論集 第 2 章 第 5/6 段

For although the grace of the divine sacrament, directing the work of the paschal mystery and, the law of the Old Testament having been sent before as it were constructing the future road of our salvation, appoints the entrance of the God who is to come into a new light and to suffer, and in preparation for the paschal day commands the lamb to be slain—calling Christ this Passover of the Lord, and the immolation of Christ that other Passover—and although the beast of the earth is quite different from the God of glory, since indeed this earthly, mortal, perishable thing, animated by the precept of a living soul unto the use of the formed age, while Christ is the origin of all, wholly in himself, presuming nothing from elsewhere of what he is, without beginning, without end; whom, if you consider him throughout all things, you will find one in all, and discourse will sooner fail concerning him than will his nature, since what always is has neither in God a term of ceasing nor began an origin to begin, but all this for our sake he was to come into the flesh, or suffered in the flesh:

God willed us to understand in ourselves, that—because the one author of the saying is the author of both, and it is necessary that the peaceable understanding of the divine sayings be so fitted to each several kind of causes that the New Testament agrees with the Old, even though both are one—yet, because they are thought to be divided both by the very institution of the law and by time, and by name, and in the Old Testament the oblation of cattle and the circumcision of the flesh is sought, in the New only the faith of the soul—we may recognize in ourselves that, while in both Testaments man is sought perfect in body and spirit, as Christ was perfect in the flesh, as it were in two, the Old Testament is devoted to God for the sanctifying of the body and the New to the institution of the soul; and it is not at variance with itself but divided by reason, so that, just as these two Testaments are one God, so in us the perfection of good may be glory, if the sanctification of the body is cultivated by the fruit of the divine will, as the apostle says:

Behold, the old things have passed away and all things are made new; and elsewhere he himself says: as we have borne the image of him who is of the clay, so let us bear the image of him who is of heaven. Accordingly, in that testament which is the earlier, as the present first reading teaches, when Egypt had been struck the people of God were to be brought over into joy: for the celebrating of the Passover, the form of the cattle, the day of the months, the season of the years is required;

But in that which is called new, when the cattle had been driven out of the temple in the gospel and the world was nailed upon the cross, Christ ascending the gibbet is offered for us, and that is called the Passover of the Lord, this one ours, so that, the dispensation of these words being understood, we may grasp that all that is being done and has been done for the salvation of men has been shown forth; so that the nature of the body, which through the apostle is called the figure of the world and the old man, although it was made by the hand of God, yet because by the grasping of the clay it is kindred to an earthly birth, and is divided up by days and seasons, years and months and all the natures of vices that are under the sun, has dulled the divine race of men with the snares of an earthly dwelling, as the prophet says:

The body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things; necessarily it has been chastened through the law of the old testament and offered in the tabernacle of God, so that it should no longer owe anything to days and seasons, but, just as the flesh of Christ made a partaker of a virginal body slays before the sight of the Lord the form of sin working in itself, and just as on the cross of Christ, like a lamb perfect, male, unspotted, it dies together with the doing-away of all vices, as the apostle says: I am nailed with Christ to the cross, and now it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

For he who understands these things, confirmed unto faith and buried together with Christ in baptism through death, set free from days, seasons and months, deserves to be of the number of God and not of the world; and despising the earthly things that live, walking in the flesh yet warring not according to the flesh, he becomes the Passover of the Lord; and being regenerated in the new testament, made like to the body of God, when he has offered himself as a whole burnt offering to God, then in that which he was suffering he recognizes that his own Passover, Christ, has been immolated, as Paul says: if we have been planted together into the likeness of his death, we shall be so also of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified together with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed and that we should no longer serve sin; and elsewhere he himself:

For in that he died, he died unto sin once for all; but in that he lives, he lives unto God.

Finally our God, taking on flesh, joining in himself the form of God and of man, that is, of the divine soul and of the earthly flesh, while he shows the one of these to be the form of sin, the other the divine nature, and demonstrates that one to be the weapons of iniquity unto sin, this one the weapons of righteousness unto our salvation, being the Word made flesh: while as the invisible he is seen, as the unbegotten he is born, as the incomprehensible he is held, while as man he dies he rises again as God; and now he complains of his soul sorrowful unto death as though fearing, now beyond human confidence he professes that he will sit at the right hand of God; now he asks that, if it be possible, the cup of the passion be taken away, now he confidently insists that he will drink it as received from the Father; now as man he laments that he has been left in his sufferings by God, now as God he promises paradise to the thief who confesses;

while he is called Son and Joseph is not his father, while he is called Son and Mary is a virgin, a virgin conceiving before conception and bringing forth flesh, a virgin to give a wonder to the world after the birth; since amid these things so diverse, so discordant, according to the understanding of the human creature virginity would not agree with childbearing, nor death with eternity, nor diffidence with exhortation, nor trembling with liberty, while he shows the one thing ready according to the spirit, the other weak according to the flesh: thus he willed himself to be understood as God suffering in the flesh for men, so that, if sense be sought among us: he is one God; if word: he is one Christ; if work: he is one Jesus; if nature be sought: he is one Son; if origin be sought: he is called Father; if creature:

he is wisdom; if ministry: an angel; if power: man; if condescension: the Son of man; if that which was made through him: he is life; if that which is apart from him: nothing — thus ordering all things, so that, since he was one in all, willing one man in himself, the searcher of his work could find no other kind of perfect work except that he should believe him to be one God, whom he would find to be Almighty in himself in what he is and in what he is called.

And do not think that it pertains to the dishonour of true divinity, if God, commending his love among us and bearing our infirmities for us, thus asks for the offerings of an earthly birth, in order that, distinguishing himself in nothing according to the elements of the world, he might prove how far the power of eternal infinity exceeded the grasp of an earthly mind; but so that, by these things understanding God, steadfast faith may spurn the captious and useless questions of the world and acknowledge the sin which works in our mortal body, and that man himself, dividing himself while God shows forth all things in him, may discern what must be crucified for the destroying of the work of the world by chastening the body, what must be ascribed to God as unspotted in himself, what, because the divine dwells in us, must be kept impassible; so that, as we said above, being perfected in God in a threefold work of body, soul and spirit, we may fulfil what is written, as Paul says:

Just as you presented your members to serve uncleanness unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification; for the wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And therefore, beholding all things in you, although the comely working of worldly things commends the dispensation by the one or the other motion of its nature, yet, because it is necessary that the Worker far precede unto glory the sense of all creation, know that God has demanded nothing of this kind for himself; but because, man being deceived, the demoniac nature of idols had confounded the simple arrangement of divine works, divided by place, time, number, day, month and reckoning, while, introducing families of uncertain gods, it ascribed the incommunicable name of God to days, months, cattle, birds, woods and stones, and there was such a war of faith that, abandoning the God of so great a gift, they worshipped in earthly and heavenly things the bodily and visible forms of creation, as the apostle says concerning these:

They became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man and of birds and of fourfooted beasts and of creeping things. Necessarily our God, tempering the measure of a religious decree, that he might smooth the steep path of divine understanding as by a gentler slope, first gave the law through Moses, forbidding every idol that was in heaven or on earth or in the waters, detesting the warfare of the principality of the world which works in hurtful thoughts, and purifying in these the work of the flesh, that man should not desire anything besides the one God as a god, he restrained it by the limit of a precept; and, when he asked for some one thing in sacrifice, he willed not the blood of cattle to be slain, but that there be slain in us those things which the nature of vices had occupied in the flesh under idolatrous forms, as the apostle says concerning this matter:

not that an idol is anything, but that the things which they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; so that, these things being corrected in man, afterward the very nature of good things, fashioning, as it were, the place of a perfect man, entering the womb of virginal flesh, when the idols' forms had been slain in the cattle, might offer his own blood for the redemption of human expiation, and, passing through all the reproaches of our nature by conception, birth, wailings and cradle, in the world nailed to the cross might rejoice over man saved in himself and through himself for himself. For as to the first month being asked at the Passover, it is not that the month be regarded, whose number it is agreed shall perish with the numerable world, but because the Creator of all is in all things, that there be acknowledged what is written:

Christ is the firstfruits of all, and concerning the propitiated passing-over of the enemy, where the first month is asked for the immolating, there, because, as it is written, the number of man is the number of the beast, let the work of the world and nature in us be first overcome, and let us understand that we owe rather to God than to the world that we are born; let us understand this to be our first month and day, not that in which we appear in the world, but that in which, Egypt being overcome, that is, the world being repudiated, we are restored by a divine birth into God.

But the course of the moon is commanded to be observed for this reason, not that there be in it an observance of religion, but because in those things which are seen every man is overcome, and the flesh, kindred to the elements, bound to days and seasons, esteems the rulers of the circle of the earth to be gods; necessarily the nature of number, circumscribed by God in the elements, must be understood, and that which is diminished or increased must be believed first not to be of its own power — those things which have not liberty of voluntary action — and afterward, the institution of worldly wisdom being rejected, in body, soul and spirit, in which man is overcome, the threefold law of the decalogue being restored in us, it may become the month of the Lord, and the birth circumscribed by time may be overcome in us; since, as it is written, the bounds of the nations having been appointed according to

the number of the angels having been appointed, when the decade of the world is overcome, the commands of the Lord's decade are restored; and hence it is that in the mystery of the Lord either the tithes of fruits are asked for in the law, or in the overcoming of Egypt for the preparing of the Passover the tenth month is demanded; for he who, mighty in three, evicting the beginning, the middle and the consummation of the world working in himself, recognizes that he came not to be bound by time but that he might conquer; and believing, made out of time by things eternal, he understands that all that the sun is diminished or increased by day, the moon by night, is not the dominion of our captivity, but the workable constitution of nature; and the whole of what we have lived, when we return to our own kind, shall be called the Passover of the Lord, not the work of the world, as it is written:

I created all the host of heaven and I did not command that you should worship it. But as to the unspotted yearling lamb, taken and asked for from the lambs and the kids, it is in order that, as it is written, imitating the work of Christ, being little ones and unspotted in malice and imbibing the law of the Lord, we may work; and that, while man is rendered to God, the whole world being overcome in the number of the year, the innumerable nature of Christ may be held; and thus, out of the lambs and the kids, that is, out of two, into one new man, by the sanctification of body and spirit taken up, the Passover of the Lord and our Passover, that is, Christ in man and man in Christ, may be brought to be; and that there be fulfilled what is written: both he that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are all of one.

But as to the expiation of the house being asked for, it is not the cleansing of a house made with hands, which itself is fallen through the antiquity of time, that is demanded, but, as it is written: the house which we are, if we strive even to the end blameless by the virtue of faith; nor does God will the lintels or doorposts, built of woods and stones, to be touched with the gore of slain cattle, for of such things God has no care; but, as Paul says:

the head of every man is Christ, but the head of Christ is God: he prophesies the mystery of the future baptism, to be enriched by the pouring out of the divine blood, in us; and, as some of you have already known, others desire that you may know, all things which we see, hear, pray or speak, he wills to be fitted, either upon the doorposts or upon the lintels of the living body, unto the entrance of the divine word, that is, not to be snatched into the wandering errors of the world, but, as we seal ourselves unto the glory of the cross of Christ, as it were with the blood of the unspotted lamb, to be marked by the testimony of the divine passion, so that, as we walk in newness of life and not in the oldness of the letter, the body received by us in victory may no longer be called the earth of the world, but the house of God, nor the dwelling of fornication, but the image of the body of Christ.

Wherefore you also, understanding that the law is spiritual, but we are carnal, sold under sin, sanctify your souls unto obedience and offer yourselves as spiritual victims, an acceptable sacrifice well-pleasing to God; and, understanding the present reading, gird not the loins of the body, but, as the apostle says, having girded up the loins of your mind, sober in all things, believe perfectly in him in whom you are sealed by the Spirit; and, as those cleansing a house, prepare a dwelling for your flesh worthy of the commandments of God, so that, imitating the vigils appointed at the Passover of the Lord, dwelling in the night of ignorance, you may keep watch unto God, and may complete all that is offered by you before the day of the Lord comes in the morning; and, if it is not at once possible to complete what you will, understanding your neighbour close at hand, that is, the one dwelling together with you, by the Spirit, call him to your aid for the perfecting of the work; since, as Paul says, it is his both to will and to work in us and to perfect.

And as the present reading says, the Lord declaring: and the blood which you have placed on the doorposts and lintels shall be for a testimony; for I, seeing this blood, will protect you, nor shall there be the plague of extermination upon you, when I strike the land of Egypt: so when the Lord comes in judgment, he himself rendering testimony for us and crying in our hearts, Abba, Father, let us not be condemned with this world, but, sealed on our foreheads by the testimony of the precious blood, let us be absolved in Christ.

Amid all which things, although the very pages of God's scripture speak to you, yet, because I too am held to be a witness to you in Christ Jesus, I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord, that, putting off the old man with all his deeds and lusts, having become the Passover, and in the seven days, in which the world is either begun or carried on or ended, without leaven, that is, without vice, sincere, that is, unleavened, and owing nothing to the days of the world, guarding in yourselves the nature of God and the law, that is, let us live by the flesh and blood of the Lord, so that, when God comes in judgment, as you read in the Apocalypse, we may not be the number of the beast nor the measure of the world, but, in whom you read that John also wept over the seven seals sealed, we may be held as the book of heavenly doctrine, and, ascribed among the twelve thousand sealed of the patriarchs by their numbers, may not be called the number of the beast but the measure of man, which is an angel; that being fulfilled which the Lord says in the gospel:

the sons of this world marry and are given in marriage, beget and are begotten; but the sons of God neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither beget nor are begotten, but are like the angels of God. The holy David, establishing the mastership of divine instruction and setting in men the foundation of the indissoluble word, while he exults in all that for which he had been chosen, directing the work of the first psalm, both shows the glory of the divine nature and sets a discipline of living for all, saying: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence.

To which psalm, necessarily, because it is the first, the beginning of all, no title is placed in the superscription; for he who knows that which was first, and yet has not so done, is not held by the title of possessing sin, as it is written: for who calls by himself one who has been called? and elsewhere: for the just man the law is not laid down.

Although the prophetic word ascribes this to God alone, who alone could do it, yet it also persuades us so to serve God-Christ, that, the cloud of sins being wiped away and the birth of Christ being restored in us, if we know Christ to be the beginning of all things and acknowledge man to be the dwelling-place of Christ, we may prepare a dwelling worthy of such an Inhabitant — one which the error of worldly ambition does not bend down, nor lust deprave, nor avarice discolour, but which, enriched with the splendour of perennial life, may be found both a temple of Christ-God and a testament of the law and a dwelling worthy of the Saviour, as Paul says: you are the temple of God and God dwells in you; and elsewhere: know that, if anyone violates the temple of God, which you are, God will destroy him.

Understanding which, we know that we are the temple of God and God dwells in us; greater is the fear of the crime and more evident the punishment of sin, to have the same one as a daily witness whom we have as judge, and to owe death to him whom we understand to be the author of life. For we are all the body of Christ and members in part; for that we are reborn unto salvation is of mercy, not of nature; so that, if, bound by the birth of the flesh and obligated by the vices of worldly evil, we have escaped the way of sinners and the counsels of the ungodly, or, baptized into Christ, putting on Christ, we may so follow the heir of perennial life that we be found neither sharers with him whom we have renounced nor unfaithful to him in whom we believe.

And therefore, understanding the utterance of the prophetic word, be such as God the Father made you, be such as the Father's hand established you; for the image and likeness of God, which you are, seeks not the enticements and flatteries of corruption; and all the counsel of the ungodly and the ways of sinners, the seats of pestilence, are the cunning of corrupt flesh and the workshop of a polluted body, as it is written: the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things. For this is the modulation of cupidity, the stroke of wrath, the unhealable promise, the weapons of the serpent, the craftiness of the enemy, the flattery of the stranger, the subjugation of ourselves, the corruption of oneself.

Through this the assailing enemy inserts his arts, and by his snares, through hidden things that deceive, the devil creeps in, while he strikes that he may terrify, or while he flatters that he may deceive. So finally the apostle Paul, showing what he himself willed and what he resisted that it should not be done, said: I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin; and elsewhere: I know that there dwells not in me, that is, in my flesh, good; for with the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. So also the prophet, speaking of this, says: ascend the high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem; lift it up, fear not;

say to this people: 'all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass; the grass is withered and the flower has fallen, but the word of the Lord abides for ever.' And elsewhere he says: I will stand upon my watch, that I may see and hear who shall speak in me and what I shall answer in my accusation; and elsewhere: hear, my people, they who call you blessed lead you astray and disturb the paths of your feet. If we understand the nature of these and have no fellowship of vices, we necessarily attain the kingdom which flesh and blood shall not inherit.

So finally Rebecca, chosen unto the faith of the working mystery, seeing in her own womb the battles of two peoples, brought forth Esau in the sorrow of her travail, who would lose his birthrights, and produced Jacob unto salvation, whom Christ would make heir.

In which you too, most beloved brethren, as faithful servants and, as it is written, sons of God and joint-heirs of Christ, working in the testimony of the things to be spoken, sanctify your souls unto the obedience of faith, not conforming yourselves, ignorant, to the desires of life in which you are ashamed to wish to receive the wages of sin, but, entering the path of the psalmist's word, walk in the law of the Lord, so that, like a tree which is planted beside the running of waters, watered by the fountains of the divine words, you may bring forth the ripe shoots of a flourishing understanding and the abiding fruits of an honourable life — fruits which the pleasure-seeking time of a corruptible dwelling has not produced, but which the instruction of the divine word has made fruitful — so that, covered by the perpetual light of the commandments whose leaves fall not, we may be able to spurn the punishments of sinners and to have the rest of the just, through Jesus Christ.

'Lord, how are they multiplied who trouble me? many rise up against me' and the rest. Although the title of the psalm holds the order of the deeds — why holy David turned aside in spirit from the face of his son Absalom — yet for us who speak of heavenly works, the things of carnal matters are not to be scrutinized, but rather, found by the searching probe of inquiry, that we may attain the rewards of the work found in secret, as it is written: seek, he says, and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you; and elsewhere: all things are possible to him who believes. And so we ought to gather deeds done through the appearance by faith, and to track out visible works by the invisible secret of the mind.

For the apostle affirms that all things were done in a figure, and that the things done aforetime show forth a type of us, so that the work of labour may, through the knowledge of the law, illuminate those whom ignorance previously veiled in darkness, as it was said by the apostle to the Ephesians: for you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord; walk as sons of light. Therefore we ought to keep watch, who are joined to him, which if it be corrupted by the change of time, yet day by day that man is renewed, so that we may deem magnificent not the things which come into the eyes but the things which come into the mind, not being eager for bodily things but for spiritual, labouring, as the apostle Paul, the chosen vessel of Christ, the teacher of the nations, sets forth and says: the law, he says, is spiritual, but I am carnal; and most blessed Peter:

all prophecy, he says, or scripture needs interpretation. Hence for us, night and day, there is meditation on the law of the Lord; hence, as far as is meet, the intent of a careful mind upon it; hence the knowledge of ourselves; hence the confidence of glorying, to repudiate the things that are of the flesh and to choose the things that are of the spirit, to direct the keenness of the heart unto the knowledge of truth, to come to know the secrets of the heavenly precepts, to provide for the profit of the soul while time suffices.

Whence, brethren, as I gaze rather curiously upon the providence of the sacred reading, the order of the psalms digested through the prophet seems to me not undeserved, nor are the things which the Spirit of God dictated set forth in disorder, since he shows the raw birth of man, formed in the purity of simple innocence, equal to the blessed, if he remains in these, saying: blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly and has not stood in the way of sinners; secondly, he dreaded the embodied venom of envy, when he says: why have the nations raged and the peoples meditated vain things? thirdly, in this he teaches that the hatred of son against father is born from us, showing the things which persecute us. Then also that, most dear ones:

he admonished the sense of the reader and slowed the anxious mind with the inquiry of truth, when he placed at the beginnings the things which at the end of his reign he endured — prophesying, I believe, the life of man, and circumscribing the nature of worldly evil. The things of form or of age, tossed by the whirlwinds of ignorance, are bitter in their sins; in the tranquillity of age they become ripe by the amendment of knowledge; for which the same one prays: remember not, O God, the sins of my youth and of my ignorance; and the apostle, rousing us to the liberty of righteousness and rebuking the servitude of sin in us, thus says: for when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness; what fruit therefore had you then in those things in which you are now ashamed?

For this is the third psalm, as Absalom was the third son, ungodly, cruel, unjust, who, having obtained pardon for his slain brother, attempted to pursue his religious and most indulgent father with war, to strip him of his kingdom, to deprive him of life. All which things I judge are to be referred as a figure to us, and that the things contrary to us which are begotten from us come into being. Hence the first enticement nourishes guilt, and the evil of appearance furnishes occasion to the enemy; then in the downward slope by the impulse of the will he is urged on, and the man, that is, the son of perdition, is shown forth. For the first is the fault of concupiscence, the second the adjoining of the will, the third the fulfilment of the desired work.