Sermons to the People 32.28–35.3

But you, what do you say? For they called happy the people to whom these things belong. What do I say? “Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God.” That, then, is the blessed people which, instead of its sons and adorned daughters, instead of fat oxen, instead of fruitful sheep, instead of full storehouses, instead of intact buildings, instead of peace from lawsuits and civil quarrels, instead of all this happiness, wants to possess its God, so as to have him instead of all things, him who founded all things, and to say, “But for me it is good to cling to God.” Let it worship him gratis; let it worship him when he gives these things, and when he takes them away, and when he does not give them; and let it fear nothing so much as that he should take himself away. And so, brothers, the Christian people, which says in its heart, “Let him take away whatever he wills, so long as he does not take himself away from me”: “Blessed is the people whose Lord is their God.”

Since it is written, “O God, I will sing a new song to you; on a psaltery of ten strings I will play to you,” by the psaltery of ten strings the ten commandments of the Law are understood. To sing and to play is usually the business of lovers. For the old man is in fear, the new in love. So too we distinguish the two Testaments, the old and the new, which the apostle says are figured in an allegory in the two sons of Abraham, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman: “These,” he says, “are the two Testaments.” For slavery belongs to fear, freedom to love. For the apostle says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father.” And John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Love, then, sings the new song. For that servile fear, set in the old man, can indeed have the psaltery of ten strings, since the Law of the ten commandments was given even to the carnal Jews; but it cannot sing the new song on it, for it is under the Law and cannot fulfill the Law. It carries the instrument but does not play it; it is burdened by the psaltery, not adorned by it. But whoever is under grace, not under the Law, fulfills the Law, because to him it is not a weight but an ornament: not a torment to one who fears, but an adornment to one who loves. Kindled by the Spirit of love, he now sings the new song on the psaltery of ten strings.

For so the apostle says: “For he who loves another has fulfilled the Law. For: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet; and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love of neighbor does no evil. Love is the fullness of the Law.” The Lord too, since he had said, “I did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it,” therefore gave his disciples a commandment by which the Law could be fulfilled by them: “A new commandment,” he says, “I give you, that you love one another.” It is no wonder, then, if a new commandment sings a new song; because, as was said, the psaltery of ten strings is the ten commandments of the Law, and the fullness of the Law is love. The apostle chose to mention a few of its strings, so that the rest might be understood from them, when he says, “For: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill,” and so on. For just as there are two commandments of love, on which the Lord says the whole Law and the Prophets hang, showing clearly enough that love is the fullness of the Law, so the ten commandments themselves were given on two tablets. For three are said to have been written on one tablet, and seven on the other. And just as those three pertain to the love of God, so the other seven are assigned to the love of neighbor.

The first of those three is: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord. You shall not make for yourself an idol or the likeness of anything, either of what is in heaven above or of what is on the earth below,” and the rest, by which he binds us to the worship of the one God, abandoning the fornication of idols. The second commandment is: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” The third concerns the keeping of the Sabbath. I believe that three commandments pertain to the love of God because of the Trinity. For the unity of the Godhead has its beginning from the Father; hence the first commandment speaks especially of one God. In the second commandment we are warned not to think the Son of God a creature by taking him to be unequal to the Father. For every creature, as the apostle says, has been subjected to vanity; and there it is commanded that we not take the name of the Lord our God in vain, that is, “to vanity.” And the gift of God, which is the Holy Spirit, promises eternal rest, which is figured by the Sabbath; hence we keep the Sabbath spiritually if we do no servile works. For even according to their carnal understanding the Jews are forbidden these on the Sabbath. But whoever wants to understand servile works spiritually, let him hear the Lord saying, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” And sin is not only what appears to men in a shameful or unjust deed, but also what has the appearance of a good work and yet is done for a temporal reward, not for eternal rest. For whatever anyone does, if he does it with the intention of obtaining earthly gain, he does it servilely, and therefore does not keep the Sabbath. For God is to be loved gratis, and the soul cannot rest except in what it loves. Eternal rest is not given to it except in the love of God, who alone is eternal; and this is perfect sanctification and the spiritual Sabbath of Sabbaths. Therefore, since we are sanctified in the Holy Spirit, whom does it not move to understand a great sacrament: that among the three commandments pertaining to God, the third commandment concerns the Sabbath? And among all the things that Scripture in the book of Genesis records God as having made, it is not said that he sanctified anything except the seventh day, which signified the Sabbath.

Of the seven commandments assigned to the love of neighbor, the first is: “Honor your father and your mother.” The second: “You shall not kill.” The third: “You shall not commit adultery.” The fourth: “You shall not steal.” The fifth: “You shall not bear false witness.” The sixth: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” The seventh: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s property.” The apostle clearly bears witness to this division when he says, “Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment.” For one asks how, since it is not found to be the first in the whole Decalogue; for of the ten commandments the first is the one that commands the worship of the one God. It is therefore because the commandment to honor parents is written on the other tablet, and is first there, since the commandments that relate to the love of neighbor begin from it.

Let us sing, then, a new song, playing on the psaltery of ten strings. This is the new song: the grace of the New Testament, which separates us from the old man, who was made first, earthly from the earth. For he was made from clay, and having lost blessedness was justly cast into misery, since he had become a transgressor of the commandment. But what does he say in the prophet, who gives thanks to the grace of God that reconciles us to God through the forgiveness of sins and renews our past oldness? “He brought me up,” he says, “from the pit of misery and from the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps; and he put a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God.” This is the new song, played on the psaltery of ten strings. For no one praises God, that is, sings a hymn, unless his deeds agree with his mouth, by loving God and neighbor. And let the rebaptizing Donatists not think that they belong to the new song: for those do not sing the new song who have cut themselves off by proud ungodliness from the Church, which God willed to be in all the earth. For the same prophet says in another place, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” Whoever, then, will not sing with all the earth, not departing from the old man, does not sing the new song, nor play on the psaltery of ten strings; because he is an enemy of love, which alone is the fullness of the Law, which we say is contained in the ten commandments pertaining to the love of God and neighbor.

We have been urged to sing to the Lord a new song. The new man knows the new song. A song is a thing of cheerfulness, and, if we consider it more carefully, a thing of love. Whoever, then, knows how to love the new life knows how to sing the new song. So we must be reminded what the new life is, for the sake of the new song. For all these belong to one kingdom: the new man, the new song, the New Testament. So the new man will both sing the new song and belong to the New Testament. There is no one who does not love; but the question is what he loves. We are not urged, then, not to love, but to choose what we love. But how do we choose, unless we are first chosen? For we do not love unless we are first loved. Hear the apostle John. He is the apostle who reclined on the Lord’s breast and at that supper drank in heavenly secrets. From that drink and from that happy drunkenness he belched forth, “In the beginning was the Word.” Lofty humility and sober drunkenness! That great belcher-forth, then, that is, preacher, among the other things he drank from the Lord’s breast, also said this: “We love, because he first loved us.” He had granted much to man, since he was speaking of God, in saying, “We love.” Who? Whom? Men God, mortals the immortal, sinners the just, the frail the unchangeable, the works their maker. “We have loved”: and where do we get this from? “Because he first loved us.” Ask how man comes to love God, and you will find nothing at all except that God first loved him. He gave himself, whom we have loved; he gave the means by which we might love. Hear more plainly through the apostle Paul what he gave so that we might love: “The love of God,” he says, “is poured out in our hearts.” From where? From ourselves, perhaps? No. From where, then? “Through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Having such great confidence, then, let us love God from God; indeed, since the Holy Spirit is God, let us love God from God. For what more shall I say than, let us love God from God? Certainly, because I said, “The love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” it follows that, since the Holy Spirit is God and we cannot love God except through the Holy Spirit, we love God from God. This, then, follows. Hear John himself more plainly: “God is love; and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” It is little to say, “Love is from God.” Which of us would dare to say what was said, “God is love”? He said it who knew what he had. Why then does human imagination and flighty thought fashion a God for itself, and build an idol in its heart, composing such a God as it can think of, not such as it has been found worthy to find? Is God like this? No, but like this. Why do you arrange features? Why do you put together limbs? Why do you shape a pleasing stature? Why do you imagine bodily beauty? God is love. What color is there in love? What features? What shape? We see none of these, and yet we love.

I dare to say to your Charity: let us notice in lower things what we may find in higher things. That lowest and earthly love, that sordid and shameful love which pursues the beauty of bodies, reminds us of something by which we may rise to higher and purer things. Some lascivious and unchaste man loves a very beautiful woman. The beauty of her body moves him, to be sure, but what he seeks inwardly is love in return. For if he hears that she hates him, does not all that heat and passion for her beautiful limbs grow cold? Does he not in a way recoil from what he was intent on, turn away, take offense, and even begin to hate what he loved? Has her form changed? Are not all the things there that had attracted him? They are there; and yet he was burning for what he saw, and demanding from her heart what he did not see. But if he learns that he is loved in return, how much more vehemently does he burn! She sees him, he sees her; no one sees love; and yet love itself, which is not seen, is loved.

Raise yourselves up from that muddy desire, so that you may remain in the most luminous love. You do not see God: love him, and you have him. How many things are loved in damnable desires and are not had; sought basely, and yet not possessed straightaway? Is loving gold the same as having gold? Many love it and do not have it. Is having very broad and very fine estates the same as loving them? Many love them and do not have them. Is loving honor the same as having honor? Many without honor burn to have it; they seek to have it, and often die before they find what they were seeking. God offers himself to us by a short way. He cries to us, “Love me, and you will have me; for you cannot even love me unless you have me.”

O brothers, O sons, O Catholic offshoots, O holy and heavenly seeds, O you who have been reborn in Christ and born from above! Hear me; or rather, through me, sing to the Lord a new song. “See,” you say, “I am singing.” You are singing; clearly you are singing; I hear it. But let your life not bear witness against your tongue. Sing with your voices, sing with your hearts, sing with your mouths, sing with your lives: “Sing to the Lord a new song.” You ask what you should sing of him whom you love? Without doubt you want to sing of him whom you love; you look for his praises to sing. You have heard: “Sing to the Lord a new song.” You look for praises? “His praise is in the church of the saints.” The praise of the one who is sung is the singer himself. Do you want to sing praises to God? Be what you say. You are his praise, if you live well. For his praise is not in the synagogues of the Jews, not in the madness of the pagans, not in the errors of the heretics, not in the applause of the theaters. You ask where it is? Look to yourselves; be it yourselves. “His praise is in the church of the saints.” You ask what to rejoice in when you sing? “Let Israel rejoice in him who made him”: and he finds nothing to rejoice in but God.

Well, my brothers, question yourselves; examine your inner chambers; see and consider how much love you have, and increase what you find. Attend to such a treasure, so that you may be rich within. Other things that have a great price are called dear, and not without reason. Look at your ordinary way of speaking: “This is dearer than that.” What does “dearer” mean, if not “more precious”? If whatever is more precious is called dearer, what is dearer than charity itself, my brothers? What, do we think, is its price? Where is its price to be found? The price of wheat is your coin; the price of an estate, your silver; the price of a pearl, your gold; the price of charity is you. You look for the means to possess an estate, a jewel, a beast of burden; you look for the means to buy an estate, and you look for it among your own resources. But if you want to have charity, look for yourself, and find yourself. Why are you afraid to give yourself, lest you use yourself up? Rather, if you do not give yourself, you lose yourself. Charity itself speaks through Wisdom and tells you something, so that you need not be terrified at what has been said: “Give yourself.” For if someone wanted to sell you an estate, he would say to you, “Give me your gold”; and if someone something else, “Give me your coin, give me your silver.” Hear what charity says to you through the mouth of Wisdom: “Give me, my son, your heart.” “Give me,” it says: what? “My son, your heart.” It was in a bad way when it was with you, when it was your own; for you were being dragged about by trifles and by lascivious and ruinous loves. Take it away from there. Where are you dragging it? Where are you putting it? “Give me,” it says, “your heart.” Let it be mine, and it is not lost to you. For see whether he wished to leave anything in you with which you might love even yourself, he who says to you, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.” What remains of your heart with which to love yourself? What of your soul? What of your mind? “With the whole,” he says. He who made you demands the whole of you. But do not be sad, as though nothing remained in you to rejoice in. “Let Israel rejoice,” not in himself, but “in him who made him.”

You will answer and say: “If nothing remains to me with which to love myself, since I am commanded to love him who made me with my whole heart and my whole soul and my whole mind, how am I commanded by the second commandment to love my neighbor as myself?” That is all the more reason why you ought to love God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole mind. And your neighbor, how? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God with the whole of me; my neighbor as myself. From what do I love myself, from what do I love you? Do you want to hear from what you love yourself? You love yourself from this, that you love God with the whole of yourself. Do you think it benefits God that you love God? And because you love God, does something accrue to God? And if you do not love him, will he have less? When you love, it is you who benefit: you will be where you do not perish. But you will answer and say, “When did I not love myself?” You certainly did not love yourself when you did not love God, who made you. But when you hated yourself, you thought you loved yourself. “For whoever loves iniquity hates his own soul.”

Turning to the Lord God, the Father almighty, with a pure heart, let us give him, as far as our littleness is able, the greatest and most abundant thanks, praying with our whole mind to his singular gentleness that in his good pleasure he may deign to hear our prayers; that by his power he may also drive the enemy from our actions and thoughts, multiply our faith, govern our mind, grant us spiritual thoughts, and bring us to his blessedness: through Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord, who with him lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

If the divine words are listened to with care, what is written may perhaps, not without reason, trouble us: “Son, if you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors; but if you turn out evil, you alone will drink up the evils.” How can this be rightly understood? For just as a neighbor’s good life gladdens us, so a perverse one saddens us. Or if this is thought to be said with respect to persuasion, because the wise man is wise both for himself and for those whom he persuades to wisdom, how will he alone drink up the evils if he turns out evil, since of the persuasions of such men it is said, “Evil conversations corrupt good morals”? For what else does that voice of love cry out: “If one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together; and if one member suffers, all the members suffer together”? How, then, is it true, “Son, if you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors; but if you turn out evil, you alone will drink up the evils”? How shall I rejoice in the good of one whose evil does not become an evil in me? How does it delight me that he has been found, if he could be lost while I remain unconcerned? If he is wise, will he not be a healthy member, with whom the other members rejoice? How then will the evil man alone drink up the evils, since likewise the other members suffer with a sick member?

This question, then, unless it is solved, will trouble us. But with the Lord’s help it will be solved, if first we hold fixed and immovable what is defined by most certain truth: that no one can be good by another’s good, nor evil by another’s evil. Hence the apostle says, “Each of us will carry his own load”; and elsewhere, “So each of us will give account for himself”; and again, “Let each one test his own work, and then he will have his glory in himself alone and not in another.” This is also said through the prophet Ezekiel: “The soul of the father is mine, the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it shall die.” He explains that whole passage so as to show that bad sons are not relieved by the goods of their parents, nor good ones crushed by their evils. Once this most true principle has been established first and most firmly concerning ourselves, it remains to look at what duty we render to others, distinguishing most carefully what effect we seek for our own salvation and what affection we render to our neighbors. If you are good, you are good not by another’s good but by your own; yet by that very good of yours by which you are good, you also rejoice in another’s good, not by borrowed goodness but by mutual love. Likewise, if you are evil, you are evil not by another’s evil but by your own; and by that same evil of yours you do not love your neighbor as yourself, for you do not even love yourself. For you love iniquity, a most bitter enemy, not brought against you from outside but made by you within you; and so that it may conquer you more easily, you take its side against yourself. So you are plainly convicted of hating yourself, since you love that by which you are shamefully conquered. For the divine word is not proved false which says, “But whoever loves iniquity hates his own soul.”

Hence, then, the good man, by the good by which he is good, both rejoices at another’s good and is saddened by another’s evil. And so with such a neighbor (for he is more truly called a neighbor who attends to you from close by, that is, looks on you with mercy), with such a neighbor, then, if you become wise, you will be wise both for yourself and for him: not because he will be good by your good, but because by his own good he will love your good. But if you turn out evil, you will drink up the evils not with him but alone. For he will not be evil by your evil, but he will be merciful in your evil. Your wickedness saddens him, but your punishment does not follow him: it brings him sorrow, it does not share injustice with him. As an evil man, then, you will drink up not goods with your neighbor, but evils alone; because the sorrow which the good man has over you he has by his own good and by your evil. That sorrow of his shows his love and your perdition: it condemns you and crowns him; it casts you down and raises him up. That is why it is written, “Obey your leaders, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give account, so that they may do this with joy and not with sorrow; for that would not be good for you.” It is not good for you, then, that they be weighed down by sorrow. For it is good for them to be saddened by our wickedness. Count the good, then, as your neighbors; and be good, by your own good, not theirs, and even that not given to yourself by yourself, but bestowed by God. “For what do you have that you have not received?” And so, “If you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbors,” for whom it is good to rejoice at your goodness. “But if you turn out evil, you alone will drink up the evils,” and not they too, for whom even this is good: to be saddened by your wickedness.