Although I know, most holy Vigilius, that very many of the Gentiles, turned away from the order and reason of truth so as not to know the Lord, wander in blindness of mind, yet I have known more of the madness of the Jewish people, who even now, with obstinate hardness of heart and with the inbred iniquity of their fathers, persist against the name of the Lord, turning away from true salvation and not seeking the giver of eternal life; so that they, being by equal desert liable to the offences of their ancient stock through inbred wickedness, might at least even late, by believing, be freed from their iniquities through a fear turned toward God and every satisfaction of penance.
But it persists and endures still, and I think will always endure even to the succeeding generation, the innate irreligious perfidy of the fathers, which, strengthened by the madness of unbelief against a hatred of the name of the Lord, can neither be corrected to the knowledge of the truth, nor be taught and persuaded to the fear of God by his very admonitions. But since the Lord teaches and shows, saying: 'I am the light of the world, and he who has followed me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,' how great an evil is it, deliberately to forsake the light of life shown from heaven, and to prefer blindness of mind, to choose the darkness of death—so that they display, by the free and unrestrained ruin of their own will, that they refuse against God even those things which profit them, to their own damnation?
According to which the Holy Spirit also speaks, when Jerusalem is rebuked by the Lord's voice because she was unwilling to be gathered when God willed to gather her, and he makes manifest the goodness of God, that he perpetually wills to come to the help of sinners: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not?' So plainly, by the voice of God, is the obstinacy of the perfidious people denoted, that it is even shown always to have despised its own salvation against the merciful compassion of the Lord. Another prophet likewise, offering and imparting the benevolence of God by the exhortation of his preaching, proclaims and urges, saying:
'Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord.' Another likewise, showing that God's mercy remains everlasting, added, saying: 'I do not desire the death of the dying, so much as that he should return and live, says the Lord.' What, then, is it to return, but to be able to be saved, by believing in Christ, reconciled to God through him who is the way of coming to the Father? And how can they return to God, who were unwilling to believe him who preaches the will of God—him through whom is the knowledge of God and the return to God? Or how shall they be able to appease God by satisfaction, who chose rather to persecute with sacrilegious assault him who is the satisfaction and propitiation for us before the Father?
For if we have Christ as advocate with God the Father, we ought assuredly with anxious fear to begin and do those things which he taught and admonished us, and which he is to speak on our behalf before the Father. Therefore we who, with mind bent toward the fear of the Lord, hold fast to the admonitions of his commandments, and, out of a religious and reverent heart, have conceived a ready belief born of his fear—what else ought we to follow, what to desire, what rather to will and hold, than that, with all the night of the old mind dispelled from us and the gloom of our former life wiped away, mindful of the Lord's saving commandments and retaining the promises of eternal life, we should turn to his admonitions and walk in that light which he has shown, with a faith made firm:
so that we who once, ignorant of the salvation to come, wandered entangled in the errors and darkness of our former life, being now illumined by the brightness of that true light, and the path of a better way shown and opened to us, may hold to the commandments of the Lord which are to be followed and performed. This light of saving life has risen for us; this safeguard, born for the restoration of man, has come from the providence and pity of God the Father. The Magi, first coming from the eastern region and, with his star as guide, openly seeking the King of the Jews by their foreknowing proclamation, bringing gifts as well, showed him to all, testified by their inquiry. And lest to any it should be hidden who he was, finding the child, they fell on their knees and worshipped, as the Gospel testifies, saying:
'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came from the east to Jerusalem, saying: Where is he who is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.' Testifying, that is, the truth concerning him—that even a star had been shown to them as a sign and token of his very nativity, by which as pointer, while the wise men proclaimed and affirmed him to have been born, it might be believed even at Jerusalem.
Simeon also, the just man, who, being set in blindness, had heard by divine admonition that he would not die before he had seen Christ, when the mother brought the infant with her into the temple, all the people being present, perceived in the spirit that Christ was born, took the child into his hands, saw him, and, blessing God in the sight and hearing of all, said: 'Now you dismiss your servant, O Lord, according to your word, in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.' What Simeon, being blind, had heard was fulfilled with evident truth, and the truth which he had seen with the light received, he openly preached to the people by blessing God. For to this end he had seen—that he might report it, that by his revelation he might show that Christ
had been born, and might instruct the first beginnings of the perfidious people's unbelief. Nor is this the only testimony that the truth of the heavenly Scriptures bears concerning him; but also through the prophets the Holy Spirit beforehand openly proclaimed his coming into this world as future, with the mind of all made aware, lest there should be any pretext of excuse for the unbelieving, either that they had been ignorant that Christ was the Son of God, or that they had not known the Saviour's coming to be future—as David makes manifest, saying: 'Day utters speech to day, and night shows knowledge to night; there is no speech nor words whose voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the earth. In the sun he has set his tabernacle.'
that is, in the open, in the light, he showed openly that he himself had come, and by his manifestation he in a manner confirmed to all the preaching through the prophets by the demonstration of his presence. This also Isaiah, through whom the Lord himself showed his presence by the clear manifestation of an announcement, prophesies and says: 'I myself who spoke am come'—that is, I who through the prophets had spoken beforehand of my coming as future, am he who now, with my own and most glorious voice, myself openly manifest my presence as my own witness. What could be said more evident, more clear than light, more true? So that it might be as it were perceived with the eyes that he had come, he who was to come showed himself before he came; and while unbelief blocked up the minds of the perfidious people, no one recognized him when he came.
As the same Isaiah proclaims in his first rebuke of the people, saying: 'The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib, but Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me.' He appeared openly to all, as he himself foretold, and to those sitting in darkness the manifest light of life shone forth; and the injustice of the perfidious, its breast beset, its own salvation set aside and rejected, chose rather the darkness by the blindness of heart. Everywhere the prophecy of all those frequents and makes manifest, who, by the forewarning of the Holy Spirit, were allotted to be the surveyors of the Lord's coming. This light given to the world and the day of salvation risen for us, destined also for the quickening of those who believe in him, the Holy Spirit teaches and shows in the Psalms, saying:
'The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner: this was done by the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord has made; let us walk and rejoice in it.' That we should walk in this day, Paul the apostle also, commanding and teaching and forewarning, says: 'For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand. Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; let us walk becomingly as in the day,' that is, in Christ and his commandments, illumined by whose light and admonitions, and found in the brightness of his day, we behold with our mind salvation near to us by our belief in him.
That Christ too is the Sun to all who fear him, the prophet Malachi testifies and promises, saying: 'But to you who fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise, and healing in his wings'—showing that salvation can be conferred on us by nothing except by the passion of his cross, whereby, stretching out his hands to embrace all things that were to be saved throughout the world, we may believe with a fear turned toward him, and be quickened unto the eternity of life by the hope of his future kingdom.
Who then is so stolid and mad, who so alien from the understanding of his own salvation, that, in so many and so great testimonies of the truth, being unbelieving, he does not soften his breast, hardened against sincere faith, with the understanding of the truth, and, stripped of the darkness of a life once mortal, walking in the light of the heavenly precepts, does not with illumined heart and with the whole belief of his mind turn to the divine admonitions and to the performance of the Lord's saving commandments—so that he may know as Lord him whom the prophets proclaimed, may understand Christ, who showed that he had come openly to the world, may believe him to be the Son of God and God, according to the Scriptures divinely testifying? As he himself makes manifest what is eternal life, saying:
'And this is eternal life, that they may know you the only and true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,'—teaching and showing that to know God is nothing else than to believe, and to open the eyes of the heart upon the Lord with a bent and unchanged faith of a devoted mind. Hence it comes about that by believing you may understand, and by understanding you may behold God in your perception with illumined heart, as the same Lord also forewarns through Isaiah, saying: 'Unless you believe, neither shall you understand.'
So easy and excellent and lavish and abundant is the clemency of the Lord's kindness, that if anyone once turns himself to him with all fear, being admitted to the heavenly gift, his mind straightway lies open to nothing but the divine, and, raising the eyes of the heart to heaven and the things above, he beholds the light of Christ, salvation already won. An example and lesson of our fear and faith is shown from the faithful belief of the patriarch Abraham himself, who with a simple mind straightway believed the promise of God, and therefore, by a fitting recompense, deserved to have it reckoned to him for righteousness.
This is what God loves, this he desires, this he graciously rewards and honors in his own servants: the simplicity of a clean heart by which we behold God, the fear born of love for the Lord by which we are tested, the trusting faith of the mind by which we are reckoned unto righteousness. It befits us to follow this faith and to keep this fear of God, we who, guarding the words of heaven and hoping in the divine promises, have deserved to be called the children of Abraham. This is confirmed by the testimony of the apostle Paul, who by the voice of God was called a vessel of election, when he says: 'Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.' Know therefore that those who are of faith, these are the children of Abraham.
This the Jewish people, to whom from the very beginning of the Law admonitions were spoken, refused to keep, through the hardness of an unbelieving mind and the madness of a faithless heart; and therefore, for the desert of their distrust, they lost the name of children. Yet not in all of that faithless nation was the mind hardened by hatred against the name of the Lord, so as not to perceive the truth. And moreover the Holy Spirit, that is, Christ our Lord, who came forth from God the Father and came to save that which had perished of Israel:
who, greater and stronger to subdue the necks of the obstinate unto the fear of his name and his power, so easily converted to the knowledge of his brightness and glory even those who, hardened then by the blindness of a stubborn mind, resisted the splendor of his illumination, that in his desire to save all he deigned to come by the providence of his divine mercy. For, that I may be silent about the minds of that then hard-hearted and impious people converted to the fear of the Lord by the Lord himself preaching the Gospel, and that I may pass over in silence the people of believers multiplied throughout the whole world and crammed full by the preaching of his apostles:
there presents itself that splendid, memorable, and glorious disputation of Jason the Hebrew Christian and Papiscus the Alexandrian Jew: how the obstinate hardness of the Jewish heart was softened by the Hebrew's admonition and gentle rebuke, how the teaching of Jason concerning the outpouring of the Holy Spirit proved victorious in the heart of Papiscus, whereby Papiscus, admitted to the understanding of the truth and, by the Lord's own mercy, formed unto the fear of the Lord, believed Christ to be the Son of God, and, praying that he might receive the seal, besought Jason for it. This is proved by the very writing of their contest, which was set down in the work of the Greek tongue as they clashed with one another, Papiscus opposing the truth and Jason asserting and vindicating the ordering and fullness of Christ:
To the translation of this into Latin understanding I approached fearlessly, the aid of the Lord giving life to me and the firmness of a living faith preserving the propriety of the words; and for those who are strangers to the understanding of Greek learning I have expounded it, having interpreted the whole meaning of the words with their full significance, laying open the manifestation of all understanding and truth, and examining it by the method of Roman speech. The proof of this labor I commit to you, dearest, who are grounded in the instruction of both tongues, with earnest entreaty:
that you, who are modest in your reverence for the Holy Spirit, having compared the reading of both works, may examine the audacity of my modest temerity, and by the scrutiny of your judgment may approve and amend, by the authority of the Holy Spirit who has flowed into your breast by the flood of heavenly grace, whatever things have perhaps been arranged by us insufficiently or improperly:
and let there go forth to you from this reading, from my lowliness, an entrusted embassy, and a first petition of love to be pressed upon you on my behalf: that you may join the smallness of my faith to the instruction and erudition of your disciples; and that you may admit me — whom, set in another part of this province, neither the length of the journey deterred from visiting your face, nor the old age and difficulty of a body now wearied and spent held back, but rather, driven by the goad of the Lord and urged on by an eager haste to make speed, despising all the tribulation of want and penury, and coming with whatever strength I had, the far-famed report of your holiness led hither — that you may admit me into the joined-together love of your affection with the unanimity of brotherhood, and equally join and adopt me into that love which the Lord left to his disciples by the title of an inheritance; so that I may await together with the brethren, at the opening of your mouth, the splendor of the grace of the light of Christ, and follow in your discourses the light which the Lord revealed, which Christ at his coming showed to be eternal life.
Surely how joyful, how longed-for is that day to me, when, by the favor of the Lord's mercy the summons of death being deferred, it shall befall me to prolong this old age of mine, so that, by the prayers of the saints earnestly and continually beseeching the Lord, I may both behold a martyr of Christ and see you bearing the crown of righteousness that has been laid up for you with the Lord. Yet do not suppose that martyrdom is granted to you according to the present vow of our desire. The honor of this felicity was conferred long ago; long ago, by his own just judgment, the Lord chose you as a destined martyr, when, taking you out from the flock of the righteous and taking you up to himself, he unexpectedly set you a priest at the altar.
A truly splendid and glorious election of calling, and one, by the Lord's condescension, new and unheard-of, and to me a felicity: that you, occupied by the necessities of a pilgrimage across the sea, came suddenly, unknowing and unaware, to the office destined for you; and that the time of your return was so balanced to this that, by the unhoped-for swiftness of your coming, you might understand and discern that the honor of the heavenly priesthood was destined especially to you among the rest, and was reserved so that, awaited by the command of the Lord, you should come and meet it. That the Lord might provide for his church with all the tenderness of his compassion, when the people delayed in their contention as to whom rather they should choose as bishop, Christ suddenly offered you, unlooked-for, to his people who were seeking one.
And the heavenly providence plainly showed him well-pleased by the unforeseen encounter of your arrival: the token of a sudden and swift meeting displayed the ordering of God's will, so that what you could scarcely have reached by a difficult expedition was accomplished with easy speed by the command of the urging Lord; and so that you might first behold yourself standing as bishop in the church of God, and stand amazed, before you discerned that you had come. From that moment the Lord confirmed his love with you, charity having been begun; from that moment he sealed with you the friendship which he handed down and dedicated to his disciples under the triumph of his cross, saying: 'If you do the things I command you, I will no longer call you servants, but friends'; from that moment he sealed your martyrdom, from that moment your election to the priesthood.
It is friendship through which you are admitted to the face of Christ, to arrive as an extraordinary victim. Thus are the righteous chosen, thus are the devout and the simple, elected in the fear of Christ, proved: that you may be destined beforehand for the reward of faith, held worthy beforehand of the prize of a devoted mind in the Lord, before the hour of the decree has come, before you have received the sentence of Christ — so that the heavenly election may find you a proven and prepared victim. For he who is no lying God, who set you unexpectedly a bishop for his people, he will crown you with the full love of his will.
Only this we ask and pray: that then you would remember us, when, your chastity of the Lord's own choosing being proved and yourself an unspotted victim, you shall stand before the tribunal of Christ; when you shall have received the glory of the grace of God as the reward and recompense of a devoted mind, may that love of charity which you deign to impart to us cling to your memory and remain tenaciously in your thoughts: that by your prayers our sins may obtain even pardon, that by the merits of your righteousness the offenses of our life may be purged. For I am confident that it is the very likeness of martyrdom for a sinner to have deserved salvation through the petition of a righteous martyr, and that, since you yourself can accomplish something to advance your cause by your prayers, you may be set free by the merits of the martyr.
So Job the righteous is shown to have been about to ask and to obtain from God for the sins of his three friends, and the proof of his fear and of his faith is sealed by the witness of the Lord's own voice. When therefore on the day of your deliverance, dearest, you shall have begun to present yourself before the face of Christ, when by a happy lot you shall have succeeded to reign with Christ unto the eternity and perpetuity of living, then, for the Lord's mercy, hold me in mind, Celsus your servant, O most holy one.