saw the saints clothed in fine linen (Rev.

(Rev. 19). And lest perchance under 'fine linen' we should seek warps and woofs and material, or should suppose that something corruptible and fleeting is wrought in the heavenly places, he added: 'the fine linen is the justifications of the saints.' Then, therefore, as I understand it, there shall come upon the surface of our body those things which now are covered beneath the body. Then to each one — wretched me! — his own conscience shall become a garment. Then those things which have been built up by each upon that foundation, than which no other can be laid (1 Cor. 3), shall stand forth pre-eminent, so that either he who has set up things that shall abide may receive a reward, or he who has built things that shall burn may suffer loss. Now why should I call to mind those things which follow, which wholly belong to the saints?

Flesh without earth, body without the sense of pain, soul without fear, life without end, an age without time, light without night, blessedness without end? I behold a man, and in the man God: 'For God shall be all in all' (1 Cor. 15). All that now is discerned as impossible to man, shall then be done through the bounty of the eternal King: to veil and to reveal, to melt away and to make solid again, and Himself to become such that both the disciples did not perceive Him, being solid and corporeal, entering through walls and doors, and yet they all beheld Him standing within before them. And all that the Spirit of God cherished without this body, the body together with the Spirit of God shall bring to pass. Christianity cannot be sated with the delight of these knowings.

This is that rest of theirs, this their delight, this their pleasure, these their delicacies: to go in mind into the seat of God, and there to claim for themselves a place and a portion of the seat, not by their own presumption, but by the promise of the Divinity. Nor does this seem hard to them, since already there, in Christ the Lord, one recognizes his own manhood. He claims for himself an equal right of kinship, through God, to the flesh that was assumed: since we are of His flesh and of His bones. For He is the head of the body, the Church; He is the beginning of all rule and of powers, as the Apostle preaches: 'from whom the whole body, thus compacted and produced through its connection, and knit together, groweth unto the increase of God' (Col. 2). What then shall I say of the judgment to come;

and of the day of the Lord, desirable to the godly, and to be fled by the impious; what shall I say of that fiery deluge — not of waters — the earth smoking, the sea fleeing, the heaven folded together into the likeness of a book? These things are grievous to the rich of this world, but to be awaited by the poor of Christ, on whose behalf the Lord sighs in the Psalm, saying: 'Because of the misery of the needy, and the groaning of the poor, now will I arise' (Ps. 11). What shall I say of that tribunal, immeasurable through the majesty of the Judge, and to be adored upon twelve thrones, and of so great a power given by the Son, that in judging they should have even the substances of angels, as though addicted to their creator, the Apostle saying: 'Know ye not that we shall judge even angels?' (1 Cor. 6)

And what shall there be that would not be believed to be delivered up to those to whom even that spiritual nature of wickednesses is to be made subject? What then shall they do, who now glory in honors, who through terrible prefectures and fasces and everlasting (as they think) consulships, strive to compare themselves to God by robbery, not by nature? What shall he do who joins house to house?

who, having thrown a city into confusion, and broken through all the boundaries by which it was hemmed in on every side, leaping over mountains, rivers, and seas, wishes — so far as in him lies — that there be one possession, which is the common earth of all; and, exceeding by insatiable greed the breadth of the immense world, is diffused into the anxiety of Alexander of Macedon and into the innumerable worlds of the Epicureans; and, the confines of this world having been acquired through avidity, believing there is another, is inflamed — the possibility of his own body not being reckoned — supposing that he shall suffer a loss of right if he lend no credence to his own frenzy?

What shall these do, who — as though correctors of morals — tear at and harass the Lord's household, which lives more attentively and more strictly, whether in garments of humble color, or in the dry frugality of its food, or in the not idle sobriety of its vigils, as though it were made delicate by softer clothing, or fattened by more abundant feastings, or drowsing upon warmer couches — not knowing that in the holy martyrs and confessors of God the very apple of His eye is struck? They shall perish without doubt; in that day all their thoughts shall perish; nor at that tribunal shall either Lucius Crassus defend them, or Mark Antony, or Tullius more eloquent than these:

since then every tongue of this age shall be struck dumb, and eloquent alone shall be justice in its own rustics — that justice which made the mouths of infants fluent, and loosed the tongues of the dumb into a new song, and acquired for itself, through its own mercy, a heavenly harmony from its own little sheep. To celebrate whose glory, even if the zeal of men should cease, the stones stand condemned to the confusion of the human race. But I have digressed from the matter proposed, as one about to rebuke the wickedness of mortals. And, as a public accuser of a uniform evil, against worldly vices, while I pity some, I have not spared them. And yet, even were it the time for judging, I would not dare to cast a stone upon the adulterer;

even if the authority of a purer conscience should arm me for the judgment of the innocent, yet I ought to await the time, the Apostle teaching, who did not take away judgment from the saints, but deferred it. For he says: 'Judge nothing before the time' (1 Cor. 4). He intimates that time of the resurrection is to be awaited, when through the glory of incorruption the revived flesh shall stand, worthy of judgment, its constancy already abiding from eternity, while the terror of the fall stands by: it shall not then tremble to bear sentence upon another, when it has deserved to be secure concerning itself. But now all things are doubtful, all things tottering, the Apostle saying: 'Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted' (Gal. 6) — thou who, ignorant of thine own state, wouldest easily judge another concerning his ruin.

What if thou shouldest give confidence to the wretched, as God gives to the blessed? Let us rather praise the rewards of the saints — that is, the true rewards — than be branded, whether for our conscience or for our timing, as improvident or unseasonable. CHAP. VIII. — Let us return, then, to those most noble and most joyful thoughts of the saints; for nothing is more joyful than for a mortal to meditate upon the inheritance promised to him. Let us set before our eyes that man of whom we have spoken, since it is safer to celebrate true things than to blame things pitiable — although things truly happy cannot be told without the unhappiness of sinners. Let us behold, then, as we have determined, the saints of God flitting everywhere with their torches, and with right hands flashing for vengeance, drawing their two-edged swords.

For this is the glory of the saints of God; this, in this world a despicable warfare; this, scattered abroad on the tongues of all in disparagements. This, then, shall be the fruit of our patience; this the reward of our endurance. These the rewards, in place of the name of blasphemers: to have subject to itself every proud soul, and every man that exalteth himself; the once most powerful kings of the world, adored throughout the whole earth, to be set with iron manacles and fetters, and their nobles bearing the weights of huge chains upon neck and shoulders before the splendor of that august tribunal, to be presented to those whom they once despised, looked down upon, and mocked. For the lot being changed, so that this age belongs to the sumptuous, one may believe the age to come belongs to the wretched.

For 'woe to the rich, for they have received their reward' (cf. Luke 6); but to those rich to whom it must be said: 'I was hungry, and ye gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me not to drink' (Matt. 25). To those rich, assuredly, who had refused to make friends of the unjust mammon; who meditated in their thoughts, when the fruit overflowed by which they refreshed no one, to build new storehouses for immense harvests — who knew not where they should eat on the morrow. Their soul was demanded of them at that time, occupied within a single night by vain solicitude, since they ceased not to lay up treasure, nor omitted to keep watch over buried wealth. Hence Lazarus the poor man, with that patriarch who lived as a stranger in the world, rejoices in his resting place.

But the rich man, on the contrary, burns in eternal fires, and, stripped of all dignity and substance, implores the divine aid of the poor man he once despised, and longs to be touched by even the smallest little finger of him whose destitution he sustained not, amid his rich banquets and abundant feasts, with so much as the crumbs falling from the table. Since, therefore, the prescribed judgment is to be celebrated through us — that is, through the saints — vengeance upon the nations and upon the peoples has been granted to us. When this is pondered, what mind is in us, what ardor of soul, what desire of things to come, what contempt of present things, can more easily be felt than told. Or who is there who, hastening to these things, would not desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Phil. 1)?

Or what great thing is it, if for goods so many and so excellent death is held in contempt, goods for which even this present life ought to be held in contempt? For 'whoever loses his soul for their sake shall save it.' But, on the contrary, 'whoever here shall save his soul shall lose it.' For whereas very many in this world are so inflamed in spirit by ambition, as if by furious flames, that they spare neither their hoarded riches nor their patrimonies, nor even their own sons—whom, when they are accused of avarice, they are wont to put forward as an excuse—while they purchase prefectships and consulships, offices which death takes away and a successor shuts out:

what madness is it not rather to procure, at the cost of all one's expenses and at the loss of life itself, those things which make the advanced either secure concerning life eternal, or glorious concerning the perpetual dignity of the judgment? CHAP. IX.—The time admonishes us, the very place suggests it, nor does the subject-matter seem foreign, since we have begun to treat of the merits of the saints, that we may wash away the blasphemies of a most wretched wretchedness which seem to belong to this same theme.