論集 第 1 章 第 10/14 段

for indeed whoever follows justice must needs be tested. Finally, the harlot, when sought, was not found; because he who is reborn through water and the Holy Spirit ceases to be what he was, and begins to be what he was not. There follows that she again took up the garment of widowhood, certainly not that she might do what she had done, but that she might bewail having done what she had done; for otherwise no one can be saved, however just he may be, unless, making confession, he both extinguishes his present sins and repels those to come. Tamar is accused of having conceived from fornication. And the Church, as it were an adulteress of the law, was accused by the elders of the Jews of having broken the Sabbath, of having cast off their traditions.

Tamar brought forth the necklace, the ring, the staff, and freed herself by the sacrament of the number from the impending punishment. The Church, by the very truth, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, not only extinguishes the present fires of the devil, but will also overcome the conflagrations of the day of judgment to come. She departed justified; the Church, glorified, by the increments of the true number, will abide in the faith with Christ for eternal ages, through our Lord and preserver Jesus Christ, who is blessed with the Father and the Holy Spirit before the ages and in the ages and unto all ages of ages. Amen. TRACTATE XV. On Job. I.

The narrative of sacred history, most beloved brethren, has been handed down to us to be read for this purpose: that we may imitate, if it can be done, at least in some part the conduct of our forefathers, if we cannot imitate their virtues; for they lived with such integrity that it is part of happiness to know what they did. Therefore Job was a man just and truthful, set apart from all the concupiscences of this world, pure in conversation, purer in mind, so circumspect and irreproachable that he was praised by the testimony of God Himself (Job 1:8). Hence not undeservedly the blessed man enjoyed a blessed life. For he had a most splendid house, a rich estate;

a rich number of children too, and (what is pleasing to parents) of both sexes, and loving one another (Job 1:3); for whose number he daily offered sacrifices to God (Job 1:4-5). And he was fortified by so great a wall of purity and faith that the devil dared not attempt him, except by right granted from God (Job 1:12). Now consider from these things, brethren, how furiously he raged when stirred up, who cannot be borne even when flattering. Therefore a famous battle is joined. On that side the devil, thundering dreadfully with all his arms, and moreover rousing his ministers to his aid, sounding a terrible trumpet, the hearts of the robbers kindled with furious fire, with frequent assaults everywhere invades all the goods of the man of God:

suddenly by plunder, fire, and sword he destroys all things in one moment (Job 1:15ff.). On this side Job, robust with the deep root of faith, is battered by so many mournful messengers, yet is not moved; but only blesses God and keeps his goods by despising them. But when the devil recognizes that he has gained nothing by such great assaults, he pours out all the fury of his impiety upon Job's sons. For when, after their custom, they were of one mind feasting in the house, suddenly its four corners being shaken with all his force, the falling walls and roofs bury that most holy band of brothers in an unconfused heap before he can cut their throats; and such is the destruction devised by impiety, that

in that throng of one single funeral a father's grief was not sufficient for the bereavement, since he knows not whom first to lament, whom first to find, to whom first to render the due rites of the raw funeral. Having received this message, the servant of God rent his garments — not that he might cast reproach upon God, but that, unencumbered, he might fight with the enemy. Finally, in his lost goods he despised the rich man; in his lost children he set aside the father; in the pain of his own body he showed himself just. For being struck from the very crown of his head down to the lowest nails of his feet by the blow of the enemy, he was not distinguished by his teeming sores, but the whole of him was made one wound. Yet in all these things he speaks nothing wickedly against God.

He does not yield to his wife persuading him to unlawful things, nor give in to his insulting friends; but, victor over cruelty and impiety, he sits on a fetid dunghill teeming with worms, as though having suffered nothing, but content with the fear of God alone. O blessed man! who by wondrous patience won God's favour, conquered the devil, recovered his health, and did not lose but exchanged his goods and his children. II. Job, as far as can be understood, most dear brethren, bore the image of Christ. Let then a comparison establish the truth. Job was called just by God. He Himself is justice, from whose fountain all who are blessed taste: for behold, of Him it was said: 'There shall arise to you the Sun of justice' (Mal. 4:2). Job was called truthful.

But the true Truth is the Lord, who says in the Gospel: 'I am the way and the truth' (John 14:6). Job was rich. And what is richer than the Lord? whose servants are all the rich; whose is the whole world and all nature, most blessed David saying: 'The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein' (Ps. 23:1). Job the devil tempted thrice; likewise, as the Evangelist relates (Matt. 4; Luke 4), he attempted to tempt the Lord thrice. Job lost the goods which he had. And the Lord, for love of us, set aside His heavenly goods and made Himself poor, that He might make us rich. Job's sons the raging devil slew. And the Lord's sons, the prophets, the mad Pharisaic people killed. III.

Job was defiled with sores. And the Lord, by taking flesh, was begrimed with the filth of the sins of the whole human race. Job's wife exhorts him to sin. And the synagogue compels the Lord to follow the corruption of the elders. Job's friends are reported to have insulted him. And the Lord's own priests, His own worshippers, insulted Him. Job sits on a dunghill full of worms. The Lord too dwelt in a true dunghill, that is, in the filth of this world, among men boiling over with diverse crimes and lusts, who are the true worms. Job both recovered his health and his estate.

But the Lord, rising again, bestowed on those who believe in Him not only health but immortality, and recovered dominion over all nature, as He Himself testified, saying: 'All things are delivered to Me by My Father' (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22). Job begot sons in place of those lost. The Lord too, after the prophets, brought forth holy sons, the Apostles. Job blessedly rested in peace. But the Lord abides blessed forever, before the ages and from the ages and unto all ages of ages. TRACTATE XVI. On Susanna. Whenever, in this perverse world, manifold snares are set against praiseworthy men, and factious causes have arisen by diverse kinds of calumnies;

whatever a pestilent man may devise, or whatever the devil may contrive, let the just man not fear, since God is with him. Hence Susanna, the illustrious Hebrew, taught women the glory of true chastity by the example of her own purity. Susanna stood in the judgment, oppressed by the lies of corrupt false witnesses, yet content with the good secrets of her conscience, about to receive sentence not so much as guilty, but rather, dedicated to God, bravely to die for chastity; and her whom the wicked sentence of the judges had cast down, the integrity of her illustrious conscience raised up. Therefore the conscience of chastity suffices; God is the witness.

Chastity did not regard what the false witnesses said, nor how the suborned judges might condemn her, nor finally how the devil might defame her — he who could not overthrow the foundations of her modesty. There went to punishment not the adulterous body, in which an extreme senile lust had blazed up, but that which the devil had defamed, and which virtue had protected, and which unimpaired modesty adorned. Then the Holy Spirit, entering into the holy boy Daniel, said, as she was being led to punishment: 'Return to judgment: for they have borne false witness against her' (Dan. 13:49). The people are astonished that one already condemned should be recalled from punishment to judgment to be reheard. Dread seizes the false witnesses.

The devil trembles, because his own devices are laid bare. The angels rejoice, because oppressed truth is at last defended on earth. The husband triumphs, because he has found his wife chaste. The whole household is glad, because rumour finds nothing in her to strike at. The devil is tortured, because in no part has he accomplished his will: for neither did he carry out the adultery which they commit and which he was defaming, nor the homicide which he was procuring did he obtain. TRACTATE XVII. On the prophet Jonah. I. It is the religious confession of human devotion to know of God this much, that is lawful: for just as His testimonies are to be searched out in a simple heart, so His secrets are not to be inquired into with curiosity.

For who can know the causes and natures of this heaven and of the higher heavens? Who would lie that he is able to discuss the bodily emptiness of this air, as some suppose? Who would presume to know that the earth is borne by water, or that the water is contained in the bosom of the earth? Who would boast that he has grasped the airy spirits, the shapes of the winds, the increases of the rivers amid the marine tides, who finally the workmanship of the Lord and the counsel of God? — when the Apostle says: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord?' (Rom. 11:33-34). For it is not while seething in the investigation of these things that the Prophet says:

'Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord' (Ps. 130:1); he cries from the depths, that is, from the inmost recesses of the heart: he cries from the depths, but the depths by which, mournful and sad, he was hedged in — the calamities of mankind; and he cries not with his voice but with his heart, not with clamour but with faith, which he knows God willingly hears. Crying thus from the deep, Peter likewise obtained from the Lord that he might both walk over and escape the slippery folds of the deep sea and the surfaces of the liquid plain unsubdued to human steps, by which the trembling traveller was being swallowed up (Matt. 14:30-31). From the depths too Paul cries, overwhelmed by blessed calamities, when for the name of the Lord he suffers robbers on the roads, robbers in the cities:

when thrice beaten with rods by the Jews he is washed by a triple shipwreck; when he is happily hailed upon with stony showers by the furious storm of a mad people; when, abiding in the deep of the sea a day and a night, crying to God, he is spewed forth thence unharmed (2 Cor. 11). II. Jonah likewise, a prophet, was sent by God to the Ninevites, to announce that destruction was hanging over their city (Jon. 1): for they were weighed down by huge burdens of sins. But he, turning aside on another journey, embarked on a ship bound for Tarshish;

when suddenly the sea, lashed by the violent blast of contending winds, roars, and with the hoary rollings of the steep mountains of the restless whirlpool, dashing against the foaming mouths of the resisting shores, it threatens shipwreck at every moment: the gathering tempests rage, the ropes hiss horribly, the yards groan as the sails give way, and the prow, beaten back on every side, finds no passage. The sailors tremble, they hasten in vain to lighten the ship of its weights by jettisoning the vessels — the ship that was weighed down by the weight of the prophet. Then Jonah, whom alone that good tempest sought, drawn by lot, is rendered a shipwrecked man, nay rather is transferred from a wooden vessel to a living one:

who, as soon as he was let down into the deep and received into the lodging of the beast's maw, keeps vigil in the deep, he who had been snoring in the ship. A wondrous thing! After the shipwreck, after the swimming sepulchre, unharmed on the third day he enlightens the Ninevites, about to grant salvation to the believing city by terrible oracles. III. As far as can be understood, brethren, the ship is a type of the synagogue: its prow-officer we take to be the priestly body, the sailors the scribes and Pharisees, the jettisoning of the vessels the repudiation of the prophets and of all the saints, whom the Jews, when they were driven out by the synagogue, slaughtered with murders unworthy to the loss of their own salvation.

The raging winds are the diverse kings, who, with the mournful blare of trumpets and the terrible clash of arms, with the storms of battles pressing on every side, miserably scattered Judaea throughout the whole circle of the lands. Jonah sleeping in the ship bore the image of the Lord's sacrament; for the material of the ship signified the cross, but the sleep the Passion. But the sea is this swollen world: its waves we take to be the peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles, who vainly raged against God. The lot betrayed Jonah as one to be cast headlong; prophecy foretold the Lord as one to suffer; both willing, the one by his condition, the Lord by His mercy. That the whale is hell is not doubted:

for just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, and, vomited out, presented himself to the city of Nineveh; so the Lord, rising from hell on the day after, presented Himself to the city of Jerusalem before going to heaven. But Nineveh bears the image of the Church, in which our people from the Gentiles was already dwelling, which was not in vain called by God a great city; for it was to come to pass that, by the peoples of all nations believing in Christ, the whole world should be rendered to God as one city. Finally, the saving deeds confirm the comparison, which also abide in us. As, brethren, destruction was announced to the Ninevites, they believe and fear;

and the more they know the Lord to be no liar, the more confidently they presume upon His mercy, and at once condemning the deeds of their old life, in order to redeem their salvation they do not, after the wonted manner, run together to stupid images, they do not kindle deadly fires upon stinking altars, they burn no incense, they pour out no wine, nor, having seized animals by an unexpected death, do they consult the fibres of the still-breathing liver, nor through the various flights of birds do they seek out by empty conjectures the state of a feathered safety; but they demand the saving remedy from their own heart, and ambitiously sacrifice their own spirit, contrite in all humility: and thus, penitence being lawfully celebrated, they rendered God propitious to themselves.

Which we too have done, and ought for the most part to do, that we may deserve to escape both the temptations of the present time and the punishments of the judgment to come, through Christ our Lord. TRACTATE XVIII. On the birthday of St. Arcadius, who has his birthday on the day before the Ides of January, in the city of Caesarea of Mauretania. I. While we consign to the annals the deeds of the blessed martyr Arcadius, to be celebrated in triumph, the Christian ardour is ever quickened to the contest of immortal praise. There will be a twofold gain from religiousness, when both the people is kindled to the heavenly reward, and the merits of the martyr are not passed over in silence.

But who could with adequate discourse set forth the palm-bearing crown of so illustrious a martyrdom by its trophies, when in one body there seem to be as many martyrdoms as there are members? The ancient devil, that asserter of veteran hatred, had armed his satellites against the Lord's people, and was throwing into confusion the whole household of the Lord by the rampage of his insatiable savagery. He had declared war upon God-in-man, and from the pyre of his ill-omened superstition had rekindled throughout the whole world a deadly funeral-pyre, complicit in the abomination. Public crime seethed through the heights of the roofs, nor was there any place in which there was not sacrilege in the name of religion.

The people of Christ were being compelled to take part in empty superstitions, and now to pour out libations unchastely in the worship of unspeakable rites, or to drag in victims adorned with garlands, or to kindle heavy incense reeking with its fumes, or amid smoking fires to bedaub themselves with deadly blood from pale-yellow fat, so that by the administration of so renowned a service God might be driven out of Christian minds. II. But while the war of a hard contest was being waged, and the household of the Lord was being tested under the gaze of heaven, the most blessed martyr Arcadius, struck with horror at this unlooked-for sacrilege, for a little while put off the fight, though he was already owed to the crown.

For after he learned that the city was being thrown into turmoil by that deadly assembly, and that every single person was being dragged to that deadly spectacle, despising all his possessions and cutting away the roots of the world, he hid himself and committed himself to the shade of withdrawal—thus fulfilling what he willed as a Christian, so that he might neither seem to have fled too far from the battle, nor, by withdrawing, fail to be encouraged by the example of the Gospel command (Matthew 10:23). Behold, into his lodging, as upon enemy plunder, a headlong band of marauding attendants burst in; they hastened in hope that God's servant could be seized, though a kinsman of the blessed martyr, who happened to be dwelling in his lodging, was crying out with persistent voices that the man was absent.

But him, as he confessed his faith, the agents of a guilty mind seized for unspeakable custody; and the most cruel governor ordered the man thus brought before him to be held under sharp watch. As a witness to his future glory, the blessed Arcadius had in a certain way set aside this kinsman, owed to martyrdom, in whom he would forsake neither Christ nor his relative. At once the blessed martyr would not suffer himself to remain hidden; offering himself unbidden to the judge, he voluntarily excused his delay by anticipating the charges. And when the governor of the province promised pardon for his earlier flight on condition that, even though late, he should join in the unspeakable superstitions, the most holy martyr broke out against him with such words: "What," he said, "most worthless of all judges?

Do you suppose that the household of God can be terrified either by the unwholesome usury of this light, or by the sudden losses of an overhasty death, since we know that it is written by apostolic faith: 'For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain'? Devise whatever torments you can, heavier tortures; kindle yourself with greater goads of fury; though you exert the whole mass of your cruelty, you cannot for all that overcome us." III. At once the judge, stirred by the gall of his viperous venom, commanded the executioners to rage against the martyr's limbs with an unwonted infliction of penalties, with no customary legal punishment of the condemned. The claws grew worthless, the blows of the leaded scourges seemed useless, the rack stood despised, the frequent showers of cudgels were neglected in view of a greater penalty.

A new and astonishing torment was devised, by which he might believe that in this one man he conquered God. "Let his hands be cut off at the joints," he says, "and his feet at the legs; let him gaze upon himself as a living corpse." To him the blessed Arcadius said: "O madman among men! Your fury has cheated you: there still remained in the Lord's victim something you might offer. You did not know to order the tongue cut out, which in the struggle of martyrdom is wont to be the first to confess the Lord." At last the blessed Arcadius was led to the place longed for by his righteous prayers, and gazing upon heaven he stood untroubled, with God looking on. He had made ready his neck, stretched out for the blows to come; he had bared his throat to the approaching swords; he had thought to sate the deadly madness of the judge by the lot of a swift death;

when suddenly he was ordered to stretch out his hands, and, stripped naked and thrown down upon the turf on his face, to bare the ends of his feet. Behold, even amid the very tortures he is not allowed to rest, but instead of prayer he meditates through the executioner's torments. The maddened striker had raised the axe, and marking with his eyes a line upon the wounds, he brandished the deadly blow with constant aim. The hands of the dauntless martyr had clung fast with the glue of his confession; nor did the leaping fingers quiver at the doom of the death to come. So great was the constancy in the martyr's devotion, that he came to glory ready in his whole body. IV.

Soon, then, when the executioner saw the body so devoted, at once the falling axe loosed the bound sinews, and, the whole framework shattered, it broke all the joinings of the body. The severed hands leaped forth, and the stream of blood, after a brief amazement of the veins drew it back into itself, rushed out again. Then, with the hams and calves stretched out, by the sword of the savage brigand the boundary of the soles is cut away from the true conjunction of nature, and the martyr's body is widowed of the service of its feet. Let those who can count the tortures count the martyrdoms; and as much as the devil, publicly exposed, was seen to rage in one body, so much let the Lord be acknowledged to have triumphed.

But amid all this the martyr's spirit endured, and, preserved through the multitude of delays, he remained alive, already buried in part of his own body. O worthy ending of a glorious departure! About to ascend the height of heaven, he sends ahead the encumbrances of his body, and himself precedes the funeral rites of his own burial. To what confession is this to be compared? It must be joined to the number of the Maccabees; it must be set equal to the resolve of Eleazar, compared to his purpose. The most blessed martyr Arcadius still lingers in the world, and is already proclaimed a martyr in heaven. TREATISE XIX. On that passage of Genesis: Let us make man to our image and likeness. There is nothing,

most beloved brethren, above all things so necessary and fitting for a man who fears God as that he should know himself; for it is a kind of madness that he should inquire into the reason of nature's secret who cannot give an account of his own life. For in no way can the substance of nature be comprehended by human conjectures—a nature which no one knows save He alone who made it. And so, as concerns specially our own part, let us consider what it is that God says: Let us make man to our image and likeness. And God made man, it says, to the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27); and in another place He says: I am who am, and I change not (Malachi 3:6).

Since this is so, how does man bear the image of God—he whose passible countenance, subject to every alteration, is changed at every moment by toil, age, sickness, anger, joy, sadness, and puts on as many faces as there have been movements of the soul; and there is no day at all on which he seems continually like himself? Since these things are otherwise than God's, do we then not have the image of God? We have it plainly, and indeed a manifest one, from this very fact, that it is not known to us who bear it. For the image of the incomprehensible God must of necessity be invisible. In short, it is not subject to fleshly eyes. For neither when it enters our body, nor when it goes out of the body, can it be detected by anyone;

and yet it has such power that, though it is held within the enclosure of its own dwelling, nevertheless whatever it wills, it illuminates at every moment. We ought not, then, to take this fleshly dwelling as the image of God, but the spiritual image of the heavenly man, which the Lord bestows out of the loving fountain of His fullness upon those who believe in Him and are renewed by a heavenly birth, through our Lord Jesus Christ. TREATISE XX. On the same passage of Genesis. In which, with a few things added and certain things changed, is contained what was in the foregoing. There is nothing, most beloved brethren, above all things so necessary and fitting for a man as that he should know himself;

for it is a kind of madness that he should inquire into the reason of nature's secret who cannot give an account of his own life; for the elements cannot be asserted in human words more beautifully or more truly than they were made by God, or appear to be. And so, as concerns us, let us consider what it is that God says: Let us make man to our image and likeness. And God made man, it says, to the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26); and in another place He says: I am who am; and I change not (Malachi 3:6). Since this is so, how does man bear the image of God—he whose countenance, subject to every alteration, is changed at every moment by toil, age, sickness, joy, sadness:

now disfigured by leanness, now by monstrous fatness; so uncertain that the same man cannot be found alike in two persons throughout the whole world. Since, then, these things do not befall God, do we not have the image of God? Far be it, brethren! We have it plainly, and indeed a manifest one, from this very fact, that it is not known to those who bear it; for the image of the incomprehensible God must of necessity be invisible. In short, it is not subject to mortal eyes; for neither when it enters the body, nor when it goes out of the body, can it be beheld by anyone: and yet it has such power that, though it is held within the enclosure of its own dwelling, nevertheless whatever it wills, it illuminates at every moment.

We ought not, then, to take this fleshly garment as the image of God, but the spiritual image of the heavenly man, which He bestows upon us out of the loving fountain of His fullness. This truth Paul plainly disclosed, saying: As we have borne the image of him who is of clay, let us bear also the image of him who is of heaven (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:49); and they who shall have borne it in holiness—as the Apostles and all the righteous—shall bear not only the image, but God Himself as well, as it is also written: You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you (1 Corinthians 3:16). TREATISE XXI. On the Hundredth Psalm. I.

Negligent observers of the sacred law are often entangled in great error, when either they do not understand the sayings according to their contexts, or they by no means inquire into the reasons of the sayings. Now in the present psalm, when the Prophet says: Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord (Psalm 101:1), how is it that the Lord says in the Gospel: He who believes in me shall not be judged; but he who does not believe is already judged (John 3:18)? By saying this He exempts the faithful from judgment, and does not admit the unbelieving to judgment. But if both parties are exempt from judgment, how shall each one be repaid according to his deed? For the righteous will seem to labor in vain, unless the unjust receives according to the deeds he has done.