Second Apology of David

Perhaps the title of the psalm which you heard read has offended many: that Nathan the prophet came to him when he had gone in to Bathsheba. At the same time the reading of the Gospel which has been gone through could also have raised no small scruple among the unlearned, in which you noticed that an adulteress was brought to Christ and dismissed without condemnation. For certainly, if anyone takes these things in with careless ears, he incurs an incitement to error, when he reads of the adultery of a holy man and the acquittal of an adulteress, with an example of falling, as it were, both human and divine: that a man thought adultery could be done and God judged that adultery should not be condemned. Slippery, then, is the road to a fall, whether of pardon or of desire.

There is also this, that he seems to kindle the very torches of youthful wantonness, because he did not blush at his adultery, did not hide it, but published it by a kind of proclamation in a divine song. What then? Was holy David so shameless and improvident as to sing his own disgrace, especially since he himself said in another psalm too, which was gone through today: “How long, O Lord, how long shall sinners boast?” Does he forbid others to boast of sin, and himself boast of it even in a sacred song? How, then, are we to distinguish these things?

Suppose, however, that David erred wantonly: did Christ also err, so that we should think he did not have right judgment? Well, then, did David prophesy today as if to them, saying: “Understand, you senseless ones, and you fools, be wise at last.” For how could Christ err? It is not right for this to enter our minds. “Does he who planted the ear not hear, or he who formed the eye not see? He who rebukes the nations, will he not reprove, he who teaches man knowledge?” Did Christ, then, not know how to question guilt and hear a just accusation? Could Christ approve wantonness? Did Christ, who rebukes the nations, think that the adulteress should not be reproved? Did Christ, who knows the inner things of each heart and teaches the knowledge of the law, either be deceived by an error or judge against the order of the law? And how did he himself say: “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it”? Could Christ, who condemns hidden things, overlook public ones? Can Christ, who made the times, not know the times? Does he who knows the vain thoughts of men not know the criminal ones also?

And so let that be a sufficient answer to those who, though they cannot deny the Creator, nevertheless deny the Creator’s power, and who, though they confess his wisdom, assert his foolishness by charging him with lack of foresight about the future. On this I could discourse more broadly, but another treatise seems to be set before us. And although a series of different readings has been gone through, they nevertheless serve the same argument, especially the title of the psalm and the Gospel reading. But though the argument is one, let the order of the treatise follow the order of the readings, and therefore it seems we must first treat the title of the psalm.

The history set before us contains adultery and murder. For we find it written thus in the book of Kingdoms: that King David, while walking in his house, saw Uriah’s wife bathing, loved her at once, and ordered her to be fetched. Then he ordered her husband, innocent as Scripture presents him, to be thrown against the fiercest warriors, so that he might be overcome by enemy force. These things were done, and they are not denied. How, then, will they be defended? The Gospel reading admonishes well that, even when sin is apparent, the judgment of the judge ought nevertheless to be sober, and each one ought to be mindful of his own condition and merit. For often in judging the sin of the judgment is greater than the sin of the one who was judged. For if it has been prescribed by certain wise men of the world that in judging care must be taken that the penalty be not greater than the fault, and this is observed, how much more does it seem it should be observed that each one who is about to judge another should first judge himself, and not condemn lesser errors in another when he himself has committed graver ones. Who are you, then, who judge David, a holy man? I say it to the Gentile, I say it to the Jew, I say it to the Christian. And therefore it seems to me the treatise should be divided into three parts: one against the Gentiles, another against the Jews, the third among Christians.

My first discourse, then, is against the Gentiles, who usually object: “See how the Christians pursue innocence, display faith, revere religion, teach chastity, whose leaders are reported to have committed both murders and adulteries! David himself, from whose race, as you say, Christ chose to be born, himself sang of his murders and adulteries. What sort can the disciples be, whose teachers are such?” What then?

Do we deny the deed or repudiate the teacher? Neither; but let one who objects a particular case consider what is common. The particular case of the deed is the commonness of nature. It is no wonder, then, if the particular lies within the general. For I acknowledge that David was a man, and it is no wonder: I acknowledge what is common, that a man sins. For the infirmity of the human condition is nothing new, and it seems more wonderful if a man is without sin than if he falls into sin. Holy David, then, committed sin (I will not keep you in any doubt): he committed adultery, he devised a murder, both devised and carried it out. He sinned, as kings are wont to do; but he did penance and wept, as kings are not wont to do. He asked pardon, not presuming on his power but conscious of his weakness; prostrate on the ground, he covered himself with sackcloth, forgetful of his rule and mindful of his fault.

Find me a man of this kind, who, placed in power, does not rather love his crimes, proclaim his fault, defend his sins; who thinks that what is not fitting is not permitted to him; who binds himself by his own laws and recognizes that what is not permitted by justice is not permitted by power either. For power does not dissolve justice, but justice power; the king is not released from the laws, but releases the laws by his example. Or can it be that

he who judges others should himself be free from his own judgment and permit himself what he binds others in? Good, then, was David, and much more admirable as one who conquered power than one who conquered love. For chastity is sometimes yielded up by the body, often by error; but power is subject to God, and it is easier for one to restrain himself in love than to be moderate in power. Do you not, then, pardon what is less in one in whom you admire greater things? Slippery in all men and prone to sinning is nature; slippery too, even in good characters, is the license of power and the offer of opportunity. For the anger of a king differs not from the anger of a lion; but one who provokes him and meddles with him sins against his own soul. Let no one, then, provoke power, lest the soul, entangled in bodily snares, be unable to free itself from vice. It is no wonder, then, if David too slipped through the appearance of power; but much more to be admired is that he was called back by the contemplation of faith.

You see, then, that this worldly power often profits nothing and generally does harm; for often the outcome of a fault lies in the authority of power. Do not, then, whoever you are, O king, presume on your might and resources; for “the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord.” Do not flatter yourself on the subjection of peoples, because “a king will not be saved by the multitude of his strength, nor will a giant be saved by the multitude of his strength.” For not in the lofty peaks of tents and the costly summit of roofs, but “in those who fear him the Lord is well pleased, and in those who hope in his mercy.”

So we see that power is slippery toward vices; yet I would not say it is always bent toward them, since we read that David, exalted by royal power, increased divine worship, and that Solomon consecrated a temple to the Lord.

Now let us establish what we touched on, that the opportunity of ruling is an incitement to sinning, and let us follow the course of the history. David would not have violated the right of another’s bed and the compact of a covenanted marriage had he not seen from the inner part of his house a woman naked and bathing. And therefore it is well written: “Do not fall upon the beauty of a woman, and do not desire a woman,” and elsewhere: “Beware of every irreverent eye.” Presume nothing on your continence and virtue. For “the fornication of a woman is recognized in the haughtiness of her eyes and in her eyelids”; and therefore flee first the cause of sin; for no one is strong for long. And it is said not to the frail only but to every man: “Let not desire for beauty overcome you” (if you do not wish to be overcome, do not engage with sins, lest vices be crowned at your expense) “and do not be captured by her eyes or carried off by her eyelids.” A woman seems to you cheap in price but strong toward vice, because a woman captures the precious souls of men.

It is hard, then, for anyone entangled in the enticements of lust to escape unharmed. Nor is this judged hard by my opinion alone; it is judged impossible in the Proverbs of holy Solomon too, who, led by his own example, says: “Will anyone tie fire in his bosom and not burn his clothes? Or will anyone walk on coals of fire and not burn his feet?” Beware, then, you too, lest you kindle within the bosom of your mind the fire of lust and love, lest the bodily garment be consumed by that burning of the soul, and the everlastingness of the resurrection, or at least the footstep of your mind, be burned, if you think you must walk through the torches of lusts; for one who is burned in heart is consumed in body.

In every way, then, encounter with feminine wantonness must be avoided. And therefore, it says, “acquire prudence as your disciple, so that she may guard you from another’s wife and the fornicating woman,” lest she hold you bound with the snares of her lips and entangle you in the little curls of error. And so the prophet has taught you from where you ought to beware the harlot: that you beware her entrance from the window. For she enters from the window of her house, and her window is the eye; and therefore “beware of every irreverent eye,” lest love enter through the window and lust penetrate. For the fornicating woman entices the lover by sight, and unless you check the wanton gaze of the mind and spirit, death enters through the window. The wantonness of a harlot is not lazy, her lasciviousness not idle; it makes the hearts of young men fly, so that they cannot hold the constancy of their own mind and are swept this way and that by burning love. Beware, then, of a woman of this kind, whose feet do not rest, who wanders outside, lies in wait at the corners, binds with her eyes, entices with words, has woven her bed with bands and spread it with tapestries from Egypt. For she takes her adornment not from divine knowledge but from worldly enticement, she who rightly says that her husband is absent, since no adulteress can have Christ

present. You see, then, with how many nets even the hearts of saints are captured, and therefore do not wonder if holy David too was captured, a great man indeed, who conquered by faith the foreigner, huge in body and bristling with weapons of war. But would that he had conquered himself; would that, as he laid that adversary low, so he had been able to lay low and overcome his inner adversary! Harder is the fight of one who fights within than of him who fights outside.

But why do I speak of David alone? Let us summon others too to a discussion of this kind, lest we think the weakness was David’s, that is, of one man, rather than the infirmity of our bodily condition. Samson, strong and mighty, strangled a lion, but could not strangle his love. He broke the bonds of enemies, but did not break the ties of his own desires. He burned others’ crops, and, himself kindled by the little fire of one woman, lost the harvest of his strength. Solomon built a temple to God: but would that he had kept the temple of his own body! But let our discourse return to the one from whom it departed. David triumphed over ten thousands, but he erred among twenty thousands and more; and because he erred, he recognized that he was a man, confessed his fault, and begged pardon, saying to the Lord: “O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your wrath. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.” If David was weak, are you strong? If Solomon fell, are you immovable? If Paul was the first of sinners, can you be the first of saints? So if these erred, they erred as men, but they acknowledged their sin as just men. If the just received the sentence of a harsher punishment, how do you set before yourself a hope of impunity, when Scripture says: “If the just man is scarcely saved, where will the sinner and the wicked appear?”

You notice, then, my sons, how often an occasion of sinning undermines even a good purpose, and therefore you ought first to flee and avoid the occasions themselves. You do not wish to be caught by love: do not gaze at the beauty of a woman, because “when your eyes see a strange woman, then your mouth will speak perverse things, and you will lie as in the heart of the sea and as a pilot in a great storm.” For the multitudes of desires make a great tempest, which toss one sailing as in a strait of the body this way and that, so that the mind cannot be its own pilot, not knowing day from night in the fog of love.

So lust is roused by the eyes but inflamed by drunkenness; “and every drunkard and fornicator will become poor.” Do not flatter yourself on your power to drink. Noah became drunk, and he who was not drowned by the flood was drowned by wine. But he did not know the nature of wine, for he had not drunk before; you have learned in him what you ought to beware of. Lot was deceived through sleep; and you, if you do not wish to be deceived, shake off the sleep of your mind, lest a son mock you when drunk or a daughter when asleep. It is not piety that is mocked there but drunkenness; it is not a father who is cheated there but a sleeper. Do you wish not to be burned? Do not approach the fire. Do you wish not to be thrown headlong? Flee what totters, beware of steep places, turn aside from what is falling.

You see, then, that in those who deserved to be just there was not a different nature, but a different discipline. For after the fall of the first man and the just sentence, since appetite was condemned in the one flesh, our condition contracted vice, fault infected nature; but faith tempered the vice of nature itself, and the effort of devotion softened the offence.

Turn, then, to God, you nations, and know that the Lord himself is God. He made us, and not we ourselves. Know that we are flesh and dust. Let us leave, then, what we have done and revere him who is our author, who gave life and forgave sins, who alone can say: “I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities and will not remember.” Great indeed and merciful is God, who confers a benefit and does not reproach the gift of the benefit. Do you wonder that he made David king and conqueror of many nations? So he is accustomed to raise up his little servants. Not stingy with gifts, nor sparing of benefit, nor narrow in grace, nor frugal, but opulent in generosity, those whom he redeemed from sin he increases in reward. So much against the Gentiles.

But since we promised a threefold division of this treatise, one against the Gentiles, another against the Jews, the third within the church, it now seems we must treat against the Jews. Let us review, then, what is set before us. The title of the psalm, it says, is: “Understanding of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, when he had gone in to Bathsheba.” Certainly this history presents David as both an adulterer and a murderer, and this is the man you, Jews, say is the Son of God! But God is God of virtues, not of crimes, and of him God the Father says: “His throne as the days of heaven.” One who has committed guile will not have overcome sins; and how is it written: “No one is without sin but God alone”? If, then, he who is the Son of God cannot but be God, surely the Son of God is the judge of righteousness, not liable to fault.

By what opinion do you judge either David to be the Son of God, or think Solomon to be? Is it because it is written: “O God, give your judgment to the king and your righteousness to the king’s son,” and because the title of the psalm says that the seventy-first psalm was composed for Solomon? But notice which Solomon it means. For Solomon is “peaceful”: this is what the interpretation contains. The psalm is spoken of him whom we truly know to be the lover of peace. But how was Solomon peaceful? The blood of Joab does not show it, whom he ordered to be killed among the altars of the temple; nor the punishment of Adonijah, whom he struck down as guilty of aspiring to a royal marriage-alliance, and was not called back from his indignation even by his mother’s entreaty. And how do you think it fits Solomon, son of David, that it is written that “he will remain with the sun and before the moon for ages of ages,” when he, having obtained the use of a short life, passed the span of his living within narrow limits? And how is it said of him: “He will rule from sea to sea,” when he, set within Syria, that is, within the province of one region, had the bounds of his rule circumscribed, while Christ alone has extended his rule to the bounds of the whole world? For he alone is the one of whom the course of the psalm prophesied well that “the kings of the Arabs and of Sheba will bring gifts, and all the kings of the earth will worship him, all nations will serve him.” For we know him ruling all peoples and nations with an uncircumscribed rule and unlimited power.

Solomon, then, is not the Son of God. But for what reason did you think him the Son of God? Because he was wise? But he asked for wisdom, so as to receive what he did not have; Christ is himself wisdom, having by nature in the whole universe what Solomon received by grace in human affairs. Indeed, what is received from time is possessed in time. For Solomon neither had wisdom at his beginning nor possessed it at his end. For he did not believe he had what he asked for, and afterwards, turned away from the worship of God, he fell not as a wise man but as a fool, so as to give offence; and he gave offence so as to lose even what he had merited. Why, then, did you believe him the Son of God? Because he built a temple to God? But from this you ought to have believed that he was not Lord and God, because it is written: “Unless the Lord builds his house, in vain have they labored who build it.” In vain did he labor who built that temple which fire set beneath it burned up. Or because it was said to David his father: “You shall not build me a house, but when you sleep, I will raise up your seed after you”? But there too a temple not bodily, not material is promised; for God does not dwell in things made by hand, but the temple is the holy church, which is founded not by human but by heavenly power.

For if we admire works of a more excellent, but still human, power, we find many of this kind whom we can compare with Solomon. And therefore where there is equality of work, there is no excellence of power. Nor can we speak of many sons of God, since we have read of one Son of God; but an injury must not be done to the Son of God on the basis of the benefits he conferred on our fathers. For there were many illustrious men; but through one, Joshua son of Nun, “let the sun stand,” it says, “over Gibeon.” You see that he went beyond David in power; for David commanded earthly things, not the stars. You see too that the sun is a servant, not a lord, since it obeyed even a human voice. Yet it stood, because in Joshua it recognized both the type of the one to come and the name. For Joshua son of Nun commanded the heavenly lights not by his own power but by the mystery of Christ; for it was being signified that the Son of God would come into this world, who by divine power would put off the setting of the world’s light, already sinking and verging into darkness, would restore the light and bring in brightness. Enoch too was taken up to heaven; but he was taken up, this one returned. He was taken up lest malice should change his heart; this one abolished the very malice of this world. Elijah ascended to heaven by chariot and horses; but Christ descended from heaven without chariot or horses. The one went up thus because he could not otherwise; this one went back by his own power. Elisha ordered the leper to wash in the Jordan, so as to be cleansed from all contagion; this one washed the whole world in the Jordan. Moses himself, to whom it was entrusted that the people of the Jews should cross, divided the water. And he divided the elements because he did not divide the power of the Trinity; he separated the masses of the waters because he did not separate the Father from the Son.

You see how great these men were and what proofs of works they left. How, then, do you judge unequal in condition those whom you recognize as equal in power to King David or Solomon, so that you think Solomon, son of David, sits at the right hand of God, especially since David himself clearly expressed of whom it was said? For he would not have said of his own son: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand.” For how would he call his own son Lord? The law forbids, religion opposes, faith shrinks from your placing a mortal man at the right hand of almighty God. Another is he who sits at the right hand, who took up a body, not who began from a body, who was begotten before the morning star, that is, before the brightness of all the lights, since he himself created the brightness of the various lights; for Solomon certainly comes after the morning star. Solomon was not a priest; and therefore it could not be said to him by almighty God: “From the womb before the morning star I begot you”; it could not be said to him: “You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek,” especially since in the time in which Solomon lived the priests were after the order of Aaron, not after Melchizedek. For the priests were still offering the blood of goats and bulls for the sins and errors of the people; but after he came who offered himself for the salvation of the world, so that those whom the blood of bulls could not wash the blood of Christ might cleanse, priests began to offer themselves as victims.

And so with one question our Lord Jesus Christ has stopped the mouths of all heretics and shut in their sacrileges. For by this question he refuted not only the Jews but also the Photinians and Arians and Sabellians. And therefore, since we now see that the Jews have failed and that execrable faithlessness diminished, some things must now be touched on in the treatment of this question concerning the Arians, who do not differ much from the Jews, and the Photinians and Sabellians. Let Photinus, then, be silent, who says that Christ is the son of David, not of God; and let him be silent, condemned by the heavenly voice. For how does he say that Christ is the son of David, when David himself said in the book of Psalms: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”? “If David,” he says, “calls him Lord, how is he his son?” So Christ is not the son of David, but the Son of God. Let the Sabellian too be silent: when he reads that the Lord said to the Lord, let him understand that he who speaks and he to whom it is spoken are not one and the same (for the Father does not say to himself, “Sit at my right hand,” nor did he say to himself, “I will put your enemies”); and let all at last understand that it is the Son who sits at the right hand, and let them keep this distinction between Father and Son, that the Father and the Son are distinct, in that the Father is one and the Son another; but because they sit on one throne, they enjoy one majesty, and they sit not for a distinction of dignity nor for an order of power but for the bond of love; let them understand one power of Father and Son. In this let Arius too fall silent, who presses the footsteps of an error contrary to Sabellius. Let him hear the Lord speaking to the Lord, let him hear that the Son sits at the right hand of the Father, and let him cease to raise a question about the Godhead from the speech and order of men. Nor let him argue here that the Father says “Sit”; for we read elsewhere too that the Son sits without the Father’s word, as it is written: “And he sits at the right hand of God,” and elsewhere: “From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God.” For he is the one to whom “Sit” is said, who is called the Son of Man. He hears as man; he sits as Son of God. What more excellent can be said than this power, which placed even the flesh of man at the right hand of God, and joined that weakness of the human condition, after the Word was made flesh, to eternal divinity? But what is this?

After Photinus has fallen dumb, Arius gone silent, Sabellius lost his voice, I still see the mouths of heresy stirring up various things against the church. For see, the Manichee and the Valentinian and every offshoot of the Manichees relies on the weapon by which the others were slain: it contrives a prejudice against faith from the testimony of faith. For the detestable heresy says: “See, Christ denied that he was the son of David; and therefore,” it says, “it must be believed that he did not take up flesh.” To these Scripture answers most plainly at the very beginning of the Gospel and says: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David.” Why, then, is he elsewhere called son of David, or elsewhere denied to be son of David, unless that you may understand that it is one thing to be son according to the divine substance, another according to the taking up of flesh? For according to the divine substance he is Son of God, according to the flesh son of David. And so, where the generation of the Savior according to the flesh is described, he is named son of David; but where the fullness of confession is required, when the generation of the Savior is designated, the Son of God does not wish to be named son of David; for the designation of his majesty interprets his nature. But now, the interpretations of the perverse having been refuted, our discourse must turn to the church.

But that we often repeat the title of the fiftieth psalm is an example not of presumption but of weakness. For in one day, whether through the narrowness of my talent or the frailty of my voice, I cannot complete the whole course of the treatise. And therefore, since on the previous day our discourse was directed against the Jews, whom the proofs of faith so far overcame that Christ was placed on the heavenly throne (which certainly cannot fit a man, for it is not credible that anyone other than the Son of God sits at the right hand of God), no one else, all ambiguities removed, is to be thought by us to sit at the Father’s right hand but the Son of God. Again, since Scripture has: “Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne,” the same Son of God is surely to be believed to have taken flesh from Mary, in whom is the fruit of the prophetic womb, so that you may recognize truly the succession of origin and not doubt that he, the Son of God, made afterwards the Son of Man by the taking up of flesh, sits on the heavenly throne. For Christ did not have any royal throne in this world, so that you should think another throne was promised to David’s seed, especially since the Lord himself said: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

So, shut in on every side, they divert the attempts of their faithlessness to asserting that it is incredible that God took up flesh; but they cannot explain for what reason he could not take it up. For I ask whether they think flesh could not be taken up by God because of impossibility or because of injury. If because of impossibility, is anything then impossible to God? For there is nothing he has willed to do and could not do. It remains, then, that it be shown either that he willed or that he did not will. And what greater sign of will than what he himself said: “I appeared openly to those who did not seek me. I spread out my hands to a people unbelieving and contradicting”? If, then, he willed and was able, do we think he was unwilling because of injury? And what injury does the Godhead feel to itself? For it is free from insult and not subject to our passions; for flesh could bring neither loss nor increase to the Godhead.

Those, however, who object that the Son of God could not take up flesh: if they are Gentiles, how can they, who testify that their gods, since they cannot deny that they were men, were seen in human form? Or could their king, whom they set before all their gods, take up monstrous forms for love, and could Christ not take up the flesh of man, whom he made in his own image, that most excellent work of his, for the salvation of the world? And does it seem finer to them that the form of flesh was assumed for the adultery of another’s bed than for the redemption of all? But if the Jew objects to this, how does he read: “Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and his name will be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us”? How does he read: “Behold, I who spoke am present”? And how does he assert that it is read: “Behold, as a panther and as a bear bereaved I will meet them”? Could the Son of God, then, not take up flesh for the redemption of all, when they themselves cannot deny that for the punishment of our sins God put on a kind of disposition of wild cruelty, so that he who is by nature kind and merciful, yet moved by the atrocity of our crimes, takes on against us a kind of savagery of beasts?

But now, since I think enough answer has been given to the Jews both on the previous day and today, to you, dearest brothers, I must render an account of the prophetic deed. For when this title of the psalm was first read, that Nathan came to David when he had gone in to Bathsheba, we said that many are offended by the course of this history, and therefore we undertook a threefold treatment of it, and I thought the division of the treatise should be made thus: that with the Gentiles the fall of our condition should not be denied and the correction of the error should be established; with the Jews, that we should teach that holy David fell so that the faithlessness of the Jews might limp no longer and they might cease to believe him the Son of God, whom they saw to have been liable to sin by the common condition; and that Christians might notice the mysteries of the rising church. So the threefold division was made: one according to nature, another according to faith, the third according to grace. Weakness does not exclude from pardon, and faith excuses from fault, and the sacraments win the grace long promised.

Let David have sinned, so that the whole world might not err; let him have sinned for himself, so that he might amend us all; finally, let him have sinned against his own body (for one who commits fornication sins against his own body), let him have sinned against his own body, so that he might be redeemed in the body of Christ. See, the one we thought hardly to be defended we now see to be praised. For who is there who would not rather have divine gifts than human works proclaimed in himself? For we hold, according to the apostle, that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law. Let David, then, be justified by faith, who through the law recognized sin, but believed by faith in the pardon of sin; let David be justified, because in his sin the mysteries of the church that was to rise shone forth.

Someone will say: for what reason did the one chosen as ancestor of the Lord’s race commit both adultery and murder? But I say something else: such an ancestor of the Lord’s body had to be chosen. For what is incorporation but the remission of sins? And therefore he could not be free of sin, so that he might set forth divine grace both by example and by message. Indeed, by that same dispensation Bathsheba and Tamar are counted among the ancestors of the Lord’s race, of whom the one committed adultery and the other incest. By that dispensation too Ahab and Jeconiah, as the evangelist Matthew described, are numbered among the ancestors of Christ, so that he might begin the benefit that would redeem all men from his own ancestors; at the same time, lest he who subjected himself even to the suffering of the body should seem to have sought the nobility of a spotless origin; for it is the boasting of men to seek another’s glory, not their own; and yet even among men the grace of virtue is greater than that of nobility. At the same time an example had to be given, so that all might understand that the disgraces of ancestors cannot be a dishonor to their descendants, since each one could abolish the stain of his succession by the merit of his own virtue. Do you see how many and how gravely criminal persons the line of the Lord’s generation includes, from whose origin Christ was not ashamed to be born for your sake? And if you believe these things, they are gifts of divine mercy toward you, and this is the mark of heavenly power; for sin abounded, so that grace might abound more. So let David not have been exempt from fault, so that he might be chosen for grace.

But now let us review the mysteries of the history itself and draw from the very springs of the Scriptures, and, so that we may look into the whole course of the mysteries, let us repeat the text of the history itself. Thus, we remember, it is expressed in the book of Kingdoms: that David, when he had seen Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, bathing, fell in love with her, then ordered her to come to his house while the woman’s husband was away; that not long after her husband returned as a messenger of the war, a truly religious and devout man, who thought he should not enter his house in time of war, when he saw his companions intent on the war and keeping watch not in domestic dwellings but in battle tents; that afterwards by David’s order he was sent back to the war with the instruction that he be thrown against the enemy warriors, so that, by the man’s death, the king might have free opportunity of possessing the woman. And here there is some shame at the sin and modesty about the fault, in that he sought a hiding place for the error and did not take upon himself the authority of an unjust killing by right of royal power, but avoided odium. I admit the fault, but more tolerable is that which is pressed down by shame than that which is proclaimed by insolence. So Uriah died, thrown against the warriors; but afterwards those same men who had killed him were slain by David’s order when the city was stormed. This is the course of the history, in which deep mysteries may be seen.

And since we have undertaken not to defend David (for he does not need my help) but to excuse him, or rather to praise him, lest I waver in so great a depth of mysteries, it is right that I use the mouth of the one whose history I use. I will use, then, the prophetic response, saying: “Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” For no one can look into such divine recesses of mystery without the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. For if so great a prophet asks that the gift of the Holy Spirit be poured into him, what ought I, weak as I am, to do, especially since even the holy apostle asks to be helped by the prayers of the people, so that a door may be opened to him to speak the mystery of the Word? O that Christ would deign to open that door to me! Let us knock, however; for he is wont to hear those who knock, since he himself said: “Knock, and it will be opened to you.” O that he would unlock himself to me, since Christ is the door. He is within, he is without; he is the way that leads, he is the life to which we strive to come.

Come, then, Lord Jesus, and open your springs to us, so that we may drink of the water which whoever drinks will never thirst again; or, if we cannot yet draw from your spring, deign to grant that we may at least draw from the well from which you promised drink to that Samaritan woman while she was still doubting. And you indeed promise to all from the spring, but for those who doubt, like that Samaritan woman, your spring is still a deep well. Let us too drink the water of heavenly secrets, and, since we have been found worthy to come to your spring, let it be granted us at least to see an image of the heavenly mysteries.

And so, unless I am mistaken, by the prophet we shall understand the Holy Spirit, and by the adulteress we may consider the various fornications of the synagogue. And therefore we see it revealed long before by the Holy Spirit that the Lord Jesus would be born also of the family of the Jews, whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh: he was indeed born, as a Jew, of an adulterous family, but, as one spotless, of a virgin. The family of the Jews was under the law, as if under a husband. The observance of the law had to be abolished, so that truth and grace might be substituted.

We have one mystery. Receive another too, remembering, however, that from the first conception of Bathsheba a little child was born, who died; afterwards Solomon was born: that little child from a stolen conception, but Solomon from an acknowledged marriage. It is clear, then, that by David the prophet is to be understood, and by the prophet the prophetic people, from which also the synagogue; first, the one who was born, since he degenerated from his ancestors, formed through shameful deeds and conceived through vices: the people of the Jews could not reach the age of resurrection nor grow into a perfect man, but failed in the small littleness of its senses and in a kind of infancy of virtue. But he who was afterwards conceived from a lawful union is the Christian people, that wise and peaceful one (for these things are disclosed by the interpretation of the name Solomon), which has reached the hoary age of a long resurrection and that heavenly kingdom. Through that people the law was dissolved, through this one grace was restored.

Receive also a third mystery. What the Hebrews call David, the Latins interpret as “humbled.” And who is truly humbled but he who did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but, taking the form of a servant, humbled himself, becoming obedient even to death? He, then, is the one signified by David: exalted by nature but humbled by mercy, lofty in divinity but gentle in body. And so, where he is humbled, there he is obedient. For from that from which humility is born, obedience is born, and in it it ends. For when he is said to have become obedient even to death, and death not of the divinity but of the body, surely that was not the obedience of the divinity but of the body, nor the humility of the majesty but of the flesh. So as far as concerns the taking up of the body, the apostolic reading declared in what Christ’s humility consisted; but as for what concerns the nature of the divinity, it was disclosed by the Gospel reading, which you followed with devout assent when you heard read the Son of God saying: “I and the Father are one”; for the Son and the Father are one in divinity, but the sacrament of the body and the eternity of the divinity are not one. Nor did the apostle alone say that the Lord was humbled, but he himself too declared that he was humble, saying: “Take my yoke, for it is light, since I am gentle and humble of heart.” And yet he is marked not only by interpretation but also by explicit naming, for it is written: “I have found David my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him,” and further on: “He will say to me: You are my Father,” and: “I will say to him: You are my Son.” So the David we were seeking we have found: a servant in appearance, but Lord in truth. This David, then, was walking within his house.

What is Christ’s house but that of which he says: “In my Father’s house are many dwellings”? Set in that palace, then, he saw human nature naked and, pitying her, loved her. For she was still naked of virtues, because through the serpent’s snares she had been stripped of the native garments of her nature. For it does not seem likely that a woman would strip naked in front of the king’s house, that a woman would bathe in front of the king’s house, as though no other place could be more convenient for bathing. It does not square, it does not fit, it does not agree with faith; it is far from the truth, it is repugnant to sense. Such a woman, so wanton, so impudent, the king could have shuddered at, not loved. Could she not have felt shame, if not before a man, at least at the king’s gaze? Could not even his servants have kept her away before the king saw her?

So if this cannot agree with faith, let us ask who this naked woman is: clearly human nature, stripped of all the garments of its nature, lacking the cloak of immortality and despoiled of the veil of innocence; for he is naked who is stripped by sin and fault. Indeed that first sinner of our race, and would that he were the only one, did not perceive that he was naked before he sinned; after he sinned, he saw that he was naked, and therefore thought he must be covered with leaves, because he knew he was naked. So he became naked to himself after he became guilty of fault. In him the whole human condition was stripped, liable through the succession of nature not only to fault but also to hardship. So he perceived and saw that he was naked. Hence our whole condition is such that one who thinks himself naked both sees and perceives himself naked. Indeed one who covets riches is naked; one who despises them is wealthy. So much is each one’s own perception his hardship, and each one’s own virtue free of injury. So Christ first claimed human nature for himself in marriage through the law, and afterwards divorced her. Hence he says too: “Where is your mother’s bill of divorce, by which I sent her away?” In this way, then, Christ saw his family naked and loved it; for Christ loves the holy soul. Indeed Jesus loved Lazarus and Mary; Christ loved his church although naked, although not yet clothed with any adornment of virtues.

Indeed, so that we may know that the course of the Scriptures agrees with the arrangement set before us, let us learn that the church is naked, let us learn that she is seeking, hastening, and washing herself before the house of Christ, when John was baptizing in the Jordan, saying: “I indeed baptize you in water for repentance; but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.” So when the people was being baptized for repentance, it was already near his house, seeking Christ, so as to come to grace. So the church was seeking Christ in John, saying: “Tell me, you whom my soul has loved,” recalling that he was the cause of her desire, the cause of her washing, as you have: “I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tent of Kedar, like the skin of Solomon.” You have the reason why she longs to wash herself, because she recalls that she is dark. For, as if to John asking why the great people running together longed to be washed, she answered, saying: “I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem.” Because she is dark, she desires to be washed; because she is beautiful, she does not fear to be seen naked. “Do not look at me,” she says, “because I have been darkened, because the sun has not looked upon me.” So we are darkened when we are not seen by Christ, but when we are seen we become white. So he saw her, to whom all things are naked and from whom the hidden things of the breast cannot be hidden, because he is the searcher of heart and reins; nothing is covered from him, nothing wrapped up. He saw his church naked and, as he saw, loved her. He saw his beloved naked and loved her as a son of love.

See how he invites, see how he calls. These are not the reproaches of adultery but the mysteries of chastity. “You are all beautiful,” he says, “my near one, and there is no blemish in you. Come hither from Lebanon, my bride, come hither from Lebanon; you will pass and pass through from the beginning of faith.” And well “from the beginning of faith.” So where you have faith, you ought not to fear adultery; for faith belongs to marriage, fraud to adultery. But so that she might be able to come from Lebanon, he said before: “Arise, come, my near one, my beautiful one, my dove, my perfect one”: near by the desire of faith, beautiful by the adornment of virtue, a dove by spiritual grace. For the silvered wings of the dove signify that eternal power, and the flight of the dove declared the presence of the Holy Spirit. So Christ calls her to himself, that she may come, since she was coming already dowered with spiritual gifts, because, “behold,” he says, “the winter has passed, the rain has gone, it has departed by itself, the flowers have appeared on the earth.” See how the holy church is invited. “The winter,” he says, “has departed by itself,” lest, naked, she fear the winter: a winter not of the season but of weakness, which strips the fruitful field of the soul of every flower. For there is a winter not of the earthly sun; there is a winter of the mind, when cold slips into the soul, when the warmth of the mind vanishes, when the vigor of sense is loosened, when too much moisture overflows and weighs down the mind, when the inner sight grows dim. And therefore the Lord says: “See that your flight be not in winter or on the sabbath.” For it is good that the day of judgment or of death should come when the gentle temperature of the soul is vigorous, when the heavenly mystery shines with serene light, when our heart burns within us. For then Christ is present, as Ammaon and Cleopas testify in the Gospel, saying: “Was not our heart burning within us on the way, when he opened the Scriptures to us?” And the soul is vigorous when a flower too is seen on the earth. What is this flower of good fragrance but he who said: “I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys”? Of him it is written in Isaiah too: “A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a rod will rise from the root, and a flower will come forth from the rod.” The root is the family of the Jews, the rod Mary, the flower of Mary Christ, who, when he shines in our land and is fragrant in the field of the soul or blossoms in his church, we can neither fear the cold nor dread the rain, but await the day of judgment.

And therefore the church, so as to see this flower, hastened with all eagerness, as she herself testifies, saying: “On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved. I sought him and did not find him; I called him, and he did not hear me. I will rise, then, and go into the house, into the forum and the streets, and seek him whom my soul loved. I sought him and did not find him. The watchmen who go about the city found me, struck me, and took my cloak from me.” You see how she seeks him whom she desires to find, so that she does not fear to be wounded. But these wounds are not to be feared but desired, because they are wounds of love, as she herself said: “I am wounded with love.” Good are the wounds of love. Indeed, “more useful are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy.”

Rightly, then, she is naked, because she lost her cloak; or perhaps she is naked because it is sometimes a mark of virtue not to have the breast covered, not to have the heart veiled. Indeed, the veiled one, that is, the synagogue, which had a veil in the reading of the Old Testament which is not lifted, since it is done away in Christ, the veiled synagogue, I say, Christ despised and spurned; hence even today a veil is laid over the heart of the Jews. But she who turns to the Lord with her whole mind is naked and transparent. For when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil will be taken away, so that, beholding the glory of God, we may see. Indeed elsewhere too to be naked is a sign of virtue, for it is written: “I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on?”

“I have washed my feet, how shall I soil them?” What tunic, then, she has put off and does not find how to put on again, let us reveal from the Scriptures if we can. For there is a kind of bodily tunic, there are certain veils woven of desires; and therefore it is sometimes better to be naked in body than veiled in heart. Hence Paul too admonishes us that it is much better to be stripped than to be clothed over, saying also elsewhere: “Stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.” So she who has been stripped also has her feet washed, and therefore she who has washed does not know how she could be soiled; for by grace she forgets what she had drawn in by nature. Great, then, and just is this love of the woman washing herself before David’s palace.

But she not only washed but also called, as we receive in the same book, the holy church saying: “Come, my brother, let us go out into the field, let us rest in the villages, let us rise early to the vineyards, let us see whether the vines have blossomed.” So she not only washes but also calls and invites Christ to come to her, saying: “I will give you my breasts.” And she promises not only her own but also things new and old, as you have: “New and old, my brother, I have kept for you.” And, as if impatient of love, she seeks the support of someone by whom Christ may be asked to come. See her burning, see her longing. “Who will give you to me, my brother,” she says, “nursing at my mother’s breasts?” And she shows for what reason she seeks him, with what grace she invites him, how she can hold him, and how she awaits him lingering outside, and begs him to enter her house, saying: “Finding you outside, I will kiss you; I will take you and bring you into my mother’s house and into the secret chamber of her who conceived me.” You see how she is naked, who cannot have a covered secret of an undefiled nature, the secret of an inmost conscience not marked by any rashness of vices. For the holy church is a garden enclosed and spotless virginity, which merits this grace from Christ because she sought, desired, and found the Word of God, watching before the doors of Wisdom, as Wisdom herself says: “Blessed is the man who hears me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my doors, guarding the posts of my entrance; for my goings out are the goings out of life.”

So Christ desired the beauty of his church and prepared to take her as his wife. But because she was under the law (for Peter, John, and the rest of the apostles were under the law), he thought we must first be released from the bonds of bodily observance. For although the law is religious, the law is just, as is shown in the person of Uriah, who was so religious and chaste that, having returned from the war, he did not know his wife or go in to her; yet when David, that is, the humble man, came to know the union of Uriah, the church, departing from union with the synagogue, was preparing a place for the marriage to come. Hence John too received a type of the law: though he was of the fathers, he announced that the ways of the Lord were to be prepared and prophesied the church’s union; and therefore he is presented as killed, to show the failure of the legal observance; for the law and the prophets were until John. So now Uriah was killed as a type of the law, so that the synagogue might be released from the snares of the law, since the woman who is under a husband is bound to the law while the husband lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. So while the husband lives she will be called an adulteress if she has been joined to another man; but if her husband has died, she is freed from the law of the husband, so that she is not an adulteress if she has been with another man. So human nature is not an adulteress, which, though it was under the law, has nevertheless, the observance of the law being in a way abolished, been claimed for grace.

But Christ did not abolish the observance of the law. Hence David did not kill Uriah himself, but allowed him to be killed by the warriors; that is, Christ allowed the rite of the observance coming from the law to be profaned through the incursion of barbarians and the captivity of the Jews. Indeed Uriah means “my light.” And what is Christ’s light but the law and the Gospel? (“For if you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.”) For Christ’s light went before in the law, whose grace afterwards, in the Gospel, filled the whole of this world as by a sevenfold Spirit. To this law, then, he took away the flesh and joined the church to himself. The light of this law a hostile people diminished, when it violated the holy things of the law. So the light of God was diminished in the people of the Jews, because blindness has happened in part to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved.

There still remains a fourth mystery, which I beg you to receive with calm ears, and to weigh our mind, not our words; for the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. Adultery was committed, murder was committed. This is what was said to the prophet: “Take for yourself a rod of the nut tree.” And elsewhere we read of a rod of the nut tree, by which we understand a certain law and sum of prophecy, which, like a nut, is bitter outside in the rind, hard in the middle of the shell, tender and fruitful within. So even if in the history you hear bitter things, and in the type you recognize hard things, yet hope for fruitful things in the mystery. Adultery, I say, was committed as a type of salvation; for not every adultery is to be condemned. Indeed it was said to the prophet: “Go, take for yourself a wife of fornication.” The Lord commands this, that a woman who has committed fornication should be a wife, of which marriage, as we said above, the offspring is Christ. For to the son who was born of fornication the name Jezreel was given by the Lord, which is “divine generation.” If, then, that union with a fornicating woman was devout, surely this union with an adulteress too is a devout fellowship. But that one concerned the Jews. Of divine things, however, I do not dare to speak of a devout adultery, even if it may be so, lest even the sound of the word offend anyone, though a more reverent sense is at hand. What can nevertheless be said more cautiously, if not more expressly, is that from unequal unions a devout companionship was made when the Word was made flesh. For the fellowship of divinity and flesh is not a lawful one, nor, as flesh and soul come together in a kind of covenant of natures, the flesh to the soul and the soul to the flesh, do divinity and flesh likewise keep in some way the law of a just bed. God took up flesh, assumed a soul; through an unusual and not lawful incarnation he made the fellowship lawful, so that God may be all in all.

Indeed, so that you may know there is a mystery, interpret the names. You take David as a type of Christ; Bathsheba is called “daughter of the sabbath,” and “full daughter,” and “well of the oath.” What, then, is clearer than that the daughter of the sabbath is the flesh of Christ, because God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law? She is also full, because in his passion is the fullness of the law, or because she is full of the Holy Spirit; for Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. She is also the well of the oath, that is, of religion and faith. And well a well, because rivers of living water will flow from his belly. Taking her to himself, then, God the Word made the union lawful; this mystery that wedding too declared which is in the Song of Songs, in which the church weds Christ and the flesh the Spirit. And therefore she ran about and sought the Word of God everywhere, because wounded, because naked, because adulterous in all, though spotless in Christ, the wretched flesh was seeking its Redeemer.

This flesh Christ joined to himself, to make her spotless; he associated her with himself, to take away the adultery. And because she was under the law, she had to die, so as to be freed from the law, so that through that death a kind of marriage of law and flesh might be dissolved. So the flesh died in Christ, so that we, made dead to the law through the body of Christ, as the apostle said, might belong to another, who rose from the dead, and the passions and desires of the flesh and the thoughts of sins, which through the law were in our members, might die in that death, while we, freed from the law of death, might rise as by a new union with Christ in newness of the Spirit.

And yet those who dissolved the law in the flesh of Christ and thought it should be violated were all slain by the warriors at David’s command. By this sign is shown what they taught was marked for later times: that none of those who killed Christ escaped; and it is most clearly revealed that those whom Christ took to himself before his death, like the Jews, perished as little ones and unformed, while those whom he took into the number of his sons after his death were kept for the kingdom. Hence, according to this mystery, it fits that the first birth among the Jews was weak, so that afterwards the eternal fruit might come among the Christians.

But now let us pass to the messenger. For above our treatment concerned that odious adultery and murder of the prophet David, and, the mysteries having been gone through, we found not only nothing to be condemned but even something to be praised. Now the treatment begins to be about the messenger, whom the title of the psalm gone through, already often repeated, shows. For it is thus: “A psalm of David, of understanding, when Nathan the prophet came to him, when he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

And so this part of the history too must be gone over, which is as follows. “A rich man,” he says, “and a poor man were in one city. The rich man had many herds, many sheep; the poor man one sheep, which was fed on the poor man’s bread and wine and rested in his bosom. A guest came to the rich man; the rich man took nothing from his herd or from his flocks, but killed the poor man’s one sheep.” When David learned this, “That man shall die,” he said, “and restore it fourfold.” Nathan answered him: “You are the man.” Then he disclosed to him the heavenly command, saying that the Lord commanded that he had conferred on him many goods, that is, royal wealth, after taking him from among the shepherds, and had poured out his mercy upon him; and therefore, since he had provoked the Lord by sin, all his goods were to be carried off, seized by enemies, his house laid waste. Then he said: “I have sinned”; and Nathan answered: “Since you confess that you have sinned, the Lord will forgive you your sin; but your son who was born of Bathsheba will die.” While this son was sick David wept, lay on the ground, covered himself with sackcloth, fasted. When he learned he was dead, he rose, washed, ate, and comforted others.

See how many things there are. First of all, that God is kind and merciful, and that the adversities which happen to us we receive as the price of our error. We have learned, then, that captivity is the price of sin; for this punishment is decreed for crime. Then we notice that the fall of kings is the punishment of peoples. For as we are preserved by their virtue, so too we are endangered by their error. Hence we should pray that we may have a glorious and perfect king. Do we, then, who wish to have a perfect king, not wish to have a perfect Lord? Or can those wish a man to be perfect who do not wish God to be perfect? The text of the history also briefly brings it about that we notice how quickly the hope of pardon followed. And it is no small thing that Nathan announced it to him, that is, a lesser prophet; for it is a heavy shame and embarrassment to have an offence rebuked by an inferior. You see that fault diminishes grace. Nathan knew what David did not know; so much is the mind darkened, overshadowed by a kind of cloud of vices. Then this is the Nathan who had earlier prophesied that David was acceptable to the Lord, so that he might grieve that his sin was convicted by the same witness by whose prophecy his merit had been proclaimed.

But now let us seek the mystery. “There were two men,” it says, “in one city, one rich and the other poor.” Who is this rich man or poor man unless perhaps the one the people of the Jews, the other the Christian people? The former rich in the law, rich in the oracles of God entrusted to it, rich in prophecies, rich in oracles; the latter poor. But do not flee this poverty, which the kingdom of heaven follows; for it is written: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Good is the poverty that does not lose what it has had. Good is the poverty which, if it has no treasures of money, nevertheless has treasures of knowledge and wisdom. Do not, my sons, despise poverty as cheap; “this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him.” Do not envy great riches as such; “the rich have been in want and hungered.” But if you wish to have good things, seek the Lord; for “those who seek the Lord will not lack any good thing.” So do not refuse any poor man. Peter was poor and had no coin to give, but he gave health more precious than any money. Lazarus in the Gospel was poor; but he who before lay rich in scarlet and purple wished, after the end of life, to be cooled by the poor man’s dripping finger. Although, proud in royal scarlet and in purple garments, the fastidious rich man shuddered at the poor man’s sores, yet, placed in the underworld, he wished he had been in that place where Lazarus was. In that place the reading does not seem to describe a man rich and poor in money, but that poor man who for faith and devotion did not shudder at wounds of the body and endured hunger and fasting.

Though, then, the people of the Jews had in its flocks a great abundance of victims, yet it snatched the one little sheep which that poor people had, subjecting it to that glorious passion. Do you want to know what sheep? He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, who was fed on the poor man’s bread and used the poor man’s drink and slept in the poor man’s bosom. For he used our food, he rested in the lap of our breast. For he said he could not rest in the bosom of the Jews, saying: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

“And a guest came,” he says, “to that rich man.” Who is this guest but wretched sin? For fault entered this world like a guest, foreign and strange to our nature. And so he did not offer a victim from his own flocks, but took the poor man’s little sheep and killed it. Whose passion, though it profited for a saving sanctuary, yet seems to have been for him an increase of his fury, food for his fault, and an incitement to sin. Indeed Judas received bread from Christ, and then was filled the more with the devil, because he did not receive it in faith, he who was preparing betrayal for so hospitable a Lord.

“And David was angry with that man.” We said that the prophet signifies the people of the Jews, and therefore under this figure it condemns itself. “That man who did these things is worthy of death, and he shall restore the little sheep fourfold”; that is, the people of the Jews would perish, but the Christian people would enjoy more abundant goods, because the state that is owed from the resurrection is better than the present.

My purpose was, as you will kindly remember, to answer in my discourse those who condemn the murder and adultery of holy David; and so, with the favor of your unanimity, the course of our treatise has turned out such that he whom we thought could not be defended seemed rightly to be praised by all. But since the holy man does not need our help, let him now speak to you for himself, and let his own words defend his deed.

“Have mercy on me, O Lord,” he says, “according to your great mercy.” This combination of words is new, unless I am mistaken, dearest brothers, that “great mercy” should be said, and I do not remember easily reading it elsewhere. And therefore we ought to notice what great mercy is. For although we do not easily read “great mercy,” we do read “the great power of God.” And therefore, by considering what great power is, we shall be able to infer what great mercy he wished to designate. For we read in holy Jeremiah: “Who are you, O Lord? You made heaven and earth by your great power and your high arm.” So great power made heaven. What is this great power, the Father’s or the Son’s? The Father’s power is certainly great (for he made heaven and earth through the Son, as you have: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”); but the Son too is great power. For when you read that the Son is the power of the Father, as you have that Christ is the wisdom and power of God, surely, since the Son is the power of the Father, the Son is great power. How, then, is he denied to be almighty, whom we confess to be the great power of God? This great power, then, made heaven, because the Son too made heaven, as you have: “All things were made through him.” So if both the Father made and the Son, surely the unity of the deed indicates the unity of the working. So the working of the Father and the Son does not differ. And if there is one working, surely there is one power of working and one majesty of the things made. So much about the Father and the Son.

Why, then, are we silent about the Spirit, especially since divine Scripture does not let us be silent? For the passage gives a most fitting testimony for proving the unity of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, so that we cannot separate his working either from the work of the Father and the Son. For we read that the Father is great power, because he made heaven; that the Son too is great power, since he made heaven, and not only made it but also made it firm; for “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm.” So if both making and making firm the heaven belong to great power, we cannot separate the Holy Spirit either from the majesty of great power, because it is written: “And by the Spirit of his mouth all their power.” For when heaven and earth were being made, the Spirit was borne above, of whom he says elsewhere through the prophet David: “Send forth your Spirit, and they will be created.” Of him he also said elsewhere: “For I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers.” For God did not make heaven and earth with bodily fingers, but by the sevenfold grace of the Spirit, that is, by that finger of which you have in the Gospel: “But if I cast out demons by the finger of God.” For this finger he called elsewhere the Spirit, as you have: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God.” If, then, the Spirit is the finger of God, since the Son is the arm of God, surely the Spirit, working together with the Father and the Son through the unity of working, made heaven and earth. For the Son named him a finger precisely so as to express the unity of the Godhead as of one body. And so if great power founded heaven, surely great wisdom founded heaven, because it is written: “In wisdom you have made all things.”

We have learned, then, what great power is; let us now gather what great mercy is. If great power made the heavens, great mercy too ought to be from heaven, and great righteousness ought to be from heaven; for righteousness looked down from heaven, and mercy came from heaven. So mercy became great because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. So great power made the heavens, great power bowed the heavens, as we read: “And he bowed the heavens and came down.” By this it is shown that the Son of God was never without his divinity, not even when he lived among men; since, though he took up what he was not, he did not cease to be what he was. And so when it is said, “And he bowed the heavens and came down,” he seems not so much to have come down from heaven as to have come down with heaven itself. For when the Father addressed the Son placed on earth, and angels ministered, the Son of God seems not so much to have changed his seat as to have moved it. So we have learned that mercy is great.

And so, if it is great mercy to have come down from heaven, we ought to distinguish and understand what the multitude of compassions is. For thus it follows: “And according to the multitude of your compassions blot out my iniquity.” For the two little verses do not mean the same thing; the first refers to the incarnation, but what follows seems to refer to the injuries which the Son of God took up in the flesh: that he fasted, hungered, wept, was beaten, was crucified, died, was buried; for these are the marks of the flesh, not of the divinity. And it was necessary that the multitude of compassions should drive away the multitude of hardships, the struggle of the Lord’s passion being to profit us.

For he was not blotting out his own sins, because he had committed no sin; but because he was made sin, our sins had to be blotted out, as David said: “Blot out my iniquity.” What is “blot out”? Let us look at this word; it is not idle. Indeed elsewhere too he says: “I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities, and I will not remember.” There are indeed certain ulcers of offences deeply impressed on our conscience, and certain weals of our minds and souls, which are covered over with the sores of our errors. So fault has its characters and letters, by which it is betrayed. This we do not invent by our own wit; we mark it by prophetic authority. It is written, then; and see where it is written. “On the breast,” he says, “of your heart”; that is, there the record of fault is written where also the form of virtue is, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart. But good things are inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, while vicious things are inscribed with a pen of iron and a point of diamond. The writing is almost such as the punishment of sin. That is written with a pen of iron; this is restrained with a rod of iron, as it is written: “You will rule them with a rod of iron.” That other is the rod of uprightness, the rod of your kingdom. The one restrains the guilty with punishment; the other governs the innocent with rule. So fault is written; let us see where. Not outside, but inside, in your heart and in your breast. For just as the word is near, in your mouth and in your heart, so for unbelievers the figure and image of sin and error is imprinted in the heart itself. So fault is within, virtue is within. And therefore the Lord says: “I perceive that power has gone out from me,” to show that good things come forth from within and, on the other hand, bad things come out from within. “For it is not what enters the mouth,” he says, “that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth.” For from your heart thoughts proceed; and therefore beware lest evil thoughts come out of your heart, which in later time may convict and accuse you. For God does not need witnesses and proofs to convict you; your own fault accuses and betrays you.

Hence David says well in this psalm: “My offence is always against me.” For woe to me that I wish to lie hidden and cannot! For how shall I lie hidden, I who bear inscribed on my breast the marks of my offences? On that day of judgment each one’s breast will be laid bare, his conscience bearing witness to all and his thoughts accusing or even defending one another, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men. What shame then, when what we thought hidden begins to be revealed to all, when the image of each one’s offence begins to open itself, so that each is convicted by the record of his own crime! What shame, when you see preferred to you him whom you judged contemptible in this world, that slave of yours; when you learn that he whom you thought foolish and incapable by the cunning of this world has been honored for the riches of his simplicity! So while we live, let us flee to him who can blot out sin. And do not fear that it was written with a pen of iron and a point of diamond (for he broke the gates of iron and diamond), nor fear to confess your fault.

David confessed, recognized his iniquity, recognized his error, and therefore says: “For I acknowledge my iniquity.” David acknowledges, and do you not acknowledge? David confesses, and do you deny? Paul cries out that he is guilty, and do you assert that you are innocent? Is there not, then, the greatest cause for blushing, when our companionships are mixed with very many sins? If, however, we pursue the effort of correction … Nor again should you dread that the confession of fault will be held for punishment. For the good and merciful God is accustomed not only to pardon the fault of those who confess, but also to bestow rewards on those who correct themselves, if each one asks to be given what he understands is not hidden. “Tell your iniquities, then, that you may be justified.” This is the voice of God willing to pardon; this is the voice of God promising that he wishes to blot out your sin.

“Against you,” he says, “have I sinned and done evil before you”; that is: even if men do not see, you see; even if men, who are sharers in offences, cannot judge me, you nevertheless are the judge of each, you who are free of offences. However much harmful thoughts lie hidden in the inmost heart, they are nevertheless before you, who can say: “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” Surely Christ says this. He, then, who knows what is written in the heart can blot out whatever has been inscribed in the heart. To him holy David confesses that he sinned not only in himself but also in the first man, when the divine precepts were violated.

Here one may notice, dearest brothers, how all heresies, while they fight each other, run back into each other. And so the Arians, while they separate the power of the Father and the Son, rush madly into such an outcome of their argument that their assertion coincides with the Manichees’; for these say that there is one God of the Old Testament and another of the New. This profane assertion the holy church condemns, which reads of one God, because “there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, and we through him.” Surely one almighty power of the Father and the Son is declared, so that we neither separate the Father from the grace of the New Testament nor again separate the Son from the founding of the world.

Indeed let us consider whether the same God is the founder of both testaments. Certainly we all sinned in the first man, and through the succession of nature the succession of fault too was poured from one into all. Against whom, then, did I sin, the Father or the Son? Surely against him who entrusted to me what I sinned by not keeping. It was commanded to man that he should taste of all the things in paradise but not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So Adam is in each of us. For in him human nature offended, because through one sin passed into all. I see the sum entrusted to me; I see what debts of transgression I have contracted, while I taste what is forbidden and prohibited. Hence I owe interest on the capital entrusted, because I could not keep with unviolated faith the loan of the heavenly commands. We have recognized the loan; let us recognize also the lender.

It is surely the lender’s right both to exact and to remit. And therefore the same one remits who has the right to exact. Since, then, Christ said to me in the Gospel: “Your sins are forgiven you,” do I not understand the same one to be the lord of the capital whom I recognize as the judge of pardon? Or if the Father lent and the Son remitted, not through unity, as we say, but, as the Arians assert, through difference of power, did one God lend and another remit? Hence they run into this, that they do not escape the faithlessness of the Manichees. Then, by calling one God good, let them notice what snares of their madness they fall into. If he who lent is good, how is he not good who remitted? So the Arians have a share with those with whose assertion they agree.

Nor is it any wonder if one who has once begun to stray from the truth entangles himself in the bonds of another’s error. And therefore there is one judgment which destroys the machinations of all heretics: that we believe the Trinity to be of one power, majesty, and strength, and therefore do not separate the Father from what the Son did nor separate the Son from what the Father commanded. For so it will come about that we do not bring in one God of the Old Testament and another of the New, but through the unity of power the Son will be understood in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Son lends in the Father and the Father remits in the Son. For the Father too forgives sin; we have already said that the Son forgave.

Understand that the Father too forgives. “Forgive us our debts,” he says, “as we also forgive our debtors.” Surely the Son says this to the Father in our person. Nor does he say it as if he himself could not forgive, but he says it so that you may understand the unity of power.

Indeed, if you seek authority in the Son, he says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” He forgives by word, he forgives by command, but he forgives with reason, saying: “Go, and from now on see that you do not sin.” You have authority, because he pardoned the past; you have judgment, because he prescribed for the future.