The first class contains sermons on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. The second, sermons on the seasons. The third, sermons on the saints. The fourth, sermons on various matters. Inserted into these classes are the sermons of Caesarius, bishop of Arles, except those which are inscribed 'to the Monks.' We have compared all those editions mentioned at the beginning of the Retractationes and the Confessions, in volume one. First Class. On the Old and New Testament. Sermon One. On the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). 1. Empty questions concerning the tree of paradise are resolved. We read in Genesis that the Lord said to Adam: Of every tree that is in paradise you shall eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is in the midst of paradise, you shall not eat;
but on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. We know, dearly beloved brethren, that many have raised empty questions about this tree, who say that Adam did not sin by his own will, because in that tree was the knowledge of good and evil: and while they strive to excuse the fault of man, they thus do injury to God the Creator. To these an account must be rendered, lest they longer raise empty questions, or lie hidden even now in error by thus thinking: but if they wish to know, let them be silent and hear; lest, by foolish speaking, they hurl reproach against God. There was one tree in the midst of paradise, testing the will of man: in it hung life, in it also lurked death through transgression: in it transgression appeared, in which the precept of the law had been established.
God said: Of every tree that is in paradise you shall eat; but of that tree which is in the midst of paradise you shall not eat, lest you die. In this word a law had been laid down by God for man; in it was a reward appointed, when, in the determination of the sentence, God said: If you taste, you shall surely die; and the devil said: You shall not surely die; and man stood between God the Maker and the devil the deceiver. God threatens death if the fruit of the tree is touched; the devil promises that they will be as gods if that tree is violated: and the poisonous sweetness was desired, and the wholesomeness of perpetual life was despised. 2. Death was not made in the tree. But some slanderer says: Do you see that in that tree death was made?
Let us answer the empty question. It was not at all made in that tree, but discovered through man: this was a testing of man, not a deceiving by the Savior. For if He had not loved man, He would not have made him; nor would He have forewarned him beforehand, had He willed to put him to death. But if He had not forewarned beforehand, it would have been not mercy but impiety; not justice but injustice — that He should have made man mercifully, and caused him to fall unjustly. This impiety ought not to be even in man: how much less is it to be believed to have been in God, who is the fount of piety and goodness? Which of men, my brethren, would allow his own work to perish, or hand over his own building to ruin, or thrust into the pit of death the son whom he has begotten?
If this cruelty is not found in man, neither should you believe it was in God, who ordered His own workmanship well—that is, man—and propped up His creature against its impending ruin with the stay of a commandment, that it might not fall; yet it could not stand. Why? Because it refused to hear God. What blame, then, do we lay upon God if Adam fell—Adam who, that he might fall, despised the commandment of God? The tree was not evil. Things are evil not by nature but by evil use. Tell me, was the tree itself good or evil? You will say, Evil: evil surely, since by snatching its fruit man was punished with death. Was it then the tree that was evil, or the transgression of the commandment? Plainly the tree; for if it had not been evil, Adam would not have fallen. You say these things without attending to the power of the Scriptures.
For just as it is written that in that tree there was the knowledge of good and evil, so it is written, And God saw the things that He had made, and behold they were very good (Gen. 1:31). Do you believe that which would lead you into error, and do you not believe that which would bring you to salvation? Will you, who slander, come to know that that tree was not evil but good, and that death was not made in it by God, but that man created death for himself? Tell me, slanderer, is iron good or evil? Without doubt you will say, Evil. And why evil and not good, when all things that God made are very good? What kind of good do you call iron, by which men are slain? Hear, then: it is not the iron that is evil, but he who uses iron for a crime—he himself is evil.
For do you wish to know that iron is good? One man uses it to prune a vine, and another to commit murder; one man feeds himself by iron, another slays the innocent with the sword; one man tills the field with iron, another sheds blood by the iron at the throat; one man works with iron to sustain his own life, but another with iron snatches away another's life. For the judge too bears the sword, that he may punish the guilty and acquit the innocent. Still—if you have leisure—go on slandering. Do you say wine is good or evil? I think you would say it is good, not evil; and this by the judgment of fairness, not by the favor of charity. Therefore wine is good. Very good. Well then, since in the matter of wine you have confessed that God's creature is good, I too confess that it is good.
Why then does one man take it with sobriety, and another unto drunkenness? Is God's creature to be called evil merely because one man gets drunk on it and appears disgraceful? Another drinks soberly, and in that very sobriety blesses God; but he who is made drunk falls into a pit, and at times incurs death. The foods that the Lord has deigned to bestow on us for our use are not evil but good; and yet, if they are taken in excess, they are ruinous and harmful. Is God's creature therefore to be called evil because it harms, or is ruinous to some? No—rather it is because they take in excess unto the ruin of their own well-being, so that what God has bestowed on the human race becomes harmful to them. And the things I am about to say are well known to all.
We know that some have been choked to death by too much wine and food: was death then in the wine or in the food? Far from it! Rather, immoderation in food made them fall into death. So too iron is not to be called evil because a robber commits murder with it; rather the man who uses it to slay a human being is himself evil. Thus that tree also was not evil but good; but plainly evil was the fact that man transgressed the commandment of God; for whatever God has deigned to grant man for his use is good. Behold, from the New Testament I bring forth testimony that all things which God made are good.
In the Acts of the Apostles we read that Peter fell asleep and saw in a vision a certain white vessel like a linen sheet let down from heaven, in which were set the four-footed beasts, the birds, and the creeping things of the earth. And a voice came to him: Rise, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter said: Far be it, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common and unclean. To him it was said: What God has sanctified, do not call common (Acts 10:11-15). What now, slanderer? Behold, by the divine mouth we have proved that all things are not only good but even sanctified. The sin is to be imputed to Adam alone, not to the tree nor to God. This tree was not evil but good, nor could anything of evil be found in it.
but man became evil of his own accord, having used ill the good that God had made. In this the evil will of man is recognized: that he, to whom all paradise lay subject, by stretching out his hand to the forbidden tree incurred death. If the Godhead had bestowed on him but one tree, and all paradise had been forbidden, what God bestowed on him ought to have sufficed. But because he wished for more than the will of the Giver granted him, he lost even what he had, and none the less incurred death. To whom is Adam's sin to be imputed? To God who warned him, or to him who refused to hear?
To the physician who gave the wounded man a precept to be observed, or to the wounded man who, against the physician's precept, by tasting harmful fruits incurred the reed—that is, the occasion—of transgression? It is the art of physicians that, to those whom they see laboring under too grave an illness, they forbid the things that are ruinous to health or would bring on danger. But if the sick man, against the physician's precept, through intemperance taking the very things forbidden, falls into death, what does it matter to the physician who, foreseeing the cause, prescribed the regimen? So neither is it to be imputed to God, the physician of souls, that Adam fell—Adam who, though warned beforehand, wished to live forever. Many things remain concerning these questions that ought to be said;
but the hour has slipped by for saying each thing, lest the length of the discourse breed weariness in the hearers. I call myself a debtor, I ask for a deferral; but I fear lest here the debtor should appear and the creditor procure his own absence. I am concerned to pay the debt of a sermon, but I do not find my former creditors: some I see, some I seek. O sluggish creditor, when you have come to exact the debt, why do you procure your own absence? The debtor desires to satisfy the creditor, and the idle creditor absents himself. You see a strange thing. The debtor presses upon the creditor to receive the debt, and the other makes excuse. But what does it matter if the creditor was unwilling to come? Let the debtor render what he promised. Why did God, foreknowing that Adam would sin, not call him back from sin?
Still that old slanderer, though convicted by so many proofs, does not acquiesce, but says: Did God know that man could sin, or not? Let us answer him, lest he seem to himself to have said anything: He knew it plainly. If, then, He knew that man could sin, why did He not call him back from sin? Why? Because it was not fitting to crown one who was unwilling. Who ever, my brothers, gives a prize to one who does not fight? Or what crown to one who does not contend? Or what victory without a struggle? Hear the Apostle speaking by the divine mouth: No one is crowned unless he has striven lawfully (2 Tim. 2:5). Adam neither fought nor took up the contest with the devil; but at a single suggestion he lost the prize of immortality. He was conquered who did not fight;
he yielded to his will, not to necessity. O slanderer, who do not know how to mark yourself with the sign, and yet wish to slander God because Adam did not sin by his own will! Was not Job a man like him—how much did he suffer and endure? He fought bravely and conquered: he was given by God into the power of the devil, and he held out. And surely the one whom God knew could by no means be utterly overcome, He ought not to have handed over into that power; but God willed to test him in this way precisely to cut off from us all occasion of excuse and slander. Stripped of his riches and estate, he could not be conquered, because he did not will it. He lost his son, and blessed the Lord. This was too little: afterward, full of sores, he lay upon the dunghill;
and he could not speak anything evil against the Lord, though he was pressed by pains to speak; yet his words were not of reproach. To him his wife was now no longer a helper but a deceit—the helper indeed of the devil, but the deceit of her husband—suborned by the devil she urged such things, saying: How long will you endure this? Say a word against the Lord, that He may be angry with you and you may die (Job 2:9). O the affection of a wife! O the conjugal poultice! As if she had said, Confess to God, that He may be gracious to you and you may live: rather she says, Blaspheme God, that He may be angry with you and you may die. O the devices of the ancient serpent! Through his wife he thought to deceive Job, whose soul was full of wounds; yet not even so was he able to incite him to blasphemy. But what such thing did Adam endure?
What contest did he have with the devil? He endured nothing of the sort. Why then did he obey the devil rather than God? Death comes from the contempt of the divine command. With what reverence the Scriptures are to be received. But still, slanderer, you say: Why did God say, You shall die the death, unless because God Himself made death, since He did not avert it? You are answered in this too, most foolish slanderer: if you, being a man who has sons, admonish them all, give a precept to all, that they should follow you and lean upon you in all things—and if one of them proves a despiser, and through evil conduct incurs death—surely his death is not to be imputed to you, but rather to him who, by despising your admonition, incurred death?
So neither is Adam's death to be ascribed to God, who warned him beforehand, before the transgression, lest he fall into the snare. For it is manifest that the Lord warned him, and did not wish man to die, nor did He Himself make death. To this word most wise Solomon bears witness, saying: God did not make death, neither does He rejoice in the destruction of the living (Wisd. 1:13). Adam neglected God's command, and fell into death. Truly, brothers, no one contemns the imperial rescript without peril to his own blood; but all receive it with trembling and veneration, and adore the meanest little scrap of paper written with ink, and revere as it were divine characters. When the divine Scriptures are read, the words of God thunder, the Lord Himself in a certain manner present speaks to those present;
and He is not heeded. Either men listen with disdain, or—what is worse—sitting idle they give themselves to idle tales. The emperor, set far away, speaks from a scrap of paper; and we tremble, and he is adored in that paper as though present: yet when the Testament of the Lord is recited, it is even despised by some men. The prophets themselves cry out, the apostles preach, the Gospels speak, He converses with men through Himself, and He is not heeded. Hear the Lord present and speaking: Wherever, He says, two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them (Matt. 18:20). Ought God to have permitted sin? But surely, say the slanderous men, God ought not to have permitted man to sin. O fools!
Those who say this do not consider that God did not make a statue of stone or of wood, but fashioned a perfect man, to whom He also gave the power of free will, that he might consider what good to desire and what evil to spurn. He ought to have feared what God threatened, and to have despised what the devil urged; and with the prize of immortality set before him, he ought to have kept his heart prepared for this, and to have kept the command of his Creator, not dared the counsel of the destroyer. Do I not blame man rather than God? Should He who made man do him wrong? O foolish and empty question! Men say, God ought not to have permitted man to sin; and they do not say that man did evil in transgressing God's command that he might sin;
for indeed man himself ought to have shunned death and not approached the forbidden tree. If any man (I will speak of the emperor of this world) has contemned the herald of the judge, is he not haled off to punishment? Adam contemned the command of God, and is defended by some! Why do you blame God at your own peril, and not man without your peril? Why do you accuse the Craftsman, who fashioned well, and defend the man who was unwilling to attend to his own building, who was forgetful of the divine command, who ran into the wound of transgression? Adam is not evil merely because he begot a murderer. O you who defend Adam and do God wrong, answer me what I ask you. Was Adam good or evil?
You will say, Good, so that your defense may be complete. If, then, he was good, why did he beget one son good and the other a brigand? He ought to have created good sons; or if, as you say, he sinned by God's doing, he ought to have generated both evil. Why did he beget one innocent, and the other a shedder of innocent blood? The one consecrated martyrdom, the other initiated parricide. Therefore Cain, because he killed his brother, is not guilty, since his father took on the guilt, who created the son? Therefore Cain unwillingly fixed the sword in his brother's throat! Such is the justice that those hold who strive to slander the law: that the begotten should not be guilty, and their begetters should be held bound by the guilt.
Behold Adam who begot a brigand, behold Cain who killed his brother: which of these two is guilty? The father who begot, or the son who destroyed his brother by a cruel death? The slanderer has yielded, the slanderer has fallen silent—though he who slanders the truth never says anything truer. Where are you, slanderer? Answer me on behalf of your client, you who were so confident of yourself; defend the one whom until now you were defending. Why have you yielded? Why have you fallen silent? Behold, for the son's guilt Adam is held guilty, who begot the parricide. Why do you not say, He is not guilty? He who was silent has risen up: I do not keep silence, he says; I answer plainly, and I defend: Neither is the son guilty for the father, nor the father for the son;
for it is written: The soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that has sinned, that alone shall be punished (Ezek. 18:4). That slanderer, who was sleeping, has as it were awakened, opened his mouth, begun to speak; but presently he will fall silent. Say then, neither is the father guilty for the son, nor the son for the father. Answer for your client, and I for my God. Defend the cause of Adam, and I the injury done to my God. You say it is not just that Adam should be guilty for his son: and I agree. If the son's guilt does not implicate the father in sin, and just as we are not to judge on behalf of Cain, so neither let us impute to God that Adam sinned; but let us so act that we may come to the mercy of God. SERMON II. On the calling of Abraham, 'Go forth from your land,' etc.
Genesis 12:1. What it means to go forth from one's own land. Just now, when the divine lesson was being read, we heard the Lord saying to blessed Abraham: Go forth from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father's house. All things, dearly beloved brothers, that were written in the Old Testament bore the type and image of the New Testament. For so Paul said: All these things happened to them in figure: and they were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Cor. 10:11). If, then, they were written for our sake, what we read was done bodily in Abraham of old, we see spiritually fulfilled in ourselves. Go forth, says the Lord to him, from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father's house.
All these things, brothers, we both believe and perceive to be fulfilled in us through the sacrament of Baptism. Our land is our flesh: well do we go forth from our land when, forsaking carnal habits, we cleave to the footsteps of Christ. Does it not seem to you that he happily goes forth from his own land—that is, from himself—who from proud is made humble, patient from wrathful, chaste from lustful, generous from covetous, kindly from envious, gentle from cruel? Truly, brothers, he happily goes forth from his own land who for the love of God is so transformed. And so even in private conversation we are accustomed to speak thus: if some evil man begins of his own accord to practice good works, we say of him, He has gone out of himself.
And truly he is rightly said to have gone forth well from himself who, having repudiated his vices, delights in virtues. Go forth, says the Lord, from your land. Our land—that is, our flesh—before Baptism was a land of the dying; through Baptism it has been made a land of the living. This is that land of which the Psalmist makes mention, saying: I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps. 27:13). The land of the living and not of the dying—that is, of virtues, not of vices, as I said—we have been made through Baptism: if, however, after receiving Baptism we do not return to the wallowing-place of vices, if, after we have been made a land of the living, we do not do works subject to death and lustful. And come, says the Lord, into the land which I shall show you.
For then do we come with joy to the land which the Lord shows, if first we drive away, with His own help, the vices and sins from our land—that is, from our flesh. To go forth from our kindred. Go forth, He says, also from your kindred. This kindred is understood to be the vices and sins which are born with us, as it were, from our very birth, and are added to us and nourished from infancy by evil deeds. From our kindred, then, we go forth when through the grace of Baptism we are emptied of all sins and vices; yet in such a way that afterward, with God's help, we labor as much as we can, so that, our vices being expelled, we may be filled with virtues.
For if, having been emptied of all evils through Baptism, we choose to be slothful and lazy, I fear lest that be fulfilled in us which is written in the Gospel: When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walks through dry places seeking rest, and finds none. Afterward returning, if he finds the house empty, he brings with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and entering they dwell there: and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first (Matt. 12:43-45). So then let us go out from our kindred—that is, from our sins and vices—in such a way that we may never afterward wish to return to these evils, like a dog to its vomit. To go forth from his father's house. Go forth, He says, also from your father's house.
And this too, dearly beloved, we ought to receive spiritually. Our father, before the grace of Christ, was the devil. Of him the Lord in the Gospel reproves the Jews, saying: You are of your father the devil, and you wish to fulfill the desires of your father (John 8:44). He called the devil the father of men, not by their being born of him, but by their imitating his wickedness; not that they could be born of him, but that they willed to imitate him. For that the devil was formerly our father, the Psalmist makes mention in the person of God speaking to the Church, saying: Hear, O daughter, and see, and forget your people and your father's house (Ps. 45:10). Consider, brothers, what he said: Hear, he says, O daughter. He who said, Hear, O daughter, is surely a father.
And when He says, Forget your people and your father's house, He surely admonishes that the father is to be forsaken. We are therefore invited by God the Father to forsake, by a blessed and happy exchange, the devil our father. Well do we forsake the devil as father, if, with God's help, we always strive to shun or flee his cunning and wickedness. Recapitulation of the things said above. All these things, then, brothers—that is, that after the example of Abraham we may be able to go forth from our land, namely from our carnal manner of life, and to leave our kindred, namely our vices and sins, and to escape from the house of the devil our father—we have merited not by our own strength, but by the grant of Christ's grace.
And therefore, as much as we can, let us labor with His help, lest we return to fellowship or friendship with the devil, or to vices, or to carnal concupiscences; on account of that which is written: Now you have been made whole; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you (John 5:14): but rather by imitating the faith of Abraham, and by doing good works continually, we may be able to attain not only to pardon, but even to the fellowship or friendship of God. But that too, dearly beloved brothers, which the Lord spoke concerning this same matter to Moses, we ought to consider with great fear and dread. For thus He says:
When the Lord has delivered to you the land of the Canaanites, beware lest you ever join friendships with the inhabitants of that land, which forthwith would be to you unto ruin (Deut. 7:1-4). For since we believe that through the grace of Baptism all crimes or sins have been expelled from us, if afterward we make friendships with those very vices and sins, while we consent to them unto covetousness or luxury, without doubt this friendship turns to our ruin. And therefore, as much as we can, let us labor with His help for the well-being of the soul; and in the field of our heart, which sins or crimes had possessed, let us take care to introduce virtues, that there may be fulfilled in us what blessed Isaac, blessing his son as a type of Christ, said:
Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed (Gen. 27:27): which may He deign to grant, to whom be honor and dominion with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto ages of ages. Amen. SERMON III. On blessed Abraham. Abraham justified by faith. Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness (Gen. 15:6). Behold, without works he is justified by faith, and whatever might have been conferred on him by legal observance, faith alone bestowed the whole. He had been a law to himself, who had not received the law; yet by nature he observed whatever was of the law (Rom. 2:14).
Abraham our father had the root of faith and of the Christian name; who, when he was commanded to go forth from his native inheritance unto uncertain and foreign places, fulfilled it with total devotion: in a thing so hard he had no hesitation, but received the sentence of God as one who might seem to be choosing it. Go forth, says the Lord, from your land and from your kindred, and come into the land which I shall show you (Gen. 12:1). A new kind of testing: to enjoin foreign exiles upon one who has his own possessions, to heap toil upon one at rest, to command penury upon one who possesses, and to impose upon the lord of such great resources the necessity of wandering abroad. Yet gladly did faith accept whatever seemed arduous to the unbelieving.
To whom is not his own hut sweeter than foreign palaces, and a cottage of one's own will than well-appointed praetoria? It is no light thing for anyone to leave his own and to follow after alien uncertainties; to leave what he knows, to seek what he does not know. For who has forsaken his own without grief, or abandoned it without tears?
To whom is it not hard to leave those walls that shared the secret of his birth, that sweet threshold and beloved hearth, which both the memory of his parents and the first rudiments of his own infancy commend to him—where those cradles of the new and soon-rising man served him, where carefree infancy played amid the first beginnings of light, or the childhood years happy in the simplicity of that very age, which native need, amid the frolics and the very sports of that age, displayed to him on his own home soil? Amid these things, then, so charming, so sweet, which had to be left with every difficulty, Go forth, He says, from your land. Who would gladly hear this without the strength of faith? It would be a lighter trial, if he even heard the name of the place to which he was to go.