Sermons to the People 8.1–9.2

With the firmness of the events first laid down as a foundation, we ought to seek their meaning; lest, with the foundation taken away, we seem to want to build in the air. But what was done first, as a sign, that the rod was turned into a serpent, does not belong to the ten plagues. For it was the very approach to Pharaoh, by which Moses was accredited as the one who would lead God's people out of Egypt: the stubborn were not yet being struck, but were already being frightened by a divine sign. The rod signifies the kingdom of God; and the kingdom of God is, of course, the people of God. The serpent is the time of this mortality; for death was served by the serpent. So falling, as it were, from the hand of the Lord to the earth, they were made mortal: hence the rod, thrown from the hand, became a serpent. Pharaoh's magicians did the same; when their rods were thrown down they became serpents: but first Moses' serpent, that is, Moses' rod, swallowed all the magicians' serpents. Then at last, when its tail was grasped, it became a rod again, and the kingdom returned to the hand. So the magicians' rods are the peoples of the ungodly, conquered by the name of Christ; when they are brought over into his body, they are as it were swallowed by Moses' serpent: until the kingdom of God returns to the hand of God, but at the end of the mortal age, which the serpent's tail signifies, and a great sign is made. You have heard what you ought to desire: hear what you ought to avoid. The first commandment in the Law is about worshipping one God: "You shall have," it says, "no other gods besides me." The first plague of the Egyptians: water turned into blood. Compare the first commandment with the first plague: understand the one God, from whom are all things, in the likeness of water, from which all things are generated. And what does blood refer to, if not to mortal flesh? What, then, is the turning of water into blood, except that "their foolish heart was darkened"? "For claiming to be wise they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man." The glory of the incorruptible God is like water; the likeness of an image of corruptible man is like blood. And this happens in the heart of the ungodly. For God remains unchangeable. Nor was God changed because the Apostle said, "They changed."

The second commandment: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." For whoever takes the name of the Lord his God in vain will not be cleansed. The name of the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, is truth: for he himself said, "I am the truth." So truth cleanses, vanity defiles. And since whoever speaks the truth speaks from God, while whoever speaks a lie speaks from his own: to speak the truth is to speak rationally; to speak vanity is rather to make noise than to speak. Rightly, since the second commandment is the love of truth, to which the love of vanity is contrary, and truth speaks while vanity makes a din: see the second plague, contrary to this second commandment. What is that second plague? An abundance of frogs. You have vanity plainly signified, if you attend to the croaking of frogs. See the lovers of truth, who do not take the name of the Lord their God in vain, speaking wisdom among the perfect, and also among the imperfect. Not, indeed, speaking what they cannot grasp; yet not departing from the truth and going over to vanity. For though the imperfect do not grasp it if anything a little loftier is discussed about the Word of God, God with God, through whom all things were made, and though they can grasp what Paul speaks among them as among little ones in Christ, Jesus Christ and him crucified, yet the one is not truth and the other vanity. But it would be vanity if we said that Christ did not really undergo death but feigned it; if we said those wounds were a phantom, that the blood that flowed from the wounds was not real but simulated; that he showed false scars as after false wounds. But when we say all these things are true, say they really happened, believe and preach them as certain, plain and accomplished, then, even if we do not speak of his sublime and unchangeable truth, we still do not go into vanity. But those who say that all those things in Christ were false and simulated are frogs croaking in the marsh: they can make a noise with their voices, they cannot convey the teaching of wisdom. In fact, in the Church those who cling to the truth speak of the Truth through which all things were made; the Truth, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us; the Truth, Christ born of God, one from one, only-begotten and coeternal; the Truth, who took the form of a servant, born of the virgin Mary, who suffered, was crucified, rose again, ascended: Truth everywhere, both what the perfect grasp and what a little one can grasp; Truth both in bread and in milk: in the bread of the grown, in the milk of little ones. For the same bread passes through flesh in order to become milk. But those who contradict this truth, and, deceived in their vanity, deceive others, are frogs bringing weariness to the ears, not food to minds. Hear, finally, men speaking rationally: "There are no speech nor words in which their voices are not heard": but voices that are not empty; for "their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." And if you want to understand the frogs on the other hand, recall that verse of the Psalm: "They have spoken vanities, each to his neighbor."

The third commandment: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." In this third commandment there is conveyed a certain proclamation of rest, which is tranquillity of heart and mind, produced by a good conscience. There is holiness there, because the Spirit of God is there. See, then, what rest, that is, quiet, is. "Upon whom," he says, "shall my Spirit rest? Upon the humble and quiet one, who trembles at my words." So the restless leap away from the Holy Spirit: lovers of quarrels, sowers of slanders, more eager for contention than for truth; by their restlessness they do not let into themselves the spiritual quiet of the sabbath. Against their restlessness it is said, as if so that they may have the sabbath, the holiness of God's Spirit, in their hearts: "Be gentle," it says, "in hearing the word, that you may understand." What am I to understand? God saying: Cease from your restlessness; let there be no tumult in your heart, with fancies flitting about through corruption and stinging you: let there be none. For so you will understand God saying to you, "Be still, and see that I am God." You will not be still because of your restlessness; blinded by the corruption of your contentions, you demand to see what you cannot. For consider the third plague, contrary to this third commandment. Gnats were born from the mud in the land of Egypt: they are tiny flies, most restless, flying about without order, rushing into the eyes, not letting a man rest; while they are driven off they rush back, when they are chased away they return again; just like the utterly empty fancies of the hearts of contentious people. Keep the commandment; beware of the plague.

The fourth commandment is, "Honor your father and your mother." Contrary to this is the fourth plague of the Egyptians, the kynomyia. What is kynomyia? The dog-fly: it is a Greek word. It is doglike not to acknowledge one's parents. Nothing is so doglike as when those who begot us are not acknowledged. Rightly, then, are the puppies of dogs born blind.

The fifth commandment is, "You shall not commit adultery." The fifth plague is death among the cattle of the Egyptians. Let us compare: take a man contemplating adultery, not content with his own marriage: he will not tame a certain appetite of the flesh in himself, which we have in common with cattle. For to lie together and to beget belongs also to cattle; to reason and to understand belongs to man. So reason, which presides in the mind, ought, as ruling and governing, to rein in the lower movements of the flesh, not to let them loose without measure and unlawfully, here and there, wandering at large. And so it has been given by nature to cattle themselves, by the Creator's ordering, that they are not stirred toward the females and to mating except at certain times: for at other times the beast does not restrain itself by reason, but becomes sluggish altogether as the impulse itself cools. Man, however, can always be stirred precisely because he can also rein the impulse in. The Creator gave you the rule of reason; he granted you commandments of continence, like reins on lower beasts. You hold what a beast cannot; and so you hope for what a beast cannot. You toil somewhat in restraining yourself; the beast does not toil: but you will rejoice for ever in an eternity to which the beast does not come. If the work wearies you, let the wage console you: for it is itself patience, to rein in the inner impulse, and not to let loose in every direction, like a beast, what you have in common with a beast. But if you despise yourself, and neglect in yourself the image of God in which he made you, overcome by desire for things suggested to you, then, as if you had lost the man, you will be a beast; not as though changed into the nature of a beast, but having in the form of a man the likeness of a beast, you who do not listen to him who says, "Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding." But perhaps you choose to be a beast, and to roam with free lust, reining in the appetite of the flesh by no law of continence. Consider the plague: if you are not afraid to be a beast, at least be afraid to die.

The sixth commandment: "You shall not kill." The sixth plague: sores on the body and blisters boiling and festering, and burning wounds from the ashes of the furnace. Such are murderous souls; they burn with anger, because through the anger of murder brotherhood has perished. People burn with anger; they burn also with grace: but the heat of health is one thing, the heat of a sore another. Murders conceived everywhere bubble up like burning pustules, and there is nothing sound: it burns, but not from the Spirit of God. For both he who wants to help burns, and he who wants to kill burns: the one by the commandment, the other by disease; the one with good works, the other with festering sores. If we could see the souls of murderers, we would lament them more than the rotting bodies of the ulcerated.

There follows "You shall not steal," the seventh commandment; and the seventh plague, hail on the crops. What you take away against the commandment, you lose from heaven. For no one has an unjust gain without a just loss. For example, he who steals gains a garment, but by heaven's judgment loses his faith. Where there is gain, there is loss: gain visibly, loss invisibly; gain from his own blindness, loss from the Lord's cloud. For nothing happens without providence, dearly beloved. Or do you really think that what people suffer they suffer while God sleeps? These things seem to happen at random: clouds gather, showers pour, hail is hurled, the earth is shaken by thunder, terrified by lightning; they are thought to happen at random and as if they did not belong to divine providence. Against such thoughts that Psalm keeps watch: "Praise the Lord from the earth" (after praises had been spoken from heaven), "dragons and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy wind, which do his word." So those who steal outwardly from their evil desire are hailed on inwardly by the just judgment of God. Oh, if they could look into the field of their heart, they would surely mourn, finding nothing there to put into the mouth of the mind; even if in their theft they found something to put into the greed of the belly, the hunger of the inner man would be greater: a greater hunger, a more dangerous plague, a heavier death. Many walk about dead, and many criminals exult in empty riches. Finally, Scripture calls the servant of God rich within: "The hidden man of your heart," it says, "which is rich before God." Not rich before men, but rich before God; and where God sees, there he is rich. What good is it to you, then, if you steal where man does not see, and are hailed on where God sees?

The eighth commandment: "You shall not bear false witness." The eighth plague: the locust, a creature harmful with its teeth. And what does a false witness want, if not to harm by biting and to consume by lying? Finally, the Apostle, warning men of God not to attack one another with false accusations, says, "If you bite and devour one another, see that you are not consumed by one another."

The ninth commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." The ninth plague: thick darkness. For there is a kind of adultery against which a commandment was given above, and there is also one in not seeking to violate the chastity of another man's wife. For a man is an adulterer who does not go to another man's wife, merely because he is not content with his own. But now, not only to sin beside one's own wife, but even to make an attempt on another's: that is truly thick darkness. For nothing so pains the heart of the one who suffers it; and whoever does this to another would want to suffer nothing less. Every man is readier for another's wife; but I do not know whether there is anyone who would bear this tolerably. Oh, the thick darkness of those who do such things, who covet such things! Truly they are blinded by a horrible madness. For it is an untamed madness to trample on a husband's wife.

The tenth commandment: "You shall not covet anything of your neighbor's; not his cattle, not his property, not his beast of burden; you shall covet nothing at all of your neighbor's." Opposed to this evil is the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn. When I look for some comparison in this plague, nothing occurs to me for the moment; perhaps it will occur to those who search better and more carefully: unless it is that the one who keeps all the things he has for his heirs is blamed. But here the one who covets his neighbor's goods cries out, and the one who takes them by theft, and the one who steals something of his neighbor's can steal nothing but his neighbor's goods. But a commandment about theft has already been given above, in which you are to understand robbery too. For Scripture would not give a commandment about theft and keep silent about robbery, had it not wanted you to understand that if it is punishable to take things secretly, it deserves a much greater penalty to seize them by violence. So taking from an unwilling person, whether secretly or openly, has its own commandment. But to covet your neighbor's goods, which God marks in the heart, is not allowed, even if you seek a lawful succession to them. In fact, those who want to possess others' goods as if lawfully seek to be made heirs by the dying. For what seems so just as to possess a thing left to oneself, to have it by common law? What does a man do before you? "It was left to me; I came into it by inheritance; I read the will." Nothing seems more just than this voice of avarice. You praise him as one who possesses by right; God condemns him as one who covets unjustly. See what kind of man you are, who wish to be made someone's heir. You do not want him to have heirs. And among heirs nothing is dearer than the firstborn. So you will be punished in your firstborn, you who, by coveting the goods of others, seek under a shadow of right what was not due to you by right. And indeed, brothers, it is easy to lose firstborn sons bodily. For people die, whether before their parents or after their parents; they die who were going to die: what is grievous is that through this hidden and unjust covetousness you lose the firstborn of your heart. For the firstborn in us bears the image of the grace of God; newly born, born first, among all, as it were, the children of our heart, the firstborn is faith. For no one works well unless faith has gone before. All your good works are your spiritual children, but among them faith is your firstborn. Whoever you are who secretly covet another's goods, inwardly you lose your faith. For you will first, without doubt, be a pretender, attentive not out of love but out of fraud; as if loving the one by whom you want to be made heir, you seek his death while you love him, and in order to see yourself the possessor of his goods, you begrudge him a successor.

Well then, brothers, having run through the ten commandments and the ten plagues, comparing those who despise the commandments with the stubbornness of the Egyptians, we have made you careful, so that you may keep your goods safe in the commandments of God; your goods, I say, your goods of your inner coffer, of your inner treasury; your goods, which neither thief nor robber nor powerful neighbor can take from you; where neither moth nor rust is to be feared; with which even a rich man who is shipwrecked goes out. For so you will be the people of God among the wicked Egyptians, while they suffer these things in their hearts and you remain unharmed in your inner selves, until the people is led out of Egypt by its own exodus; and this happens: for that was done once, this never ceases to be done.

There is no divine and true sanctification except from the Holy Spirit. For it is not without reason that the Holy Spirit is so called in a proper sense; though the Father is holy and the Son is holy, yet the Spirit received this as his proper name, so that the third person in the Trinity should be called the Holy Spirit. He rests upon the humble and quiet person, as in his sabbath. For this reason the number seven is also assigned to the Holy Spirit, as our Scriptures sufficiently show. Let better people see better things, and greater people greater things, and say and explain something subtler and more divine about this number seven; but I, as is enough for the present, see this and remind you to see it: that this sevenfold principle is found to be assigned properly to the Holy Spirit, because sanctification sounds on the seventh day. And how do we prove that the sevenfold principle of number is assigned to the Holy Spirit? Isaiah says that the Spirit of God comes upon the believer, upon the Christian, upon a member of Christ: the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and godliness, the Spirit of the fear of God. If you have followed, I have run through seven things, as if the Spirit of God were descending to us from wisdom to fear, so that we may ascend from fear to wisdom: "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." So the Spirit is sevenfold and one Spirit, one in a sevenfold working. Do you want something more evident? Holy Scripture records that the feast of Pentecost was made up of weeks. You have it in the book of Tobit, where it is plainly said that this day was made up of weeks. For seven times seven come to forty-nine in all. But as if so that there might be a return to the head: for by the Holy Spirit we are gathered into unity, not scattered from unity; so one, the one of unity, is added to forty-nine, and it makes fifty. It is not without reason, then, that the Holy Spirit came on the fiftieth day after the Lord's "ascension." The Lord rose again, ascended from the underworld, not yet into heaven: from that resurrection, from that taking up from the underworld, fifty days are counted, and the Holy Spirit came, as it were keeping his birthday among us in the number fifty. For the Lord lived here with his disciples for forty days; on the fortieth day he ascended into heaven, and when ten days had been completed there, as if by the sign of the ten commandments, the Holy Spirit came; because no one fulfils the law except by the grace of the Holy Spirit. So, brothers, it is plain that this number seven belongs to the Holy Spirit. And whoever does not cling to the unity of Christ, and barks against the unity of Christ, must be understood not to have the Holy Spirit. For only the unspiritual make contentions and dissensions, of whom the Apostle says, "But the unspiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God." Then it is also written in the letter of the apostle Jude, "These are they who separate themselves"; he was speaking in rebuke: "These are they who separate themselves, unspiritual, not having the Spirit." What is clearer? What is more evident? Rightly let them come, even though they believe the same things as we do, to receive the Holy Spirit, whom they cannot have as long as they are enemies of unity. The Apostle compares them rather to Pharaoh's magicians ("Having," he says, "the form of godliness, but denying its power"), who failed at the third sign.

Now see why they failed at the third sign. Remember that those who oppose unity do not have the Holy Spirit. Those first three commandments in the Decalogue are understood to belong to the love of God, so that the other seven are understood to belong to the love of neighbor; so that with the two tables of the Law and the ten commandments, those two summary commandments, as it were, are held: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself: on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Let us, then, refer the first three commandments to the love of God. What are the first three? The first, "You shall have no other gods besides me": the plague contrary to it is water turned into blood, because the supreme principle, the Creator, was brought down to the likeness of human flesh. The second commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain," belongs, as I think, to the kingdom of God, which is the Son of God. For there is one God, and one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. Against the Word, frogs: see frogs against the Word, din against reason, vanity against truth. The third commandment, about the sabbath, belongs to the Holy Spirit because of sanctification, which was first spoken of on the sabbath, as we commended to you strongly a little while ago, as much as we could. Contrary to this commandment is restlessness in the flies born of corruption and rushing into the eyes. So at this third sign those failed who, as enemies of unity, did not have the Holy Spirit: for the Holy Spirit does this to them as a punishment. For grace does one thing, punishment another: he does one thing by filling, another by forsaking. Finally, so that we may recognize it plainly by the very confession of Pharaoh's magicians, let us see how the Spirit of God is named in the Gospel, what name he received. When the Jews, reproaching the Lord, had said, "This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons," he answered, "If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you": which another evangelist relates thus: "If I cast out demons by the finger of God." What one evangelist called the Spirit of God, the other called the finger of God. So the finger of God is the Spirit of God. That is why the Law was given written by the finger of God, the Law which was given on Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after the slaughter of the lamb, when the Passover had been celebrated by the Jewish people. Fifty days are completed after the slaughter of the lamb, and the Law written by the finger of God is given; fifty days are completed after the slaying of Christ, and the Holy Spirit comes. Thanks be to the Lord, who hides with foresight and reveals with sweetness. See now this too, brothers: that Pharaoh's magicians most plainly confess it. Failing at the third sign, they said, "This is the finger of God," etc.

Our Lord and God is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering and very merciful, and true; as generously as he offers mercy in the present age, so severely does he threaten judgment in the age to come. The words I have spoken are written and contained in the divine authorities: "The Lord is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering and very merciful, and true." It greatly delights all sinners and lovers of this world that the Lord is merciful and compassionate, that he is long-suffering and very merciful. But if you love so many gentle things, fear also the last thing it says there: "and true." For if it said nothing else but "The Lord is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering and very merciful," you would turn yourself, as it were, to security and impunity and the licence of sins; you would do what you liked, enjoy the world, either as much as you were allowed or as much as your lust commanded; and if anyone, admonishing you well, rebuked and frightened you, so that you would restrain yourself from an unbounded rush in following your desires and deserting your God, you would stand against him in the middle of his rebuke, with a shameless face indeed, as if you had heard a divine authority, and you would read from the Lord's book: "Why do you frighten me about our God? He is merciful and compassionate and very merciful." So that people would not say such things, he added one word at the end, "and true"; and he shook off the gladness of those who presume wrongly, and brought in the fear of those who grieve. Let us rejoice in the Lord's mercy; but let us fear the Lord's judgment. He spares while he is silent. He is silent, but he will not always be silent. Listen while he is not silent in words, lest you have no leisure to listen when he is not silent in judgment.

For now you are allowed to settle your case. Settle your case before the last judgment of your God. There is nothing to presume on: when he comes, you will not bring false witnesses to deceive him, nor will you employ an advocate with fraudulent tricks and wordy arts, nor will you canvass in any way so as to be able to bribe the judge. What, then, will you do before such a judge, whom you can neither deceive nor bribe? And yet there is something you can do. For then he will be the judge of your case who is now the witness of your life. We have cried out, and praised: let us settle our case. He who is witness of our deeds is himself witness of these voices: let them not be empty; let them be turned into groaning. It is time to agree quickly with your adversary. God is so long-suffering in seeing wicked things and not punishing them that the judgment will nevertheless come quickly. For by the measure of human life what is brief to God is long. But even for the world and the human race, what seems far off, what consolation is that? If the last day of the whole human race is far off, is the last day of each person far off? I say this: since Adam many years have rolled by, many years have flowed, and will flow hereafter; not indeed so many, but still years will pass until the end of the world, as those passed: what remains seems long (although it will not be as much as what has passed), and yet, once that past time is over, the end of the remaining time is to be expected. There was then a certain day which was called "today"; from it until this "today," has not whatever was to come become past? It is held as though it had not been. So will be whatever remains to the end. But let this too be long, let it be drawn out as much as you think, as much as you say, as much as you imagine, as much as not Scripture informs you but your thought invents; prolong the day of judgment as much as you like: will you prolong your own last day, that is, the last day of your life, on which you are to go out of this body? Let old age be certain for you, if it can be: but for whom can it be? Is it not so that from the moment a man begins to live he can already die? The beginning of life brings the possibility of death. In this land and in the human race only he cannot yet die who has not yet begun to live. So the uncertain day is to be expected as if it were any day. And if the uncertain day is to be expected as if it were any day, let there be agreement with the adversary while he is with you on the way. For this life is called the way, along which all pass; and this adversary does not withdraw.