Questions on the Old and New Testament 115.16–127.7

For all nations too have different institutions, and what is lawful elsewhere is not lawful here, and again what is lawful here is not lawful elsewhere. For here in the city of Rome and its territory, which is called most sacred, it is lawful for women to put away their husbands, although it is provided in the divine law that not even husbands should use this power, except for the cause of sexual immorality. See, in this matter the barbarians are better! That this can be kept here too is not impossible, because it is shown to have been kept before. Fate, then, has been changed, because what was formerly forbidden began to be lawful.

It is not lawful to make eunuchs in the Roman realm, though among others it is lawful. But it is settled that they could be made here too; for it is proved that it is done, though in secret. If fear ceased, it would be done publicly. Fear, then, restrains fate; for fate is conquered if it does not do what it wants to do.

The Persians wear earrings like women, which here is dishonorable and unlawful; but that it could be done here too is attested by the priests of the Mother who is called Great (and truly great she was, but a harlot; but there is this difference, that these men are effeminates, while the Persians are men). And what shall we say? In the whole world are these alone born under the fate of being castrated and turned into women, so that in all the world only these few are found, who, it is known, are wretchedly deceived and driven by promised rewards to this pain and disgrace? If they had been born for this, they would not need to be driven to it.

The Persians consider it lawful to unite with their own daughters, and it is shown that this could happen here too, since it is proved to have been done by some. But because punishment intervened, they were seized with fear and did not do what can be done but is not lawful. Everything that is forbidden is forbidden for this reason: lest, because it can be done, it should be done. If it were a matter of fate, it could not be otherwise, and it would not be forbidden. For if it is not of fate and is forbidden, this shows that what is not of fate can be done. And what prudence is there in forbidding what cannot be done? Would anyone forbid a person to fly from the city of Rome to Spain, or to carry a mountain on his shoulders? It is the things that can be done but ought not to be done that are forbidden.

It is the custom of the Moors that their women wear rings even in their noses. Is this a matter of fate? If it were, they would keep it when brought here, because, if there is fate, everyone carries his own fate with him. But because it is not of fate, all who come here from there change, seeing that what is thought becoming there is regarded as shameful here.

Certainly among all nations number is number, earth is earth, water is water, air is air, and fire is fire. Can earth be found anywhere that is not dry, or air that can be touched, or water that is not fluid or cold, or fire that is cold? So everywhere Jupiter is Jupiter, Saturn is Saturn, and Venus is Venus; and the other signs likewise. This art is practised everywhere by one method.

But the institutions of every nation stand not by the logic of the fates, which, as they treat it, is the same everywhere, but by human devising. Whatever seemed reasonable and fitting to someone who was thought the leading man among his people, he established for those over whom he presided; hence each region or nation has its own customs to keep, as Solon and Lycurgus established many things that the Greeks kept as law, which were gradually forgotten as their power declined.

Mules pleased the kings of the Jews for riding; the kings of the Romans preferred not mules but horses; the kings of the Garamantes, who live beyond African Tripoli, prefer bulls for riding; the kings of the Persians are carried in litters (the ancient kings of the Persians were not even seen by the people); the kings of Midian delight in riding camels, and adorn their necks with golden collars; and throughout Africa people prefer to ride asses rather than horses.

Though all things are found everywhere, not all things please everyone, because each chooses what appeals more to him. We ourselves have differing wishes in clothing, in food, in other uses, and in our very opinions. That this should not be said to be a matter of fate (since they assert that many people have different fates) is shown by the fact that our will often changes. What we love for a long time we afterward despise, and we begin to love what we did not care for before, and once it has become habit we remain changed.

They say that the order of the fates is such that what they bring about at given times recurs at intervals as before, so that, for example, what they do today they will do again after a time. Human ways are not said to remain in one state; for fate is overcome by discipline and custom.

For a long time the use of wine was unknown to Roman women. Discipline, having become custom, confirmed their judgment, so that they kept what they had learned to be beneficial. Were these fates in force in those times and did they afterward die, so that a well-devised practice ceased? It was not the fates that devised this but discipline; and when people departed from the custom, the discipline perished.

The ancient Romans were of such self-restraint that they even refused gifts offered to them, reckoning a good reputation as riches and preferring virtue to pleasures. Did these fates come in their turn, or did they die out? It was not of fate but of discipline, which is the tutor even of fate itself. How could something be of fate that did not exist before that time and does not exist now?

And I do not know why they lay so much blame on fate as to call it the author of all deeds, when it both is and is not. Where there is discipline, it is not; where there is custom, it is not; where there is chance, it is not. And where it seems to be, it is overcome by fear of the law: lust is restrained by fear, and gain of money is rejected in order to win God’s favor. In this respect, then, its existence cannot be denied, for what is overcome cannot fail to exist; and yet it can rightly be said not to exist even here, because what is overcome lacks authority.

So whoever follows God’s law and keeps the habit of a good life finds that all the things called fates give way to him. Habit can do so much that it even tames wild beasts. Those who wish to live badly make fates for themselves. Through luxury and pleasure come intemperance and restlessness, which produce lack of self-control and anger. Knowing that this deserves punishment, and wanting to make themselves exempt, when they are put to shame they ascribe it to the fates; while demons give help to those who are thinking of such things. Those who stand ready to give effect to evil intentions they call fates, not understanding that they are man’s enemies.

If sins did not creep into the soul through the senses but were born from within, everything in which one offends could rightly be said to come from the fates. But since they see that the desire for sins is born through sight and hearing and the other senses, with the help of the enemies, who suggest doing what is harmful, and which is not thought harmful while it is being done (for it seems sweet while it is done or before it is done, but once done it proves bitter), why do they blame the fates?

That it can be overcome we can see from this. When we are thinking hard and absorbed in some matter, the enemies fall silent and lust grows quiet; they cannot make suggestions to us while we are occupied. Does anyone suggest something else to a person devoted to some task? He does not, knowing either that he will not be heard or that he will be rebuffed as making an untimely suggestion. So too with the enemies, who are known to be demons; for these are the gods of the pagans. If they see us occupied with divine things, they do not intrude to suggest what is contrary, but lie in ambush, looking for an opportunity to plunge in.

The defenses of the soul, then, are constant meditation on God’s law and work, because if the demons see us idle from divine things, they are roused to tempt us. It is they who sow desires through flesh and blood. Although the flesh has its own impulse from its origin, since fleshly birth is not idle, yet in this matter the help of demons is added, to bring about people’s death.

Demons are of different kinds and have different wills. Some, while disturbing minds, strike down bodies; some, mixing themselves with the blood, generate desires in souls; others, attaching themselves to a person’s heart, suggest harmful things with flatteries; and there are some that only bind bodies with infirmities, like that daughter of Abraham whom the Lord healed.

Not knowing all this, the pagans call it fate, when the causes are various and are contrived by the enemies, so that, ensnared by one cause or another, a person is made subject to passions. They call it good fate when bodies are well tempered or commended by an agreeable manner and have a certain charm; and bad fate when a body has too much heat or moisture, or is not touched with charm but rather prone to losses; such people they call unfortunate.

Suppose this is true. We see such things even in animals, that some have more heat; but animals are not rational, as man is, so as to be able to temper their bodies by taking care. The mind is the commander of the body precisely so that it may govern it with the reins of the divine law. The divine law shows that what is suggested, whether by the impulse of the flesh or by the enemy, is not beneficial; God gave it as a help for this purpose, so that, looking to the precepts of the law, we may recognize the enemy who presents evil as good to be a seducer, because he urges something other than what the law teaches.

So the body is reined in in this way: because it runs hot, less is given to it, and it is kept from delicacies. Just as a feverish body grows hotter if it takes food or drink, so bodies of this kind, inflamed by the heat of the blood, will blaze up more fiercely unless they are governed. If you do not feed a fire, it dies down.

It is the mind’s task to lead the body; if it lets it go where it likes, the body throws it headlong, as a spirited horse throws a careless rider. And because the heat of the body blazes up more when the enemies are at work to deceive the soul (for the body does not desire, but by its heat produces desires in the soul), our God’s protection must be implored to guard us and to restrain them, because our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. Once they are removed, it will be easy to check the motion of flesh and blood. A fire goes out if the material that keeps it alive is lacking.

The things that astrologers foretell happen to those who believe that what they say will happen. It is brought about by the subtlety of demons that they bring to pass what their priests have said will happen, lest they be exposed and shown to be false. But their working has no power over those who do not give credence to their responses, because the demons are not so eager to satisfy those who do not believe them, and God does not allow them to do anything by which those who trust in God and do not believe the devil might be led astray. God has so ordered all things that it happens to each according to his faith, so that the free choice of the will remains. And therefore nothing can prevail against one who believes God and takes refuge in his help; for he is certain that all that God made is in his power, and that nothing dares to act against one whom it sees to have the God of all on his side.

Certainly God made the world and created the sun and moon and stars, setting for them courses by which the human race is governed. Does he not have power to command them to do something other, at times, than what has been decreed for them? He created them so that they are subject to his will and carry out their appointed courses only if nothing else has been commanded. So, if he is asked by those whom they serve, because the rains are untimely or crops are barren from excessive drought, he may order the weather to be tempered; or if, as usually happens, people live under God’s anger, wandering in luxury and vanity and not doing what pleases God, he may hold back the rain for a very long time, as we read happened under Elijah and Elisha, and stir up famine on the earth; and then, appeased by their satisfaction, he grants that showers should join the dry land.

The government of the world is like that of a secular empire. Just as some who are oppressed by provincial governors run to the emperors for help so as to be relieved, so people, if they see hard times, should present themselves as suppliants to God, in whose power are all things.

But the astrologers do not think so. They say that nothing can happen except that the stars fulfill the causes decreed for them; that they can neither be called back nor driven to anything else, but keep the duties once established for them. This is the astrologers’ claim: that the fates cannot be changed and nothing can be obtained by prayer, because, they say, God once established the order of the whole world and handed it over to the stars as his ministers, which can be moved neither backward nor forward.

This is the error of the astrologers, by which they even assail God. By this claim they deny that anything can happen outside the order of the world, so that they deny that we should believe any of the things that God is read to have done in the world if they conflict with the world’s law, and accept only those said to have been done according to the world’s statutes; so that it may not be said that a virgin gave birth, nor that Aaron’s rod blossomed and bore fruit, nor that old Sarah gave birth. The order of the world does not contain these things, because they are read to have been done by God outside the order of the world. And what wonder is it if the author of the world did what the world cannot do?

“But he seems,” they say, “to have transgressed the order he established, if he is said to have acted himself otherwise than he decreed for the world.” Come now: he laid down for the world a law of making and generating; did he lay it down for himself? It would be a lowering of himself if he acted as the world he made acts. And how would it be understood that something was done by him, if he had done what he did by the world’s law? So that it would be understood to have been done by God and not by the world, it was done by another order.

He certainly decreed that the sun should run its appointed courses unceasingly, with no license to stand still. Because he laid down this law for it, will he himself not be permitted to make it stand still?

It is certainly laid down for judges that they may not revoke a sentence given against a defendant; will the emperor himself also be under this law? He alone may revoke a sentence and pardon one condemned to death. How much more should that be permitted to God which ought not to be granted to the world, since the world is the servant of its Creator! Indeed the world, by the law handed to it, can kill but cannot make alive. Through intemperance it can make a man blind, but cannot restore his eyes; it can make him weak and sick, but cannot heal him. God reserved this to himself, so that it might be seen that he is Lord of all. It serves to overthrow fate that the dead rose, that eyes were restored to one born blind, that the sick and paralyzed were made strong, and that other such things were done; so that, for those who take refuge in God, fate, if there can be any such thing, can put no obstacle in the way. For the apostle John says: “Greater is he who is in you than he who is in this world.”

When God is asked, he removes even what he has established. He certainly established that sinners should be punished, and yet he pardons those who entreat him, because he alone may bind and loose. Hence, although the sun was not granted to stand still, under Joshua son of Nun it was ordered to stand, and obeyed his command, contrary to what had been prescribed for it in the order of the world. And under Hezekiah more is read to have been done: so that Hezekiah would not doubt that what had been promised him was true, he received a sign that was new and unheard of to human ears. The sun was not ordered, as before, to stand still, but to go back, so that, seeing this, Hezekiah might be certain that the one who had made the ninth hour the sixth could add fifteen years to his life. And because what was granted to Hezekiah is against the astrologers (for they deny that anything can be added to a life), he received in this matter a sign that was against the astrologers as well; for they say it is impossible for the stars to do anything other than what is established for them.

They certainly say that whether one has a slave or not is a matter of fate. So be it. Where were these fates from the beginning of the world? Until the flood, and for a long series of years after it, there was no such condition as slavery. Or did these fates begin in the times of Ninus, who is said to have been the first to make war on his neighbors and to make captives subject to slavery? You see, then, that this was invented later and is not a matter of fate but the work of demons; for if it were of fate, it would have existed from the beginning of the world. The stars are the same ones that were made in the beginning, and their course remains the same.

In earlier times human life was rustic, and no one pursued riches. How, then, do the astrologers now say that people become rich and poor through the stars? Have the stars changed, or is it the cunning and illusion of Satan, so that he says things are done by the stars which he works through his ministering angels? As the time approaches when his destruction draws near, he devises greater means of making people sin.

See, we know that Italy and Africa, Sicily and Sardinia have suffered from famine. Let the astrologers say whether all these had one fate, when they say that among a hundred people not even two can have matching fates. Let them blush and be silent and stretch out suppliant hands to God, in whose power are all things. But perhaps here the fates were caught off guard: what shall we say of Pannonia, which has been so laid waste that it can have no remedy?

O the weakness of those who profess themselves Christians with a wavering faith! While they doubt the promises, they do not think about what has been done. If they considered the deeds of the prophets and apostles, they would never admit the fables of the astrologers. They would know that all things are in God’s power, and they would not be terrified when evils befall the good, because the good will be rewarded at the future judgment; they would remember the apostle, who says: “For through tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” One who is content and awaits his God’s judgment will be rewarded and also vindicated. But if he wants to be vindicated in the present, or to enjoy present wealth with all greed, he doubts the promised life, and so in the future he will be counted among the faithless and held worthy of punishment. God made the world for training and enriched it with all good things, setting before us two possibilities, the present and the future, the heavenly and the earthly, to test human beings: so that whoever spurned the future life and chose the present would be assigned to the flesh, but whoever put the future before the present would be held worthy of spiritual things; and whoever, unjustly oppressed by the power of the unjust, laid his complaints before God, or reserved them for the future judgment, would be relieved and honored with spiritual glory. Hence none of the saints appeared glorious in the world or loved present delights. Hence the apostle says: “Having food and clothing, let us be content with these.” But a Christian complains and grieves if someone seems fortunate in the world, though the dignity and happiness of Christians are promised not on earth but in heaven. How can someone call himself a Christian who wants to glory not there, where it is promised, but here, where it is forbidden? If it were profitable to enjoy present things, heavenly things would certainly not be promised to those who despise them.

With what hope, then, do Christians lend their ears to astrologers, when they hear the apostle John crying out: “Do not love this world or the things that are in the world”? If these are the precepts of our faith and our law, that neither the world nor the things in the world are to be loved, why do some of us complain, saddened by others’ worldly good fortune, which before God is perhaps misfortune, when they ought rather to rejoice that the world does not give them things that would hold them bound and subject to human affairs?

This good fortune, having obtained the means of security, lacks concern for divine things. One who is filled with every necessity and has nothing to be anxious about must necessarily be neglectful of the divine oracles. Such people usually begin to labor under another anxiety, to be enlarged in the world, which cannot be done without sin. If one looks more closely, the world will be seen to be more the enemy of those whom it is said to make happy; for scarcely any of them thinks of heavenly things.

Christians, then, should rejoice when, living rightly, they are oppressed in the world. He has conquered the world who, content with however things turn out for him in the world, gives thanks to his God, hoping that if temporal things seem to be denied him here, eternal things will be given him in return. Why did God establish the future judgment, except so that those who are unjustly pressed down for a time might be exalted in eternal life, while those are crushed who, through their power, despised or disbelieved God’s future judgment and supposed that their crimes would go unpunished?

But those who assert the fates deny the future judgment. If people are born good and others born bad, what do you praise or blame, when the good man did not labor in the fight to win, and the bad man was not negligent so as to lose? These fables they peddle among private persons. Sinners brought before the courts have never dared to excuse their crimes by fate; confessing themselves guilty, they do not deny that they receive their sentence justly. So the authority of the law tramples on the reasoning of the fates, so much so that fate cannot even be mentioned once the law bestirs itself.

And how do they believe they will escape for ever, who after wicked lives contrive to flee the severity of the law for a time, not reflecting that the author of the law cannot overlook it hereafter? Here is the image of the law, there the truth; and one who eludes the image cannot elude the truth. Is there any place without God, or does anyone escape his hand? But flattering themselves, they think that one who escapes here is already safe. And how do they think it just that, when others are condemned in such cases, they should escape?

Certainly God established the world and showed what law it should follow. Loving his work, he showed it the way that leads to life, appointing leaders for people to follow, because there is also a way that leads to death. Ought he not, then, to inquire whether those he set as ministers of his kingdom governed his people by the law he established, and whether the people received his edict, so that faithful ministers may be found worthy of praise and unfaithful ones be punished, and likewise the people praised if the law is kept or condemned if it is despised? This is just; this is what the case demands.

How, then, can some be unwilling to believe in a future judgment? It is the madness of the astrologers that invented this. How could they accept a future judgment, who oppose the present one, since they contend that judgment takes place at birth? And because truth, when it is thought to be suppressed, rises again, these very people who assert that good and bad are not made but born by a kind of natural judgment punish wrongdoers and do not allow sins to go unpunished. At home they chastise with rods, the mill, and chains those whom outside they assert were born incorrigible. Does any prudent person chastise someone he knows cannot be corrected? That is the mark either of a fool or of an unjust man.

But let them not say that this too happens by fate, as if one who is under fate does not do what he wills, so that they too are naturally driven to punish those whom they know to remain unchangeable by nature. Truly, it must be said that whatever is said to be of fate should be put down to folly. How foolish it is that, while they say someone was born bad, they cannot prove that the one they claim was born good is good! How can someone be judged good who is caught doing an unjust thing? And what is so unjust as to beat a man who, they say, could not have done anything other than what he did?

And if everything happens by fate, how did the law come in, which does not allow what is of fate to happen? If the law were removed, unlawful things would be done everywhere and publicly, the powerful could not be borne, and there would be no freedom; for even one who does not now think of evil would begin to be evil once fear was removed. Indeed we read that the law was given because of the wicked.

But perhaps this too was of fate, that the law should be given. Then by what reasoning do the fates stand, if they generate what destroys them, since the law declared that what is of fate ought not to happen? They lack reason, then, if they generate what is contrary to themselves; and they are unjust, because they cause people to be born for condemnation; and if they are unjust, they ought to have no authority, because everything unjust is liable to punishment.

Or will they perhaps say that the law is of no use, because one born to be bad cannot be changed by the law? If so, the law was given to no purpose; and how did the fates cause something useless to be born, since “nothing is without fate”? So the fates act both for themselves and against themselves. If that is so, what has no firmness through the inconsistency of its reasoning cannot stand.

Or did the fates want the law to exist so that those whom the fates cause to be born bad might be condemned by the law, so that fate and law agree in punishing them? What is to be said to this, except that both laws and fates deserve to be condemned by their own judgment, if with equal injustice they labor to have people killed who did evil not voluntarily but because the fates drove them? To this the law answers the opposite, that the fates are to be condemned by their own profession; for they do not deny that the bad are bad by fate. But the law is so opposed to the fates that it denies that the bad are bad by fate, but says they are bad by their own will; and for this reason it rightly holds them guilty. Law and fate, then, have nothing in common, since what the fates assert the law denies.

And under what star will those be said to have been born who banished the astrologers from the city of Rome, a law that is known to have been kept, and they were certainly pagans? How can things that are against fate happen by fate? If there is fate, it does not act against itself. Those who act against fate have no fate; and if they have no fate, there is no fate.

“But there is,” they say, “a fate that assigns to each person the death by which he will die.” If so, a murderer is not to be accused. He will defend himself in two ways: he did it because the fates drove him, and the other man was killed because the fates drove it. But meanwhile the law is struck down, because it punishes the murderer brought before it. In the same way one is born to be an adulterer, a woman to be an adulteress, and another to be the one wronged by adultery. If this too is so, here again the law is struck at, since it punishes adulterers; but if it were truly of fate, the man whose fate it was to suffer adultery should also be punished, for he too is found to be a partner, since his fate allowed the adultery to happen. It would be fair, then, for them all to be condemned together or acquitted together; and meanwhile the law appears unjust.

And therefore, if the fates are from God, the law will not be God’s; for it befits not only God but even a prudent man not to condemn what he himself made. But since no one has ever dared to speak against the law or deny that it is from God, the fates cannot be said to be from God, because God punishes them through the law. When what is done at the fates’ impulse is condemned, the fates themselves are without doubt condemned.

“But souls,” they say, “are born bad for this purpose, that they may do evil.” So be it. But then the innocent ought not to be born under such a fate that they could be killed by them. If those souls were bad, they ought not to be born but punished, so that they would not kill the innocent. But it is not the souls, which they imagine to be bad, that kill the innocent, but the fates, which cause people to be born so as to be killed. And therefore it is not the souls but the fates that are unjust; and if they are unjust, they are not from God. Therefore they are from the devil, and are to be condemned together with him.

And since the fates are said to decree for each person how he will die, by the sword, the noose, a fall, a shipwreck, or otherwise, they assign the same to many; for no one can differ from the fates of all others. But if anyone is found to differ, his death is no longer of fate but of chance; and if there is chance in one person’s death, there will be in many, and it will no longer be of fate. Anaxagoras, thrown into a mortar at the king’s command, died pounded to death, which happened to no other human being. And a woman drove a stake into the temples of Sisera, king of the foreigners, and so he gave up his spirit; no one else died in this way. And formerly men were nailed to crosses, which has since been forbidden by edict and remains so. If it was of fate, how did it cease? When what is of fate is forbidden and does not happen, fate is conquered. Or if it was not of fate, men were crucified not by fate but by the judgment of the law. And so people are condemned not by fate but because they are convicted by their own evil works.

Among the Etruscans a certain man is said to have been born with a face more handsome than any there had ever been; and because he was a good man, so as not to fall under anyone’s suspicion, since he drew the eyes even of respectable women, he wounded his face with seven gashes, to condemn the beauty that everyone desires. See how, if there are fates, they have been overcome! But perhaps it will be said: “It was of nature that he was born handsome, but of fate that his face was wounded.” If so, then fate is no longer something one is born with but an accidental cause; and if it is something accidental, it will not be of fate but of deliberate choice, or certainly of chance, as far as the remaining parts are concerned.

What else is it to conquer fate but to change nature? If fate were from God, it could be neither changed nor conquered. We read recorded in a certain law book that a woman once gave birth to five children at once. How did this slip past the fates, that nature decreed for her alone something that was not of fate? If it had been of fate, a number of other women would have been burdened with the same lot. And when a certain man was setting out for foreign parts, he entrusted his wife to a friend whom he knew to be faithful, not a boy but a man of mature age, who, to be a more careful guardian of her, castrated himself, so that he could sleep near her safely without anyone’s suspicion. What do we think: was this of fate or of deliberate choice? How could something contrary to fate be of fate? One who conquers what was born in him makes fate empty.

And certainly in learning the matter of the fates comes into play, determining whether someone acquires knowledge or cannot grasp it. Then all senators have one fate, for no senator is without letters; and nations without letters have one fate; and all slaves are of one fate, for no slave is a senator.

But if you call fate what one is born with, whatever is added later will be outside fate. Or if what is added comes from fate, why does it come through labor? It would be called fate if it happened to a man against his will. What comes upon one without foresight is said to be of the fates; but why should something be said to be of fate that is devised, long weighed, and acquired through intervening effort?

One man is born a eunuch, others are made eunuchs: where will fate be? In the one born so, I suppose; but what is to be said of those who are made so? The cases differ. Or if these were made eunuchs by fate, the other was born a eunuch against fate. And why is a eunuch born so rarely that it seems incredible? There was a woman in the city of Rome who is known to have had eleven husbands, and a man who had twelve wives: what fates decreed this for them? And in the time of the emperor Constantius it is well known that a girl in part of Campania was changed into a male and brought to Rome: what fates did this? Others, I suppose, of which you know nothing.

O, if only you would keep silent about this name, and leave some things to chance and accident, and grant some things to providence! For the virtue and industry of the mind can do so much that it not only resists nature but also amends or corrupts itself, because it has judgment over itself.

It is related of the Scythian women called Amazons that, when their husbands were long absent, occupied in a distant war, they had intercourse with slaves for the sake of offspring and killed every male child born, keeping the females, so that none of them devoted herself to wool-working, but from childhood they were trained in the wrestling ground and in arms. Their courage and energy in action were so great that they ruled for a long series of years, subdued a number of nations, and made all Asia pay tribute. What can be said to this? Were these things of fate, which were done over so many years in such a way as to empty everything thought to be of fate? First, that women, against nature, ruled and spurned men; then that they had intercourse with their own slaves; third, that all the male children were killed and the females kept alive, and such prosperity followed that, without men, they extended the kingdom they had begun with great forces over long periods. Certainly this never happened since the founding of the world except in Scythia alone; lest they say that these things come round when the world is renewed after one thousand four hundred and sixty years, since the world is now in its six thousandth year.

And indeed a person does what he has chosen to imitate. Marcus Crassus was called Agelastus because he is said to have laughed only once in his life; and Gaius Junius was surnamed Brutus because, by shrewd design, he pretended to be stupid so as not to be killed by King Superbus because of the size of his wealth; and in the time of Constantine a man called Samsucius pretended to be a fool for thirty years, in order, as he himself later said, to divert the emperor from his cares. Where is the reasoning of the fates, when each person does what he wills? It is excluded.

And what of this, that those who assert the fates are devoted to supplications, though these are opposed to their view? They commend their years to the gods and make inquiries about marriages, journeys, purchases, and offices. But if it is of fate, why do you pray, why do you supplicate, for what will happen even against your will? “But I am asking,” he says, “whether I ought to buy.” Then what you say you ought to do if you learn it is expedient does not depend on fate. For if it is of fate, you ask in vain, because, willing or unwilling, whether you ask or not, you are going to do it.

Because this claim is not settled even among themselves, they try things uncertainly, lest they find something true other than what they teach. Those who seem more prudent among them say: “We do not supplicate because of the fates, since we know they cannot be changed at all, but because of the things near the fates, lest they do us some harm.” Come now: if someone has a good fate, and near it there is something that seems contrary, what can that be, since a good fate is said to be unchangeable, as is a bad one? Certainly they supplicate the thing near the fate so that it will not harm them, for it will harm them unless they supplicate. How, then, is that fate said to be unchangeable, when this neighboring thing is feared? It would not be feared unless the fate were believed to be changeable. But because the point of your position is rather that fate cannot be said to change, you are without doubt supplicating for nothing.

But see whether it is not also of fate that you supplicate, since whatever you assign to fate is usually without sense. Certainly supplicating is not a bad thing; why then should it not be said to be of fate? If it is of fate that someone supplicates, whose doing will it be to supplicate and not obtain? For if it was of fate, he ought to obtain what he supplicates for. But if it is of fate to supplicate and not obtain, fate is foolish, because it makes a man supplicate whom it knows will not obtain. And if it does not know whether he can obtain what it makes him supplicate for, fate will be improvident and lacking reason, because all ignorance is lack of wisdom, and lack of wisdom is folly. Every treatise of the pagans falls into this trap. Let the pagans see to it, who cannot see the light for the darkness poured around them; ensnared by ancient error, they refuse to lend their ears to the truth that was formerly hidden.

What shall we say of certain Christians who, changed in name only, defend the vanity of their former error, and are so dull that they contend that the Lord himself acted under fate, saying, “He himself said, My hour has not yet come,” as if that hour were a necessity not of his will but of a fated condition? He was indicating the hour of his own will, at which he allowed himself to suffer. Indeed he says: “I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it up again.” Fated necessity ceases, then, where there is power of will.

And how is he called Savior by us, if what we do or what happens to us is of fate? He is called Savior because he showed us the way of salvation. If it was shown by him, then it was not of fate, because it was hidden before, and what is said to be of fate they claim happens unexpectedly. Here lies the merit of faith, which cannot be said to come from fate, because what is believed was not heard of in other ages; while the fates are said to supply what concerns human conduct.

And by what reasoning are the fates said to be able to supply what they are found not to know? Hence the apostle says: “whom none of the rulers of this age knew.” These are the principalities and powers who have bad angels under them, and who under the name of the fates bring about whatever pleases them, as sorcerers often confess. There are some people they love, others they do not love, some they hate. And each suggests to each person what it itself likes, because they too have different pleasures: for some they procure the lust of various kinds of sexual immorality, for others lust in one thing, for others wanton pleasures, for others anger, for some avarice, for others gains, for others losses, for others favor, for others hatreds and also obstacles. Sometimes at certain times, sated, they rest in idleness; and sometimes they do not intrude upon a mind occupied with some reasoning, because they do not rule but creep in, looking for an opportunity to capture. Therefore the choice of the will is free; but when through a kind of sloth we become careless about ourselves, they tempt us and persuade us to what is harmful; especially if they find us thinking of something contrary to the law, they will come and help us in that very thing, so that we do what the law forbids. But if the fear of God is in the mind, neither flesh nor blood nor principalities and powers prevail, because they are restrained by God’s support, so that they are conquered without effort.

If we were not in our own power, how could the Lord say: “Ask and it will be given to you; for everyone who asks will receive”? If whoever wishes to ask will receive, then the common saying no longer holds, “not what we will, but what has been given,” because the will is roused by the Savior to ask and to receive what it has asked for. But they say it is of fate that, whether one asks or not, he obtains by fate whatever is bad or good. The Lord excludes this when he says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well,” so that it is no longer a matter of fate when faith receives the benefit. And again he says, “If you believe, all things are possible to one who believes.” He certainly placed merit in the will, because this good belongs to faith, not to nature. Faith is something added, which rouses the will to exercise, so that, since faith is not in nature, the will, which is in nature, having received faith, lays up merit for it before God. Human nature is like a stone, which does not have fire in its substance yet has it in potential, so that by working it produces what it does not seem to have; for fire does not exist in it except as in a seed. It is there in potential, so that it may be brought forth by exercise; and if exercise is lacking, it does not exist, because a seed too does not produce unless it is worked, but remains alone. Something added, then, makes it produce. So too man does not have faith in his nature, but the seed of faith, which will give no fruit, that is, he will not have faith, unless it is called forth and exercised. Those who believe the fables of the astrologers destroy the seed of faith, which bears witness both to the Creator and to his justice. The work acknowledges its maker and testifies that he loves with equal justice all that he has made.

We warn, then, that this art is to be fled in every way. Those who are curious about it are enemies of God and are never free of anxiety; always in suspense, they wait for what they know is uncertain. But we, who believe that all good things come from God and that, if any adversities arise, they are checked at his nod, should live simply, secure in his protection, knowing nevertheless that even if something adverse befalls us while we do good, it will, if endured, serve toward the crown.

Pascha, dearly beloved brothers, is named from the passion, as we are taught by the prefiguring of this tradition that took place in Egypt through God’s servant Moses, as Scripture says: “This is the sacrifice of the Pascha of the Lord.” What, then, is the reason that the sacred mystery was celebrated through blood, and the restoration of life through death? It was so that death, thinking it was gaining, received the Savior’s blood and ebbed away diminished, and, supposing it had done this by its own power, was weakened and perished. By divine providence death was found for death through death’s own work, so that, because it always wills evil, it was yielded to for a time, so that, destroyed justly by its own act, it could not complain that its kingdom had been taken away. Although God can do all things, he does nothing contrary to reason; the justice he requires he also practises, not presuming on his power.

Great, then, is God’s providence toward the human race: preserving justice, he undid what had been justly decreed and rescued man from death, though man was not held undeservedly. But because he had been deceived by the devil’s envy, it was just that he should be helped. He was held by God’s sentence, but Satan had brought this about. Hence, just as it seemed just to rescue him, so it would have been unjust to do it by force, setting justice aside. When man, conquered at the devil’s persuasion, was to receive mercy, the devil objected as his accuser. So it was arranged that he who gloried in man’s sin should himself be caught sinning, so that, once made guilty, he would not dare to object. So it came about that the Son of God was born a man and, preaching righteousness, provoked the devil, because he kept people from the devil’s vices; so that the devil even killed him who knew no sin.

Then he was found to have sinned, and more gravely than the man he was accusing. For while by God’s decree he claimed man for himself because of sin, since whoever sins belongs to the devil’s side, he was found to have sinned more when he killed one who had not sinned, so as to seize him for himself. So through death destruction came upon death, and blood was shed so that blood might be recovered. For, as I said, death, which is the devil, having been found to have sinned in the Savior’s death, lost the Savior’s blood together with that of all of us; because, as through one man, Adam, who sinned, he held all in death, so through one who did not sin he lost all. So the Savior’s blood, unjustly shed, obtained this as its reward: recovering in triumph the blood of its own origin, it recalled it to its former state with its substance improved. Death, conquered, could not object to the one who had conquered it. Blessed, then, is the mystery of Pascha, which redeemed our blood through blood, conquering death by death, as poison is often overcome by poison.

The faith of this patriarch was so outstanding and admirable that all the other righteous confess him, by God’s judgment, to be the father of belief, and no one is worthy of God and dear to him unless he has been called his son. The privilege of his honor and merit is faith; and because he did not hesitate to give it even to things beyond belief, he was among other things found worthy to see the Savior in the form of the incarnation that was then still to come, as the Lord says and proves to the Jews: “Abraham your father longed to see my day, and he saw it and rejoiced.” It was fitting that he who had deservedly been made the father of faith should foresee the hope of his future sons, which, by the favor and foresight of God, was to flow down as a grace of inheritance from a human and godly father to obedient sons.

Let us now see what this faith believed, that it should come to such honor and glory by God’s judgment. We have praised his faith, but have not yet said what it believed. The Lord led him out, showed him the stars of heaven, and said: “Can you number them? So shall your seed be.” And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. It would not have been a great thing to believe God, except that what he believed the world judges to be unbelievable and foolish, because it lies beyond what the nature of things allows one to hope for. Hence Abraham, alone out of the world, because he believed this, was set apart from worldly people and justified.

The faithlessness of worldly wisdom makes it a great thing to have believed this, and to have believed it against worldly expectation is of the greatest merit. The despair of the worldly is the merit and the hope of Christians; the case of the wicked makes the reward of the good; for faith is stronger and fuller when it entrusts itself to things that are harder to believe. A man already dried up, with an aged wife, believed that he would have descendants too many to be numbered, looking not so much at what was shown him as at the one who showed it, whom he did not think capable of lying. And therefore it was reckoned to him as righteousness. To believe something absurd and known to be impossible is the mark of a dullard, unless there is a person whose word persuades one to believe it. Hence Abraham shows both admirable faith and a wise heart, since he both believes what is beyond belief and entrusts himself to the one whom it is both foolish and dangerous not to believe.

What proves our faith reasonable is that it believes of no one but God that he can do what he promises. This is the bulwark of faith, this its triumph. The wise of the world, looking at the nature of things, say it is foolish to believe, because nature cannot do this; they do not know that, according to the apostle, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” They would rightly judge us fools if we believed something of the nature of things that is proved impossible for it. But we believe that God, if he has promised, will do what the nature of things cannot. What folly can be found in this? If the work believed possible were unworthy of God, faith would rightly be likened to dullness; but if it is worthy of him, precisely because it is impossible for the creature, why should faith not be praised, which grants the Creator as much as is denied to the creature?

Great and admirable, then, is Abraham, who did not hesitate to believe God against the world’s opinion, because God is able to do what he promises. A Chaldean by birth, he appeared as a teacher of belief: though skilled in astrology, he put God before human counsel, thinking it fitting that we should believe of God something whose manner cannot be searched out. God’s power strengthened his weakness, since to declare the unique greatness of his majesty God would choose to do things impossible and unheard of to the world, and by doing them would show himself Lord of creation, and creation would submit to him whose work seemed impossible to all others; and by their unbelief the most faithful Abraham is exalted all the more. His faith is the punishment of unbelievers, and the faithlessness of unbelievers is his glory; for he is the father of the faithful and the judge of the unfaithful. By his example the good are given eternal life and the wicked will pay eternal punishment. At that time, when the world was still childish in knowledge and not yet illumined by signs and wonders to draw people to faith, he did not refuse God his faith, though it went against his own knowledge.

Holy Abraham, then, was given to the human race as a most faithful example. In him all nations were prefigured as coming to salvation through faith. And so that the overflowing growth of his faith might be known, he is tested and ordered to sacrifice his son to God, something that had never been done; and he is neither troubled by the novelty of it nor disputes whether the killing of a son ought to be done at the command of God, who had threatened punishment so that murder would not be done. So, fearless and sure about God’s will, he does not hesitate to believe that what God commands is wise, even concerning this son, whom two old people had received by promise, the reward of faith, the token of merits, the one in whom all hope of the promised seed was held. To carry this out with all devotion, he did not tell the boy’s mother, lest she put some obstacle in the way of his dedication, knowing that mothers are more inclined to love where their children are concerned; so he kept it from her, not doubting that what God commands must be fulfilled, so that by this example we might be taught to keep God’s commandments with all care.

If the most faithful Abraham is found obedient in a matter so grave and harsh, how much more should we be, who are commanded things that can be borne! O faith dedicated to God and hope firm in the Lord, so dear and sweet that it is preferred to the affection of parents and children, as Scripture says: “Taste and see how sweet the Lord is!”

Our patriarch, the most faithful Abraham, because he was a prophet, knew what he ought to follow. So what the Lord has now said, he did then, preferring God in love to his son, however dear, as the Lord says: “If anyone loves father or mother or sons above me, he is not worthy of me.” Hence the patriarch, in order to be worthy of the Lord above all others, did not refuse even to kill his son.

Great, dearly beloved brothers, is the love of almighty God toward the human race; when it is understood, it leads to the heavenly kingdom, but when it is not understood, it leads down to the underworld. God wants his benefit to be welcome and fruitful, so that it may profit us and that it may delight him to show mercy.

So since he is good and wills all people to be saved, he has shown us an example of righteousness in his servant Job, as the present reading testifies, by following which we may both be free of evil and come to the good, not only freed from punishment but also rewarded.

How admirable, then, is the most holy Job, who, before the law was published in writing, showed in his works a pattern of the law! He learned the teaching of no one in this matter, but with nature itself as his guide, in which God decreed that the seeds of righteousness should be present by nature, he kept reverence for the Creator with godly devotion.

With how much praise, then, is he worthy, and with what words should his deeds be extolled, since we can find no equal to him either before the law or after it? Even if someone could copy his deeds, he would not then be comparable to him or rightly called like him; for it would not be his own achievement that he had become such, since he would have followed another’s example. But holy Job, though he had seen nothing like it and had not read it in books, showed himself such that he received nothing from anyone, but himself gave to others, providing a pattern of wonderful deeds for winning the Lord’s favor. Therefore he is also commended by the Lord’s testimony, who says: “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth, a true worshiper of God.”

Who could merit so much, that the Lord should bear him such testimony, except one who is found to be not an imitator but the author of what he did? Hence he is also declared a true worshiper of God. No pretense of feigned truth can be seen in one who has had no one like him before him; for everyone who feigns feigns what he is seen to imitate.

And yet there are still greater things to be said than all these. In these praises there were no proofs from tribulations, but only a purpose dedicated to God and expressed in practice and observance. Because this did not seem to the tempter complete enough for a crown of merits, he asked to be allowed to test Job’s righteousness with various temptations, so that, hard pressed in many things, Job would stumble somewhere and go beyond the bounds; for various punishments are usually inflicted on wrongdoers for this reason, that, since no one can bear every torment, one of them may draw from him a confession of the truth.

So the tempter was permitted to destroy and lose all Job had, even to the death of his sons; so that, if he bore the loss of his oxen, he would not bear that of his sheep; or if he bore the loss of the sheep too, he would not bear the loss of the camels, or of the servants, or of all his substance; or if, being great of soul and quite pure in devotion, he were not conquered by all these, he would at least be broken by the death of all his sons together, as the force of love compelled. But because before the law was published he had the law written in his heart, no losses or bereavements made him less devoted to God, so that he set a pattern that God is to be loved with the whole heart above all things. How great is the glory he deserves, who kept the law before the law, so that he showed how the law that was to come was to be kept, not in words but as a doer, in deeds!

And because the tempter is irreverent, and this glory did not seem to him enough to prove the righteous man unless he devised something else against him that he knew a human being could not bear, he asked again to strike Job himself with a cruel wound from head to nails. And when this was permitted, he was commanded to spare his soul, because the devil is not to be trusted, for the sake of Job’s free choice, so that he would not dare any violence against one whom he could not overcome by the law of reason. Having received the power, then, with savage cruelty rising afresh in him, he struck the righteous man with an exceedingly great plague, so that there was nothing in his body free of a wound, which no man could endure except Job alone, who was able to conquer Satan. And when even so the devil’s wickedness could draw nothing from the righteous man against God, he remembered his old cunning, by which he deceived Adam, to see whether he could deceive this man too through his wife, because a man is easily deceived through someone of his own household.

Gaining nothing in all this, but rather suffering loss, the most shameless Satan found God’s servant not only immovable but a teacher as well. Placed in that very distress, he not only persevered in the fear of God, but, rebuking his wife who suggested the contrary, he taught that everything that happens by God’s permission is to be borne bravely. This doubled the punishment of the shortsighted Satan, because he did not persuade Job of what he wanted, and by envying him he made others learn what he did not want even Job to know. How much temptation profits God’s servants and harms the devil, this reading teaches us more fully. When he thinks he is harming them, he advances them, and when he persecutes one, he rouses many; for seeing this man protected by God’s help, many become his imitators. Wanting to make a gain, then, he lost; his fury always does himself harm. While he does not let the righteous be at peace, lest they be rewarded, he makes them more worthy; and in his jealousy of holy Job he doubled his merit in heaven and on earth, for Job was both enriched here and received into heaven with the Savior; so that all these things serve the glory of the saints and the punishment of the devil.

So great is the Lord God’s providence toward us that, not wanting us to go astray, he gave both the law and examples of good works, by which a modest and peaceful life may be led in the fear of God. He who is the author of life certainly does not want his work to be subject to death. Although nature itself is not without law, yet because the Lord is good and merciful, so that there might be greater knowledge of what is to be followed and what avoided, he showed it by writings and by examples, as the present reading testifies.

Holy Tobit, the servant of God, was given to us as an example after the law, so that we may know how the things we read are done, and, if temptations come, may not depart from the fear of God or hope for help from anywhere but from him, remembering that it is written: “I have been young and now am old, and I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread.”

One who hopes in God with his whole mind can never be deceived. Though tribulations may arise for a time through Satan’s snares, the examples of holy men teach us that God permits them only for the increase of our merits; for if they are borne with an even mind, consolation will be given us here with real effect, and in the future eternal life with glory. Our God, because he is just and shows no partiality, allows us to be tempted because he loves us, so that after our labor he may give us the richest rewards. Indeed when the apostle prayed that his temptations might cease, the Lord said to him: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.” Following on from this he says: “When I am weak, then I am stronger,” and: “I rejoice in my tribulations, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

How praiseworthy holy Tobit is, Scripture teaches us: captivity did not diminish his devotion, the loss of his eyes did not persuade him to stop blessing God, and the loss of his substance did not turn him from the way of righteousness and truth. Hardship proves the righteous man, and to keep fairness in want is true and perfect righteousness. The very thing that diminishes some people’s devotion made the praiseworthy Tobit grow. For “poverty,” it says, “humbles a man, and one who is humbled cannot keep righteousness.” But the mind of holy Tobit, lifted up to God, was neither broken by captivity nor humbled by poverty: he buried the bodies of the slain against the prohibition, and, confident in God’s generosity, was merciful out of his very little, knowing that mercy shown out of little pleases God more, as that widow did whom the Lord praised in the gospel. He is truly faithful and does not doubt God’s promises who gives generously out of little.

Consoling his mind with the hope of things to come, then, Tobit, dedicated to God, was found sturdy and strong in temptation, showing that in hardship one must be all the more watchful in the fear of God; for if hardship does not drive a person to God’s help, how much less will security! Holy men, then, certain that God has reserved to himself the judgment of everything done in this world, did not bear tribulations, losses, and other disasters or insults with resentment, but even received them gratefully, as our apostles did, who, when they were beaten, rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer insult for the name of God. The disasters unjustly inflicted on the faithful, whether tribulations or insults, are tokens of future merits.

So the righteous Tobit pleased God so much that he received the reward of his merits in two ways. In the present he recovered, through the ministry of an angel, the sight he had lost, and was also enriched with the goods that belong to this present life; and in the future he was made heir of the kingdom of heaven. By this we are taught that whoever obeys God’s law with his whole heart and does not doubt the promises is cared for by God in this world and is given eternal life in the world to come.

There is also something else that invites us to serve God. Holy Tobit gained not only the merits of his own righteousness; to the sum of his glory is added the good done by those who become his imitators. Examples are praised in those who imitate them; and this could happen for us too, if we live in such a way that we also deserve to have imitators.

It is fitting, dearest brothers, that the priest of God and the leader of Christ’s people should most devoutly exhort the people placed in his care in sound doctrine, as the apostle commands, so that we may perform the work of faith in keeping with the season, with all care and diligence and with an eager and devout mind. What the fasts that are now to be kept, as the feast day of Pascha approaches, accomplish, though it is no secret, ought nevertheless not to be passed over in silence. Devotion is stirred when things are reviewed, even if they are not unknown. Such is the character of our nature that it grows sluggish if the practice of reading lapses; for as iron that is not used gathers rust, so sins will be born in the soul unless it exercises itself frequently in the divine readings. This is why the psalm calls blessed the one who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night.

Indeed, although the divine words are known, when they are brought to mind from the sacred volumes the devout heart receives them as if they were new; the soul’s desire for saving works is roused. Hence the apostle says to Timothy among other things, “that you rekindle the grace of God that is in you.” Fasts, then, are necessary to us, as medicine is to wounds. They bring healing for eternal life, yet only if they are commended by the witness of two things, prayer and mercy.

Fasts, then, soften the body’s intemperance, check its hostile impulses, and lift the burden from the soul, as the Lord says: “Do not be given to food and drunkenness, lest your hearts be weighed down.” When the soul has been freed from food and drink, it recognizes itself better. As a man does not see himself as he is in a dirty mirror, so a man weighed down with food and drink perceives himself as other than he is. Then lust is roused, anger kindled, pride inflamed, and luxury bred. Hence the apostle says: “Do not get drunk with wine, in which is luxury.” But if the body has been tempered by a fast, the soul recovers knowledge of itself and understands with what devotion it ought to obey its Redeemer.

In great measure, then, fasts are necessary. Under Queen Esther, when the Jewish people had been put in danger, they were set free with the help of fasting. And the Ninevites, when they heard from the prophet the day appointed for their overthrow, proclaimed a fast and were found worthy to escape. And our righteous men and prophets, when they wished to obtain something from God, humbled themselves by fasting, as David says: “In fasting I humbled my soul.” The Savior himself, who had no need of it, fasted to give us an example.

So no one doubts that fasts are of benefit. One shows that he wants to obtain what he asks for when he afflicts himself with fasting. Hence it is said: “Prayer is good with fasting.” So that prayer may be acceptable, then, Scripture wants it to have the support of fasting; and because none of these is firm without godliness, it added, “and almsgiving with righteousness,” so that almsgiving, with righteousness preserved, may commend prayer joined with fasting. Indeed mercy commended the prayer and fasting of Cornelius. He was rich and fasted, but he also fed those who had nothing, so that their being filled made his fast acceptable. Fasting, then, needs certain things and must be free of certain things, if it is to merit what it asks.

O holy and saving day of Pascha, to be proclaimed with every praise, on which death was conquered and the kingdom taken from the devil; the mystery of God made manifest, the decree that was against us cancelled; the gates of Tartarus broken, the bound set loose, the imprisoned released, the blind enlightened, the unlearned given knowledge, the ungodly made merciful, the unjust made righteous; forgiveness of sins given, enemies reconciled, error corrected, truth declared; sons won for God out of the lost; pride brought low, humility exalted; the poor enriched, the rich emptied; mountains leveled, valleys filled, hills laid low; shamelessness trampled, modesty strengthened; access to heaven given to souls, freedom restored, captivity broken and undone; darkness grown numb, malice confounded, squalor purified; Satan cast down, the underworld emptied, our Lord Christ Jesus proved the true Son of God, flesh taken up into heaven to the confusion of the worldly wise, and things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth shown to belong to the one God and Lord!

So, dearest brothers, we ought to keep and honor this feast day, devoted to God, with a modest life and a glad mind, avoiding what is shameful and dishonorable, so that we may be found worthy to come to the fruit of Pascha through Christ our Lord, to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

“In the beginning was the Word.” What does “in the beginning” mean? We read in the old books too, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”; and in the letter of the same man whose gospel this is, whose opening we are trying to expound, the same sense is expressed, for he says, “what was from the beginning.” The letter and the gospel, then, have one sense. But it is one thing when Scripture says in the old books, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” and another when it says, “In the beginning was the Word,” and “what was from the beginning.” To be “in the beginning” and to be “from the beginning” mean the same thing, because what was from the beginning did not begin to be. What begins to be was not from the beginning, and is therefore placed under the beginning, so that it is said, “it began to be in the beginning,” that is, it is first in order among the others, because, made in the beginning, it began to have others after it, which were made after it; as we read that in the beginning God made heaven and earth. Scripture did not say, “in the beginning heaven and earth were,” because they did not exist; when God was arranging to make the world, “in the beginning,” that is, among the other things that went into the making of the world, “he first made heaven and earth”; for a beginning is the starting point of someone who begins something, which is first in order.

When it says that in the beginning was, that is, the Word, this signifies that it existed before the commencement of the creation above and below, so that it would certainly not be understood to have been made first among the created things; for it was in the beginning, when God was arranging to make the creation. If, then, it was in the beginning, that is, before all things, it always was; and therefore it was also the Word.

“And with God,” it says, so that what was always with God would not unworthily be thought to be subject to a beginning. For it is fitting that what was with God before all things should be subject to no beginning.

Hence he also added: “and the Word was God.” Now he shows plainly that what was said above fits the Word, because the Word, he says, is God; and of God one must think nothing other than that he always existed. If he began, he is a creature; if he is a creature, he is not God; for whatever exists is either God or a creature, and therefore the name of God does not belong to a creature. But because he did not begin to be (for he was), he is rightly called God.

He is said always to have been with God because he is God not from himself but from God. For this reason his name too is said to be “the Word of God,” as the faith of the same evangelist shows in his Revelation, where he says among other things: “and his name is the Word of God.” So that not the one from whom are all things, but the one through whom are all things, that is, not the Father but the Son, would be signified, he was called “the Word of God”; so that, because God cannot be without a Word, the one who is called “the Word of God” may be believed always to have been with God; and because a word is not outside the one whose word it is, this Word that was with God may be understood to be from no other source but from God; and because he is from God, he is not absurdly called God.

So it does not make two gods that God was with God. If there were two, they would differ in nature and not be of one will. If we human beings, though of one nature, are nevertheless of differing wills, how much more where the nature too is different! And then God would not even be said to be with God. For God who was and is with God does not have from himself that he is God; otherwise he would neither be said to be God with God, nor would “the Word of God” be called God the Word. But because what is from God signifies being nothing other than what God is, “the Word of God” was named God; so that, because he is called “the Word of God,” he would not be referred to another God; and that he is called God so that it would not be an injury to God if what was from God were not called God. So both the unity of God has been preserved and due honor rendered, since he who is God from God is received not in his own glory but in the glory of the one from whom he is God.

For this reason the gospel begins to speak of the Word before it speaks of God the Father, because questions arise not about God but about the Word of God. No one doubts about God, but about the one who is God from God. Every tongue of things in heaven and on earth confesses one God, but is troubled by the mystery of the one God. It trembles on hearing that the Word of God is called God, because it is struck by bodily ways of thinking, since a man’s word cannot be called a man. Yet God is certainly simple in nature, not composed of members, having no inside and outside, no before and after, no highest and lowest, but, if it may be said, wholly the same throughout, never varied or unlike; his one brightness is boundless. If fire has no front and back or inside and outside, how much less its Creator! So, because all that God is is wholly one, there is no discord when what is from God is called God.

Partly by a human comparison, then, and partly not, the Son of God, who is the Word of God, is God. As the sons of men are men, so the Son of God is God. But because the sons of men are men through the mingling of parents, the Son of God is not God after this pattern, for he was born simply from the simple God. And as our word comes from us, so by this comparison the Word of God is understood to be from God; but because our word is not what we are, the Word of God is not from God in this way, for the Word of God is a reality, not a sound that passes away.

Because some words are common to us and to God, it does not follow that the reality they effect is of one kind for us and for God. We read: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” How did he make them? As we make things, by the work of our hands? And in what follows: “And God said, Let there be light; and light was made.” How do we think God spoke, since he certainly did not speak to a man but to one who could make, who was also to make man, as he did? As we speak, with a bodily organ? Far from it. You see, then, that the words are common to us and to God, but differ in what they effect; God makes otherwise than we make, and he is said to speak, but not in our way.

So too the Word of God is not a word like ours, which ceases to exist once spoken; that Word remains, because it is a Word that hears, speaks, and works. And the Son of God is not only “the Word of God” but also “the power and wisdom of God.” As to what he is, he is called the Son of God; as to the address by which God speaks to us through him, he is called the Word of God; as to the wisdom by which God teaches us his mystery through him, he is called the Wisdom of God; and as to working, because through him God made and makes all things, he is called the Power of God.

These titles could belong to no one but the Son of God. Because he is God from God, he is said to be all that is God’s; by being born he received all that is God’s. It would not be fitting to call the Word of God, the power and wisdom of God, degenerate; for this is what God is: Word, power, wisdom. Christ, because he is wholly God from the whole God, is called the wisdom of God, the power, and the Word of God; that is, he is God from God and with God.

Because of this he says: “This was in the beginning with God.” Compelled to overcome the minds of unbelievers, Scripture broke out to show that Christ is God. Whereas everywhere else, because of the unity of God, it wishes Christ to be understood as God, here it said in plain words that he is God and was always with God. Disclosing the mystery of God, lest God be thought entirely solitary, it declared that he is called one God not so that he may be thought solitary, but that, though there are two or three, yet they are from one and do not prejudice his unity, because what is from the one is referred back to that one, since he is one.

Although all things are said to be from God, it is one thing to have come forth properly from God and another to exist by his command. What was created by God is from outside; that is, what proceeded from his substance is one thing, and what was created by his will when it did not exist at all is another. What proceeded from God’s substance never came to be in substance, but what was created began to be in substance when it was created; and therefore the Trinity alone has no beginning.

The disclosure of the mystery, then, lessened the merit of faith, because the more hidden what is believed, the richer the believer’s reward and the lighter the punishment of the one who does not believe. And as the disclosure of the mystery made believers merit less, so it roused greater punishments for those who do not believe; for a plainer law makes a person more guilty.

The Savior’s testimony, by which he said that God was his own Father, would have been enough. Which believer would doubt that the Son differs in nothing from the Father in substance? But because the perversity of heretics had begun to attack the laws of faith with inventions of unbelief, taking the Son of God otherwise than he is preached, it was added, to make it plain, that he was with God before all things and is God, so as to declare what the reasoning of the true Son contained in a hidden way. In this the divine kindness seems to have provided for human weakness, opening what it had kept closed for the merits of a stronger faith.

Hence he added: “All things were made through him”; so that, if anyone was in doubt about anything said above, since human understanding is too narrow to grasp divine things, he might be enabled to grasp it from these words when he hears, “All things were made through him,” and so would certainly not think him something made, since he hears that all things were made by God through him. If he too were something made, John would not have said that all things were made by God through him; for he was not made through himself.

To teach this still more completely, he added: “and without him nothing was made.” By saying this he shut out every controversy and earthly argument. Although there are always some who doubt, yet, when he shows that nothing was made without him, he taught that he must in no way be suspected of being something made. How can he be said to be something made, when God is said to have made nothing without him? If God had made him, Scripture would be lying. But far from it; Scripture is faithful, and, to cut off error, it uses all the clarity it can for the redemption of human salvation.

Then he added: “What was made in him is life.” By “in him,” that is, in the Word, he signifies that what was made is life. As the Lord himself says: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself”; not that the Word was without life and afterward life was either given to him or made in him, but he wants the Word itself to be understood as life. If it can be said of God the Father that he is one thing and has another in himself, then it can be said of his Son too, since “as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself.”

Human speech is not fit to explain divine things; and so what is said seems faulty, that, although the Son of God is not something made, it is said, “what was made in him.” And if he had said, “what was begotten in him,” even that would seem faulty. But to show his generation in substance, he showed, with such words as he could use, the work done in it by which it came to be: that his generation has life in itself.

We live, indeed, but we cannot give life to others, since that life is not in our power; but he is said to have life in himself because he is able to give life and to create whatever he wills, so that it exists and lives. He is said to have been born for this, that he might be able to do all that the Father does, because he has life in himself as the Father has; that is, the Father made all things through him and in him, and begot him so that he would have life in himself, through which he could make all things. Not that he is something other than life, but because his life is able both to live and to create other things that live, he is said to have life in himself. We live, but we do not have life in ourselves so as to give life to others too. The apostle Paul too expresses this sense, saying among other things: “who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn before every creature, because in him all things were founded in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and unto him.”

The gospels of the two apostles, John and Paul, agree; they say the same thing, that the Son of God was begotten before every creature, so as to create the spiritual powers, the world, and the visible things in it. What John said, that what was made in him is life, Paul expressed in the same way when he said that in him all things in heaven and on earth were founded.

And in what follows: “All things were created through him and unto him.” He created “through him” because in substance he is the same God, that is, the Father in the Son; and “unto him” because he so begot the Son that he would have power to make all things visible and invisible. This is what it was to have made life in him: that he should both live and grant life to others, the life of living, acting, and understanding, and life to the other animals, as he willed, being the image of God.

When he is called the image of God, this refers to both things: by an exact birth he has in himself the full likeness of the Father, and he can do whatever the Father can do; so that it is true that the Father is seen in the Son, who is the image of the invisible God.

Because he called the Father invisible, did he make the Son visible, when the Son is certainly by nature what the Father is? And since the heavenly creation is invisible, how much more its Creator! But he meant what is in heaven, not what is on earth; for although the Son too is invisible, yet there, in the heavenly places, he is seen by the apostles and others like them, of whom he said, “Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory”; and in another place, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” that is, the Father in the Son, God in his image, which is God in God.

As the image of a body is a body, so the image of God is God, because the Father is the exemplar and the Son an exemplar from the exemplar, which he shares with the Holy Spirit; for he says, “he will take from what is mine.” And therefore God is seen in the Son as in his own image. As no one was found worthy to open the book and its seals except the Word of God, so no one is worthy, either by nature or by merit, to see God the Father except his true Son. There is nothing in between to stand in the way between Father and Son, as he himself testifies to us, saying: “No one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen God.”

But if the Father is seen in the Son, why is no one said to be worthy to see God, when he is seen in the Son, since the Son differs in nothing from the Father? He plainly differs in nothing in substance, because he is the true Son; but he differs in cause or rank, because all power is from the Father in the Son; and though the Son is not lesser in substance, the Father is greater in authority, as the Lord himself testifies, saying: “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.”

Keeping this measure, the apostle Paul says: “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”; so that the first rank is the one from whom are all things, the second the one through whom are all things, the third the one in whom are all things. And because none of these is degenerate, they are signified within the unity of God, as the apostle says: “For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory.”

I have found that some of our brothers, not having examined the Scriptures fully, but out of simplicity of mind, assert that Adam, when he was made, received the Holy Spirit, which he lost by sinning, as the Spirit is now given to believers. They are led by the reasoning commonly put forward by very many, that through faith man has been restored, so that, brought back to his former state, he received everything Adam had obtained at the beginning; and because Adam must be said to have been made a perfect man, “if he did not have the Holy Spirit,” they say, “he was imperfect.”

But I say that not only man but everything God made, of which it cannot be said that it received the Holy Spirit, is perfect. All kinds of animals are perfect in their own kind, so as to fulfill what they were made for; so too man is perfect in his own kind, able to distinguish evil from good, crooked from right. He is an intelligent animal, perfect for the purpose for which he was made; he is capable of learning, devising, and doing, so that what he cannot accomplish by strength he accomplishes by understanding.

And how have they dared to say that man is born perfect and knows everything, when they see that he knows nothing beyond what is learned here? What he does not learn here, he does not know. Indeed, since he does not learn here what he is, he does not know it. How then does one who does not know what he is know all things, when it is a lesser thing to know oneself than to know everything else? But because he learns about other things and does not learn about himself, he knows about others but does not know about himself, neither what he is, nor whether he exists before the body or after it.

If he had been made so perfect as to need nothing, he would not have been a man but God, and he would not have been deceived and transgressed. To have the Holy Spirit is beyond the nature and perfection of man; it enables him to do the things of God. Was it not beyond the perfection of the ass that it spoke to Balaam? It received the ability to do what belonged not to its nature but to ours.

Because man is more excellent than the other animals, must they then be called imperfect? Or are the holy angels imperfect because they are not what God is? Or are the lights and stars less perfect because they are inferior to the angels above, or because clouds hide the sun and moon behind their veil? And will the members of the body be called imperfect because they need one another, since the feet cannot do what the hands can? Far from it. All things are firm and perfect in their own places and ranks, so as to fulfill the purpose for which they were made.

So all things are perfect, because their Creator is perfect; but compared with him they are imperfect. God is perfect in every respect, as the fount and origin of all things. The things that have been made are perfect for the purpose for which they were made, but not perfect in other respects, because one needs another; each is perfect in what it does not need, not in what it needs. And therefore all things are both perfect and imperfect. The hands need the feet, because unless the feet walk the hands will be idle; and the feet need the hands, for they cannot put on their own shoes or tend themselves.

Though the body is perfect in its members, it cannot fly, nor carry as much as a mule. And though beasts are perfect in their abilities, they do not know how to govern themselves and cannot apply medicine to themselves. Hence it is said: “Do not become like the horse and mule, which have no understanding.” Water and fire, though they oppose each other, are each perfect in their own kind, because they fulfill the purpose for which they were made: fire cooks and consumes, purifies and warms; water washes, cools, irrigates, and refreshes the thirsty.

So although all things are perfect in their own kind, they can do nothing without man, nor man, though he is more perfect, without them. Hence the apostle calls us both imperfect and perfect. Compared with unbelievers we are perfect, because we have come to know God; but because we know less than we ought of what has been promised, since in this life we cannot grasp as much as is believed, we are imperfect. Since, then, they think that Adam’s perfection is restored to believers, let us see whether this restoration contains no more of the divine gift than Adam had received.

Adam, when he was made, “was placed in paradise to work there and to guard it,” that is, to cultivate the earth and to keep God’s precepts, by which he would know that he had received dominion over all things in such a way that he himself still lived under the Creator’s law, lest his dominion exalt him and, puffed up with pride, he forget his maker. He was placed there so that his life would be sustained by food; but through Christ it has been granted that those who rise will need neither food nor drink, because what is mortal in man will be changed into life. Adam was made to dwell on earth; but faith has graciously granted that our dwelling should be in heaven.

Scripture itself testifies: “The first man Adam was made a living soul, but the second man a life-giving spirit. The first man,” it says, “was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As is the earthly, so are those who are earthly; as is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly.” What could be plainer than that Adam did not have the Holy Spirit? He was made a living soul; but through Christ man is made a life-giving spirit, so that he may be like the Creator in some respect and be what he believes. Because the mystery of faith given for salvation is threefold, man becomes threefold, in body, soul, and the Holy Spirit, through whom we are called sons of God, which Adam is not shown to have been called; for he was made earthly. But the sons of God, born not carnally but spiritually, are called heavenly.

See, it is settled that God’s gift granted far more grace in the Savior’s time than Adam had received, because man was not only restored but also improved: restored in that he was washed of his sins, improved in everything else. Justice and reason both required that God’s kindness should be richer in giving benefits at the time when he willed to make known to creation the mystery of his divinity, so that, knowing what had been unknown for ages and generations, that the mystery of the one God consists in the Trinity, people might be washed of their sins, as at the dedication of something new, and moreover be justified, and, adopted by God, receive the Holy Spirit, through whom they may be seen to bear the sign of adoption. Those adopted by God ought to bear the sign of God the Father, so that they may rightly be called sons of God.

This gift was promised through the prophets, to be given when the mystery of God was to be declared in triumph, with death conquered, so that creation might know that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God. Hence the evangelist says: “The Spirit had not been given, because Jesus had not been glorified.” This is the glorification: when by his power he is recognized to be what he testified about himself; and this glorification gave the gift that had been promised through the prophet Joel. For God says: “In the last days I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” and so on. And the apostle says among other things: “But when the kindness and humanity of God our Savior appeared, not by works of righteousness that we did, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal, through the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us abundantly through Christ Jesus our Savior, so that, justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” The apostle confirmed what had been promised through the prophet Joel: that after Jesus was glorified God fulfilled this, pouring out the Holy Spirit on those who believe in Christ; and that to receive the Holy Spirit is to “become an heir of eternal life,” so that, because the Spirit is eternal, whoever has received him has eternal life; for he is the pledge of immortality.

Whoever has received him and remains in his love goes, when this life is over, into heaven to the one whose Spirit he has. It would be incongruous for someone who leaves this world having the Holy Spirit to be held in the underworld. His Spirit is the sign in a person of Christ’s victory, by which he conquered death, so that one in whom his Spirit is cannot be held by the underworld. And therefore the Holy Spirit was not in the ancient saints as he is now in the faithful, because when they left the world they were in the underworld; for it cannot be said that the Holy Spirit was held there along with them under the sentence given to Adam, because of Adam’s sin, which through the descent of the race made all his seed subject to the underworld.

That the Holy Spirit was with the prophets and with righteous men is not in doubt: with the prophets for the sake of the dispensation, with the righteous for the sake of holiness, as is read of holy Simeon, “the Holy Spirit was with him,” not as a sign of adoption in him but because of the grace of his merits. Believers began to be sons of God only when the Son of God was made manifest to all creation, with death conquered.

But if the Holy Spirit is said to have been in Adam and the others as he is now in the faithful, what new gifts did God give when he dedicated the kingdom of his Son in us? And how is the coming of the Savior called a happy and blessed time above all others, if it gave what had already been given? And where then is what the Savior says to the disciples: “Many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it”?

On what grounds, then, can it be said that the blessedness of this time bestowed no greater gift than was bestowed on the ancients? This tends to the Savior’s dishonor, as if he had nothing new to give those who received him at the beginning of his reign, when the rich take pains to give choice gifts to their guests on the festal day of their birthday. How great a dishonor to the Lord, then, to say that he had nothing untried to give to those whom he invited to a new and unheard-of feast, worthy of all praise! And where is the saying of the evangelist John: “He came to his own, and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, he gave them power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God”? How is what God gave to those who believe in Christ not unprecedented, when he gave them power to become sons of God, that is, brothers of his own Son, born not of the will of flesh and blood or of a man but of God, so as to be born spiritually? Or if this grace is shown to have been granted earlier, then let it be said that the coming of Christ conferred nothing new.

Adam’s making was certainly carnal and earthly, not spiritual. He was not born of God without flesh and blood, but was made by God from the earth. And therefore he could not receive the Holy Spirit, since he was not spiritual and had not been granted to call God Father in prayer. To those who receive the Holy Spirit power has been given, because they have the Spirit of God, to call him Father of Christians in prayer. Because this was not granted before, those who came earlier cannot be said to have had the Holy Spirit. Those who think that Adam or others had the Holy Spirit do not know what kind of gift from God they themselves have, and cannot give him fitting thanks, since, though they have received more than others, they say they have obtained nothing more.

Mercy is one and the same in the rich and in the poor, but it is reckoned differently to the rich and to the poor, because it is more to be praised in the poor than in the rich. The poor man did not fear to give from his scanty means, hoping to be repaid by God both in the present and in the future; for he believes Scripture, which says that whoever gives to the poor will not be in want. Hence that poor woman, while the rich were putting in much, alone was found worthy to be praised by the Lord, because she did not fear to give out of her poverty. The rich give, secure in their riches; the poor man gives, secure in the Lord. The rich do well when they give to the needy, but the poor do much better; and therefore the reward of the poor is one and that of the rich another. If the rich man does not do this, he will be beaten; but so much is not required of the poor, and therefore the merciful poor man is praiseworthy.

Theft is one and the same sin in the poor and in the rich, but it makes the rich man more guilty, because the poor man steals out of need, while the rich man, though he has plenty, is not content with his own and takes what belongs to others. And, what is worse, they usually rob the poor; and so the punishment of the two differs.

Righteousness too is one and the same in the poor and the rich, but it is more praiseworthy in the poor. To keep righteousness in want is a magnificent thing; but the rich man seems to keep righteousness because he is a stranger to want. Both, then, are righteous, but it is greater to keep righteousness in need.

Pride is one and the same, but it is more to be condemned in the poor man than in the rich, because the rich man is lifted up by abundance, but the poor man is proud in his want, which borders on madness; and therefore the poor man is more guilty.

Humility is one and the same, but it is more to be praised in the rich. What great thing is it if a poor man seems humble, when poverty itself makes him humble? But it is magnificent if one who is distinguished by rank and wealth bows himself down, not claiming for himself what he knows he deserves. Humility, then, is good in everyone, but much more so in the rich.

The pursuit of learning and study is one and the same, but it is more praiseworthy in the rich. The poor man, having no advantage to commend him, took pains to acquire something for which he might be sought after; but the rich man, though he did not lack means of distinction, increased himself by his labor so as to be needed on two counts; he did not let his wealth distract him and withdraw his mind from flourishing by his own effort. Therefore he is more worthy of praise than the poor man, who, had he not applied himself to study, would have remained of no account in every respect. Will made the one eager for study; necessity made the other.

Lust is the same in the poor man and in the rich, but it is more damnable in the poor man than in the rich. Want itself ought to call the poor man back from the desire for luxury; he ought to reflect that he lacks the means to satisfy it, and that in hurrying to satisfy it he must commit many other evils, from which he may not escape even in this life, or else, spending what little he has, he will be left a beggar and disgraced. But the rich man’s abundance of delights provokes him to the pleasure of lust; besides, the rich are sure of impunity, knowing that judgments are for sale and that no one will rebuke them. Who would dare to rebuke a rich man supported by rank? Hence they are inflamed the more, so as even to do these things by force. Not only are they not rebuked; they are held in great honor, so that they can even boast of being what they are. But if both, the poor man and the rich, are chaste, the chastity of the rich man differs greatly from that of the poor. The poor man may be held back by his lowly state, so that he cannot do what he wants, or by fear of the laws; but the rich man, since many circumstances combine to entice him to pleasure, is praiseworthy if he turns his mind away from it. So the chaste rich man deserves one reward and the chaste poor man another. And if a king is chaste, that is very glorious: having everything in his power, he does not touch what he knows he could do with impunity. This man truly fears God, this man truly keeps his precepts, who, having the laws in his own power, keeps God’s future judgment before his eyes. It is a great thing that, though in the present he has no one to fear, he overcomes what delights him, since delight is so strong that it fears neither the future nor even the present. Those who overcome it merit much, but this man more, who in the present rules over laws and men. The others fear both men and laws, and that is why they keep their resolve: to avoid shame before people they keep what they have long held, and to avoid condemnation they abstain from what is forbidden. But this man, who because of his power neither fears the laws nor is ashamed before men, wins great glory if he abstains.

I remember reading in a certain little book of Eusebius, a man once distinguished in other respects, that not even the Holy Spirit knows the mystery of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ; and I am amazed that a man of such learning should have inflicted this stain on the Holy Spirit. By saying this he marked him as degenerate. One who does not know the things of God cannot be said to be from God, because an inferior nature does not know what is in a superior one. But if he is of the same substance and divinity, how can he not know what is his own? Indeed the Son of God, after saying, “I and the Father are one,” because of the unity of substance, rightly added: “All that is the Father’s is mine, and what is mine is the Father’s.”

Therefore, if the Holy Spirit is of the same divinity, on what grounds is he set apart so as not to have the same knowledge, when it is not denied that he is of the same substance? You grant the greater and withhold the lesser. A creature learns and begins to know some things about its maker, and what it has learned is then shared with its maker; but substance or divinity cannot be shared by God and a creature. God’s substance has nothing to learn, because there is nothing it does not know; but human substance does not have knowledge by nature, but only the capacity to learn. So knowledge comes to human nature as something added, yet the substance is not changed, because human nature lacks knowledge; the substance was created in such a way as to acquire knowledge through exercise.

Substance, then, is greater than knowledge, because knowledge does not acquire substance, but substance acquires knowledge; substance exists without knowledge, but knowledge cannot exist without substance. In God, however, as there is substance, so there is knowledge; a substance that has nothing to learn is itself its own knowledge. For this reason everything in God is called substantial. A substance that lacks nothing has everything substantially, because nothing came to it by study.

How, then, can it be said of the Holy Spirit that he does not know the birth of the Son of God, if he is consubstantial with him? Can one and the same substance both know and not know? Certainly the Son of God did not learn the mystery of his own birth; he knows it substantially, not by teaching. By what reasoning, then, is the Holy Spirit said not to know, when he too has nothing to learn, because he knows all things by substance?

For like the Son of God, the Holy Spirit too is the substance of God, as the Lord says: “All that the Father has is mine,” by which he indicated that God the Father’s substance is his own substance. And he says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and receives from what is his: “Therefore,” he says, “I said, he will take from what is mine, because all that the Father has is mine.” If he proceeds from the Father and receives from the Son, how can he not know the Son’s birth, when his substance is the Son’s substance? For all that is the Father’s is the Son’s. Without doubt, then, the Father’s substance is in the Holy Spirit. For the Son added: “and all that is mine is the Father’s.”

Why, then, is there doubt about the Holy Spirit, whether he is of the same divinity, when he is of the same substance? As the Lord said of himself that he came forth from God, so he testifies of the Holy Spirit. And so that this could not be interpreted otherwise, he says, “he proceeds from the Father,” and, “he will take from what is mine,” so that proceeding from the Father is the same as receiving from Christ. When he is said to receive from the Son of God, there is no doubt that he too is from God, so that there is no doubt that the substance and divinity of the Father are in the Holy Spirit.

So whoever says that he does not know the birth of the Son of God disparages the one from whom he is said to have received. He received nothing other than what the one from whom he received is, because to have received from Christ means to have proceeded from God; and therefore he cannot fail to know what the one from whom he received knows, nor can he be said to be ignorant of God, since he proceeded from God.

Certainly the Son of God, because he is from God the Father, knows all things of God. Why then should the Holy Spirit be denied knowledge of what is Christ’s, since he has received from him? So if the Son of God knows the things that are in God, there is no doubt that the Holy Spirit too is not ignorant of the things in the Son of God; and because he knows what is in the Son, he must not be said to be ignorant of what is in God. From the one from whom he received, he has knowledge of God.

And why do we labor, when the apostle is our witness in this matter, saying, “No one knows the things that are in God except the Spirit of God”? See, what we sweated over for so long we have accomplished with the apostle’s help. Did he prejudice the Son of God by saying that no one knows the things in God except the Spirit of God? Far from it. Neither did the Son prejudice the Holy Spirit when he said, “No one knows the Father except the Son.” He said that no one knows what is in God except the one who is from God, because everything that is from God knows God and what is in God. God’s nature knows itself; and since you understand that it is also in the Holy Spirit, because he proceeded from the Father and received from the Son, it is not safe to say that he does not know God the Father, whose nature you recognize in him.

And yet the Savior said that no one knows God except the Son in such a way as to reserve this knowledge for another person; for he at once added, “and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” To whom, do you think, does the Son wish to reveal him? No one can be dearer to him than his own Spirit; for “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ,” it says, “he does not belong to him.” How, then, do you think God the Father is revealed by the Son to the Holy Spirit, except as the Lord himself says, “he will take from what is mine”? God the Father cannot be revealed to a creature, because a creature cannot bear God’s nature unless it is of the same substance; for he dwells in light that is inaccessible, inaccessible, that is, to creatures.

But some think it right to say that the Holy Spirit does not know the mystery of the Son of God’s birth, because he is said to search all things, and “one who searches,” they say, “certainly does not know.” This must be understood from other passages; for these are the words of God, who says among other things, “I am God who search the reins and hearts,” and in the psalm, “God, searching hearts and reins,” and the apostle, “He who searches the hearts knows what the Spirit desires, because he intercedes for the saints according to God’s will.”

From these examples, when the Spirit of God is said to search, it means that he is not ignorant. He is said to search “even the depths of God”; and what are the depths of God, which he is said to see through? To search means to penetrate hidden things, so that nothing is believed to be hidden from him. The depths of God are God’s inner mysteries, which cannot be searched out by a creature. He is also read to intercede for the saints according to God’s will, which the saints themselves certainly do not know, as the apostle says: “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought.” So to know the depths of God and not to be ignorant of God’s will mean the same thing. What mystery is so deep as the will of God, which is known to the Holy Spirit but unknown to all others?

We must consider how it was said that “no one knows what is in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him.” By spirit he meant the mind, because no one knows what is in a person’s mind except his mind, which is his spirit. So too no one knows the things that are in God except the Spirit of God, that is, God himself.

One who is from God is understood to be nothing other than what God is. Therefore the Spirit of God knows what is in God, because he is from God. If no one knows human thoughts except God, how much more can no one know God’s secrets and will unless he is from God, that is, the same God himself! For he is known to himself alone.

Indeed in God there are no thoughts. He does not deliberate within himself what to do or not to do, considering whether it is expedient; for everything that is in God is without hesitation, not by accident but by substance, not by study but by nature, because he does not change. And therefore the Holy Spirit knows the mysteries of God in no other way than through substance; for one substance has one mind and one will.

He is speaking of God, who is always one and unchangeable, whether in the Son or in the Holy Spirit. What the Father wills, the Son also wills; and what the Son wills, the Holy Spirit wills as well. For this reason he is sometimes called the Spirit of God and sometimes the Spirit of Christ, because “he goes forth from God,” it says, and “he will take from what is mine.”

Hence the apostle John says: “By this we know that God remains in us, from his Spirit whom he has given us.” If, then, God is said to remain in us when the Spirit of God remains in us, the Spirit of God is shown to be God.

Indeed this is the sign by which believers are shown to be sons of God: when they receive him, they dare to call themselves sons of God. Unless they had the sign of deity, they could not be called sons of God. For no one is a true son of God, wholly from the whole, as Christ is; but they become sons of God by adoption, so that, receiving the Spirit of Christ, they are called sons of God through him, because the Spirit whom they have in them is from God. In sons, even adopted ones, something of the Father’s substance ought to be seen in some measure.

In the world, because things are imperfect, sons adopted by human beings receive no pledge but only a name; but God, because he is perfect, does more, giving his Spirit to those he adopts, so that through him those adopted by God may be seen to have some reality; for names without realities are empty.

Our apostle supports this claim of ours when he says: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how untraceable his ways!” Why is it that, though elsewhere he says that the depths of God, that is, his secrets, can be searched, here he denies it, saying they are unsearchable? In this place he said that God’s secrets or judgments are unsearchable to the creature; but of the Holy Spirit, because he knows all that is God’s, he said that everything in God can be searched, so as to assert that the Spirit of God is not ignorant of what is unknown to the creature. The nature of God, then, cannot be denied to one who knows what no creature can grasp.

Those who call the Holy Spirit degenerate attack God’s design, for God declared that the salvation of all creation consists in the divinity of the Trinity. If the Spirit is not consubstantial with God and Christ, it is absurd to place him among the number of the Father and the Son, so that without him there is neither salvation nor dignity for anyone. If he is not of the same divinity, this was done either foolishly or by favoritism, which God forbid. What prudent person would deny that the Creator cannot be counted together with a creature, the eternal compared with what is subject to a beginning, the Lord made equal to a servant, the powerful set beside the powerless, or the one who knows reckoned with the ignorant?

But now let the slander cease. He is third in order, not in nature; in rank, not in divinity; in person, not in ignorance. As the Son of God is second from the Father and not lesser in divinity, so the Holy Spirit, coming after the Son, is not unequal but equal in the divinity of the substance.

Indeed what we read of the Son of God we read also of the Holy Spirit, with the Son himself as our witness. For he says: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, the Spirit of truth.” When he said “another,” he showed that he himself is a Paraclete. The apostle John declares this when he says that the Son of God intercedes for our sins, and the apostle Paul says, “The Spirit of God himself intercedes for us.” See, Scripture shows that both are advocates. And when he called him the Spirit of truth, he showed that the Spirit differs in nothing from himself, for he said, “I am the truth.” He said he was sent by the Father, and he himself promised to send the Holy Spirit. If he is not unequal to the one who sends him, neither is the Holy Spirit unequal to him. Nor, because they are three, is each a member of the other, so as to have different powers. The power of the three is one, so that nothing is lacking to any of them.

Let this be the end; the rest, concerning the undivided unity of the Trinity, has been fully treated in the little book composed against the Arian impiety.

It is written that the righteous man’s righteousness will not profit him on the day he goes astray, and that the wicked man’s wickedness will not harm him when he turns back; and the Lord says in the gospel: “Whoever has not believed is already judged,” so as to indicate by this that whoever has believed is not subject to judgment to receive a sentence, but will be worthy of praise by the merit of his faith.

The knowledge of God, then, has this privilege, that it obtains the forgiveness of sins. One who believes that Jesus is the Son of God becomes worthy to be freed from all sins. Long astray in error and tossed in every direction by the waves of ignorance, he has been lit by the flash of truth and has found a harbor where he may rest secure after his great storms. It is fitting for him, once he has knowledge, to refrain from the things he did long ago when he was in ignorance. What good is knowledge if the former way of life remains? One is seen to have known God when he changes his life and conduct.

Once God is known he ought to be feared, because he is preached as the one who will judge, so that the faithful may receive the fruit of their righteousness and the ungodly, that is, unbelievers, pay the penalties their faithlessness deserves. It is fitting that the righteous should rejoice in the future, where Christ will reign with his own, so that those who in this world, whose prince is the devil, are held in contempt and subjected to injuries, may appear glorious in the kingdom of Christ, for whose sake they were judged contemptible by worldly people; and that the unrighteous, because they seem to flourish falsely, fighting the truth with lies, should be afflicted in punishment, so that those who seemed glorious through pretense may, through the truth, appear despised and utterly humbled. Then the righteous will rejoice that they believed, when they see the faithless tormented; and the faithless will not repent of not having believed until they see their own punishment and the glory of those whom they thought foolish and contemptible for believing.

So from the moment someone professes to be a Christian, he ought to strive not to sin. He must arm himself against vices, and, since it is impossible always to win, if he is conquered he must grieve, so as not to be conquered again; for one who grieves at being conquered restores himself. One who fights back, then, has an excuse if he is conquered; he shows that he wished to win but did not prevail. For him there is hope that he can restore himself, so that by constant practice he may be found more skilled and stronger in the fight.

But one who rises up in order to sin is inexcusable and has a very grave case. It is worse to live under the profession of God and have the will to sin than for someone who does not know God to live shamefully and defiled. The latter does not know whom he ought to fear; the former knowingly despises him.

Believers, then, receive the forgiveness of sins; yet they will not be glorious unless, after receiving the faith, they live in the fear of God, so that, wrestling against the enemies of the Christian name, they win the victory and can merit the reward, conquering more often than they are conquered.

Someone who understands God and yet does not come to his faith, so as not to have to live as a Christian, but wants to receive the faith at the end so as to die a Christian, is either ashamed to live as a Christian or is devoting himself to sins that he thinks can be forgiven him once he has believed. I do not think such a person has a good case: so that he may sin as long as he is in the world, he does not want to become a Christian and live as one, or he is ashamed to be called a Christian. What kind of God does he hope for, from whom he wants to receive wages while ashamed to serve under him? Such a person is a mocker. Knowing that, with death at hand, he no longer has time to sin, he then wants to become a Christian, so that, since he can no longer sin, he says he believes in Christ, who abhors sin; so that it is not that he no longer wills to sin, but that he cannot, death forestalling him. To such people it must be read out that God is not mocked.

Such people often even give instructions that the faith should be given to them when they are already failing, out of their minds, and only gasping for breath, fearing that they might recover and be put to shame for having been made Christians. To them should be recited the words of the gospel: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the kingdom of his Father.”

But perhaps they will say: “Knowing that the human race is frail, we want to receive the faith at the end of life so that we may no longer sin.” But the faith must be received in such a way that the one receiving knows what he receives. He will have its benefit only if he knows and professes it, for “with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” How then can one who no longer knows where he is be said to receive it? He has received who professes that he has received, knowing that he has received. If they believe that forgiveness of sins is given to believers, they ought to know that the one who believes is the one who believes with his own heart as witness, because God, who made the promise, sees the heart; he accepts the one whom he sees believing in his heart. How, then, will someone whose heart does not attend to the words of faith have its benefit?

A person may be seen to fear becoming a Christian by receiving the faith, if he is seen to act so as not to sin lightly afterward. But one who is eager to sin does not want to receive the faith for this reason, lest he be compelled to live well, which he evidently does not want; but at death he wants to obtain impunity, hoping for forgiveness of his past evils, so as to be secure about both the past and the future, since, being about to die, he certainly will no longer be able to sin.

But it is not done with good counsel or with a clean conscience to want to receive the faith at the moment when one can no longer sin, rather than when one no longer wishes to sin. To such people that saying applies: “Let us do evil that good may come,” that is, “Let us sin now and believe at the end, and it will be forgiven us.” And therefore he added: “Their condemnation is just.” It is not fitting that forgiveness of sins should be given to those who, already knowing God, who does not want sin to be committed and hates sinners, are eager to sin, unwilling to see that God’s gift benefits those who sin in ignorance of God, not knowing that God will judge. But for one who has heard, has considered it with himself, and has the wish to sin, not so as to be overcome by some compelling cause but because he wants to sin, it is hard to be pardoned.

There are two ways that bring forgiveness of sins: one by the gift, the other by penance, so that one who has sinned after the gift may be restored by penance. Because he did not remain in the grace he received, so as to persevere in freedom, but again subjected himself to sin, he obtains the blotting out of his sin by lamentation and groaning. He sinned knowingly and deliberately; not that anyone is ignorant of what sin is, but one who does not know that God will judge thinks that his sin will go unpunished.

And therefore a gentile who falls ill and, in despair of life itself, considers within himself the faith and the promised hope has an intact case: his sins are forgiven him as he believes, and he is not held in the underworld, carrying with him the sign of death conquered and despoiled; yet he does not have rank or reward. There ought to be some difference between one who, moved by love for his lord, did not fear to fight against his lord’s enemies, arming himself with continence and guarding against all vices so as to resist evil, always anxious how to defend his lord’s rule; and one who sided with his lord’s enemies and assisted them, and returned to his lord at the end of his life, not to defend his lord’s kingdom but to benefit himself alone, discharged before he was ever a soldier.

One who prefers to live as a Christian, so as to be rewarded after death, knows that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that will be revealed in us; and so, taking up the arms of faith, he does not hesitate to engage the principalities and powers, so that, victorious in this world, he may be crowned after it. It is fitting that one who, among the faithless and rebellious, bears witness to his lord’s kingdom in the present should receive the reward for it in the future; so that God’s enemies, seeing the witness of Christ exalted in God’s kingdom for the truth of his confession, may grieve in confusion that they thought false what has been declared true; and that those who believed late, confessing God not in life but in death, seeing how great is the glory of those who serve under Christ’s arms and wage their emperor’s wars devoutly and faithfully, may regret that they did not live as Christians, but only died as Christians.

One who had no wish to live as a Christian may seem hardly fit to die as one. Perhaps, already about to die, he wanted to be called a Christian because there was no longer time to sin. “In case,” he says, “what is believed is true, I want to become a Christian, losing nothing if what is believed is false.” Since at death it is not the will to sin but the sinning that ceases, he tries to see whether faith can profit him after death; whereas what would have been useful was that his vices and sins be amended here, where they were committed.

A person proves that he has condemned his past when, following the line of faith, he is seen to change his conduct and life. If before he sinned because he did not know God, once he knows him he ought to sin no more, lest it be in vain that he came to know him; there ought to be some progress from the knowledge of God. A Christian is to be recognized before his profession is heard: Christians are proved by works more than by name. For this reason commandments were given that are purer than other laws and concerned with holiness, so that the worship of God might be seen in them; otherwise people will hear: “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?” By this he indicated that it profits to call the Lord Lord only if his commandments are kept; one who calls him Lord whose precepts he despises seems to be mocking him. To such a person must be recited the words of the law that say that God is not mocked. So whoever calls him Lord, while showing by his works that he does not fear him at all, will be condemned by his own words.

I think no one doubts that this world was built for the sake of man. Though it consists of different substances, it is one, fitted together with many members, so that through their mutual working the things that man would need might be produced. A house was made for man, with its provisions, in such a way that each of these things came into being on the earth according to its kind; that is, the things made had this power implanted in them, that the offspring of each kind should be produced on the earth. Origins were established whose seed would serve the procreation of the kinds that were to multiply upon the earth.

Hence Scripture testifies: “And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply upon the earth.” In the same way the human race too was blessed, as we see in the law, for we find it written: “The people increased and multiplied in Egypt.” With the same blessing with which the things created for man’s use were blessed, man too was blessed, so that likewise, from male and female, the offspring of the human race should increase and multiply upon the earth; and so that, as seeds were to be improved by cultivation, so the human race too, taking care, should strive, once it had received knowledge of the Creator, to bridle its life so as to win his favor, so that all things together might serve the praise and glory of the Creator.

And since these words mean nothing else, the facts themselves bear witness. Everything that was made has been multiplied and improved on the earth at God’s command; nothing could grow except as God’s will and blessing decreed for the seeds. How, then, can it be said that what increases by God’s blessing and with his favor is done wrongly or is not lawful? The tradition of this both remained in the synagogue and is now celebrated in the church: that God’s creature is joined in marriage under God’s blessing, certainly not by presumption, since the pattern was given in this way by its author himself.

But if it is thought that marriage ought to cease, it will have to cease when the other things that were likewise blessed to multiply cease too; for if the generation of human beings ceases, what use will there be for the things born on the earth that were blessed? The world cannot be at work in one part and cease in another; either the whole of it works or the whole of it rests in idleness. Is a body useful when some of its members are vigorous and others numb?

Why, then, do some assert that what has been blessed by God is a sordid and defiled work, unless because they in a sense lay hands on God himself? They would not find fault with this unless they thought ill of God, its author. Because they are afraid to disparage God openly, they accuse him through the work he devised; for when the work displeases, the author is blamed.

But if such people read, or rather accepted, the Scriptures, they would remember Balaam, who said: “How shall I curse whom God blesses?” In vain is he accused who is praised by the judge; rather, one who calls guilty a man whom the laws defend accuses himself. Who are you, then, who think to condemn what you read has been blessed by God, unless you either deny that this is God or accuse Scripture of falsehood?

For there are some who, as if receiving new things, think that the old are to be rejected. But the new precepts made known to the peoples through Christ do not disagree with the old. For he himself, when asked to go to a wedding, did not disdain it, and not only made it illustrious by his presence, but also supplied what was lacking for its gladness. For it is written that wine gladdens the heart of man. And to show that he had done this according to the will of God his Father, when the Jews asked whether it was lawful for a man to put away his wife, he answered, saying among other things: “Since from the beginning God made male and female, and said: For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined, let man not separate.” This is why, when asked to a wedding, he went gladly, so as not to seem to weaken the work of God his Father; rather, showing that the teaching of the old law and of the new agree, he not only did not forbid weddings but even deigned to be present at them, giving them his testimony that God is their author; and he showed by a saving precept that what has been joined by God ought neither to be forbidden nor separated.