This same title is read in Gennadius, in the catalogue of the works of St. Maximus. If nothing further could be brought forward to establish credence, it would be enough. But the testimonies of three most distinguished codices attend upon Gennadius, namely the Sangallensis, homily 81, and both codices of Holy Cross in Jerusalem, in the more ancient of which, no. 90, it is homily 26, and in no. 99 homily 82, with this conforming title: Here begins on that which the prophet says to the children of Israel: Your tavern-keepers mix water with wine. All the other codices lack this homily; which Gillotius reprinted in his edition of Ambrose as sermon no. 78; but the Benedictine monks of the congregation of St. Maur, in the preface to the sermons of the same St.
bishop of Milan's sermons, declared that nothing else is to be judged concerning the homily on the first chapter of Isaiah than what Gennadius wrote. The same was the opinion of Gymnicus (p. 297), Galesinius (p. 180), Raynaudus (p. 246), and Margarinus in the Bibliotheca Maxima, vol. VI, p. 48, all of whom concluded with this the collection of St. Maximus's homilies. Not inopportunely, a few days ago, we set forth that this priestly office holds a certain likeness of a business, and that this ministry of the clergy is no small enterprise. It is plainly a not inconsiderable gain, where the profit gained is not of moneys but of souls; it is a great trade, where the redemption of man is at stake, not through the counting out of a price, but through the announcing of a precept.
For the precept of Christ is a certain precious talent, by which salvation is procured, by which life is redeemed: and great is the redemption, when both a price is given and no money is seen. A great talent, therefore, is the precept of the Saviour, which, after the manner of a loan, can bear increase among the diligent, but can be lost among the negligent; for by some it is repaid with manifold grace, but from others it is demanded back with the interest of penalties. For Christ must needs require the talent which he entrusts, and repay grace to him who pays, but subject to injuries him who does not pay. He plainly subjects to injuries after the manner of the world; so that the debtor who cannot satisfy by the restitution of his substance may satisfy at least by the punishment of his body.
This talent, therefore, brethren, we by our preaching entrust to your hearts, that we may mark out for the Lord some gain of your salvation. We shall have to render account how either our preaching may prosper or your obedience may bear fruit; for it is not without cause that the Gospel is proclaimed, the Apostle cries out, the priests speak: into whosoever's ears the holy voice shall have come, he will either be blessed for his devotion, or guilty by reason of the testimony. For we speak blessedness to believers, we bear witness of judgment against the guilty. The ministry of priests, then, is a trade: whence the prophet also says to the children of Israel: Your tavern-keepers mix water with wine (Isaiah 1).
For holy Isaiah does not speak of those tavern-keepers who, serving public functions, mix the pure quality of the wine with a fraudulent filth of water (nor indeed could this pertain to a holy man after the manner of a worldly judge, why with the corrupted vessels of taverns the people should use a less intoxicating drink), but he speaks assuredly of those tavern-keepers who preside over churches, not over taverns; who to thirsting peoples hold out not the cup of concupiscence but of virtue, who serve not the draught of drunkenness but the draught of the Saviour. These tavern-keepers, then, the prophet reproves and rebukes, and complains that they mix the quality of water with the wine;
this he upbraids in them, that whereas they were presidents of divine functions, they have become followers of human things, as the prophet himself says: You pursue, each one, his own house (Haggai 1). For whatever priest, having left the office of the pontificate, delights in the pleasures of the world, he mixes water with the wine, that is, he inserts vile and cold things into things holy and fervent. But we can also understand it thus, that those same priests of the Jews mixed water with wine, when they received the Lord and Saviour not as God but judged him as a man, and wished to bring something turbid and sordid into his sincere and pure divinity, saying to him: Because, though you are a man, you make yourself God (John 10): and again:
We are not born of fornication (ibid., John 8). For while they excuse themselves from the adultery of fornication, they strive to adulterate him in the divinity of his birth. But let us still more diligently consider what it means that he says: They mix water with wine (Luke 5). We read that wine especially abounds in the Church, as it is said in the Gospel (Matthew 9; Luke 5): new wine is to be stored in new wineskins; that is, in new men, neophytes, the grace of the Holy Spirit is to be conferred. If therefore precious and spiritual grace abounds in the Church; vile and fetid water is to be referred to none but the Synagogue; for the water of the Synagogue is fetid, which by its baptism does not wash away sins but acquires them;
which does not purify a man by its own laver but pollutes him. In short, just as the Church is honoured in the wineskins of wine, so the Synagogue is cast off with a skin of water. For that Hagar, who bore the type of the Synagogue, of whom it is said to Abraham: Cast out the handmaid and her son (Genesis 21): when she was cast out, was indeed driven from the tabernacles not with a skin of wine but with a skin of water. Surely the house of Abraham was rich, wealthy, abounding: nevertheless she received not wine, not oil, not bread, which are the firmest nourishments of life; and the Synagogue received not the nourishments of right life, because it knows not the life which is Christ; by water alone the sick is dragged along, the languishing is sustained;
for it was fitting that she who did not deserve the sustenance of the living should receive at least the solace of the dying. For the priests of the Jews are convicted, in that they wished to mix with the ecclesiastical and precious wine the water of the Synagogue, already cast off and reprobated; for water is not wont to be mixed in the Church, but to be changed, as the Lord, invited to the wedding, mixed not the water-jars full of water with wine, but changed them into wine; for lest anything of Jewish baseness should remain in the holy banquet, he preferred to alter the nature rather than to adulterate the substance.