Apology of the Prophet David 61–85

There follows: “Turn your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.” It is a customary prayer that we ask those we have offended to forget the offence done to them. So the prophet, speaking in human terms, asks God to turn his face from his sins and, as it were, to take on forgetfulness of his sins. But because he sees all things and nothing escapes him, he cannot forget as we do, from whom, in a short interval of time, the memory of what we have known slips away. Therefore he says well that he should turn his face, not from him, lest he fail, forsaken, but from his sins, so that his sins may have no strength. For those whom the Lord looks upon he enlightens, and in the countenance of the Lord there is love and pardon. And therefore this same prophet says: “Let my judgment come forth from your countenance”; for from the Lord’s countenance comes pardon, not punishment. We must ask, then, that he look upon us, but turn his face from our sins, so as to blot them out. For what he does not look upon he blots out, and what he has blotted out will be buried in forgetfulness, as the Lord himself says: “I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities, and I will not remember; but you remember, and let us be judged.”

Sin is either forgiven or blotted out or covered. It is forgiven by grace, blotted out by the blood of the cross, covered by love. Likewise iniquity too, which is thought to be the habit of an unjust mind, although John in his letter said that one who has committed sin has also committed iniquity, as we have it written: “Everyone who commits sin commits iniquity also. Sin is iniquity,” because in sin itself there is iniquity. Yet, as it seems to us, sin is the work of iniquity, but iniquity the worker of fault and offence. It is more, then, that iniquity itself be blotted out, that the root and seedbed of sins be cut out. Let the evil root be removed, lest it bear evil fruits; let every disposition of error be abolished, let all kinds of iniquities be taken away.

And so, just as the discipline of wisdom, entering the soul, takes away imprudence, and knowledge ignorance, so perfect virtue blots out iniquity and the remission of sins blots out all sin. Hence the apostle says splendidly that the Lord Jesus forgave us our sins, “blotting out the bond of the decree that was against us, and he took it,” he says, “out of the way, nailing it to the cross.” He blotted out with his blood the ink of Eve; he blotted out the obligation of a liable inheritance. So faith lessens sin. And therefore the Lord, forgiving sins, used to say: “Let it be done to you according to your faith.”

There follows: “Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Above he asks to be cleansed from hidden faults; here he asks that a clean heart be created for him, which comes to one who is renewed by the Spirit; for in the new man the heart is clean, in whom the filth of old offences has been blotted out and no image of iniquity remains inscribed. It is a great gift to have a clean heart. Hence Solomon says beautifully: “Who will boast that he has a chaste heart?” And the Lord in the Gospel: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” For this reason David too desired to have a clean heart, lest he be cast away from the Lord’s face.

In one whose heart is clean, the spirit is renewed in his inward parts. For as the viscera are the inward parts of the body, so there are also spiritual viscera of the soul, such as the heart of mercy, such as the inward parts that bless the Lord, of which he says: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, his holy name.” The viscera of the soul are the inventions of the senses, the pursuits of good thought, perseverance in the virtues, finally those things which in Greek are called ἔννοιαι (“conceptions”).

The right spirit is the one that directs well, that leads into the right way: this is the Spirit of truth, or certainly the right conscience of a man bent by no sins, or the spirit which is in man. We have not passed over what others think; yet it seems to us that, since the reading speaks of mysteries and the grace of the renewal to come is expressed, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is being asked for.

Indeed there follows: “Do not cast me away from your face, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.” If any of our slaves offends us, we usually turn our face away from him. Many of the rich are accustomed to banish their slaves and relegate them to their little farms, and this is thought a heavier punishment. Indeed they usually prefer to offer themselves to the lash. If this is thought grievous among men, how much more with the Lord our God. Was it not from this that the fratricide’s pain broke out (which should indeed have been restrained, if any piety could have tempered him), that God turned his face from Cain’s gifts but looked upon Abel’s gifts? So by his silent countenance he pronounced the one innocent, the other a sinner. So, like the lowest slave, he humbles himself, and, as one caught in sin and guilty of offence, he begs to be scourged rather than cast away from the Lord’s face.

Hear how God casts away from his face: “Take him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” One who is not corrected by his face is placed in darkness. Therefore the just man, so as not to suffer darkness, says: “Your face, O Lord, I will seek.” For where the Lord’s face is, there is light, as it is written: “Make your face shine upon your servant.” Indeed, as soon as he looked at Peter, he also enlightened him.

It is a great punishment, then, to be cast away from the face of God. Adam was cast out of paradise, and not without reason; for he had first hidden himself from the face of God. Cain too went out from the face of God, not only after the fratricide committed, but also after he thought God could be deceived, so as to deny his crime. So the sinner is shut out from the face of God, but the just man says: “Here I am.” Indeed David himself, when he saw the people perishing, offered himself, saying: “Here I am; I have sinned, and I, the shepherd, have done evil,” and so the Lord’s anger was appeased and pardon granted.

At the same time he shows that the saints remain, the criminals are cast away. And therefore we must keep spiritual grace, lest it be taken from us because of our sins. For one in whom the Holy Spirit is is not cast away, but with the unhindered fruit of his gift he is eager always to offer himself to the Lord, like the one who, when the Lord said, “Do you too wish to go away?”, answered: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe.”

At the same time it must be considered that the Spirit is not taken away except by the Lord’s will, as he is not given except by the Lord’s will. And surely when he is given, he does not work as one compelled, but is distributed according to his own will, as it is written, the apostle saying: “All these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills.” Since, then, he is not taken away except by the Lord’s will, it is plain that the will of the Trinity is one.

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and strengthen me with a princely spirit.” To whom it is owed, to him it is restored: the joy of salvation is restored to rational nature. And joy and gladness are the fruit of the Spirit; our firmness too is the princely Spirit. Indeed one who is strengthened by the princely Spirit is not liable to slavery, does not know how to serve sin, does not know how to waver, how to stray, nor does he totter uncertain in his pursuit, but, made firm on the rock, he is established with solid footing.

Whom do we think is called the princely spirit? Many refer the right spirit to the Lord Jesus, who took away the sin of the world and renewed the whole human race by the shedding of his blood; and therefore it is said, “And renew a right spirit within me.” The Holy Spirit, of whom he says, “And do not take your Holy Spirit from me,” they understand as the Spirit of truth; and the princely spirit they think is God the Father. And how morally he says: “Do not cast me away from your face!” Faithfully he fears to have taken from him the grace he received. And therefore he says elsewhere: “My eyes are always toward the Lord,” and later: “Behold, as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters, and as the eyes of a maid on the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God, until he has mercy on us.” Certainly this is the Spirit, author and prince, who rules the mind, strengthens the affection, draws where he wills, and directs to the higher life.

There are also those who have taken it as the spirit of man, which is in him. Of it the apostle says: “For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?” The one who can know all things, whom the hidden things of man do not escape, can have the princely rule in man.

There follows: “I will teach the unjust your ways, and the wicked will be converted to you.” He is the outstanding pilot who steers the ship on a rocky shore; he is the good teacher who sharpens duller minds for progress in learning; he is the excellent warrior and wonderful general who fires the more timid for battle and, having explored the terrain, props them up by its features, so as to make up for weakness of strength by the advantage of a favorable position; likewise he is a great preacher of the faith who teaches the unjust. Hence he says beautifully: “I will teach the unjust.” He did not say, “I will teach the just” (for the just know the ways of the Lord), but “the unjust,” he says, “I will teach.” Indeed the author of prudence and teacher of all says: “I came not to call the just, but sinners.” And that heavenly physician says: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Whether, then, in the person of him who called the nations, or in his own, he put it well: “I will teach the unjust,” because heavenly teaching can change inmost affections and turn purpose, and divine working can pour the pursuits of piety into sacrilegious breasts, so that those who lived without law may be converted to the true Lord, who before were turned away; and that by the example of the king’s penitence those who practice iniquities and bitter shameful deeds may be corrected and, converted in faith and work, receive the remedy of saving teaching and enter the ways of the Lord, in which they will meet no windings of error, no byways of headlong fall. For just as the model of good life and the pattern of virtue is in those men who have run the times of their life without stumbling, so those who, renouncing former shameful deeds or the errors of unbelief, have corrected the course of their later life are set forth for imitation by those who slip in deed or thought.

There follows: “Deliver me from blood, O God, God of my salvation.” This can also be referred to Uriah’s death: conscious of having ordered his killing, he asks pardon for so great a deed, and although as king he was released from the laws, he was nevertheless guilty before his own conscience. Desiring to untie himself from these bonds, he prays for divine help, so as to be cleansed from every stain of the crime committed. And indeed, since the holy prophet, meek and gentle of heart, always gave outstanding marks of his gentleness and devotion, so that he often pardoned his adversaries and thought he should refrain from killing them, it is no wonder that he grieves so heavily that the sin of shedding innocent blood had crept upon him. Therefore he asked to be delivered from blood, that is, from deadly sins. He praised the Lord his God, he proclaimed the Lord’s justice, and therefore he added: “My tongue will exult in your justice.”

“O Lord, you will open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” For one who praises the Lord will be saved from his enemies, as it is written. And certainly he had said above, in the forty-ninth psalm: “But to the sinner God said: Why do you recount my justice?” Since, then, he had said with his own mouth that God forbade the sinner to recount his justice, surely by recounting the justice of God he himself declared that this deed was by no means imputed to him as sin.

And he added: “You will open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” God shuts the sinner’s mouth, lest he speak the justice of God; he opens the just man’s, so that he may speak. One whose lips he opens, then, he acquits of the guilt of sin. And the Lord opens the lips of one who receives the word in the opening of his mouth. Hence the apostle too asks to be helped by the prayers of the people, that a door of the word may be opened to him to speak the mystery of Christ. And by “tongue” we understand the speech of one who exults in God’s praises. Hence that saying too is so understood: “My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly,” the word poured into the prophet.

But if we take it as said in the person of Christ, consider whether the scribe writing swiftly is not the Word of God, which runs through and penetrates the inward parts of the soul and writes in it the gifts either of nature or of grace; and the tongue that holy body born of the Virgin, by which the poisons of the serpent were emptied and the works of the Gospel to be celebrated throughout the whole world were accomplished. He came to empty sin, because he took on humility; he crushed his heart, which the Lord chose as a sacrifice rather than burnt offerings for sins, which used to be offered according to the law. Indeed he says above: “Burnt offerings for sin you did not require; then I said: Behold, I come”; that is: not thinking it robbery to be equal with God, I come, taking the form of a servant; I come in the appearance of the humanity I took up, in the truth of the cross, to prove obedience by the humility of death, so that disobedience may be blotted out.

Rightly, then, he says here too: “For if you had wished, I would surely have given sacrifice; you will not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifice to God is a crushed spirit: a crushed and humbled heart God will not despise.” And, as I said above, it is certain that it fits the mystery that the Lord Jesus himself seems to speak here too in his own person, he who brought forth that earlier saying with evident testimony of his person. For he is the true David, strong of hand, truly humble and gentle, the first and the last, first in eternity, last in humility, through whose obedience the guilt of the human race was blotted out and righteousness poured back. He, I say, Jesus, the end of the shadow and of the law, came as the teacher of humility, to teach the proud, puffed up in mind and swelling of heart, that they must pass over to gentleness and simplicity. How, then, can sin be imputed in the type of his mystery, when in the mystery itself is the remission of sins? Unless perhaps David confessed his iniquity and the sin of that deed precisely so that he himself might share in the remission of sin and the grace of the mystery.

For what does it mean that a man confessing his sin sings of Zion and Jerusalem, saying: “Deal well, O Lord, in your good will with Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be built,” unless that it pleases him that the gathering of the church be hastened through the calling of the nations, so that, not by the sons of the slave woman but by the free Jerusalem, that which is in heaven, it might spread the lineage of its faith throughout the whole world and lay the foundations of spiritual walls by the assertion of the apostolic teaching?

So the walls of Jerusalem are the bulwarks of faith, the fortifications of disputations, the summits of virtues; the walls of Jerusalem are the assemblies of the churches founded throughout the whole world; for the church says: “I am a wall, and my breasts are a tower.” And well are the gatherings of the churches the walls of Jerusalem, since everyone who enters the church in good faith and work becomes a citizen and inhabitant of that heavenly city which comes down from heaven. These walls are built by a structure of living stones.

Seeing, then, the true Jerusalem and Zion, he said: When you have blessed Jerusalem and Zion in your will, then you will accept the sacrifice of righteousness, that is, the sacrifice of the body of Christ, who said, when he spoke of his own passion: “Open to me the gates of righteousness, and entering them I will give thanks to the Lord.” And in the Gospel he says to John: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” and further on: “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake.” Christ is righteousness; so he asserts that the sacrifice of Christ will be acceptable to the Father. This, then, is what he says above too: “Sacrifice a sacrifice of righteousness, and hope in the Lord.” This is the offering of spiritual righteousness and the burnt offering of fervent devotion and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which he says will come when the souls of believers begin to be brought to that spiritual altar of the Lord, souls which, renouncing pleasures and delights, draw as it were a plough through their inward parts, so as to be able to bear the fruits of devout cultivation.

Or certainly thus: when you have blessed the church acquired from the nations, and the spiritual sacrifice of righteousness has begun to be frequented, then the holy martyrs too, who offered their bodies for Christ to be ploughed, will be offered like calves on the sacred altars, as we find written in the Apocalypse of John: that under the altar were the souls of those who offered their bodies to martyrdom for the name of the Lord Jesus, so as to gain for themselves the grace of Christ. To him be honor, glory, everlasting praise with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.