At his words I would readily yield to the natural bent of human nature, which seeks ease rather than toil, were I not pressed by the testimony of Luke the evangelist, who says in the Acts of the Apostles that the disciples likewise conferred among themselves over the Scriptures, to see whether it was as Paul had spoken to them; and I recognize that those matters of which I desire knowledge have received the testimony of prophecy within the canon. For although it is a fault not to have believed the apostolic discourses, it is nonetheless not a blameworthy crime to build up the foundation of faith by the proof of the writers, and to leave nothing in which the devil's reproach might find us weak.
For the divine Word, since all that he had spoken was his own, could have spoken as one uttering from himself, not as written by another, and could have brought it forth out of his own self; yet by saying that it was written, he necessarily set before us the diligent task of reading, and did not omit either his own glory, concerning whom prophecy had been uttered, or the grace owed to posterity from him who had prophesied. I, at any rate, stand debtor to both and for both: to read him who prophesied unto the remembrance of things divine, and to believe God. For who would not delight that Christ was prophesied before the ages, not by a few, but by all?
Or who is so barren an appraiser of the divine majesty and of so incredible a miracle—that God should be born and that a virgin womb should open as a dwelling-place to receive the ministry of the divine Word for conceiving and bringing forth a body—as to suppose that the secrets of the divine purpose were not proclaimed unto all the earth and unto every man, since it is written: Let every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father? And therefore, whoever he be that denies these things, I at least know that he shall receive the reward of those Pharisees who, when the Lord was coming and the whole multitude joined with the apostles cried out:
'Hosanna, hosanna in the highest, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord,' he said that those ought to be rebuked who so undoubtingly would not keep silent the glories of the present God. But let whoever is of such a sort observe that the Lord said: Even if these should hold their peace, the stones will cry out; and let him understand that, if the hardness of rocks, naturally already dead, is quickened unto giving testimony to God by means of human speech, how shall the tongue of the saints be shut up—a tongue which is impelled to confess both by its own nature and by divine grace?
For if the souls of the Gentiles, ensnared by the forms and ceremonies of idols, declare from the swift passages of birds and the wind-given courses of their wings—as if foretelling the outcome of the future—and from the veins of entrails throbbing with the animation of an earthly spirit, while they give credence to demons, affirm that the soon-to-perish bowels of animals announce things to come, and beseech the dead concerning life, saying to a stone 'rise' and to wood 'awake'; and if this sacrilege is by such men called devotion, and ignorance is named wisdom, while they know not that they sacrifice not to God but to a demon:
if among such men there is glory in things like these, how is it that we spurn the divine prophecies of the saints, and, while we obey our own self-wills, envy those who have prophesied God, abandoning the apostolic precepts which say: Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings? And therefore, since where there is liberty, there is Christ, it pleases me, one man, to cry out on behalf of all, for I too have the Spirit of the Lord: let the envy of the devil cease! By all has the Lord been announced, by all has Christ been prophesied—by Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and by the rest who from the beginning of the world prophesied; and undaunted I declare what the devil envies:
Every man knew that God would come in the flesh—not to speak of those whom God in the gospel placed in the ordering of his own generation, who were to furnish to the canon both the faith of the divine nature and its number. And as for those who, knowing this, yet deny it, the punishment is greater; so too the perfect glory is not only to believe with the heart, but also not to deny the glory of confession with the mouth, as David says: I believed, therefore have I spoken. Wherein also the apostle Peter, knowing in conscience the reckoning of number in the canonical books and granting freedom to read those things that are written concerning Christ, when he sent his epistle to the Colossians, said: When this epistle has been read among you, see that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that you read that which is from the Laodiceans.
Was the apostle then condemnable in your eyes, who permitted his disciples to read an epistle that was not in the canon? Or is our care for Christ greater, and do you so pursue your own self-wills that you stretch an unjust judgment even upon those things which were decreed before your time? For to all of us who believe God to be Christ, the fullness of faith is the day of the Lord, and the law of life is the form of the apostolic precept; since, if faith is by hearing, and hearing stands by faith, how is hope of things to come set before us, if those things which are taught aforetime, written or spoken concerning Christ and preserved in remembrance and never repudiated but read by the apostles, are not only spurned by us but condemned as sacrilegious—when in the gospel it is written:
Whosoever shall do a mighty work in my name cannot speak evil of me? Yet in this I neither refuse nor reject that these things ought not to be entrusted to untrained ears, lest—because many things have been falsified by heretics, who, under the pretitled name of the prophets, seek a divine work in the words of the saints—they rush into the pit of heretical falsity, while they do not fully retain the discipline of the apostolic word. But neither, on account of the wickedness of the basest men, is the prophecy of the saints to be condemned; for in all heresies they have established the institutions of their wretched sects by persuasion, with a perverse interpretation of all the Scriptures, and they all affirm that they believe Christ to be God and that they are Christians.
Nor on that account is the divine Scripture to be condemned, nor is the faith of Christ to be repudiated, nor is the Christian name to be shunned, if, while they wish to maintain their sacrileges, they dare to usurp fellowship in the catholic name. For if we wish to condemn all that they read, surely we condemn even those things that are recorded in the canon; whence it is better to condemn a deadly interpretation and a sacrilegious teaching than the divine Scripture, since it is written: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to the rest I will speak in parables, that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear. To me, at least, a servant of the Lord, considering these things, there is this one sense: that whoever loves not Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha.
Even if nature herself teaches us that, amid the unexplored conversations of human life and the world's measurable contests unworthy of God, nothing is more profitable to a man than, through all his days, to spurn the things which are friends of this world and to keep the precepts of the divine institution—the apostle saying: All friendship of the world is enmity with God, and again the prophet saying: Be not slow to turn unto the Lord, and put it not off from day to day—yet the minds of mortals, taken captive by familiarity with worldly things, are shut up within the error of human weakness; and ever, amid so many ill-advised shipwrecks, divine mercy meets those perishing as if at the very end, like an anchorage and a longed-for harbor.
Grasping by the voices of the prophets the one measure of the divine decree, God appointed the glorious day of the Passover, so that—although God willed his men to serve him through all their days—yet, because the whole world is set in wickedness, and since, where there is no end of the infinite, and our step being fixed upon slippery places, we set no measure to uncertain things, he might, by exhorting us in remembrance of the passion expended for us, or by the yearly return, compel us to obedience of faith, remembering that all that we live we owe to him alone—the apostle saying: whether death or life, whether things present or things to come, all are yours, but you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
And therefore, beloved in God, since we are placed in this position—to loosen your minds, beset within the straits of human weakness, by the religious exhortation of teaching, as if into a new light—it is necessary, as the days of Lent begin in preparation for receiving the Passover, that we, as it is written, like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, command one thing lest it be done by way of charge, and beseech another thing by way of pardon; since at this time both he who already abstains from evils, growing accustomed to good things, ought to will better things, and he who is still bound fast by the undisciplined error of the world is urged to be recalled from things alien, or by the observance of solemn days, so that, when the Lord's Passover comes, both he who is faithful may rejoice that he has kept the faith of the commandments once received, and the penitent may seek again salvation, and the catechumen may not lose confidence of the future remission—that it may be fulfilled which is written:
Behold the day of the Lord and his salvation! Open the gates, that the people may enter in, keeping righteousness and truth, because, embracing understanding, they have received peace, hoping in the Lord.
Wherefore, beloved, as partakers of the heavenly calling, sanctify your souls unto God, and, as it is written, abstaining from bodily desires which war against you in your members, fasting unto God not in shameful gains nor in the uncertainty of avarice nor in quarrels and contentions—since, although in these days the divine work seeks abstinence from dainties and the hardening of the body, yet it does not require such a fast, but, as it is written, sanctified in body and spirit, having charity sincere in love from a true heart, and show yourselves rich in good works unto the divine glories; and, as the prophet says, loose every bond of injustice, and reject the obligation of oppressive dealings, deliver him who suffers wrong, judge the orphan, justify the widow, send away the broken in remission, and break asunder every iniquitous bond; break your bread to the hungry, and bring into your houses the needy and those who have no shelter;
if you see the naked, clothe them, and despise not those who labor; for thus it is written: If you give your bread to the hungry from the soul and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your God shall be with you, and you shall be satisfied with all good things in everything that your soul desires. Consider, then, what is the Passover of the Lord, the apostle saying:
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, showing that the endurance of present things advances unto the reward of blessed immortality; wherein the almighty God, in the birth from a virgin and in the assumption of a body, not refusing the shame of human origin, while bearing in himself the manifold proofs of truth, chastises the vices of human nativity, passing through by conception, birth, wailings, and cradle all the reproaches of our nature, so that, coming into the flesh, he might overturn the constitution of the former decree, and, fixing upon the gibbet of the glorious cross the curses of earthly dominion, himself immortal and not to be conquered by death, he might die for the eternity of those who were dying.
With whom, if we are buried together with him into death by baptism, we who desire that we may die together and be buried together, so ought we to come unto the day of the Passover, that—because his disgrace is our honor—imitating the Lord fasting forty days in the desert in the gospel, walking in the flesh, we may live not according to the flesh; so that, even if we are overcome for a little while, yet we may be restored in the framing-together of the body of Christ by the divine light of the precepts; for, as one who has obtained mercy, I, a counselor, I am a witness that we cannot be free from sins unless we are saved by the remission of baptism and the redemption of the divine cross.
For these are the days that Moses, fasting forty in number, merited the utterance of the law of the divine word, when, the Passover of the Lord being announced, the sea was afraid, and the mightiest element on earth—which by its very nature stands for tempest—dividing its waters, furnished a dusty road for the people; and, against its accustomed uses, about to give a miracle to the world, the barren sand brought forth the pasture of herbs. These are the days that Joshua son of Nun, likewise spending in fastings, entering the land of promise—clad with the arms of faith, the ark of God standing in the midst of the waters—offered to the people a dry road over all the banks of Jordan, while it, running into its forward parts or rolling back into its hinder parts, trembled lest nature should run counter to the divine command.
These are the days that God, coming into the flesh, having been set in the desert after the enriched font of baptism, fasting days and nights, overcame; and he was tempted by the devil—now by the necessity of fasting, now by the ambition of mortals, now by fear; wherein, even if God could not be tempted, yet, preparing the passion of our salvation and fulfilling in himself the decrees of the Passover (not abolishing them), in that he willed to be tempted, he showed what things in these days ought to be repudiated by us; and what we read that he answered to the tempting devil unto faith, let us use unto the destruction of the diabolical temptation.
The form of the prophetic precept, given a body for proclaiming the divine glories, though it is held in the lodging of an earthly dwelling, yet, being filled with the light of the Spirit of God, so disposes the works of prophecy that, attributing present realities to God, it instills into men the faith of believing, and through the things that are seen demonstrates the deeds of spiritual understandings wrought in us. For all things that have either been done or written are shown to be spoken for the correction of falling men and for the faith of believers, so that, the divine law being set forth and power over us reserved to the one God, an end may be promised to passing things, punishment to sinners, and things eternal to mortals, as it is written:
The heavens themselves shall perish, but you shall endure, and all shall wax old as a garment, and as a cloak you shall fold them up; but you yourself are the same, and your years shall not fail. Finally, holy Moses, instructed by the divine words and chosen for the work of the evangelical dispensation, who at the beginning of his birth merited such a beginning of the One coming in the flesh, that those who threatened his life should feel from them the allurements of nurture, and afterward, when Egypt had been smitten and the people of God set free, should make the first beginning of signs, and, nourished by the increases of the divine precepts in fellowship joined with God, should give the beginning to the canon, whose fullness he had brought forth in himself unto testimony—teaching, namely, by the words of the writing, and showing the work of the word by the works of deeds;
thus finally it is also written concerning him: And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one who speaks to his friend. Seeing therefore the future dogmas of heretics and the diverse ingenuities of disputants—that some love that the world was not made but eternal, and therefore that what has no beginning will be forever eternal; others, flattering themselves in their pleasures, while they wish to impute all that they sin not to themselves but to the malice of the devil or of the world, though it is written: Ephraim himself set a stumbling-block before himself, loving the Canaanites, and elsewhere the apostle saying: Whence wars, whence quarrels among you?
is it not from your own lusts? thus accusing the nature of the world through these things, because they judge this to be evil, they affirm that God made nothing in the things that appear, and, delighting in carnal concupiscences, assigning the making of their own body to the devil, they suppose that they know not what they do, and that what they sin in their own bodies is not held by the care of the divine disposition—though it is written: The body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation depresses the mind that ponders many things. Others, esteeming the Sun and Moon, luminaries appointed for the ministry of men, to be gods, attribute power over the world to the principalities of the elements—though it is written: What is brighter than the sun? And yet this shall fail, and elsewhere:
who calls for the water of the sea and pours it out upon the face of all the earth; the Lord God Almighty is his name—but all these, beloved brethren, wrapped in the darkness of ignorance, overthrow the doubting and lead those who consent unto the perils of their own destruction. For these are, as it is written, clouds without water which are carried about by the winds, trees of autumn without fruit, dead and uprooted, and the fierce waves of the sea foaming out their own shameful deeds, wandering stars for whom the tempest and the gloom of darkness are reserved; whose judgment of old scarcely suffices, and whose perdition shall not slumber.
For they know not that all this which is seen will perish at the end set by God, and that the darkness was therefore illumined and a nature found for created things, so that, divided by the numbers of the seasons, they might furnish a dwelling of days to man laboring in the work of Christ, nor exceed that which is established by the divine will—for he had willed to keep the divine institutions for affording the ministry of ourselves. For thus it is written concerning these: Your father the devil was a liar from the beginning; and necessarily, he whose beginning nature gave to lying cannot hold the way of truth.
Wherefore I exhort and admonish you, that you who were baptized in Christ and have put on Christ, casting off the darkness of the world, may walk honestly as in the day; and, as the apostle says, let no man despoil you according to the philosophy of this world and not according to Christ; for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, and the things that are seen are mortal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. For marking the meaning of the lection that was read, which says: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, know that God made all things that were made, and that, the elements being fitted together among themselves, he extended the solidified nature of heaven, and so, the use of air being given over to the powers of the winds, he set the course of the year by the fourfold turn of the seasons and the appointed arrangements of the stars.
For when the Word of the divine power appeared, saying: Let there be light, all things that were in darkness were laid open, and the night of evening being divided from the splendor of light, each several thing being set apart into the place of its appointed order, the earth was made solid, so that—the ministry of one or other of the elements going before with an even turn of the seasons—it might bring forth the use of the appointed work, animated by the spirit of life; not that the earth or heaven, or the earth-born principalities given from kindred elements, received anything of a spirit of their own power, but that, the material of things being prepared, the divine Word, entering upon the work of creation, might complete the institutions of wise precepts, holding the forum of the world established as a dwelling-place for men.
Finally, all these things which the conversation of the world possesses being made according to their kind, God made man unto his own image and likeness, and, taking up the clay of the earthly dwelling, animated our body, so that, man being set over the Lord of all things, he might place in him the sabbath, that is, his own rest, where he had embodied his image and likeness; and afterward, nature being propagated, man, presuming a corporeal lodging from man, might be born flesh of flesh; in which—we being established and following the commands of the divine precepts—the body sanctified might overcome the work of the world and the nature of earthly material, and man, using the ministry of the age, not deceived by the will of concupiscence, might have in himself the testimony of the image and likeness of God, and, glorified in the body, might become the temple of the Lord, so that, the world being sabbatized in all things, he might present the rest which he had promised in himself unto God. Finally, our God himself, disposing all things in himself through all Scripture, willed that all that is said be said of himself, so that, he alone being able to save and to destroy, in each several work of the word so named he might not deny punishment to sinners and glory to those laboring in himself, as it is written:
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, chosen, and he who believes in it shall not be confounded; to you therefore is this honor who believe; but to the unbelieving, the stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner, and a stone of offense and a rock of scandal, to those who stumble at the word and believe not—that you may understand how the name of one thing was to some unto increase of faith, to others unto offense, the punishment of sin. For he set himself as the door to those entering in, himself the way to those walking in the precepts of God, himself the fountain to those thirsting for righteousness, himself the bread to the hungry, himself the vine unto salvation to those believing, as it is written in the gospel:
I am the vine, but you are the branches—so that he who acknowledges all things in all might, no part being conceded to any name or power, believe in one God whom he would find one in all things, as it is written: That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things heavenly and things earthly and things infernal, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father; as also he himself says through the prophet: I am God, and before me there was no other, and after me there shall be none like me; I am God, and there is none beside me who saves; and again there: I am the first, and I am after these things, and beside me there is no God; who is like me? Likewise through Jeremiah:
This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned beside him, who found out every way of wisdom and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen upon earth and conversed with men. And therefore you also, my beloved, sanctify your souls unto the obedience of faith, and, putting off from yourselves the old man with all his acts and concupiscences, put on in yourselves the new man, and, through the understanding of spiritual virtues, entering into the work of the lection that was read, prepare in yourselves the heaven and earth of the Lord, as it is written: The heaven of heaven to the Lord; and elsewhere the Lord saying: Be unto me a voluntary land, that, the evening of ignorance being dissolved, it may be cried out in you: Let there be light, as it is written:
Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem; and, the darkness of the corruptible body being chastised and the light of the divine spirit being composed in you, may you be called the day of the Lord. For he who does these things in the works of Christ, first completing in the recognition of himself one day, set in the second degree, rightly learns the firmament of all the commandments, so that what was barren in him, being made fruitful by the word of the Lord and receiving the rain of divine preaching, he may train unto all the grace of the catholic profession; and so, plowing in the hope of his faith, gathering the fruits, unto the glory of the perfect week and the growing work, reforming in himself the Church of the Lord through the faith of Christ, as it is written: Wisdom has built herself a house and founded it upon seven pillars;
into which house you also, as living stones, are built up into spiritual houses, offering immaculate victims acceptable to God, as those reborn not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of the living God who abides forever; so that, made the sabbath of the Lord and keeping holiday from all the acts of the world, you may owe nothing to the age, but may rest in Christ. The word of God indeed sufficed for believers, which, by apostolic testimony, having been poured into us together with the very power of the truth, taught the resolution of the saying spoken in parables, Paul saying: Christ our Passover has been sacrificed;
but because the signification of visible things, and the efficacy of realities, and the demonstration of times, and the understanding of the nature disposed unto us, is not at once comprehended—although there is no comparison of earthly things to God—yet, because all Scripture needs interpretation, and the weakness of human understanding compels us to seek the species of earthly things as it were the indicators of higher things, so that, the custom of visible things familiarly admonishing, a religious understanding may be built up unto unaccustomed meanings, it is necessary for us, for your sake, to extend the humility of our discourse into those things which seem unutterable; so that, when something visible is set down in the law of God, that which is set down is not held to be God, but, because all speech is from sense, according to the manner of necessary discourse, while the nature of the thing sought is recognized, the understanding sense may utter to itself that which God seeks in us.
For this you ought first to understand: that all Scripture, in everything that is said or spoken, is divided by a threefold work of the understanding—either, destroying in us the work of the world, it chastises the dwelling of the earthly flesh in its concupiscences, the prophet saying: Chastity shall keep and justify the heart; or, seeking again the divine kind of the soul, it informs those things which in us seem constrained by the days, months, seasons, self-wills, and the idolatrous vices of earthly nativity, the apostle saying:
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit; or assuredly it shows God in man, daily a witness of himself, suffering for us and our judge, so that—because he willed us to be partakers of the divine nature—he might thus constrain us in body, soul, and spirit by a threefold observance of the precepts, so that, reformed through the shadow of the law in spirit and imbued with the works of the flesh to be cut away, we may enter the solemnities of the heavenly Passover, and, roused from death, Christ dying for us out of immortality, we may understand that he, made all things for us, while in his oblations he demands days, months, the forms of cattle, the natures of animals, the differences of trees, the fruits of earthly seeds, does not desire the things of the elements or earthly things, but, demonstrating all to be his own, demands the sanctification of the earthly flesh and spirit—wherefore he himself also suffered for us in the flesh—unto the triumph over the sin that works in us; and, speaking himself wholly through the nature of all things, wills the institutions of the world not so much to be venerated as to be destroyed, that what is written may be made manifest: