But when, by diligent attention, there is discerned from the distribution of the divine gifts a manifest difference of merits in the Church of Christ, differing in profession, in order, and in vow, and when the dignity of those is set apart as principal and special who, in having marriage, are proved not only to contract no offence, but even, by using it solely for the sake of propagating offspring, have moreover been able to acquire great merits—inasmuch as the prophetic intent of such marriages was doing service toward the Christ who was to come, to say nothing of the other virtues by which, as Scripture testifies, we have learned that they flourished:
their surpassing eminence, I say, being set apart, let no one ever suppose that the beauty of virginity is to be made equal either to conjugal chastity or even to the continence of widowhood. Although this is proved by many oracles of divine Scripture bearing witness, yet it is chiefly declared in this passage; and in hastening to expound it, and undertaking its exposition, blessed Augustine—what he set down or perceived beforehand, from his book which he published On Holy Virginity—I have taken care to transfer into this work, so that it may be made clear that virgins hold a place honorable above the rest, who, over and above the rightness of faith (according to which the whole Church is a virgin), have vowed themselves to Christ, with the integrity of the flesh also preserved. For he says:
Let marriages have their own good—not because they beget children, but because they beget them honorably, lawfully, chastely, and in a social bond, and rear those they have begotten together, wholesomely, and with earnest care; because they keep faith with one another in the marriage-bed; because they do not violate the sacrament of wedlock. Yet all these things are the offices of human duty. But virginal integrity, and freedom, through pious continence, from all sexual union, is the angelic portion, and a meditation, in corruptible flesh, upon perpetual incorruption. Let all fruitfulness of the flesh yield to this; let conjugal chastity yield. The former is not within our power, the latter is not in eternity. Fleshly fruitfulness free will does not possess; conjugal chastity heaven does not possess.
Assuredly they will have something great above the rest in that common immortality, who have already something not of the flesh in the flesh. And a little after: Therefore, he says (1 Corinthians 7), I have no commandment of the Lord to preach concerning virgins—whereby the preacher is taught to have regard for eternal salvation. From that which is announced, he who announces it is indicated. Hence the psalm (Psalm 103): Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire. There follows: Fear God rather, and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment is come.
Although from the beginning of the Christian faith we have known that the kingdom of heaven draws near, yet here he most urgently announces that the hour of his judgment is now, even now, about to be present; therefore he necessarily set this kind of preaching first, to be displayed to all, just as the Lord also says (Matthew 24): This Gospel shall be preached in all the world, and then shall the end come. And to show that point of time in which the adversity of the last persecution will press upon them, he added the word 'rather,' as though he were saying that the temporal power of the beast is to be lightly esteemed, and that God is rather to be feared than men—God whom his aforesaid creature confesses forever. And worship him, he says, who made heaven and earth, the sea and the fountains of waters.
And another second angel followed him, saying: Fallen, fallen is that great Babylon, from the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Babylon is interpreted as 'confusion.' In it, moreover, is signified the city and people of the devil, and all the corruption of vices, which he ever exercises to his own destruction and that of the human race. This city, which is to fall, he says has already fallen, according to the customary manner of Scripture's speech, which is wont to weave the past tense in place of the future when it knows that what it foretells is inevitably to be fulfilled—as: They divided my garments among them (Psalm 21), and things like these; or else because the proud are then already known to fall when they have dared to be proud. Hence the psalm (Psalm 72):
You cast them down, he says, while they were being lifted up—cast down, assuredly, when they were exalted. But after its own manner Scripture said, All nations have fallen from the wine of her fornication, since this city which is longed for, and is gathered together out of all nations blended into one, has herself drunk of the wine of fornication. For all nations, made drunk with errors, are that very city; but she divides it into one, after her own manner. And the third angel followed him, saying with a loud voice: If any man shall worship the beast and his image, and receive his name on his forehead or on his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his wrath.
Concerning the beast and his image enough and more than enough has already been said; but because certain heretics fall away from us through an evil credulity, while others, straying from our traditions by a discordant depravity of morals, are shown to perish by a hostile evil—all of these here are briefly embraced by the inscription of the beast, added to them while yet living, on the forehead or on the hand. But the cup of wrath ought not here to be understood as that alone of which the Lord says (John 3): The wrath of God abides upon him, showing original sin; but also that of which, speaking to the obstinate Jews, he says (John 8): You shall die in your sin, signifying the merits of damnable deeds that have been added.
And he shall be punished with fire and brimstone before the eyes of the holy angels, and before the eyes of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torments shall ascend for ages of ages. He says 'in the sight of the Lamb,' whose judgment they shall suffer, whom they proudly despised, and over whose members they unjustly aspired to lord it—assuredly of his angels, who, by God's revealing, recognize that these suffer just penalties. And they shall have no rest day or night, whosoever worship the beast and his image, and whosoever takes the mark of his name. From the dead and from the living he has here, by this kind of narration, built up the whole body of the beast. For what is said to be already tormented in the dead, this is agreed still to be worshiping in the survivors.
But that they shall have no rest day or night who worship the beast and his image—that is, the devil, whether in that head which was slain, or in the whole body. Here is the wisdom of the saints, who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Hence the Lord (Matthew 10): He who shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved; and the Apostle (Hebrews 10): For patience is necessary for you. So also here the patience of the saints is said to consist in this, that persevering unto the end they may flee the fellowship of the beast and the mark of his name. And I heard a voice from heaven, saying to me: Write: Blessed are those dead who die in the Lord. Those are said to die in the Lord who, approved in faith and life, have hence merited to be called away. Finally there follows:
Henceforth, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. Just as, on the contrary, he said that those impious ones have no rest day or night, so now he says that the faithful have merited rest by their good works. For it was fitting, when mention had been made of the deeds of the evil, that the blessedness and fullness of the good should also be proclaimed; and because this consists in those set over others and in the peoples, he here briefly embraces both, saying first indefinitely: Blessed are those dead who die in the Lord; but on account of those who labor in the vineyard, Let them rest, he says (Matthew 20), from their labors—thus promising felicity to all universally, yet pledging to those who labor in the vineyard a special fruit of rest after labor. Hence the Apostle: We beseech you, he says (1 Thessalonians
5), that you know those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, that you esteem them more abundantly in charity for their work's sake. Or even concerning himself (1 Corinthians 15): I labored more than all. For their works, he says, follow them. Of these the prophet speaks (Psalm 89): And direct the works of our hands over us. And I saw, and behold a white cloud, and one sitting upon it like the Son of man, having upon his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. In the cloud he shows the incarnation of our head, Jesus Christ, or the body of the Church which Christ put on, made snow-white after the fires of the persecutions, having on its head a golden crown.
These are the elders with golden crowns, or the twelve apostles, whom at the beginning of preaching the faith he principally acquired. Hence we read (Psalm 9 [21]): You have set on his head a crown of precious stone. And the sharp sickle is the judicial sentence of separation due to the impious, and to be more justly inflicted upon them by the divine judgment on account of the Church, for whose defense Christ the shepherd ever keeps watch. Hence Zechariah: This, he says (Zechariah 5), is the devouring which has gone forth over the face of the whole earth. And another angel came, crying out to him who sat upon the cloud: Send forth your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap is come, because the harvest of the earth is now dry. The reapers of the earth are the angels, as the Lord expounds (Matthew
13), we know are to be, and that the maturity of the harvest is set as a sign of the end of the age by the judgment: in which crop, because in a field of grain both chaff is known to be present in the fragile stalks and ears, and wheat in the grains, we recognize that here it more aptly signifies the due ends of the good and the evil, when he says the sickle must be applied to the ripe harvests. But to whom would this most fittingly be intimated than to the Church? Then he who sat upon the cloud sent forth his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped. In the time of the last examination, when the battles with the beast have been spiritually accomplished, the Church will be able, by an ampler illumination, to recognize whom she ought firmly to reckon as her own, and whom as alien.
For this is to sit upon the cloud: as though having received judicial power from the divinity, to discern between the good and the evil. You shall sit, says the Lord (Matthew 19), with me upon twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. But what follows concerning the other angels seems entirely to be borne out by the Lord's sentence, saying (Matthew 13): The reapers are angels. But what the threshing avails toward the harvest, this the winepress avails toward the pressing of the grapes, so that a time may come both for the chaff to be burned and the grape-skins to be cast away, and for hidden receptacles of the heavenly dwelling to succeed for the storing away of the fruits. And another angel came forth from the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.
Likewise also another angel, having power over fire. He who has the reaping sickle, he also has the vintaging one; and he who said to the reaper, Reap, the same also says to the vintager, Gather the vintage. For it is one thing, and shall be done at one time. But in the harvest and the vintage, as in the husbandry and the building of the Church, the figured breadth of the divine discourse is shown, when the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 3): You are God's husbandry; you are God's building. And he cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God, and it was trodden in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out thence up to the horses' bridles, over a thousand six hundred furlongs. In saying 'of the wrath of God,' he here put the sentence for the wrath of God, which he says was inflicted on the proud one, whom he also calls 'great.'
You, he says, have humbled the proud one as one that is wounded; for the winepress, as the Greek copies contain it, he put in the feminine gender, and 'great' in the masculine. 'Outside the city'—outside the Church; for when the future separation has been made, outside will be every treading down of the man of sin. This treading of the winepress, or threshing of the floor, weaves together the useless things, and proves the imperishable, as fire proves the vessels, and as the temptation of tribulation proves the just (Ecclesiasticus 27). The blood going out up to the horses' bridles is vengeance reaching even to the rulers of the peoples.
For when the devil, with his accomplices, shall have begun to pay the penalties of the persecution he inflicted, the blood of the saints that was shed is not incongruously said to reach even to him and his princes—that is, to those horses through whom, in the person of the heretics, wars are stirred up, and whatsoever follow their errors. As it was foretold: In blood you have sinned, and blood shall pursue you, over a thousand six hundred furlongs—that is, through the four quarters of the whole world. For it is a fourness squared, as in the four four-formed faces and the wheels. For four times four hundred make one thousand six hundred. CHAPTER 15. And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues.
With the order again restored, about to narrate the same plagues of the last persecution, he wished to make the hearer attentive, saying: A great and admirable sign. In the seven angels we understand the Church to be figured, since in them the indignation of God is consummated. And I saw, he says, as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire—namely, the water of baptism, consecrated by the fire of the Holy Spirit, or even, so far as pertains to the quality of fire, dyed red with martyrdom. Hence we read: The furnace proves the potter's vessels, and the temptation of tribulation proves just men. And standing upon it I saw those who won the victory over the beast and his image. 'Standing upon it' shows them stable in the faith. These the psalm describes in almost like words, when after it had said:
Who made the heavens in understanding—designating, that is, the spiritual ones, who enjoy the serene intelligence of the supernal truth—it subjoined: Who founded the earth upon the waters, that is, immovable upon baptism. For although they seem to be nourished with milk, yet they are not carried about with every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4). Therefore here too they are said to triumph over the beast and his image. Having harps of God—hearts dedicated to praises, and melodious with the harmonious truth of both Testaments; or the flesh stretched out on the wood of the Passion, where not only the sound of the voice, but also the effect of good work is signified. Therefore he also inserted mention of so great a man, Moses, as God, bearing witness, said (Numbers 12):
My servant Moses, who is faithful in all my house. And singing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. Here he more fully expressed the intent of the elect, who say from the heart: Remove from me the way of iniquity, O Lord, and have mercy on me according to your law (Psalm 118); or, For your law's sake I have waited for you, O Lord (Psalm 129), and things like these—so that he willed these too to be understood as of the number of the faithful, as partakers of the aforesaid victory. But in Moses the Old Testament, and in the song of the Lamb the New Testament, is signified, so that he may teach that the fullness of the elect, armed from both, has been made perfect in both, saying:
Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God Almighty; just and true are your ways, O King of all nations. The pages of both Testaments testify this to us with harmonious truth, that all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Psalm 24). But he is here more aptly called 'King of all nations,' because God is now known not among Judea alone, nor does the dew any longer seem to flow from heaven upon the fleece only (Judges 6), but, as Malachi says (chapter 1): From the rising of the sun even to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place a clean oblation is sacrificed and offered to my name. Which here also follows: Who shall not fear and give glory to your name?
for you only are holy; for all nations shall come and shall adore in your sight, for your just judgments are made manifest. These things are expounded out of abundance, since they are now seen to be fulfilled in deed. After these things I saw, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened. Here he says the hidden secrets of the testimonies concerning Christ and the Church, once promised, are now unlocked. And the seven angels came forth from the temple with the seven plagues. From the Church, against which the adverse party has rebelled with unceasing snares—therefore he says the plagues proceed, whether for the defense of the saints, in whom the Lord Christ formerly endured reproaches, as it is said to Paul (Acts 9): Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?; or because, as Peter recalls (1 Peter
4), it is the time for judgment to begin from the house of God. For it is certain that men are scourged in a twofold manner: either that the Divinity may justly chastise sins, as in Pharaoh (Exodus 14); or that it may examine, as in Job, by an ampler exercise of virtue (Job 1). And not without merit do we read it said by him (Psalm 118 [66]): The Lord has proved me as gold which passes through the fire; his ways I have kept, and from the commandments of his lips I have not departed. But by the number of the angels or of the plagues I judge the universality of the consummation to be foreshown, as in Leviticus he frequently says: And I will strike you with seven plagues. Clothed with linen clean and white. Mortification is wont to be figured in linen.
Whence, if the judgments of God are recognized as irreproachable even in their brightness, the sense is fittingly taken as being in clean linen, so that the mortified may use this brightness, when with unveiled face they contemplate the glory of the judgments of God (2 Corinthians 3). And girt about the breasts with golden girdles. That wisdom is signified by gold we are taught by the testimony of Scripture, which says (Proverbs 16, according to the Septuagint): Receive wisdom as gold. And well 'about the breasts,' where the priestly breast is also legally often bidden to bear the logium, that is, the rational (breastplate), so that a mind well conscious to itself may not dare to reprehend the divine judgments, but to praise them, and by the splendor of that gold may without doubt exhort others also to praise.
And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven vials, full of the wrath of the living God, who lives for ages of ages. Above he mentions seven angels with as many vials, having the prayers of the saints; but now he says they are full of the wrath of God. For the same vials are said to contain both the sweetnesses of supplications and the wrath of punishments, since they are poured out by the saints for the coming of the kingdom of God, when the judgments of God, no longer hidden like the deep, but open like vials, are foretold to bring salvation to the just, but to the impious truly to bring destruction (Psalm 35)—as the Apostle says (2 Corinthians 2): For we are the good odor of Christ in those who are saved and in those who perish: to some indeed the odor of death unto death, to others the odor of life unto life.
For if it was said of our Lord (Luke 2): Behold, this one is set for the ruin and the resurrection of many, what wonder if the vials afford sweetness to the just, but inflict the vengeance of plagues upon the impious—if indeed we ought here to understand those same vials, and not others? And the temple was filled with smoke from the brightness and the power of God. I think this is signified in the smoke: that the secrets of God's judgments cannot be penetrated by all, and that the minds of mortals grow dim and tremble at the consideration of the inflicted plagues—which he now determines to narrate, and he asserts that the smoke endures in the temple even until the ending of those vials.
Deservedly there follows: And no one could enter into the temple—that is, into that inmost secret place—until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. Whence also the psalm (Psalm 72): This was a labor, he says, before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God, and understand concerning the last things. Otherwise, in smoke confession is wont to be signified. For just as smoke precedes fire, so the confession of sins precedes the flame of faith and charity. Therefore the psalm, designating such persons, says (Psalm 103): Who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. Finally the Lord looked upon Peter (Matthew 26), and washed away by the tears of confession what he had contracted through fear in denying, so that this is the sense:
That no one could enter into the temple until the seven plagues were finished—that is, no one could yet say: I walked in the innocence of my heart in the midst of your house (Psalm 101), and, The king brought me into his chamber (Song of Songs 1), except him who has taken care to blot out by confession all the past sins of reprobate deeds committed. For the thought, he says (Psalm 75), of man shall confess to you. Behold, the smoke, and the remnants of thought, shall celebrate solemnities to you as the secure laudation of a justification obtained. And so, until all the plagues are finished, the Church is shown in lamentable confession, both in those whom we said are paying the fruitful penalties of a former offense, and in those whom he has appointed to be approved by a better worship. CHAPTER 16.
And I heard a great voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels: Go and pour out the seven vials (which you have received) of the wrath of God upon the earth. Here the inevitable outcome of the divine command is revealed, but also that power which the Church has specially merited to receive from God: to inflict judgment on those to be condemned, and mercifully to grant absolution to those converted. And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth, and there came a grievous and most evil sore upon all who have the inscription of the beast's name, and who worship his image.
The nature of a deadly wound is such that the small place which it has occupied in the body prevails more toward inflicting death than the remaining part of the body, sound and larger, prevails toward preserving the man's health. And although the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, as it works for salvation to believers by the aid of salvation, so ceases not to be for the unbelieving a testimony of damnation, the most evil wound inflicted from this defilement can be understood as befalling the whole body of the perishing; for of Christ we read (Luke 2): Behold, this one is set for the ruin and the resurrection of many, and for a sign that shall be contradicted. Yet more the nation of the Jews, from which the Antichrist is said to be born (Genesis
49)—by this one sin lost whatever justices of the law they might be able to have, and they themselves perished irremediably, in that they were unwilling to receive the Christ promised to them; in whose person it is said by the elder brother to the father (Luke 15): Behold, so many years I serve you, and I never transgressed your commandment, and you never gave me a kid, that I might feast with my friends, etc. For that people, which spurned the Lamb, as though despising the things on the right hand, in preference to lambs at the right hand embraced the kid (Matthew 25)—as one straying off to the left, to be condemned, despising, that is, Christ, and receiving Antichrist. Therefore perhaps he here says:
There came a grievous and most evil sore upon those men who have the inscription of the beast's name, and who worship his image—so that, confounded by the guilt of this one wound, they may be judged to be punished with eternal penalty. Concerning this sin, as concerning a most evil ulcer, the Lord says (John 15): If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. If I had not done among them works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. This is the irremediable wound.
But because they will have many followers by a most evil imitation, therefore at the end he said 'upon those men who have the inscription of the beast's name,' lest this be thought to have been said of the Hebrew nation alone. For just as in good, through the imitation of faith, the law also calls the nations sons of Abraham—not by being born of his flesh, but by confessing that Christ, of the tribe of Judah, rose again victorious from the dead—so in evil it must be believed that the Jews will have followers from among the nations, who, by receiving and following the Antichrist (who is said to be born of the tribe of Dan, Genesis 49), are marked to be their accomplices in the mark of the crime, whose partners they will be in the penalty of eternal damnation.
And the second poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became blood, and every living soul died in the sea. Water turned into blood—it is easy to observe that this is to think carnally about spiritual things, whereby it is figured without any difficulty in that first of the plagues which we read (Exodus 7) were inflicted on the Egyptians. But then he says the sweet waters were turned into blood, whether the rivers of Egypt, or the rain waters, as certain translations show, saying: And their rain waters into blood, which the Greeks also rendered as 'ebremata.' But now this comes into question, that in this place he says the second vial was poured out upon the sea—that is, upon the bitter and salt waters.
And it became blood, he says, and every soul died in the sea. Whence I think are signified those who, among the people of the Jews, not only strove to savor the spiritual law carnally—whence they could not recognize Christ in it. For if they had recognized him, says the Apostle (1 Corinthians 2), they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; but they were even brought to such a weight of merits, as though struck by a second wound of a worse plague, that they long for the image of the beast, and, having the inscription of his name, judge that Antichrist is to be adored in place of Christ. Therefore perhaps he here is placed in the second vial, which in Exodus (chapter
7) is described as having befallen in the first plague; inasmuch as from barren waters they passed over besides to the foulness of blood, whereby every soul is said to have been slain in the sea—that is, in this world—the part signified by the whole, as: There is none that does good, no not one (Psalm 13). By manifest barrenness are marked those of whom it is said: I waited that it should bring forth grapes, but it brought forth thorns (Isaiah 5). Those, assuredly, over whom their tongue was so enfeebled that they said, to their own condemnation: His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matthew 27). And the third poured out his vial upon the rivers and the fountains of waters, and they became blood.
He includes the remaining nations in a general way, which, just as they had been overtaken by natural error and entangled in filthy desires, added to this that they should also think carnally about divine things; whence by 'the springs' the teachings of the Gentiles may be understood. Therefore he says: 'They became blood,' just as also in Genesis: 'My spirit shall not remain,' he says (Gen. IX), 'in these men forever, for they are flesh.' And in the third book of Wisdom it says: 'Troubled in the reproof by sordid blood'; and because to be wise according to the flesh, says the Apostle (Rom. VIII), is death, and the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God. Therefore concerning men of this kind, who are said both to give offense by such sins and again are marked as running into penal crimes: