Tractates on the Books of Holy Scripture (Tractatus Origenis)

"And God formed man from the mud of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." There are many unlearned people, without knowledge of the heavenly writings, who, when they hear that God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," think that God must be understood as bodily and built by a joining of limbs. They believe this because the prophets name the Lord's head and hair, and eyes and ears and nostrils and mouth and lips and tongue and feet, as when it is said: "His head and his hair were like white wool, like snow"; and "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears toward their prayers"; and "The Lord smelled a pleasing odor"; and "The mouth of the Lord has spoken these things"; and "What proceeds from my lips I will not make void"; and "My tongue is a sharp pen"; and "Your sabbaths my soul hates"; and "Turn your face, O Lord, and we shall be saved"; and "The right hand of the Lord has done mighty deeds"; and "Has not my hand made all these things?"; and the stone tablets of the law, written by the finger of God, are handed to Moses; and "Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet"; and the people is set free by a strong hand and the uplifted arm of the Lord; and "He has measured heaven with his palm and holds the whole earth in his fist." So when they read or hear of these members of a body, they believe, as I have said, that God is as it were bodily and composed of distinct members. Indeed the people of this heresy are called by a Greek word Anthropomorphites, because they assert that God is put together and shaped after the manner of a man. Your charity therefore had to be warned, so that none of you is caught by the subtlety of these words. For they say: "If these members which the divine Scriptures mention in God are not to be believed in this way, then the prophets deceived us, who named the head and hair and eyes and ears and nostrils and mouth and lips and tongue and hands and feet and the other members of the Lord, though they knew that God is incorporeal and in no way needs any of these; and so did Moses himself, who reports in this place that God said, 'Let us make man in our image and in our likeness.'" But what are we to do here, dearest brothers? We are hemmed in on both sides. For if man was not made in the image and likeness of God, as the law and the prophets hand down, then we convict of falsehood both the law and the prophets, who say that God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," and "God made man in the image of God." But those who say these things ought to remember that the constitution of man is far different from the nature of God.

But [rather than] discuss now the invisible and indescribable majesty of the divine nature, we must treat the human image and likeness. Deformed by age and by the most fragile lot of nature, with feeble strength and withered freshness, it is often spoiled and harmed; but if it is kept in modesty inviolate and whole, it is made immortal by the kindness of God and the generosity of the resurrection, and it can be re-formed for the better. For it is plain that man, half-mortal, consists when perfect of three things, namely body, soul, and spirit. Let no one be surprised that I said "half-mortal man": for although the flesh dies, his soul and spirit remain immortal, as the apostle too says: "that your spirit, soul and body may be kept whole at the coming of the Lord." But when he asks that the spirit be kept whole, he means not the Spirit that is from God but the man's, because if it is injured by its man, it will not be whole for that man when it has departed from him. For the Spirit is not born with a man, but is given afterwards by God through merit, through the grace of faith, as the Savior says in the Gospel: "The Spirit blows where it wills, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." But the natural man, who has not yet received the Spirit of God, consists, as I said, of two things, namely body and soul. This soul, although it moves and is moved and has a changeable state, as toward good and toward evil, is nevertheless, as I have said, immortal either way, because it lives forever either to God or to punishment: to God, I say, if it remains holy, to punishment if it has sinned. But the body, which is tied together and joined of parts, is easily dissolved, and once weakened it wastes away. There is therefore in us something else that is like wind, airy, simple, breathing and mobile: the mind and the senses, breathing out and in by turns in alternate change; and there is also the solid body, which thrives when tempered by the elements, that is, by hot, cold, and moist. But this body has an earthly thinking, while the soul has a spiritual nature. Since, then, man consists, as I said, of two natures, one of which we have called spiritual and the other earthly, how do you suppose that God, incorporeal, simple, pure Spirit, has the image and likeness of man? Whoever wants to believe in such a way as to understand God as bodily, since there is no one bodily who was not made in the image and likeness of God, will lay it down that God is composed of a higher and a lower nature, because it is plain that man consists of such. But whatever is composite cannot have been everlasting, because composition has a beginning at which it is put together so as to last. God, however, abiding always and in all things, is everywhere the same and nowhere not whole, as it is written: "I fill heaven and earth"; for there is no place where God is absent, nor is any place greater than God. And since he is called Spirit, as it is written, "God," it says, "is Spirit," then he who is Spirit is simple and uniform. Otherwise, if he is built of a diversity of members, he is no longer immeasurable and infinite, because he could be measured and bounded by reckoning up his members. And what of the fact that we read of seven eyes of the Lord? A man has two eyes. Where, then, is this image and likeness of God in man? For he who has two eyes and he who is said to have seven do not share one likeness. Moreover, a man has a body and bones and leaves a footprint on the ground, but God, who is Spirit, "has no bones," it says: the Lord himself testifies in the Gospel that a spirit has no bones, nor does it leave a footprint. Where, then, will the image and likeness of God be, in a man who has bones and flesh?

But since the shortness of the hours does not allow us to gather more examples, the question must now be settled, so that we may prove both that man was truly formed in the image of God according to the Scriptures, and nevertheless that the image of God is far different from man. For God, when he made man in his image, composed him of a twofold nature, namely soul and body. The soul he established by that divine work of his power, incomprehensible to us; the body he formed from the mud of the earth. And because man (homo) is named from the soil (humus), the soul joined to the body took the name of man, so that it too should be called man. Notice, then, what the Scripture declares: "And God said," it says, "'Let us make man in our image and likeness'; and God made man, in the image of God he made him." And afterwards it repeats, saying: "God had not yet rained on the earth, and there was no man to work the earth." Where then is what it had said above, "God made man in the image of God," since afterwards it adds: "And God formed man from the mud of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul"? You see, then, dearest brothers, how it suggests that this nature of the inner and the outer man is coupled by a kind of covenant of in-breathing. Indeed the blessed apostle Paul too, knowing this, asserts that in himself the outer man is at odds with the inner man: "For I delight," he says, "in the law of God according to the inner man." But he had said before: "I see another law in my members fighting against me and leading me captive": that is, the inner man is forced against his will by the outer man to do what he does not want. Hence the same apostle says: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." He calls this body an earthen vessel because he knows that man was formed from the soil; he speaks of a treasure because Christ dwells in it, since the same apostle says that Christ dwells in the inner man. Recall too the Gospel, and there you will find that, through the parting of body and soul, the rich man is tormented in the flame and poor Lazarus is refreshed in Abraham's bosom, and that the rich man asks father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool his tongue, because he was tormented in the flame. Whence, I ask, did a dead man buried in the earth have a mouth and tongue, to beg in the underworld for the refreshment of dew from the finger of a happier soul? This, then, is the inner man, whom the apostle asserts to have been created according to God. You see, then, that one man is the one made from the mud of the earth, another the one created according to God, so that in every service of the inner man, according to the image of the creator, we may be perfect in goodness, love, and holiness. Indeed the same apostle says again: "And though our outer man is being corrupted, the inner is being renewed." See: you have the inner man created according to God; you have the outer man formed from the mud of the earth. See: you have the inner man in whom Christ dwells; you have the outer man who is corrupted and dissolved. See: you have the inner man delighting in the law of God; you have the outer man who desires the works of the flesh. See: you have the inner man, refreshed with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man who was tormented in the flame ...; you have the one who, dead and buried, is sunk in the earth. For the one who dies and is dissolved in the earth is not the same as the one who is refreshed in Abraham's bosom. That one lives and speaks, and feels and suffers torments or refreshment; this one lies dead and motionless, indeed rotting.

You see, then, that one man is he who desires the works of the spirit, another he who craves the things of the flesh; one who lives forever, another who dies. That one is invisible, who was made in the image of God, whom the apostle says was created according to God; this one is visible, who was formed from the mud of the earth. That one moves; this one does not move and cannot have motion of itself. That one is immortal, this one mortal. That one is rational, incorporeal, subtle, eternal. And so the image of God is in all these things, in invisibility, in immortality, in rationality, in motion, in which the human soul is formed, since the everlasting motion of the soul imitates the nature of God, having nothing bodily in itself, nothing heavy, nothing perishable. It was for this inner man, then, that God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," because the inner man is invisible and immortal. And this is the image of God in him. And because image is one thing and likeness another, the account must also be divided accordingly: since we have now shown the man who was made in the image of God, let us now discuss the likeness. For we have said that the image is in the person, but the likeness in deeds, as the apostle says: "Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ." And elsewhere, in the voice of God: "Be holy, as I also am." You see, then, that likeness is reckoned in holiness and goodness. Indeed, when God had said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," afterwards, repeating it, he says: "And God made man in the image of God." He did not say "in the likeness." For the image he had made in the natural Adam, from the invisibility and immortality of the soul. But the likeness he reserved in Christ, so that through him the one who had been made in the image of God might be re-formed again to the likeness in him. For so the apostle says: "The first Adam into a living soul, the second Adam into a life-giving spirit." So the one who had been made into a living soul had not yet received the likeness; but in him who was made into a life-giving spirit the likeness of God has been re-formed. For the image is the countenance, as we said above; but the likeness refers to deeds. In this likeness, which is better and nearest to God, what is like in it readily appears: what is divine, beautiful, pure, not shifting, not weak, not changeable. For it is the splendor of the inner light of Christ, whom the apostle says dwells within, a mirror of truth. But what is this likeness he names, if not the heavenly, spiritual life, which is corrupted by no foul lust, no vice, no luxury, no dark artifices of paint, no avarice, which is never satisfied but hungers more when it is thought to be filled?

This likeness, then, is not puffed up with desire for the world, does not burn with the vice of the flesh, does not gnash with monstrous cruelty, which is itself tortured before it tortures. But this likeness has a devout face, merciful eyes, a tongue that defends, a kindly will. This, then, is the likeness we should long for, which has such happiness and grace that, what is almost incredible, it is no longer called man but, its law and condition changed, an immortal god. It is, as I said, a god not born but made, that is, by favor, not by nature. Such a one, joined to heaven and the stars, will possess the eternity of the heavenly life. But do not doubt what I said, that man is a god. For the God of gods himself permits this, has granted this. Strive to conquer, that you may deserve to be called a god, because "I said," he says, "you are gods, and all sons of the Most High." What is like, then, is such as the whole is. Yet the like cannot be recognized unless it has its marks expressed through the personal image. As for the saying, "Let us make man in our image and likeness": the image of the made and of the maker is this, in the inner man: invisibility, immortality, motion. What belongs to the likeness is that we should live according to the goodness of God in all holiness, righteousness, faith, and piety. But the one who consists of mud, earthly, corruptible, heavy, perishable, will return again to the earth from which he was taken, according to the Lord's sentence: "You are earth, and to earth you shall go," although resurrection has been promised to him too. Hence you must observe that one man is he who is from the earth and turns back into earth, another he who lives forever either to God or to punishment. As for the members that are ascribed to God as though human, it is not the properties of members but the workings of divine acts that are indicated, so that people who could not see and understand the true and living God spiritually might at least perceive something of the living God according to their own nature. For the law and the prophets did not speak of God as God was, but as man could grasp, so that each might be able to know the living God according to his own understanding: that he had eyes with which to see, and a mouth with which to speak, and a soul with which to hate the new moons and sabbaths of the Jews, and hands with which to work. But since you are still waiting for the spiritual sense: when the head of God is spoken of, it indicates that he is the beginning of all things. When his hair is called like white wool, like snow, it says that he is always the Ancient. When eyes are spoken of, that he sees all things. When nostrils, it indicates that he will receive the prayers of the saints as a sweet odor, since in the Apocalypse the prayers of the saints are compared to incense, which are offered to the Lord by the hand of an angel as a fragrance of sweet scent, as it is written. When the mouth of the Lord is spoken of, it explains that he is wholly word. When his tongue is described as a sharp pen, it indicates that the twofold precepts of the old law and of the Gospels were prescribed through the Spirit, whom he called a pen. When

the hands are named, that he has made all things; the arm, that he holds all things together; the fingers of God, because through him every expression of the divine will is disclosed. For he is wholly eye, because he wholly sees; wholly ear, because he wholly hears; wholly mouth, because he is wholly word; wholly tongue, because he wholly speaks; wholly foot, because he is wholly everywhere; wholly hand, because he wholly works everywhere; wholly arm, because he wholly holds all things and governs the universe. And whatever you say of him, you will be naming the efficacy of his works and the dispensations of his mysteries; yet you will not be able to explain what and how great he himself is. For God is rightly reckoned when he is called beyond reckoning. For the Spirit, beyond reckoning, incomprehensible and indescribable, is everywhere whole and one, beyond what the human mind is able to reckon, comprehend, and define. And therefore he is to be feared, heeded, and adored, because God willed rather to be believed than to be judged.

"And the Lord appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, beside the crossroads." I must labor and search, dearest brothers, to find what it means that this noble patriarch and admirable prophet prophesied by word or by deed, because he showed many things that were to come, not only by word but by act. As we now read his deeds and compare the figurative events with the Gospel, let us take from them full and perfect comfort for our hope. Abraham, then, bearing in himself a fourfold figure, held out through an image a great mystery of the divine dispensation. For one figure in him was of the law and the prophets; another of the people of Israel, to whom the law was to be handed down; a third of the Savior and of us, who were to be sons of the faith of this same Abraham through Christ; a fourth of the people that does not believe. Therefore we must observe with great care and diligence where and when and how and to what matter he had applied the time: that is, when it concerns the Savior and us, when the law and the prophets, when the believing people, when the unbelieving Jews. For see, it is said: "God appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre beside the crossroads" (that is, at a meeting of four roads) "as he sat at the door of his tent at noon. And looking up with his eyes he saw, and behold, three men were standing before him. And when he saw them, he ran to meet them. And he bowed down to the ground and said: 'Lord, if I have found favor before you, do not pass by your servant; I will take water, and let your feet be washed, and refresh yourselves under the tree.'" Since, then, Abraham is said to have had his tent at the crossroads, at the oak of Mamre, where all who passed by found refuge, it was a figure that from everywhere and from all parts of the world, from the ends of the earth, people would run together to faith in God through the apostles, who were to be sons of Abraham. Indeed our Lord and Savior himself fulfilled the figure given beforehand when he says in the Gospel: "The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy; go now to the crossroads and call whomever you find to the wedding feast." In saying this he showed that, when the Jews, who had been called through the law and the prophets to the union of Christ and the Church, had judged themselves unworthy by not coming, that is, by not believing in him, then the apostles were sent to the crossroads to gather the peoples of believers from all nations and to be a refuge for the nations, by whom that wedding banquet of Christ and the Church, as I said, would be filled. So also the blessed apostle said to the unbelieving Jews: "It was necessary that the word of God be preached to you first; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy, we are turning to the Gentiles." And so, when Abraham is said to live beside the crossroads, it signified that the calling of the Gentiles was to come, since it had been promised to him that "in your seed all nations shall be blessed," and that he would be the father of many nations. That tree, moreover, clearly bore the image of the cross, which to some might seem hard and rough, being wooden, because the Lord was hung there so that our sins, which had come upon us from the tree of transgression, might in turn be nailed to the wood of the cross and punished through the same man, as the blessed apostle says when discussing the mystery of the cross: "Nailed to it," he says, "he expiated the offense." To others, however, it provided shade and coolness, because believers are protected and refreshed from the heat and burning of persecution, as it is written: "In the shadow of your wings I will hope until iniquity passes." For the cross of Christ, as the apostle says, is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are to be saved it is the power of God. That tent, the hut where Abraham stayed for a time, was a figure of the city of Jerusalem, in which for a time the law and the prophets, and the Lord himself and the apostles, dwelt, and which was afterwards to be left like a hut in a vineyard, according to Isaiah's saying. When is a hut in a vineyard left, if not when the vintage is finished? So too, when the vintage

of the Lord's passion was finished, Zion was left like a hut in a vineyard. But what is this, that Abraham says three men came to him, and he worshiped one of them, recognized one as his God, and confessed himself the servant and slave of one, saying: "Lord, if I have found favor before you, do not pass by your servant"? If, then, there is one Lord who deigned to come to visit Abraham, let us observe more carefully who those two companions of his are. These two, men or angels, who accompanied the Lord are, if my attention does not mislead or deceive me, Moses and Elijah: the one the giver of the ancient law, who through that law preached the coming of the Lord; the other he who is to come at the close of the world to preach the gospel of Christ to the Jews and make them noble Christians, the forerunner, that is, of the Lord's second coming. Indeed, when the Lord was transfigured on the mountain, as he will come in his kingdom, these two, Moses and Elijah, were seen by the apostles with the Lord. How they were recognized by the apostles we must not pass over in silence. Now, dearest brothers, I say what I think: Moses came to Christ with those tablets of the covenant that he had received from the Lord on Mount Sinai, and Elijah with the same chariot in which he had been taken up, and so the apostles recognized who they were; and on their account the blessed apostle Peter says: "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah." As, then, these two men, Moses and Elijah, were seen by the apostles with the Lord on the high mountain, so also they appeared then with the same Lord, because with God all things are complete that seem incomplete to us, as the apostle says: "Who calls the things that are not as though they were." For it was necessary that what was to come should first be shown to the founder of our faith, as suited the place and time, and so afterwards be revealed in truth to us, who are his sons. Indeed the Lord himself bore witness to this in the Gospel, saying: "Abraham sought to see my day, and he saw it and was glad." He saw the day of the Lord's coming then, certainly, and came to know the mysteries of his plan, when, glad with joy, he ran to meet him as he came, when he prepared a banquet and in the spirit of prophecy joyfully set out what suited the mystery of the banquet, and when he washed his feet to show full and perfect service at his coming. Indeed the Lord himself entrusted this same service to the seed of Abraham, so that he himself washed the feet of the sons of his faith, the apostles, in order to make beautiful, by the cleansing of his washing, the feet of those who bring the good news of peace.

But since the same Abraham bore in himself a twofold figure of the people that was to come from him, both of those of his seed who would believe in Christ and of those who would not believe, as it is written, "So shall your seed be, like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea" (which he said not only because of their number, but to show significantly a people divided in two from his seed: those who believed in Christ would shine like the stars of heaven, while those who refused to believe would be cast down like the sand of the sea and trodden into the ground), therefore this tent of Abraham, bearing the figure of the city of Jerusalem, clearly bore the likeness of the calling of both peoples, both of those from Israel who would believe in Christ and of those who believed from the crossroads, that is, from the nations of various peoples. But now let us see what the mystery of that banquet which Abraham offered the Lord indicates. "A calf," it says, "tender and fattened, butter and milk, and loaves baked in ashes," that is, unleavened, "mixed from three measures of fine flour." The time for speaking does not allow us to follow all these out clearly, and so, with the Lord's favor, I will touch on each briefly and concisely. This tender, fattened calf, then, prefigured the flesh of the Lord, which was to be sacrificed by the unbelieving sons of Abraham's flesh for the salvation of those who believe, as the apostle too says: "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed." He calls it fattened because it was rich with the fullness of all good works, as the apostle says: "In whom all the fullness of the divinity dwells bodily." This calf of the Lord's body, then, which in the Gospel is slain for the sinful son, was itself sacrificed for us by the unbelievers, and from it the finest banquet is prepared for believers. That he speaks of butter and milk set out together with the flesh of the calf: we have learned on the authority of the apostle that this is the ancient law given through Moses. For so he writes to the Galatians: "I gave you milk to drink, not food, for you were not yet able, nor are you able even now." For he had handed down to them the commandments of the law as milk pressed from the breasts of the two tablets of the law, which is the testament of faith; for because of the infancy of their understanding they could not yet take the solid and strong food of the gospel teaching. The butter is the preaching of John the Baptist, which is joined to the Gospel; he was in the spirit and power of Elijah the forerunner of the Lord's first coming, as Elijah himself will come before the second. That John the Baptist is himself Elijah, not by the matter of the flesh but by one and the same power of the spirit, the Lord proves in the Gospel when he says of this John: "If you wish to know, he is Elijah who is to come." Why John's preaching is compared to butter I will say briefly. Butter, though it is of the nature of milk, is already a richer and more solid substance. So too John's preaching, though it still used the milk of the ancient law, because the law and the prophets were until John, yet already announced a much stricter and severer rule of discipline, saying: "Already the axe is laid to the root, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear therefore fruits worthy of repentance," and so on. In short, he urged them with frequent rebukes to repent, to wash away their sins in baptism, to prepare the ways of the Lord and make his paths straight, that is, to prepare their hearts and minds by good deeds to receive the coming of Christ. For just as butter is drawn together and made solid by frequent churning or constant shaking, so those who had received the milk of the law through Moses, stirred by John's many rebukes and the frequent beating of his voice, advanced to a more solid substance of faith, just as David, doing penance, said that his heart was curdled like milk. Further, when butter is made, the whey is separated from the milk, and oil is made from butter. So too the unbelievers are separated from the milk of the law like whey, and from John's preaching, which is the richest butter, the testimony of the Gospels is supplied like oil. And so, when Abraham set before the Lord to eat the calf with milk and butter, it signified that neither can the body of the Lord, which is the calf, be without the milk of the law, nor the milk of the law without the butter, which is John's preaching, nor John's preaching without the fullness of the Gospel.

What the three measures of fine flour signify, and what the unleavened loaves baked in ashes from the three measures, we must not pass over in silence. The three measures, then, are the three generations of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from whom after the flood the whole human race was restored, that is, from whom all tribes, tongues, and nations began to be; from them those who believe in Christ were to be companions of his passion and partakers of the holy table, and indeed to be counted into the bread of the Lord's body. They are compared to fine flour for this reason: first, like strong and sturdy grains, they were separated from the chaff of the Gentiles by the breath of the Holy Spirit and taken into the mill of the law, so that whatever hardness was in them might be broken. Then the bran of sins was shaken out, so that the pure and white vows of faith of the believing peoples might be cleansed like fine flour, as it is written: "The Nazirites were made whiter than snow." For sprinkled with the water of baptism, they were made one body of love. But why does he say unleavened loaves baked in ashes? Unleavened, certainly, because the unity of believers had to be without the leaven of malice, without the ferment of perverse teaching, without the swelling and pride of a mad heart; and baked in ashes, because it was necessary that every believer be counted into the bread of Christ's body through repentance and lawful satisfaction and confession of past offenses, just as John the Baptist said to those who were to be baptized: "Bear fruits worthy of repentance." And the blessed apostle Peter said to the believing Jews: "Repent and be baptized in the name of our Lord for the forgiveness of sins." And so loaves baked in ashes are set out, because through the satisfaction of repentance the souls of believers are taken up by the Lord. You see, then, dearest brothers, that the mystery of this reading has drawn the outline of the order of our salvation. Abraham, who received the Lord, was a figure of the saints who received the coming of Christ with joy. His tent, I said, was a type of Jerusalem, where the Lord first came, who was welcomed by believers but hung by unbelievers on the wood of the cross and slain like a fattened calf. The milk and butter signify what the law and the prophets prophesied until John. The three measures of fine flour from which Sarah made the loaves baked in ashes, I said, indicated the image of the three sons from whom the whole human race was born, who, believing in the divine Trinity, that is, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, were to be sprinkled with the water of baptism through the Church, of which Sarah was the image, and to be brought together into the one bread of Christ's body. For Sarah, as I have said, bore the type of the Church, which was the obedient minister of the sacraments. The loaves are unleavened, that is, without leaven, as was said, because we must be without the leaven of malice, without the ferment of wickedness and perverse teaching; and baked in ashes, because, converted through repentance to the sacrament of baptism and baked by the heat of the Holy Spirit, we were to become acceptable to God as food well pleasing to him. And Sarah's son, promised and given in old age, indicated that in the last old age of the world the Church would conceive by the word of God and have a free-born people of Christians, who would be heir of the promised inheritance, that is, of the heavenly kingdom.

"But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, who had been born to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac, and she said to Abraham: 'Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.'" If we are willing to look at and consider with diligent care and anxious attention the deeds of all the fathers and the oracles of the prophets, which the blessed apostle Paul teaches are a type of things to come, we shall say without any doubt that a great mystery of our hope and salvation was arranged from ancient ages. For nothing sudden or unexpected was done in the Gospel that had not first been either prefigured and shown in the preaching of the fathers, or displayed beforehand in deed, or proclaimed by the prophetic voice. So in this place: when Abraham, on the advice of his wife Sarah, had known his Egyptian slave Hagar and received from her a son named Ishmael, and afterwards, when Sarah in her old age had borne a son and saw the children playing together, what does it mean that she said to Abraham, "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac"? Certainly a great mystery of the divine ordering was shown in this sequence. Therefore, dearest brothers, we must look closely and inquire, to find what cause or reason there was that she first wanted her husband to sleep with the slave woman and raised the son he had received from the slave woman as her own, and afterwards ordered this same son, once raised, [to be driven out] with his mother ... "[whoever] commits [sin] is a slave, and the slave does not remain in the house forever, but the son remains." And because the sinful people of the Jews, coming out of Egypt, was to receive the law in slavery, as the apostle says, "The law was given not for the righteous but for sinners," therefore this people, because it is sinful, ... rightly Hagar, Sarah's slave, bearing the type of the Synagogue, is joined to Abraham her master, so that from her a firstborn son, that is, the people of the Jews, should be born, who was to be under the yoke of slavery, although for a time it too was to become a great nation. Nevertheless the son of the slave woman, that is, the people of the Synagogue, is said to be unable to be heir with the son of the free woman, that is, with the people of faith. For no one will possess the father's inheritance, that is, the glory of the heavenly kingdom, except one who has shown himself a son of Sarah, that is, of the noble and venerable Church, by holiness of faith and all good deeds. For the blessed apostle testifies that our mother is the free, heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the holy Church; and he adds that Hagar prefigured the earthly Jerusalem, that is, the Synagogue, joined to Mount Sinai, on which the law was received in slavery. For the fact that

Sarah was still barren at the time when Abraham was coming together with the Egyptian indicated that the Church from the Gentiles would be barren and receive no son from spiritual seed as long as the people of the Synagogue, that is, Hagar's son, was being born or growing. Indeed, as Sarah conceived in old age, so did the Church at the end of the world, near the setting of the age: when the Lord deigned to come to Abraham's tent and promised Sarah a son, that is, when he came according to the flesh to the earthly Jerusalem, where the tent of the law was, then Sarah, formerly barren, that is, the long-unfruitful Church, was found worthy to receive the son of promise, as the Lord himself addresses the Church from the Gentiles through the prophet, saying: "Rejoice, barren one, who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor, for more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband." "But when Sarah heard the Lord," it says, "promising her a son, she laughed." This laughter has a double meaning: either that the Christian people, in whose figure Isaac was to be born, would suffer laughter from unbelievers in this world, or that in the future it would obtain laughter and joy, as the Lord himself said to the disciples: "Blessed are those who weep, for they shall laugh," and "You will see me again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you." Hence the one born of Sarah received the name Laughter; for Isaac, from the Hebrew language, is interpreted in Latin as "laughter." But now the discussion must run through each detail, so that its proper part in the events may be assigned to each person. We said, then, that Hagar, Sarah's slave, bore the type of the Synagogue, which bore a son, that is, a people, in slavery to sin. The blessed apostle too mentions in his epistle that these things are said by way of allegory, that is, that Hagar was the figure of the Synagogue, or of Mount Sinai, from which the people received the law of slavery, a people that could not be heir of the father's promise, that is, of the heavenly kingdom and the glory to come. Now, since we have explained above whose figure Hagar bore, we must not pass over in silence what it means that Scripture says Ishmael played with Isaac. What harm or what injury had he done, if he was playing? At that age, should it not have been pleasing that the son of the slave woman played with the son of the free woman? But Sarah thought that play destructive. And the apostle Paul indicated that this play was persecution, saying: "As then," he says, "he who was according to the flesh persecuted him who was according to the spirit, so it is now." See how the apostle teaches us that this carnal people of the Jews opposes this spiritual people; or else, among ourselves, if anyone is still carnal, he opposes the spiritual. Now, brothers, attend to what I say: this play can also signify something else, because in all things the flesh opposes the spirit. For Ishmael bears the figure of the flesh, because he is born according to the flesh; Isaac that of the spirit, because he is begotten through the promise. And so the flesh flatters the spirit, to deal with it by alluring deceptions, to entice it with delights, to soften it with pleasures, and to play upon it with the allurement of lust. Hence, dearest brothers, see that injustice too flatters a man, so that he shows partiality to the person of the powerful and, swayed by his favor, does not give a right judgment. Therefore one ought to understand that under the appearance of play he is suffering a flattering persecution from injustice. But since Sarah bears the figure of virtue, such play of Ishmael with Isaac, that is, of the flesh with the spirit, greatly offends Sarah, who is virtue.

"But when Abraham cast Hagar out of the house," it says, "he took loaves and a skin of water and gave it to her, and put the child on her shoulders, and sent her away. And Hagar went out and wandered in the desert, and the water in the skin ran out, and she put the child under a tree and sat down opposite him." What it signifies that he put the child on her shoulders, with the loaves and the skin of water, must not be passed over idly. That child, as we have often said, the son of the slave woman, bears the role of the Jewish people: it was necessary that the sinful and foolish people should weigh down the neck of its mother, that is, the Synagogue. And so Ishmael is placed on his mother's neck. So too at the Lord's passion that same people, as if to weigh down its mother's neck, cried out: "His blood be on us and on our children." And hence it is that she herself bore the sins of her people, that is, of the sons of Abraham. The loaves indicated that the old priesthood carried with it the bread of the presence, as it is written, and was to eat it. The skin with the water that ran out signified that the Jewish purification would fail, held as it was in dead skins, that is, in flesh condemned by the sentence of transgression; and it signified that the water of purification could not only give them no refreshment or satisfy a man, but would make him vomit, because it seems neither cold nor hot: that is, it is not for the Gentiles, because it was under the law, nor for the faithful, because it did not have the grace of freedom. It can also be understood in another way: the water that Ishmael drank from the skin is the letter of the law, and so its water ran out, because the letter, that is, the historical understanding, often fails; of it the Lord says: "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again." Further, as Hagar wandered in the desert with her son, so too, when the Synagogue with its son, that is, with its people, had been driven out of the Church and rejected by the Lord, it began to wander in the world through houses and forests of crimes and through the rough places of sins, and to linger in the desert, in the trackless and dry land, that is, without prophet, without temple, without priest, without law, without sacrifice, roaming openly in the world. Scattered all over the world, they could not find the way of salvation, because they were wholly ignorant of Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. "But when the water in the skin had run out," it says, "she put her son under a tree." Already defeated, already wearied and worn out by the dryness of thirst, since she no longer had the water of purification which she had carried in a dead skin, that is, in the flesh of the old man, and could not find the fountain of living water, she then puts her son, that is, the people, under the tree. This signified that some of that same people would seek refreshment at the cross of Christ and in the shade of his power, and, with the eyes of their heart opened, would see the fountain of living water, that is, Christ, so that the dryness of their mind, watered and satisfied, might flourish in the Holy Spirit; or else that in the last times, when Elijah the Tishbite comes and preaches the gospel of Christ to the peoples of the Jews, twelve thousand and twelve thousand from the twelve tribes will believe in Christ and become noble Christians. And so, in figure of them, Hagar, that is, the Synagogue, brought her child, that is, the people, to the shade of the tree, that is, to the overshadowing of the cross. For that tree, in whose shade Hagar put Ishmael, outlined the image of the Lord's cross. Hence David too says: "In the shadow of your wings I will hope until iniquity passes." And elsewhere: "In his shadow," it says, "we live." And in the Gospel: "The Spirit of the Lord," it says, "will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." You see, then, dearest brothers, under what mystery the shade of the tree was sought, where that child, that is, the people that would believe, was to take refuge.

"And the boy cried out," it says, "and wept, and the Lord heard the voice of the boy." This speaks in the person of those from the Jews who were to believe in Christ; and it signified that, weeping for their sins and turned to Christ through repentance for the past deeds in which they recognized they had formerly gone astray, making a lamentable prayer, they would be heard ...; and that he opens the eyes of their heart so that they may see the fountain of living water, that is, the Son of God, who said, "I am the fountain of living water," and that, drawing from him the teaching of heavenly grace, which is living water, and obtaining the gift of baptism, they may rejoice. Indeed, "Immediately," it says, "the angel of the Lord called Hagar, saying: 'Do not fear, Hagar; the Lord has heard the voice of the boy.' And the Lord opened her eyes, and she saw a fountain of living water," and she gave the child to drink, that is, the people that formerly had dry hearts, a child lacking in understanding, that is, foolish and wrapped in the swaddling clothes of crimes. But perhaps someone may say here: "So the whole people of the Jews, whose image this son of the slave woman bore, will believe in Christ, and all will drink from the fountain of living water in the sacrament of baptism?" Let whoever does not know this hear the most blessed Isaiah speaking of that same people: "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah." And: "If the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved." These, then, are the remnant who will be saved, believing in Christ. But the rest, who remain in unbelief, will receive Antichrist instead of Christ, as Isaiah says: "While they waited for light, darkness arose." Indeed, when the Lord says to Abraham, "So shall your seed be, like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea," he does not say this on account of their number, but to show significantly a twofold people from the seed of Abraham, so that those who believed in Christ would shine like the stars of heaven, while those who did not believe would be cast down like sand and trodden into the earth. And when he said, "I will make him too into a great nation," this signified that this people, very numerous beyond the other nations, was to reign in the world, but that of them those who believed in Christ would obtain the glory of the heavenly kingdom. Indeed, when he says, "I will make him too into a great nation," he shows that there are already others, people of a great nation, to whom those of Ishmael's seed who believed were to be joined. For by adding the syllable with which he says, "I will make him too into a great nation," he makes plain that our people, we who were born long ago of Sarah the free woman, that is, the noble Church, reign in Christ, at the time when all who came from the Synagogue and believed in Christ were to be gathered, as the apostle too wrote of them, saying: "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you be wise in your own eyes: the rejection of Israel came about so that the fullness of the Gentiles might come in, and when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then the rest of Israel will be saved." This, then, is the rest of Israel which, as I have often said, will believe in Christ under Elijah, and thereby will itself become a great nation with us and obtain an equal glory of the heavenly kingdom.

But we must not pass over in silence that Scripture first calls the one who promises her this, that he will make him a great nation, an angel, and afterwards God. But if he was an angel, how was he called God? For it is not lawful to call an angel God. Or if he was God, how was he called an angel? But this is so in order that the divine Scripture might show that it was the Son of God, not the Father, who spoke to Hagar, and that it was he who promised her that he would make him a great nation; for he himself always spoke through the law and the prophets, as it is written of him: "I who was speaking have come." And Scripture called him an angel to indicate that he is the messenger of great counsel. For he disclosed all the secrets of the Father's will to believers. So that no one should think that the Father himself is the Son himself, as Praxeas and Sabellius assert (whence these heretics are called Patripassians), it named him an angel, to show in this promise the person not of the Father but of the Son. But it called the same angel God, to show that the Son of God is God. And so he is called an angel because of his obedience to the Father's will, and is named God according to the nature of the Father, because he is truly God. For the Son of God, true God from true God, only-begotten from the unbegotten, cannot be other than God. But it is enough to have treated these things thus far.

"And the Lord said to Abraham: 'But you shall keep my covenant, and your seed after you: every male of you shall be circumcised.'" Since you often have a contest with the Jews, and the present reading has prompted us to speak on this, we must ask why circumcision was given with such emphasis to the people of Israel. We can show this very easily if we first say what circumcision itself is. As to the meaning of the word, anyone can understand that circumcision is a wound drawn around with iron, by which something is cut off. If the Jew too holds this definition, what glory is it for him to have suffered the loss of flesh in a perfect body and to have mutilated, with wounding iron, the whole form he was born with? That this is done against the natural order is shown by the very fact that a child is born whole from a Jew, so that, though like his father in everything, he is unlike him in his wholeness alone, showing that the wound was imprinted on the father against nature, since he himself is born without the sacrament of his father's body. So in the Jew nature and religion struggle: the natural order secures wholeness, and nature, passing it on, removes the perfection of the ordinance. If the Jews value this circumcision so highly, what will become of Adam, the father of the human race? Was he formed by God imperfect, since he was made uncircumcised, or ought he at least to have been circumcised after the transgression, if circumcision is the sign of salvation? What will become of Abel, who was not circumcised? Or of Seth, begotten in his place, who was found a stranger to this wound? Of Enoch, translated whole, that is, uncircumcised? Of Noah, who at the destruction of the world, when all perished, was saved without any such condition? Of the other memorable and illustrious men, whose hope and life are praised in the sacred writings? If they have salvation outside this circumcision, or if eternal glory is assured them so, the circumcision of the Jews will be superfluous. Or if without circumcision there is no hope, then, according to these people, their hope has been frustrated, against the Scripture. Or if they are saved because they are not circumcised, what reason was there for Abraham or the people of the Jews to receive this seal, without which men are held righteous and holy before God? For so the Lord says to Abraham in this place: "This," he says, "is my covenant between me and you, and your seed after you: every male of you shall be circumcised, and the flesh of your foreskin shall be circumcised. And it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and them. And a boy of eight days among you shall be circumcised; and every male who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, that soul shall be destroyed from his people, because he has broken the covenant." What do we say in this place, dearest brothers: why does the same penalty await the one uncircumcised on the eighth day as awaits the one who has violated the sabbath? For he says that the soul of one who has not been circumcised on the eighth day is to be destroyed, just as that of one who has violated the sabbath. What of the fact that a child is often born on a sabbath, who must then be circumcised on a sabbath again, that is, on the eighth day? So it will happen that either the sabbath violates circumcision or circumcision violates the sabbath day: for either iron is held on the sabbath against what is lawful, and work is done, and a wound is inflicted; or, if the sabbath ... is avoided, the law of circumcision is profaned, since it is not carried out on the eighth day; and the soul of the uncircumcised is destroyed, unless he is circumcised on the eighth day according to the law.

But I say what I think. If circumcision is the sign of salvation, why did John preach repentance rather than circumcision? If he had known that circumcision was the sign of salvation, he would have preached circumcision to them rather than repentance. What of the fact that we know many uncircumcised men after the giving of the law obtained the Lord's mercy, and many circumcised men perished by various kinds of punishment? See: Joshua son of Nun received the Gibeonites into a place of safety, yet did not circumcise them. On the other hand, circumcised men are devoured by the bites of serpents. Then in the desert a huge multitude of circumcised men was struck down, and all the uncircumcised were preserved. So too in Ezekiel all the circumcised were slaughtered by the axes of the angels, and only those were found worthy to live who bore the sign of the Lord marked on their foreheads. Dathan and Abiram and the whole congregation of Korah, though circumcised, were swallowed by the opening of the earth and plunged into the underworld. On the other hand, Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, uncircumcised, offers a sacrifice pleasing to God and gives Moses himself counsel in judging. And why say more? Abraham himself, circumcised, offers tithes to the uncircumcised Melchizedek and honors the uncircumcised priest of the most high God with the offering of gifts. But you say to me: "If, then, this fleshly circumcision was of no use, why does God say to Abraham, 'This is the covenant between me and you and your seed after you,' and so on?" But why do we delay longer, entangling this solution in difficulties, when the shortness of the hours compels us to untie the question set more quickly? The reason for this matter, dearest brothers, is threefold: of fault, of race, and of figure; of fault in the pain, of race in the sign, of figure in the mystery. Lest I seem to have confused these as if in a jumble of words, I will, God willing, explain each briefly. As to the figure, then: this circumcision is not the truth but a foretelling of the truth, a sign of future salvation, not the fulfillment of the reality. Every seal is pressed out like the impression of a ring in wax; or as painters are wont to catch the faces of others and paint lifelike images in various colors, so that either, while an empty shadow mocks the gaze, what is not is believed to be, or, while the sight of the eyes is held fast by a sufficiently deceiving imitation, the truth is shown by them: so too in the old covenant an image of the truth was seen, yet not the truth itself. Indeed the blessed apostle Paul says: "All these things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our correction, on whom the ends of the ages have come." Since, then, every figure and every seal looks to that thing, and is inferior to that thing, of which it is the figure or seal, who does not understand that this circumcision was imposed as an imitation of likeness, not as a presentation of the truth? For Abraham believed God before this circumcision, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Faith, then, is the true and lawful circumcision, so that he is rightly circumcised who believed God, while he is circumcised in figure who suffered the loss of a part of his body. Circumcision was given to Abraham and his descendants only so that, while the figure was received with honor, faith, which is the truth, might be held the more illustrious. And so this fleshly circumcision was set first, as the Lord said to Abraham: "The flesh of your foreskin shall be circumcised, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and them."

But since it has already been defined that circumcision is that by which, with iron drawn around, something is cut off from the body that harms either health or modesty, and that what harms health is whatever is found against it to have come from vice of conduct, not from nature: if this is so, the depravity and viciousness of man is nowhere but in the mind, and must be cut away from the heart, from which the Lord says all defilements proceed. That true and lawful circumcision is to be had nowhere but in the heart, so that the remedy of circumcision may be applied where all vices proceed and go out. This circumcision takes nothing from the man but from his error; it inflicts no damage on the body but brings an increase of salvation; it will not shed gore but will despise the shame of blood. Moses too urged this on the circumcised when he said, "Circumcise the hardness of your heart"; and Jeremiah when he says, "Break up new ground for yourselves and circumcise the hardness of your heart, men of Judah and you who live in Jerusalem." This true and lawful circumcision of the heart, I say, which cuts away all crimes and all vices and calls man back to the image of God by the integrity of good conduct, no iron blade ground to an edge will provide, no worked skin, nor will the loss of the foreskin, imprinted with the shedding of blood, bestow it; but sacred faith, which is stronger than any iron, keener than any edge, finer than the thinnest blade, which does not touch the extremities of the body but enters the inmost and secret places of the heart, cutting out, killing, and circumcising all vices and errors and crimes from the very hiding places and recesses of the conscience, so to speak, from their very fibers and roots; circumcising not a part but the whole man; making not a wound but gaining the wholeness of salvation; so that one so circumcised rejoices that he has lost not only nothing of his body but has prepared the wholeness of a blessed soul. This true and sure circumcision of faith, then, which amends all vices and calls the whole man back to better things, righteous Abel received inwardly in his heart and in the secret of his breast; had he not had it, neither would his gifts have been regarded by God, nor would his holy blood have spoken with God after death. This circumcision of the heart made Enoch please God and translated him. This kept and steered Noah in that shipwreck of the world. This is what performed signs, worked wonders, changed the nature of the law; considering its power the prophet cried out, "The righteous lives by faith," and another prophet, "Unless you believe," he says, "you will not understand." This circumcision, I say, set great Elijah in the fiery chariot. This granted to the bones of Elisha that by their touch they could give life back to the corpses of the dead thrown on them. This made the Hebrew youths command the fires. This, in Daniel, was able to impose peace on nature and on the starving, raging lions. This, I say, is the true and lawful circumcision of faith, by which the vices of the heart are cut away, not by which the wholeness of the flesh is muti[lated] ... [Abraham] yielded to [the voice] of his wife, which was not at all fitting, and unlawfully signed away a husband's authority to a woman's lightness, so that he was unworthily joined to her Egyptian slave Hagar, in order that, since Sarah was hindered by the fault of barrenness, she might obtain children for her husband through another woman, and for herself at least the semblance of the name of mother. From that point the fault comes first, while the divine gifts are anticipated otherwise. And so the wound of circumcision is imprinted, pain is inflicted, weakness is brought on, blood is shed, and shame is stirred. A fitting correspondence is made between the two: for the place of the fault is marked out as a rebuke of the unlawful liberty, so that, while what was committed was fined with such a penalty, a remedy for the deed might be supplied through the expiation of a pain not left unpunished. And so it is said to him: "The flesh of your foreskin shall be circumcised." Hence his sons now bear this sign, so that through the loss of part of the body self-control in lust might be learned.

There remains, as I proposed, the third reason for this circumcision. For the divine reason is always fruitful, providing for the human race in many ways. This, then, is the third reason for circumcision, which we said above was given as a sign of race: since it was going to happen that the seed of Abraham would serve foreign nations, and this not once but often, it was given so that no confusion of race should arise from the mixing of captivity; and therefore the sign of race was given in the place of generation. Moreover God, knowing that they would be warriors and would die in battle for their sins, wished them to be distinguished by this mark, so that they might thereby be recognized and gathered for burial. Indeed Tobit commanded his son Tobias to search out, among those who lay slain and unburied in the public square, those who were of his race, that is, Israelites, who in that multitude of the fallen could certainly be recognized by no other sign than circumcision. We say this so that you may know, dearest brothers, that circumcision is a sign of race, not of salvation. These are the three reasons for which it was necessary for the people of the Jews, for their time, to receive circumcision. But even if this manifold reason for bodily circumcision, of figure, of fault, or of race, had not been shown, it should nevertheless be plain to us that whatever the cause of circumcision, whatever its power, whatever its benefit, all of it ceased in the grace of the Gospel at the coming of Christ, who, having taken the intolerable yoke of the law from our necks and laid down the burden of the precepts, had foretold through the prophets that he would give another, new law, not such as he had given to our fathers, and would make the new things that now arise. And so he also gave a new circumcision when he established a new law. For since in baptism the whole man is circumcised when he is reborn, the part has certainly been removed by the whole, since even the fleshly seed of Abraham has received seed in Christ, so that from then on sons are born, through Christ, not to the seed but to the faith of Abraham: for "God is able," he says, "from these stones to raise up children to Abraham," joining the end to the head. And so it was necessary that this temporal circumcision should receive its end through Christ, through whom, as I have said, the new circumcision of the heart is also worked. Fleshly circumcision, then, had to be applied when it was necessary to restrain with iron the intemperance that could not be held in check by faith. That circumcision, I say, had force there, where virginity was assailed by marriage, not in the Church, where virginity excuses from marriage. That circumcision, I say, had force there, where one man had many wives and concubines, not in the Church, where it is said: "Those who have wives as though they had none." Therefore, dearest brothers, trampling on Jewish fables and the slanders of heretics, let us bury ourselves wholly in the love of Christ, wholly in the mystery of his Gospel, so that we who have been freed from the burdens of the law through faith may through that same faith be pleasing in the kingdom of God.

"And Joseph came down into Egypt, and Potiphar, a eunuch of Pharaoh, chief of the cooks, an Egyptian, bought him." Although there is no doubt, dearest brothers, that in nearly all the books of the Old Testament there is a threefold meaning, that is, of prophecy, of history, and of figure, we must nevertheless labor to be able to discuss and assign each matter in its own kind and standing. For prophecy lies in the foreknowledge of things to come, history in the report of things done, figure in the likeness of things, apart from those passages that seem to serve edification or consolation or exhortation or rebuke. This reading that has just been read indicates a plain history, which praises the chastity of a holy young man and marks and condemns the unchastity of a detestable woman. Yet it nonetheless also bears the image of a figure, because, just as there can be no shadow without a body nor a body without a shadow, so there will be neither truth without figure nor figure without truth. Though these differ in the telling, they agree in the interpretation. For spiritual things are supplied beforehand in figures, while bodily things are supplied in events according to the figures. Hence this Joseph, a young man and a Hebrew, bearing the type of Christ, noble by his father, nobler by his innocence, sold by his brothers to the Ishmaelites out of envy at his revelation, had come into the house of an Egyptian. By his service and innocence and the whole faithfulness of his servitude he had won his master's heart. His face, noble even in captivity, commended to all by his youth and by his very nobility, was looked upon by his master's wife otherwise than was fitting. So this shameless and incontinent woman, in a secret part of the house and a hiding place suited to the crime, thought she could overcome the young man's chastity, now with promised gifts, now with threats and terrors. And when the same woman held him back, because he was trying to flee from the audacity of so great a crime, he stripped himself and, fleeing, left behind the very clothes by which he was held, to have the simplicity of a naked body and innocence as his witness. Then she, staining crime with crime, did not hesitate to add the recklessness of slander. For, cunning and burning in spirit, when Joseph fled her desire, which could now have no effect, she complained with feigned grief to the others and to her husband that the Hebrew young man had tried to do her the violence that she herself had attempted to inflict. For she says: "My Hebrew servant, whom you brought in to us, came in to me to mock me. For he said to me, 'Sleep with me.'" Then the husband's anger, ignorant of the facts and greatly inflamed by his wife's accusation, ordered the chaste young man, who had not mixed his conscience with the offense, to be thrust into the depths of the prison. But chastity is not alone in prison, for God was with him. Indeed even the guilty are put under his hand, because he himself was held innocent. Moreover, through the Lord he unraveled the obscurities of dreams, because his spirit had kept watch in temptation. Then, set free through the Lord, he who had served his purchaser at peril became master of the royal house without peril, and, restored to his nobility, he received from God as judge the fruit of innocence and chastity he had deserved. For so great was the virtue of chastity in him that the insolence of natural impulse, which in some supplies license for wantonness, could not excuse it away. Not bodily beauty and the shape of his limbs, which often suggest that, like a flower of hastening youth that will quickly pass, it be plucked at the opportunity of a pleasure held out; not the first years of a fresh and better age, when the still raw blood seething in the body kindles the flames of nature and turns hidden fires in the marrow, ready to seek its remedy even at the peril of modesty; not the very seclusion of the house, and in it the opportunity without any witness, as some think, which is the greatest pleasure in committing a crime, when impunity of release presents itself; not even the necessity laid on him by the authority of a commanding mistress, rushing on him more violently in her recklessness, by which kind of pressure right resolves are sometimes broken; not rewards themselves, to which even good men often yield; not accusations, not threats, not punishments, not death, could overcome the chastity of the holy young man. For nothing was so cruel, so hard, so grievous to him as committing adultery and falling from so high a step of chastity. Hence he was rightly worthy of so great a reward of divine judgment, that he was both made illustrious with a royal throne and won victory over his enemies. Therefore, dearest brothers, we must always set these and similar examples before the eyes of the mind and meditate on their like day and night. For nothing so delights a faithful soul as a whole and spotless conscience of modesty. No victory is greater than that won over desire. For he who conquered an enemy was stronger than another; but he who has crushed hostile lust was stronger than himself. He who has conquered desire has broken an evil at home. For every evil is conquered more easily than pleasure, because whatever that other evil is, it is horrid, while this is alluring, and nothing is conquered with such difficulty as what is loved through that very thing by which it harms. So he who has conquered desire has removed all fear, because fear comes down from desire. He who has conquered desire has celebrated a triumph over sin. He who has conquered desire has proved himself a true disciple of Christ. He who has conquered desire

has shown the evil of the human race lying beneath his feet. He who has conquered desire has given himself perpetual peace. He who has conquered desire has restored to himself freedom, which is hardest for the freeborn. He who has conquered desire has been superior to the world itself. Therefore, dearest brothers, as the matter itself plainly teaches, we must always meditate on chastity, which is the easier because it rests on no arts. For what is chastity but an honorable mind given by nature for the guarding of bodies, so that the modesty owed by the sexes, marked with strictness, may keep to the purpose of the race? To it belong and are fitted first of all the fear of God, care for the heavenly precepts, a mind more inclined to faith, and a spirit awed before sacred and divine religion; by these virtues that chastity of ours is guarded, so that it may not be assailed by bodily vices. But since I have said that this venerable patriarch Joseph bore the type of Christ in his acts, we must certainly compare each detail with each, so that all may agree with all. First, his father Jacob made him a tunic of various colors, as a beloved son. What does this variety indicate, if not the nations of the different peoples who were to believe in Christ and be united to his body through faith? For the variety of Joseph's tunic indicated by an image the nations of the different peoples, as I said, believing in Christ, and also the various gifts of graces of different merits coming together in the Church. That the various nations who believe in Christ are reckoned as the Lord's garment, through the human flesh which the Lord put on, he himself proves when he says through the prophet: "As I live, says the Lord, I will clothe myself with them all as with a garment." Hence it is that the patriarch Jacob, the father of this Joseph, received the spotted sheep as his wages. And David: "The queen stood," he says, that is, the Church, "in gilded clothing, wrapped about with variety." Or what would he not do for the Lord's glory who had put on the type of the Lord? For so it is written: "I saw," he says, "that the sun and the moon and eleven stars worshiped me." And again: "Those eleven sheaves bowed down, and my sheaf stood upright, and those eleven worshiped my sheaf." After this revelation of dreams, then, which he brought for us concerning the future, after the tall sheaves were lowered, as I said, into the posture of worshipers, and after the reverence granted by the sun and moon with eleven stars, which indicated the image of his parents and brothers, he attained such wisdom and knowledge, such divine understanding, that what had been shown in dreams and covered by a kind of blindness of the night itself he cleared, removing the obscurity, into the pure certainty of understanding, leaving nothing unexplained in his interpretation. And since, as has been said, this Joseph had put on the figure of the Savior in everything, he was sold by his brothers just as Christ was by the Jews, his brothers according to the flesh, and by Judas the betrayer, as the prophet Zechariah says: "They took thirty staters, the price of the beloved, at which the sons of Israel valued him." Then his tunic is sprinkled with blood so that he might be thought killed by a beast: so too the flesh of Christ, which is called a tunic, is drenched with the blood of the passion, and he who was thought dead and devoured by death afterwards rose again and lives and reigns. Joseph too was called handsome: so too David says of Christ: "Handsome in form beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips."

But now let us look at the other things that seem to bear the type of prophecy. "The woman," it says, "cast her eyes on him," thinking she could commit adultery with him. That woman, then, was a figure of the Synagogue, which, as it is written, often committed adultery after foreign gods. In a similar way it wished to hold him as an accomplice in the crime of its adultery, so that he would deny himself to be what he was, and keep the precepts of the Pharisees and scribes rather than those of the Father. For the Synagogue, whose likeness that woman bore, besides often committing the adultery of idolatry, added to the crime that, having abandoned the divine law, which it had as a husband, as the apostle explains, it was then following the tradition of the Pharisees, a tradition it would take long to discuss here. Indeed for this fornication of teaching the prophet Isaiah rebukes them, saying: "Your innkeepers mix wine with water." For they dispensed to the people an alien and tasteless sect mixed with the divine law, that is, with the pure wine of wisdom, as if mixing water with wine. And the Lord too, who had spoken before through the prophets, afterwards rebuked them in a similar way in the Gospel, saying: "Why do you transgress the commandment of God to establish your traditions?" And again: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Since, then, he did not consent to the adultery of unlawful teaching, the adulterous Synagogue laid its hand on him, seized him and held him, and strove to brand its own crime on him, the innocent one, as though he blasphemed the temple of the Lord and should be called a transgressor of the law. But he, secure in his conscience, caring nothing for any of this, stripped himself of the flesh, which he had taken up like a garment, and openly, as the apostle said, triumphed over the powers of the world through the flesh, although the tunic of his body was held in burial by the guard of the adulterous Synagogue; for it had set guards at the tomb for this purpose. "But for this," it says, "he is sent into prison." For the necessity of the time required that for another's crime, that is, for the sake of the human race, he himself should descend to the underworld as into a prison of captives, and free the souls of the captives from there, as it is written: "The Lord sets the prisoners free." Further, "he found," it says, "two eunuchs of the king's house held in prison for their sins," to whom, interpreting their dreams, he showed that after three days one of them would be restored to his service and the other would receive the sentence of death. These two eunuchs plainly outlined the figure of two peoples, who were held shut up under the sin of Adam, guilty of the transgression and liable for it. They are called eunuchs because they received a chaste rule of discipline, as David says: "The words of the Lord are chaste." Then, after the third light, when the Lord rose from the underworld and, like Joseph, revealed the obscure dreams of the law, the people of believers was released from its sins and freed from the prison of hell, and is called back, faithful and innocent, into the service of the supreme king; but the unbelieving and impious people of the Jews, because it had not believed in the tree of conversion, is hanged on the tree of transgression, as befell that other eunuch, who indicated the image of the Jews.

After this Pharaoh saw a dream of seven years of plenty and seven others of famine. The seven years, shown in seven full ears or seven fat cows, which displayed abundance of crops by their appearance, are the seven gifts of spiritual graces promised through Isaiah, the famous prophet, to the Church, which is the flesh of Christ: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of strength, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of piety, the spirit of the fear of God. These, then, are the seven spirits, like seven years in which a rich abundance of faith and piety overflows. The seven barren and lean ones, on the other hand, most surely foretold a famine of truth and righteousness that is to come in the last times. And because these times were to come, Joseph, who had put on the type of Christ, was granted a chariot and a herald. For so the Scripture reports: "And he set him in a chariot, and a herald proclaimed before him. And he set him over the whole land of Egypt, to gather grain into the granaries." So too our Lord, after he was sold by Judas, as Joseph by his brothers, and rose from the prison of the underworld, mounted the chariot of the heavenly kingdom, of which David says: "The chariot of God is ten thousandfold." For Joseph was given the name in the Egyptian language Somtofanec, which in Latin is rendered "savior of the world." Christ too received a name from God the Father, as the blessed apostle says: "And he gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father": so that he should gather the grain of faith into the granaries of the saints through these seven graces of the Spirit, as through seven years; so that, when, in that iniquity of the seven capital crimes, in which, as through another seven years, all iniquity summed up will reign under Antichrist, a famine of faith and salvation has begun, then the saints and the faithful alike might have the celebrated harvest of righteousness, so that their faith might not fail, overcome by want of the word. He had a herald too, John the Baptist, who went before his way and proclaimed, saying: "Prepare the ways of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God." He will have another herald also, the trumpet of an angel, since "God himself," it says, "will come with the trumpet of an angel," and also Elijah at the second coming. Joseph had the royal ring; and Christ too holds the chief ring of faith, with which believing souls are sealed with the sign of salvation. Joseph was clothed in fine linen and a robe; so too Christ took on, in the resurrection, holy flesh more splendid than fine linen and the robe of immortality, as he himself said: "As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself." Joseph chose for his parents and brothers the better land of Goshen and measured out grain to them sufficiently, because the famine had grown strong over the land and the land was failing from famine; so too the Lord chose a better land for his parents and brothers, that is, for the patriarchs, of whom the apostle says, "whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh"; and for his brothers, that is, the apostles and all the saints, of whom the prophet says, "I will tell your name to my brothers": namely the land of promise, which is the kingdom of God, of which land it is written: "I will please the Lord in the land of the living."

That famine which was over all the earth, we have already said, signified a famine of the divine word and of righteousness which is to come in the times of Antichrist. For then no one will preach the word of God, by which the souls of the righteous are accustomed to live, as it is written: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." No one will make the bread of the Lord's body, that is, bless the Eucharist, because it will then not be lawful to offer sacrifice to God, since all things will be polluted and unclean. And so that famine ... foretold that a famine of the holy word and of the divine law was to come; at that time only the apostles and the saints, who also have the crown of righteousness laid up in Christ, will be satisfied, as it is written: "Those who serve me will be satisfied, but you will hunger." Further, concerning this land, which will be in the kingdom of God, Isaac blessed his son Jacob thus, saying: "May God give you of the dew of heaven and the fertility of the earth abundance of grain, wine and oil in your house, and you shall be lord of your brothers." From this it is recognized that Jacob was blessed by his father not for the present but for the age to come, because not only did Jacob not have abundance of grain, wine, and oil in this age, but because of the great famine he even fled to Egypt. And not only was he not lord of his brother, but he even fled before his face, and afterwards offered him gifts, seized by fear and trembling of him. Where, then, and when will this blessing be fulfilled, if not in the kingdom of God, where there is abundance of grain and wine and oil? For the earth will give its fruit of its own accord, and all malice will be taken away, as Isaiah says: "In those days," he says, "the ox and the lion will eat straw together, the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and a little child will put his hand into the asp's den, and it will not harm him." For God will re-form the world in his kingdom to be such as it was made in the beginning, before the first-formed man sinned. After he transgressed the word of God, all things were corrupted and violated and cursed, as the Lord said: "Cursed is the earth in your work." When the form of this world has passed away, then, there will be the kingdom of the saints and the liberation of creation. This is the blessing that was prefigured in Jacob, which Joseph accordingly obtained, and all the saints who keep the faith of Christ, as the Lord himself says: "I will make them recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and the Son of Man will serve you." But let it suffice to have said a few things out of many.

I know, dearest brothers, that I have very often discussed this first-born book, that is, Genesis, and have explained almost all its readings to your eagerness, as reason allowed or the modesty of my understanding permits. But now I have proposed to treat the prophecy of the most holy patriarch Jacob, in which he foretold to his twelve sons what would happen to them, which I had never yet discussed. And since it is too long to discuss everything in one tractate, some things must be discussed and others usefully deferred, because brief things please you more than long ones, since concise things are held in memory more easily than heaped-up ones. So he says: "And Jacob called his sons and said to them: 'Come near, that I may tell you what will happen to you in the last days. Gather and hear, sons of Jacob; hear Israel your father. Reuben,' he says, 'my firstborn, you are my strength and the beginning of my sons, hard in conduct, hard and bold; you boiled over like water; do not blaze up. For you went up onto your father's bed; then you defiled the couch onto which you went up.'" In these words, then, some things, though done according to the flesh, nevertheless foreshadowed an image of mystical meaning, while other things he spoke as one who foreknew the future. For as Reuben was the firstborn son of Jacob, so too the people of the circumcision was the firstborn, as it is written: "Israel is my firstborn." And so he says, "You are my strength and the beginning of my sons," since from that people the foundation of faith and the beginning of the sons of God began, as the Lord says in the Gospel: "Salvation is from the Jews." For from there came the patriarchs, from there the prophets, from there Christ our salvation. And the blessed apostle says: "Theirs is the adoption of sons, theirs the promises of the law, theirs the fathers, from whom is Christ, who is blessed forever." And so he is called firstborn and strength, since from them came the strength of God, that is, Christ. And they are the firstborn of whom he says: "I have begotten and exalted sons." And again: "You are gods and all sons of the Most High." But in adding "hard and bold," he says it because that people, after such great divine benefits, had hardened its heart, and was not only not going to listen to the heavenly precepts but was even going to offer the honor owed to God to idols and demons. Hence afterwards, remaining in the same hardness, they not only refused to believe the great miracles and wonders of Christ, but, accusing him, most impiously shed righteous blood. O iron hardness, O unbridled boldness! Not only did they refuse to believe divine miracles, but on top of that they hung the Lord of majesty on a cross. And so under the person of Reuben the people of the Jews is accused of being hard and bold: hard because of unbelief, bold because of the parricide it committed against Christ. As for his adding, "You went up onto your father's bed; then you defiled the couch onto which you went up," he does not say this of him because, as the history indicates, he had his father's wife and so defiled the couch by going up onto his father's bed; something very different is understood here.

For the divine Scripture was indicating things to come, not things past, since the patriarch himself said: "Come near, that I may tell you what will happen to you in the last days." And so, since he foretold these things as coming in the last days, they ought not to be turned back to the past. You see, then, dearest brothers, that he was speaking of the impiety which the Jewish people was going to commit against God the Father, not of what had been done to the patriarch Jacob. When did the Jewish people defile the bed of God its father, if not when it hung on the cross the Lord's flesh, in which, as the apostle says, the fullness of the divinity dwelt bodily, fitted to it, and violated it with iron? "For you defiled it then when you went up." It went up indeed in anger and fury and boldness to win the victory of its iniquity, saying: "Away, away, crucify him." "You boiled over like water; do not blaze up." With this the prophetic Spirit was announcing by way of persuasion that the people which had already boiled over, set on fire by the fiery darts of the devil, should not blaze up all the way in persecution of the righteous. This they did after the Lord's passion by persecuting the apostles and also all who had believed in the name of Christ. And so he said: "You boiled over like water; do not blaze up." So too the Lord says to Cain: "You have sinned; be still." For water that boils in a vessel over a fire either spills over from its swelling or dries up from boiling too much. This also happened to that people, which, set on fire by the devil's fury as if in the vessels of their bodies, was so spilled out that it remained scattered over the whole world, dry of religion itself and of every spiritual grace, parched in its understanding. But because Reuben the firstborn, that is, the first people of the Jews, had some faithful men who afterwards believed through the apostles, as it is written, "And the crowd of believers was added daily," therefore, after the reproach which the Holy Spirit had cast on him concerning the future through his father Jacob, Moses afterwards prays for life for him, saying: "Let Reuben live and not die"; not because Reuben himself was then living, who had long since gone forth in peace, but so that those of that people who believed in Christ might live and never die, because whoever believes in Christ does not die, as the Lord and Savior himself says in the Gospel: "Whoever believes in me does not die, but has eternal life." After this he turns to Simeon and Levi, saying: "Simeon and Levi, brothers, completed iniquity of their own will. Let my soul not come into their counsel, and let my heart not contend over their constancy. For in their fury they killed men, and in their desire they hamstrung a bull. Cursed be their fury, because it is bold, and their anger, because it is hard. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel." Many think that Simeon and Levi are rebuked by their father in this way because, in avenging the virginity of their sister Dinah, they dealt deceitfully with Hamor, king of the Shechemites, and with his son Shechem: since Shechem son of Hamor had violated Dinah their sister, they, wishing to kill him, said that all their males must be circumcised, and so Shechem could have their sister Dinah as wife. And since Shechem burned with vehement impatience in his love for Dinah, they agreed to be circumcised, not only themselves but also all their soldiery and all the men of their city. Then Simeon and Levi are reported to have cut off in that circumcision not only their foreskins but also their sinews. And it happened, after the third day, when all the men were in the greatest pain, that Simeon and Levi came upon them without their father's knowledge and killed them all with the sword, the king Hamor himself with his son Shechem and all the people of that city,

and burned the city itself with fire, and so took their sister Dinah away from there and brought her back. But let none of you think, dearest brothers, that they are so sharply rebuked by their father for this reason, especially since, as we have already treated above, the same Jacob said to his sons: "Come near, that I may tell you what will happen to you in the last days." You see, then, that he was speaking not of a deed past but of one to be done in the future. Therefore, dearest brothers, we must observe more carefully what this iniquity is which Simeon and Levi completed of their own will and with which their father reproaches them. From Simeon came the scribes of the Jews, from Levi the priests, who with one accord in their fury killed men, that is, the prophets who were sent to them by the Lord, and in their desire hamstrung a bull, that is, Christ our Lord. They hamstrung him when they crucified his feet and hands, when they pierced his side with a lance. The prophetic Spirit called him a bull because he first bore the plough of his cross on the gibbet, and prepared the hard hearts of the Gentiles, broken up, for the needful seed, that is, the Holy Spirit; and because in the last days he will come and, like a bull, toss the whole human race with the horns of his cross, and will raise some, that is, believers, to heaven and cast down others, that is, unbelievers, onto the earth. Indeed, that they killed the prophets and that they would kill the Lord himself, the Lord tells them in a parable in the Gospel: "A certain householder planted a vineyard, dug a winepress, and put in tenants. And when that householder had sent servants to seek the fruit from the tenants, they killed some and stoned others. Afterwards he sent many more, and they did the same. Last of all he sent his son, saying, 'Perhaps they will respect my son.' When the tenants saw him, they said, 'This is his son; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' When, then, the householder comes, what will he do to the tenants? They answered: 'He will destroy the wicked wickedly.'" You see, then, dearest brothers, that this is the very thing which the patriarch Jacob also charged against his sons, that in their fury they killed men, that is, the prophets, and in their desire hamstrung a bull, that is, Christ, as we have already shown above. Hence the most holy patriarch withdraws himself from their crime, saying: "Let my soul not come over their boldness, and let my heart not contend." For he does not wish to be seen as a partaker in such great crimes, which they were going to commit in the last days. Indeed what the patriarch, filled with the Holy Spirit, foretold to them here, the same Spirit afterwards speaks through Isaiah, saying: "Your sabbaths and your new moons my soul hates, and your great day I cannot bear. If you bring fine flour, it is vain. Incense is an abomination to me. And if you multiply prayers, I will not hear. And if you stretch out your hands, I will turn my face away from you. For your hands are full of blood."

But since he is kind and merciful, when he had rejected all these things, he gives counsel as to what they should do, saying: "Wash yourselves, be clean." Wash, that is, in the baptism of Christ, of which he says elsewhere: "I will sprinkle them with clean water, and you will be cleansed"; for in the sacrament of baptism all sins and all crimes are forgiven. Indeed he added: "And if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow; and if like crimson, I will make them like white wool." But what is scarlet and what is crimson? Sins like scarlet are those stained with the blood of the prophets; like crimson, those offenses dyed with the precious blood of Christ; for as far as scarlet, that is, vermilion, differs from crimson, so great is the difference between the blood of Christ and that of the prophets. How great is the kindness, how great the mercy of God our Savior, that he deigns to absolve even his own killers from every offense through the grace of baptism, if they are converted, believe, and repent of their deeds! But he added further: "Cursed be their fury, because it is bold, and their anger, because it is hard." Scripture indicates this cursed fury of theirs, and their bold anger, hardened at the devil's instigation to commit so great a crime, because, kindled with fury and hardened in anger, they came and seized our Savior and Lord, by whom they had seen such great wonders and powers done, and handed him over to Pontius Pilate, shouting and saying: "Away, away, crucify him," and "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend." O their cursed fury and hardened boldness, that they asked for the release of Barabbas, a robber and murderer, and demanded the crucifixion of the prince of life, who had raised the dead and given light to the blind, made the deaf hear and the lame walk, healed the paralytics, cleansed the lepers, and taken away every kind of illness by the word with which he was strong! Foreseeing these things in the spirit, this most holy patriarch Jacob foretold them in figure. Hence he does not wish to be seen as a partaker in their counsel and deed. For he says: "Let my soul not come into their counsel, and let my heart not contend over their boldness." Since this is so, we must ask what he added below, saying: "I will divide them in Jacob, I will scatter them in Israel." The foreseeing spirit of the patriarch was already warning that from that very people of his sons unbelievers were to be separated from believers. For Jacob, from the Hebrew language, is called in Latin "supplanter," while Israel is interpreted "a man seeing God." And so some were to be divided in Jacob, those who had been supplanters of Christ, and others in Israel, those who were found worthy to believe. So he says: "I will divide them in

Jacob and scatter them in Israel." After this he turns to Judah and says to him: "Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hands will be on the back of your enemies; your father's sons will worship you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from the shoot, my son, you have gone up; lying down you slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who will rouse him?" What is this, dearest brothers, that Judah deserved to be praised so, when Simeon and Levi above are rebuked so, if not that Christ was to come from the tribe of Judah, as it is written of him: "The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered"? And so, just as in Reuben and Simeon and Levi he rebukes and brands not so much them individually as those who were to be born of their tribe and who were to do and complete iniquities of their own will against Christ, so here too he was praising not so much Judah himself as Christ, who was to come from the tribe of Judah according to the flesh. Indeed he says: "Judah, your brothers will praise you," because all of his race who believed in Christ were going to praise him for the very powers and wonders of his that they saw. And this happened: for "all," it says, "praised God, because such a prophet had never appeared in Israel." And since Christ was the judge and lord of all, he therefore added: "Your hands will be on the back of your enemies." He calls enemies those who were not going to believe, as it is written: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." These, then, are the unbelieving enemies who did not set their face to see, but, turning their face away from the sight of God and removing their hearts from faith, turned their backs to forsake the Lord, backs which they will afterwards make ready for the lash in the judgment of God, as he says through the prophet Jeremiah: "They turned their backs to me, and not their faces." And since they will feel as a most severe judge him whom they refused to receive as a kind lord, he therefore says: "Your hands will be on the back of your enemies." On the other hand, concerning those who were going to believe, he says: "Your father's sons will worship you," since many of the Jews themselves, as has been said, believed and worshiped him, and they are called sons of God, as it is written: "To all who believe in him he gave power to become sons of God." And he added: "A lion's whelp," he says, "is Judah; from the shoot, my son, you have gone up; lying down you slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who will rouse him?" The lion is the king of beasts. And so our Savior, who is ... the King of kings, was called a lion because of the mighty power by which he conquered the devil in death. But why did he name here a lion's whelp whom elsewhere he had called the conqueror from the tribe of Judah? He named him a whelp to show not the Father himself but the Son of God. For when lion and lion's whelp are spoken of, both Father and Son are indicated, in whom the nature is not divided, but distinct persons are shown. For just as a lion is born from a lion, so God is said to proceed from God and light from light. For just as, when a lion is born from a lion, the nature is not changed but one origin is shown, so God born from God cannot be anything other

than God; but to signify the Son he named a lion's whelp. As for his adding, "From the shoot, my son, you have gone up," he wished to show us that Christ came from the shoot of Judah, as is also said through the prophet Isaiah: "A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall go up from his root." This Jesse was the father of David, from whose root, that is, from whose origin, the Virgin Mary was born, whom Isaiah calls a rod; and the flower from the rod indicates Christ born of the virgin. This is also said through Ezekiel: "Behold, days are coming, and the rod will flower": that is, the virgin will bear Christ, the flower of the human race. And this is what he says: "From the shoot, my son, you have gone up," because, as has been said, Mary came forth from the shoot of the seed of Judah, from whom Christ the flower came. And he added: "Lying down you slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who will rouse him?" We have already said that the lion and the lion's whelp indicate the Father and the Son, the begotten and the unbegotten, whose nature is one. Hence the Savior himself says: "I am in the Father and the Father in me." But one cannot be in the other except through the undivided unity of nature. And as for his saying, "Who will rouse him?": who else raised the Son but the Father, as the apostle says: "He who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise your mortal bodies." "But you slept," he says, "like a lion." What is "you slept like a lion"? That is, secure and at rest. For the lion sleeps securely, since it fears nothing but is itself feared by all. So too our Savior slept securely in death, because, by the surpassing power of his nature, he not only did not fear the power of death but even conquered death itself by dying. And so, because of the confident security with which he slept in death, not only fearing nothing but also triumphing over all powers through the cross, he is said to have slept secure and confident, as the apostle says: "Stripping himself of the flesh, he openly triumphed over the powers through the cross." And this is what he says: "You slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who will rouse him?" And he added: "A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until the seed comes that is laid up for him, and he is the hope of the nations." This is plain and clear, dearest brothers: the seed of the holy fathers did not fail, nor did a ruler, that is, a king, cease from the origin of Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until Christ, the promised seed from the tribe of Judah and the hope of the nations, was born of the Virgin Mary. For the kingdom of the Jews was from the tribe of Judah, and it did not fail until Christ, the promised seed, shone forth in the world. So if the Jews think Christ has not yet come, then the kingdom of the Jews from the tribe of Judah remains today. Or if the Jews no longer reign, the seed laid up that had been promised to them has come, he who

is the hope of the nations, after whose coming he said the Jewish kingdom would cease. But since the promised seed has already come in Christ, the Jews have no kingdom. But what does he mean by saying: "He will tie his colt to the vine, and the colt of his donkey to sackcloth"? The colt tied to the vine is one, the donkey's colt tied to sackcloth is another. These two colts, then, signified two callings of peoples, of the Jews and of the Gentiles. His own colt was the one announced as going to believe from the Gentiles, since Christ himself was called the hope of the nations, as David too says in the person of Christ: "A people that did not know me has known me; at the hearing of the ear it obeyed me." And so he will tie, it says, his colt to the vine. What this vine is, to which he will tie this colt, that is, the believing people, the Lord himself makes plain when he says: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser; every branch in me that does not bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire." This colt, that is, the people believing in him, the Lord tied to the vine of his body with the bond of love, so that one body of Christ might be made from the members of believers, as the apostle says: "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit." But how is this colt, that is, the people believing from the nations, tied to the vine, that is, to the body of Christ, if not through faith, hope, and love, through the bond of gospel discipline, as it is written: "What will separate us from the love of Christ?" And again: "But for me it is good to cling to God, to put my hope in God." "But to sackcloth," it says, "the colt of his donkey." By the donkey's colt he means the people of the Synagogue, which he calls a donkey, that is, slow-paced and weighed down by the very heavy burden of the law. But why did he tie this colt to sackcloth? Because he placed this same people under repentance for their deeds, as John too said to that same people when they came to him: "Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear therefore fruits worthy of repentance." Indeed, any of them who were found worthy to believe, repenting of their crimes, asked for the grace of baptism. For when they heard the most blessed apostle Peter preaching about Christ, they said to him: "What shall we do to obtain pardon?" Then he said: "Repent and be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins." This, then, is the colt tied to sackcloth, that is, the people doing penance, because it is guilty of the blood of the prophets, guilty also of the blood of Christ, guilty even of the law itself, in which it thought it had some salvation, since it cannot fulfill the precepts of that law; for it is written: "Cursed is the man who does not do all that is written in the book of the law," although all that is written in the book of the law cannot be done. I will say it briefly. For it is written: "Cursed is the man who violates the sabbath," and "He who is not circumcised on the eighth day, his soul shall perish from his people." Hence, if a child is born on a sabbath, he must be circumcised on a sabbath, that is, on the eighth day. If this is not done, his soul will perish from his people, as it is written. If it is done, the sabbath is violated, because work is done and a wound inflicted. See under what sackcloth of repentance this donkey's colt, that is, the people of the Synagogue, is tied: either, if it does not believe in Christ, it is placed under the curse of the law ... to be baptized with another baptism, which he was saying of his passion; therefore he says: "He will wash his robe in wine," that is, his flesh, which he deigned to put on like a robe. And he added: "And his cloak in the blood of the grape." A cloak (anaboladium) is what is fitted to the body and fastened with a band. He called us who believe in him the cloak. For anaboladium is a Greek word, so called because it is lifted from below to above and joined to the breast. And so he wonderfully called us believers the cloak, whom he both joined to his body and called from lower and earthly things to the heavenly things above, and joined to his breast with the bond of love as with a band, and washed in the wine of his blood, as the apostle writes: "But you have been washed, you have been sanctified in the blood of Christ and in the passion of his power."

"And in the blood of the grape." For he himself is called the cluster of the grape, in figure of whom two spies brought one cluster on a pole from the land of promise, so that by the pole they might show the wood of the cross, and by the cluster Christ hanging on the wood of the cross between two peoples. And so he says, "In the blood of the grape," because just as the grape is pressed out by hard, tight-squeezed wood, so too that cluster, that is, the body of Christ, pressed by the wood of the cross, poured out the blood of his grape and of his body, with which he washed his cloak, that is, the people joined to his flesh through faith, and showed it purified. And he added: "His eyes shining from wine, and his teeth white from milk." Eyes in this place indicated spiritual grace. For the seven eyes are the seven spirits, as the scripture of the Apocalypse testifies. This sevenfold spiritual grace is assigned to the eyes because by it past, present, and future are seen. For the Spirit of God sees all things, searches all things, even the depths of God. Hence the spiritual man too sees all things, searches all things, exposes the hearts of all, and is himself judged by no one. And so he says his eyes are shining, because he sees all things and nothing can be hidden from him, as it is written: "I am God, searching the kidneys and hearts." He says the eyes shine from wine, because from the blood of the Lord's passion, which he calls wine, all spiritual grace has shone out in us. As for "his teeth white from milk": when he names teeth, he means the modulations of the tongue, from which the clear word of preaching proceeds; for infants who have no teeth cannot speak, and toothless old men, lisping as they speak, cannot express the meaning of a word. So no one could have heard the word of God, which declares truth and righteousness, except through the apostles. And so, when he names the Lord's teeth, he indicates the apostles, who teach through the tongue of God, that is, the Holy Spirit, since "my tongue," it says, "is like the pen of a swift-writing scribe"; and since his tongue is the Holy Spirit, the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, preached the mysteries of the heavenly words with measured discipline. For as food is worked by the teeth, so too the word of God, who is the bread of life, worked by the apostolic tradition, which is compared to teeth, is seen to be passed down to all the inner parts of the body of the Church. And so the apostles are said to be whiter than the milk of the ancient law and of the old priests. For that milk is the ancient law, which the scribes and Pharisees and all the old priests, as I said, preached, the apostle proves when he says: "I gave you milk to drink, not food, for you were not yet able, nor are you able even now." So all the patriarchs and prophets and priests who were in the old covenant are compared to milk, and the apostles have been made whiter than they, as they either chew the bread of Christ's body or preach the living food, the word of God, to believers. Indeed David, no longer wishing to be counted under the milk of the law, prays to the Lord thus, saying: "As one weaned," that is, taken from his mother's milk, "so reward your servant," so that, as if now taken from the milk of the law, as I said, and set up as a mature man, he might be found worthy to receive the bread of Christ's body.

"Now another king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his nation: 'See, the nation of the sons of Israel has become great and stronger than we. Come, then, let us subdue them, lest they grow beyond us, and lest, if war should befall us, they side with them and conquer us and drive us out of our land.'" It would be long and very excessive to discuss the necessity and the descent of the people into Egypt. For the history is plain and well known to all. But I must rather labor, dearest brothers, to explain the force, meaning, and mystery of this reading according to the spiritual understanding. For what bears the image of future truth is worthy of discussion, since there is nothing in the divine and sacred writings that does not have a special force of meaning, as they either show things past, or suggest things present, or commend things to come. Egypt, then, was a figure of the world, Pharaoh of the devil; the sons of Israel had put on the image of the first-formed man, from whose origin they were reckoned; and Moses, who was sent to free them, bore the type of Christ. "Joseph died," it says, "and the people began to receive the yoke of the harshest slavery": that is, Adam sinned and all things were corrupted. For just as Israel, when famine came, went down from the land of promise into Egypt, so Adam went down into the world for the sake of food: for he ate of the forbidden tree and was put out of paradise. Hear, then, what it adds: "Pharaoh commanded," it says, that is, the devil; he commanded those on whom he had already laid the yoke of the heaviest slavery. And what did he command? That they make bricks from mud and straw. What could be softer or filthier than mud, what lighter or more worthless than straw? The straw mixed with mud indicates this: that, mixing empty and irrational thoughts, like straw, with the muddy and filthy vices of the body, they were to commit the gravest and filthiest crimes at the urging of the devil's tyranny; for they were then given over to flesh and blood and devoted to the foulness of allurements. So they made bricks, either to build houses or to fortify cities: that is, they pressed together earthly counsels with acts of vice, either to build up their breasts with the wall of unbelief or to enlarge the dwellings of the earthly body with filthy work. For Pharaoh, that is, the devil, thought that the whole people would be so weighed down by these works, and their hearts so shut in by the wall of unbelief, that there would be no one to weaken or conquer his kingdom, no one to bind him, like a strong man defeated, and plunder his goods. But well done, our King, you who broke the bars of adamant and shattered the bolts of untamed iron, and deigned to destroy from the hearts of all those fortifications built, as I said, by the devil's art, and overcame the kingdom of that cruel tyrant by the power of your passion, leading captivity captive and giving gifts to men according to David's prophecy, that you might free all who are yours from his power!

"But Pharaoh commanded the midwives," it says, "that when the Hebrew women began to give birth they should kill the males and keep the females alive." O cruel and dull tyrant, to order the males to be killed and the females kept alive! Herod too did this when he sought Christ among the children. But what is this, that the most savage enemy orders the males to be killed and the females to live? If he wanted to wipe out the nation of the Hebrews, he would have ordered the females to be killed along with the males, since the females who were spared could again bear males who would become his enemies. Why then do you deceive yourself? Why does blind cruelty get the better of you? You rage and you spare, you kill and you indulge. A great cause and a great reason is at work here, dearest brothers. Let us see what the staging of this secret means, which orders the males to be killed and the females to live. The devil was laboring to kill in man the strongest and manly senses of the soul, by which we savor heavenly and divine things, that is, reason, prudence, constancy, innocence, and faith, and to let live in him what was held to be womanish, weak, fragile, and prone to vice, that is, greed, lust, avarice, luxury, madness, and the like, which he wished to live in the people in the figure of the females: that is, that when the virtues were killed the vices might remain. "But the midwives of the Hebrews did not obey Pharaoh. And God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied." As to the spiritual sense, these midwives who did not obey Pharaoh are the souls and minds of the saints, which not only refused to obey Pharaoh the devil but, as midwives delivering from the womb of the heart the males, that is, the virtues of good works, like an offspring of divine seed, brought them forth into the light of thought, so that the strength of faith might prevail. And for this God dealt well with such souls, which served not Pharaoh the devil but the heavenly commands. But so that the divine mysteries might be fulfilled, let us see how Moses, who bore the type of Christ, escaped that deadly edict of Pharaoh. "His mother," it says, "took a basket and smeared it with pitch and bitumen, and put the infant in it, and placed it at the bank of the river. And his sister watched from afar, to see what would become of him. And Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe at the river, and when she saw the basket by the bank, she sent her maid and took it up. And opening it she saw the boy crying in the basket, and spared him, and said, 'This is one of the Hebrews' infants.'" Moses' mother, then, was a figure of the Synagogue of the fathers and prophets, from whose origin Christ was born according to the flesh, whose type Moses then indicated. When he was born, a beautiful infant, he was hidden by his mother for three months. Wonderfully it says "a beautiful infant," because he is more beautiful than all beauty, fairer than all fairness, as it is written of him: "Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men." But let us see what these three months signify. The three months, I say, foretell the mysteries of the divine Trinity, because the Trinity was hidden in Christ from the Synagogue of the fathers, as the apostle says: "The mystery hidden from ancient ages, which none of the rulers knew, which has now been made known to the Gentiles." And the Savior himself says: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field." This treasure is Christ, who was held hidden in the field of the world by the scriptures of the Old Testament, because there the mysteries of the ancient law were wrapped in certain images in the old records, and the typical mysteries of allegorical riddles still lay concealed and stored away among the very shadows of figures. Moreover these three months make ninety days, forty of them before the passion, in which the Lord is tempted by the devil, and fifty after the resurrection, at the completion of which he sent the Holy Spirit to believers. After these spans of time, then, when the Holy Spirit had been received, as I said, he who was hidden among Israel in the law and the prophets became known to all nations.

The basket in which the infant was put and placed at the river's bank clearly indicated the type of the holy people. For a basket (tibin) is a kind of small vessel like a box, woven of wild twigs. Some have rendered this vessel from the Hebrew language as "chest," others as "little coffer," which we, as I said, more expressly call a "box," because there all the secrets of the law were stored up in Christ. For just as this vessel is called a basket ... for there are two kinds of fire: one from the temptation of the evil one, by which the virtue of our patience is tested in the heat of persecution, since "we must," it says, "enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations"; and the other from the grace of the divine Spirit, as I have often said, by which the minds of the faithful and of those who persevere to the end are enlightened. But come now, let us see why the infant Moses was exposed at the river's bank. This is wonderfully said, because the Lord, whose type Moses had put on, is found by believers nowhere else than at the river of washing and the water of baptism. That the infant was crying signified that Christ wept over the sins of the old man. Hence too he wept at the raising of Lazarus, lamenting the faithlessness of the Jews, because they would not believe such great wonders of God. And the Scripture added, saying: "Then his sister watched from afar to see what would become of him." Who is this sister of his, if not that people from Israel which is to believe under Elijah in the last times? For she from afar, that is, from the end of the age, anxiously looks out in the spirit and watches who they are who will receive Christ, the Son of God, through the washing of saving water. Then he added: "Then," it says, "Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe at the river, and saw the basket, and picked it up, and opened it, and saw the infant, and said: 'This is one of the sons of the Hebrews.'" Let us observe more carefully what this daughter of Pharaoh indicates, or why she picked up the infant. By Pharaoh's daughter I understand nothing other than the Church from the Gentiles, cleansed by the sanctification of the life-giving washing, which picked up and keeps in herself Christ, driven out and exposed by the Synagogue, his mother according to the flesh, as an infant (for he seemed a little one when he was seen in a man), he who would now belong not to that mother who drove him out and exposes him, but to her who picked him up and keeps him. Indeed, when it was said to him, "Behold, your mother and your brothers," he answered: "Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?" And he looked at his disciples and said: "Behold my mother and my brothers. For all who do the precepts of my Father are my mother and brother and sister." So the mother of Christ is no longer the Synagogue, which could not keep him in herself, but the Church coming from the Gentiles, which picked him up by believing from the very time of temptation and raised him, as was fitting for the Son of God, with royal training in the dwelling of her mind, where he was brought to the measure of a mature man and was found king and judge of the living and the dead. Not that the Son of God was ever a little one, but he was seen as a little one when he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and made himself like a mustard seed, which is sown smaller than all herbs in the garden of the heart, but nonetheless becomes greater than all when it is recognized in the kingdom of the age to come.

"But when Pharaoh's daughter wished to nurse him," it says, "his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter: 'Do you want me to call you a nursing woman from the Hebrews, and she will nurse the infant for you?' And Pharaoh's daughter said to her: 'Go.' And she called," it says, "the boy's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her: 'Keep this infant for me, and nurse him for me.'" See what she says: "Keep for me and nurse for me," she says, "this infant." For me, she says, not for you. For he was now necessary to the Church from the Gentiles, not to the Synagogue. But meanwhile, for a time, he was given back to the Synagogue, from which he had been begotten according to the flesh through the law and the prophets, as the apostle says: "Whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ, who is blessed forever." And since it had been divinely ordained that Christ should not be handed over to the Gentiles at once, but should first be given back to his own people to preach the kingdom of God to them, as he himself said, "I was sent only to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel," and "It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs," therefore Pharaoh's daughter, that is, the Church from the Gentiles, did not take him up at once, but he was given back to his mother, because he first had to be nursed according to the ancient law and receive the milk of that law as his drink, as he himself says: "I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it." And he did so, both fulfilling and keeping every bounty of the law. Indeed, when he had cleansed a leper on the sabbath, he ordered him to show himself to the priest and, according to the law, offer him either a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. This, then, is the infant's being given back to his mother to be nursed: Christ, from his birth to his passion, was to be in the Synagogue according to the observance of the law, and then to be given back, now grown, that is, after the resurrection, to Pharaoh's daughter, that is, to the Church from the Gentiles. For Christ, as the evangelist says, had not yet been glorified, because he had not yet suffered. Indeed, immediately after his venerable resurrection he sent the apostles to the Gentiles, saying: "Go to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." When, then, Christ sent the apostles to the nations of the Gentiles, then his mother according to the flesh, the Synagogue, gave him back to Pharaoh's daughter, that is, to the Church from the Gentiles. But perhaps someone may say: "If Pharaoh was a figure of the devil, how is his daughter counted as a type of the Church and said to have taken up the Lord?" Hear the reason. All nations, before they believe and before they are reborn of water and the power from above, are called sons of the devil and children of wrath, and are named a brood of vipers, as the apostle says: "We too were once children of wrath, but now sons of God," and John the Baptist: "Brood of vipers." You see, then, that through repentance for past offenses and the sanctification of the life-giving washing, sons of the devil, children of wrath, and offspring of vipers can become sons of God and be counted in the body of the Church. And so all the nations of the world, whose type Pharaoh's daughter bore in herself, though before faith they are called sons of the devil as of Pharaoh, yet when they believe in God and become his temple, are then called members of Christ and the body of the Church. Let it suffice meanwhile to have said these few things out of many. May God the Father almighty grant me grace in the opening of my mouth and mind to understand the divine mysteries, and grant you the gifts of spiritual graces, so that I may explain with fitting reason everything written in the heavenly treasuries, and you, since the law is spiritual, may grasp spiritually what is spiritually discussed.

"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: Keep in mind the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it. Six days you shall work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God. You shall do no work on that day, you and your son and your daughter and your maidservant, your ox and your beast of burden and all your cattle,'" and so on. Many precepts of the divine law are gathered in this reading, and to discuss them all in one tractate would be not so much difficult as excessive, not arduous but long-winded. So, deferring the rest, let us for the moment treat only the observance of the sabbath, without which the Jews think every man is a stranger to the hope of eternal life. They would say this truly and rightly, if they first knew what the sabbath is. But men given over to the belly alone and nothing but flesh render everything related in the divine Scriptures, which must be understood spiritually, since the law is spiritual, in a merely bodily sense, since, bound to the workshop of the belly, they know how to cultivate nothing but the flesh. Indeed they received this law of the sabbath together with the cattle, so that, since the law is given in the same form to both men and beasts, it would show beyond doubt that those men are cattle to whom he gave the covenant together with the cattle, when he says: "You shall do no work on that day, nor your ox, nor your beast of burden, nor any of your cattle." So if man's salvation lay in the sabbath, why was the same form of law given to the cattle, unless perhaps they think the glory of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven were promised to cattle? It is truer to believe that this law is likened to cattle, because on the sabbath, while the other members are idle, only the belly is fed. But if the good of man differs from that of a beast, so that the good of man lies in the mind alone and that of the beast in the flesh, and it belongs to the beast to fatten the flesh and to man to nourish the soul with divine reason, why do they observe the sabbath as though it were a sacrament of divine religion, serving only feasts and the table, and are not even idle then, since you see them busy in taking their food? But the Jew may answer: "If the sabbath was not to be observed, why is it written, as Moses says: 'Keep in mind the day of the sabbath, to sanctify it'?" What then? Did Moses himself not keep the sabbath day in mind, he who, fasting forty days, often let sabbath days pass, which he would certainly have profaned by going unfed, if it is not lawful to fast on the sabbath? For if this solemnity must be celebrated only by serving the belly, Moses himself, the lawgiver, as I said, is guilty, who fasting forty days did not keep the sabbath. Elijah too, likewise unfed for forty days and nights, exhausted, wearied, and exercised his belly for so many sabbath days by lack of food: so he certainly acted against the law, if the sacrament of the sabbath is plenty of food and a full belly. The same charge holds Daniel too, who profaned, by their reckoning, not so many sabbath days, but still profaned them: for he fasted three weeks. Zechariah also fasted not only in the fourth, fifth, and tenth months, but also in the seventh, that is, on the sabbath. How were these men found worthy to see so many heavenly visions, if they deserved to be guilty of profaned sabbaths? Or if it is a supreme crime to do anything on the sabbath, how did Joshua son of Nun, Moses' successor, lead out an armed army for eight joined and continuous days, among which there was certainly a sabbath day, and move the camp and the ark of God with the priests and all the districts? He also led the column around the walls of Jericho, and on the eighth day ordered the priests to sound the sacred trumpets. And, if it could be determined, perhaps it was the sabbath day on which the walls of Jericho fell without battle at the noise of the blaring trumpets, and at the shout of the armed people the whole city, having laid aside its terror, fell into the power of the victorious army, and blood was shed, and spoils taken, and plunder carried off from the enemy. Whence, I say, so great and so remarkable a victory over the enemy, if it was not lawful to do anything on the sabbath? Or if this was done by the precept of the law, let the Jews know that the rest of their sabbath, which had been commanded long before, was afterwards broken without crime.

I will add another similar example. There was a certain Shunammite woman in the region who, because she received the prophet Elisha as a guest and cared for him, was found worthy, as the reward of hospitality, to have a son, though she had been childless. While her maternal affections were warm, a hostile illness took this boy from her, still young, and bound him over by the laws of a hastened death while still unripe: suddenly, amid the joys of an unhoped-for happiness, the exultant mother, while promising herself much from her son, received the unexpected wound of bereavement; and since what comes unhoped-for is usually loved the more, the son snatched away, whom unexpected happiness had given her, heaped up her grief. But grief could in no way disturb the judgment of this prudent woman: she lays the lifeless boy on the bed of the prophet, her absent guest. Having done this, she hastens to go to the prophet himself, to seek help against her son's death from the one through whom she had received a son without asking. So she saddles a donkey and prepares with urgent speed what was needed for the journey; she hates and breaks off all delays, rushes everything, hurries to be a mother again. When her husband tried to hold her back because of the new moon and because of the sabbath, the prudent woman, devoting herself wholly to the vows of devotion, and to profit even him who held her back, believed that that would be a sabbath if, her son restored, she obtained rest from the grief in which alone she was laboring. So she sets out, comes to the prophet on the sabbath, and asks him to come. And when he came, he raised her son from the dead. So, if the sabbath had been profaned by the journey, the prophet could not have raised the boy either, because he would have violated the sabbath against the law. I will further add that the army of the Jews was badly treated by the enemy because of its sabbath rest, and was defeated for following the sabbath. Judas Maccabeus, when he had led out his column against the enemy, both laid the foe low and brought the people back from victory not only safe but glorious. One may well exclaim: if a crime against religion is committed by doing something on the sabbath, whence, I ask, this great victory, when the sabbath was profaned by war? Nor will it be credible ... that almighty God, who always works for the care of his man; for whose benefit, bearing a care that foresees, he measured out the parts of the world and tempered the tasks of the elements, poured out the brightness of most welcome light, fitted the night for the boon of rest, sustained the use of cattle, the labors of animals, the services of quadrupeds, and impressed on the earth its fruitfulness and on the springs their abundance for the nourishment and refreshment of human flesh, should give man, for whose care he had provided so much, such precepts in the observance of the law as to forbid again by law the comforts of health and the necessities of the human condition! "But why," you say, "is it written: 'The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall do no work on that day'?" I say what I think: if it is a crime to do anything on the sabbath, then all creation too is guilty. For why does the day rise on the sabbath, if everything must rest in everything? Why the light? Why do the stars rise on the sabbath? Why does the sea move its waves on the very sabbath? Why do the winds blow, clouds darken the day, all things whirl with their storms and tempests? Why do springs boil up, rivers flow, the earth unfold its offspring? And not to be long in running through each thing: why is a Jew often born on the very sabbath, if not because nature is allowed to do its works, and man is not forbidden by divine law to do something on the sabbath day?

But those who do not understand what the sabbath is, or what the rest of the sabbath is, make a mockery of the law itself. For it is agreed that there are two kinds of sabbaths, one temporary, the other eternal; one figurative, the other true; one for testing, the other for salvation; one which the Lord says he hates, the other which he forbids to be profaned. The divine Scripture proves that this temporary sabbath was laid on the people not for salvation but for testing, when the Lord says to Moses: "Tell them," he says, "that I may test them whether they walk in my ways: let them gather manna for six days, but on the seventh day let them rest." They, despising this precept, went out on the seventh day to gather manna, and even gathered wood on the sabbaths, as it is written, so that you may know that the rest of this sabbath was commanded for the people's testing, not for salvation. For God, who knew the minds of the forgetful people, and that, ungrateful for the heavenly benefits, they would not hold within the memory of the fear of God, commanded them the rest of the sabbath, not because nothing should be done, but so that the people might rest from their crimes at least on the one day of the sabbath. And so religion is held out to them, so that by the frequent recurrence of the sabbath they might also remember the law of the Lord, and by the remembrance of the law be restrained from wrongdoing. Otherwise this day would not have been necessary for them, if they had been willing to live after the example of the old patriarchs, so that the fear of God never departed from their minds. Indeed this day would be a sacred one if the precept about the sabbath had also been laid on the earlier fathers. But nothing about the sabbath is commanded to Adam, nothing to righteous Abel, nothing to Seth, nothing to Enoch himself, who was translated, nothing to Noah, who alone was preserved for the conservation of the human race. So if the ground of salvation, as these people think, consists in observing the sabbath, then those earlier men who did not keep sabbaths fell away from salvation; or if they are saved without the sabbath, what use is it to keep the sabbath, since without its observance men are held holy and illustrious before God? But you will say to me: "This day was blessed by God." And I will answer: if this day was blessed because God did nothing on it, much more blessed are those days on which he displayed his divine works. For who does not know that there is more honor not where nothing is done, but where something is provided for human benefit? Who, I say, does not know that there is more grace where something is bestowed by kindness than where a day is barren from idleness, on which blessing was rightly placed by God? For the day which had not been blessed in work would not have been established without reason, if it had remained alone and idle without the fruit of blessing. For the earlier days too received a blessing, having divine works, as the Scripture says: "And God saw all that he had made, and blessed them"; much more does he bless the very days on which the things made were called very good and obtained a blessing from God himself.

But now we must briefly discuss the true sabbath, so as to follow out both its part and its fullness. Sabbath, then, is interpreted in the Latin word as rest or holiday. This is the rest of the sabbath: to abstain from evil and most wicked works, not from good and illustrious ones; not from giving benefits or bestowing comforts, but from all crimes and detestable offenses. Innocence, then, is a daily sabbath, abstinence a daily religion. For when the single days, in continuous order, receive us resting from crime, we nonetheless make all those days one. Otherwise he mocks the sabbath day who thinks that by one day's rest he [atones for] the crimes of the other days; for rest does not make innocent those who will return to their crimes. Therefore this day is not to be reckoned by us according to the flesh, but understood in spirit and truth, of the life ..., so that, while our whole life is carried on to the end without evil work, our whole life too may be rendered a sabbath. To this is added what blessed David says: "A thousand years are like one day before your eyes, O Lord, which has passed." And so there is no doubt that the seven-thousandth year is the seventh day of the Lord, that is, the true sabbath. And this will be the holy sabbath which the Lord commands to be kept and forbids to be profaned, that is, the seven-thousandth year, in which man will do no servile work, that is, no sin, in the kingdom of God, because "he who commits sin," he says, "is the slave of sin." This is the sabbath of sabbaths, in which all things will be holy, devout, peaceful, quiet, secure. These are the tender and delicate sabbaths, where there will be no pain or toil, no sickness, no malice, no sin, but immortal and eternal glory will be granted. For the devil will then be bound in the abyss, so that he may have no power to deceive anyone; and then there will be no malice there, since the owner of malice, that is, the devil, has been removed. Now, then, the rest of the true sabbath is kept in the faith and holiness of the righteous, while they abstain from evil works; but the perfection of the sabbath of sabbaths will be presented to us in the seven-thousandth year, which is the seventh day of the Lord, in the resurrection of the saints and in the kingdom of God. Why then, Jew, do you still pursue from the law the shadow of things to come, when Christ, the end of the law, has already come, in whom not a shadow but the truth, not a figure but the fullness of religion has been rendered? Then all things were done in image, as through riddles; now the truth, made clear, has succeeded. And so then the figure of the future sabbath was commanded to be held in honor through the law, so that when the day of the true sabbath, that is, the holiday from evil works, had come through the faith of the Gospel, then, the image removed, the honor of the true sabbath might be held more illustrious.

"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: This month shall be for you the beginning of months, the first among the months of the year.'" All things established by divine counsel and judgment have their beginnings, from which they arose and started; they have causes on account of which they had to be signified; they are not without reason, but have fixed orders of times, so that they are not thrown into confusion by indiscriminate mixing. So the mystery of the Passover, dearest brothers, which is now celebrated in the passion of the Lord's body, was not sudden or unforeseen. For whatever is new and splendid and magnificent was shown beforehand in likeness through the ancient law, so that faith in the deed might be the more commended by the past signification. Hence, if you are willing to attend to our Lord's passion through the image of the likeness shown long ago, you will find that this lamb, which was sacrificed at the Passover, was a figure of Christ, who struck Egypt and set Israel free. Indeed Jeremiah, the most accepted of the prophets, calls our God and Savior this lamb when he says: "I, like a spotless lamb without malice, was led to death"; and his companion Isaiah says: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth. In humiliation his judgment was taken away; who will tell his generation?" O what kind of lamb is this, whose birth the Scripture says cannot be told? "A sheep," it says, "a male, a year old, mature it shall be; from the sheep and the goats you shall take it. And it shall be kept for you until the fourteenth day of this month, and the whole multitude of the congregation of the sons of Israel shall kill it toward evening." Here is a very great and almost inextricable question: that such a lamb should be sought as has been begotten of sheep and goats, since a common offspring of animals that do not agree in mating is hardly possible. So if such a lamb as is written for the Passover cannot be found, how can the Passover be kept when such a lamb is lacking to be sacrificed at the Passover? And we have already proved that this lamb bore the image of our God and Savior, who is called a lamb not only because of his innocence but also because of his wool, since he would clothe the bodies of the human race, [stripped] by transgression, with the garment of immortality. "From the sheep," it says, "and the goats you shall take it": we must take "from the sheep and the goats" as the Savior himself taught in the Gospel: "I will set," he says, "the righteous like sheep at the right hand, but the sinners like goats at the left." And since the short span of the hours will not let us bring forward many examples, the account must be given in brief of how this lamb is born from sheep and goats.

Ruth, then, was a Moabite, of a sinful nation, which blessed Moses had excluded, saying: "Moabites and Ammonites shall not enter the assembly of God until the tenth generation"; but Boaz was an Israelite, a righteous man of the line of the patriarchs, of the tribe of Judah. He, as the Scripture testifies, after the tenth generation took as wife the Moabite named Ruth, and from him is born Obed, from Obed Jesse, from Jesse David, and from David, according to the order of generations, holy Mary is born, from whom Christ took flesh, having, namely, a twofold origin of that flesh: from the goats, the sinners of the Moabite nation, from whom we showed that Ruth, mother of Obed, came; and from the sheep of the patriarchs, from whom Boaz his father was, a righteous man, of the race of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah. Hence this spotless lamb, that is, Christ our Lord, is called the lion of the tribe of Judah: for "the lion of the tribe of Judah," it says, "the root of David, has conquered." And Isaiah: "A rod," he says, "shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall go up from his root": this is Jesse, the father of David, from whose root, that is, race, the rod, that is, Mary, arose, from whom the flower, Christ, went up. Indeed blessed Moses too, knowing this mystery of Christ's birth, said that this lamb was to be sacrificed from the sheep and the goats, because, if the Lord had put on a human body only from Israel, which the law calls sheep, and not from the Gentiles of sinners, whom it likens to goats, the Gentiles would not have been found worthy to believe in Christ or be saved, because they would not have the pledge of their flesh in the body of Christ. But now the Gentiles are saved in Christ because they were found worthy to have the pledge of their redemption, from the origin of Ruth, in the body of Christ. And so the only such lamb as was sought for the Passover, from the sheep and the goats, was found to be Christ, who is slain no more than once, so that the true Passover of the Lord may be celebrated. "It is the Lord's Passover," it says; it did not say "the people's," so that, since the Passover took its name from the passion, it might be called the Lord's Passover, because not the people but the Lord was sacrificed in the figure of the lamb. Indeed blessed Paul the apostle says: "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed." But I confess, dearest brothers, that I wonder that, in saying "sheep" (ovis, feminine), he named it male. For no one calls a sheep male; but here he says: "The sheep shall be for you mature, male, a year old, from the lambs and the goats." When he names a sheep, he indicates the flesh of Christ, which the apostle defined as the Church, saying, "the flesh of Christ, which is the Church," from which all of us who believe in Christ have been begotten, whose offspring are called saints. He says "male" in order to show that that flesh is not feminine but manly, that is, of a mature man, because there is not male and female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. And so such a spotless lamb is chosen, so that the simplicity and innocence of Christ may be shown under the figure of this lamb; a male is sought, so that his unconquered strength may be proved; it is called a year old, because from the time he was baptized in the Jordan by John, when John said, "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world," Christ suffered when the time of his preaching was completed and fulfilled, as David foretold of this: "You will bless the crown of the year of your kindness." It is also mature, because, as the apostle says, "all the fullness of the divinity dwells in him bodily"; in the first month, because he who had come to take away the sins of the world had to suffer at the time in which the beginnings of the world took place, calling the end back to the origin, so that all that had perished in Adam might be restored in Christ. For whoever means to overthrow something attacks the very birth of its nature, and cuts off the hope of renewed vigor by killing the root completely. And so the world was overcome by the Lord's passion at the very time of its birth, so that it might be broken together with the seed of all evils, as the Lord himself says to his apostles in the Gospel: "Rejoice and exult, for I have overcome the world."

"But you shall eat unleavened bread," it says, "with bitter herbs," because it was going to be bitter for the Jews themselves that they would kill their Lord and the prince of life, whose living death, so to speak, raised the dead. Bitter for them, certainly, that they came by night as if against a robber; bitter the nails with which they fixed him; bitter the unleavened bread always to be eaten by them; bitter the words they shouted, "His blood be on us and on our children"; bitter Judas Iscariot, whom they hired for a fee; bitter the thorns with which they crowned his head in mockery; bitter the hands with which they shed the Lord's blood. Therefore he commanded that this be eaten with bitter herbs, because everything they were going to do in the passion of the lamb, that is, of Christ, would be bitter for them. And since, as the apostle says, the cross of Christ is folly to those who are perishing but to those who are to be saved it is the power of God, and the fragrance of Christ is to some a fragrance of life to life, to others a fragrance of death to death, therefore, as it was bitter for them to persecute the Son of God, so the drink of gall and vinegar expiated the bitternesses of our sins. And as the thresholds of the house are smeared with the lamb's blood, so that the angel who laid Egypt waste might be kept from the houses marked with the lamb's blood, so too we cannot otherwise escape the disasters of this world and enter the kingdom of God except through the sign of the blood of the Lord's passion. For the blood of Christ is salvation to believers, punishment to unbelievers. For Egypt was in the likeness of this world, Pharaoh of the devil. The people of Israel bore our type. So, as that people was freed from Egypt through the sacrifice of the lamb, through the mystery of the Passover, so we too who believe in him are freed from the captivity of this world and from the tyranny of Pharaoh, that is, the devil. And as Pharaoh, who was pursuing the sons of the Israelites, perished overwhelmed in the water in which the people was freed, so now too in the same water of baptism in which we are freed, Pharaoh, that is, the devil, perishes ... in shipwreck. "But you shall eat it roasted with fire." For the word of God is always fiery. "And let nothing of it be left over," because there is nothing in Christ that can be rejected; "its bones shall not be broken," because the strength of Christ is unconquered; "but if anything is left over, it shall be consumed with fire," that is, if a man cannot grasp something of Christ, let it be reserved to the Holy Spirit, because Scripture testifies that the Holy Spirit came upon believers like fire. "So," it says, "you shall eat the head and the feet and the inner parts." The meaning here is threefold, but for speed it must be explained concisely: the head is the beginning, the inner parts the middle, and the feet the things to come; the learned and instructed understand these things. For the head of Christ is the Father; the inner parts are the divine Word himself, who has made known the bosom of the Father; and the Spirit, the Paraclete, had the apostles as feet, through whom he ran announcing the truth. "So," it says, "you shall eat: you shall have your loins girded, and let there be sandals on your feet," so that we may walk in faith with firm step and steady devotion. "Let there be a staff in your hands," so that it might show the firmest pillar of the cross,

with which we are supported. "And you shall eat unleavened bread," it says, "and whoever eats what is leavened shall die the death." Did it seem just that whoever ate what was leavened should die the death? Surely, if leaven polluted a man, it should have been forbidden not only at the Passover but at all times, since God commands his servants to remain clean and purged not only on the day of the Passover but at all times. But since we have said that the Passover took its name from the passion, this indicated that whoever believed in the Lord's passion and was found worthy to receive the Passover of the sacred body must now cast away from his mind the leaven of malice and wickedness, as the blessed apostle says: "Cast out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump, in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Therefore, dearest brothers, this Passover of the Lord, prefigured through the law, urged by the threat that whoever did not keep it should die the death, foretold by the prophetic voice, awaited through the hope of the ancients, fulfilled through the apostolic preaching, received through the faith of the Gospel, consecrated through the blood of Christ, ordained for the future resurrection: who would not receive it with all reverence and devout awe, since the Scripture says, "It is the Lord's Passover," that is, the Lord's passion? By this passion the world was redeemed, the devil laid low, Christ's triumph made glorious. This, I say, is the venerable and saving mystery of the Passover, by which Christ, the sun of righteousness, killed the law of death and, by rising again, showed us a new day brighter than the heat of the sun, at which cruel hell shuddered, at which, as Christ rose, heaven opened. Whoever, then, celebrates the mystery of so great a gift with lawful observance is a sharer with the apostles, a companion of the prophets; he fulfills the law, keeps the faith of the Gospel, honors Christ, magnifies God the Father, extends his hope toward everlasting salvation, gains a glorious account for himself. For he keeps the ordinance laid down by God the Father himself, which he willed and commanded to be kept in Christ,

"And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to Aaron and say to him: Any man who offers, according to all his promise and according to all his choice, a sacrifice of salvation to the Lord.'" I know, dearest brothers, that I have often treated this book of Leviticus and have explained to your charity, as I could and, I think, as I ought, its difficult and almost inextricable questions. But the reading that has just been read also has so many questions, such tangled obscurities, that the edge of the mind can hardly plunge into the secrets of the matters, can hardly gaze on and look into the depths of the words and notice the subtleties of the sayings: so wrapped is each thing in the coverings of allegory, so darkened by the cloud of riddles, that they can hardly be understood and explained. Yet, relying not on my own ability but on confidence in the divine promise, in which he says, "Ask and you will receive, for to everyone who asks it will be given, and to him who knocks it will be opened, and he who seeks will find," and "There is nothing hidden that will not be made known, and nothing covered that will not be revealed," I venture through the Lord to preach on this very reading, so that what seems stored away in a more secret recess may be opened into the light of knowledge, and openly ... unless a sacrifice of praise has been offered to God. For each one, as he has or is able, as far as the mind of believers is sufficient, ought to offer the gift of his devotion. And so it says: "Any man who offers the sacrifice of his vow to the Lord." Not that God needs sacrifices of this kind, since all things are his and he is wholly full and perfect, as it is written: "What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I am full; I do not want burnt offerings of rams and the fat of bulls and goats"; but so that man, through obedience to the law, may make God favorable to himself and by God's favor be freed from the enemy. Indeed Job too offered sacrifices to the Lord according to the number of his sons, so that they might be cleansed from sin. But now God does not seek such sacrifices as were then offered bloodily from the bringing of cattle; rather he desires our mind and conduct, and a heart humbled in the fear of God, as it is written: "A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise." For there is a sacrifice that is offered in the devotion of martyrdom, as it is written: "And when they have killed you, they will offer a sacrifice to God." There is the sacrifice of virginity, when someone has vowed himself to serve God wholly in body and spirit. There is also the sacrifice of almsgiving, when each one, with a willing mind, gives to the poor as he has, as it is written: "Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you." There is also the sacrifice of continence, because God loves the chaste. There is also the saving sacrifice ..., because "Blessed," it says, "are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." There is also the sacrifice of the fear of God and of good faith. Indeed the blessed apostle Paul called the conduct of the saints a living sacrifice pleasing to God, saying: "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice pleasing to God, your reasonable service." And the most holy Barnabas: "Through him," he says, "we offer to God a sacrifice of praise, of lips confessing his name." So, then, we offer our bodies as a sacrifice pleasing to God when we serve God in all holiness and chastity, innocence, faith, and religion. Indeed we are also called the temple of God, as the apostle says: "You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you." For in this temple we present to God pure sacrifices, clean libations of good conduct, a sacrifice pleasing to God as an odor of sweetness, as the apostle says: "We are the good odor of Christ." We have said that martyrdom is a living sacrifice pleasing to God, and that virginity too is a clean sacrifice. Continence is a reasonable service, and prayer from a pure heart is acceptable to God. Indeed the prayers of the saints are offered to the Lord like incense by the hand of an angel, as can be recognized in the Apocalypse. And it speaks of a living sacrifice

because the good conduct of the saints does not have in itself the appearance of death, that is, the mark of sin, as the apostle says, "The sting of death is sin," and "Through sin death came." For in this way he presents a living sacrifice to God who, living his life without sin, has lost the appearance of death. But if anyone says that he has offered his virginity to God as a sacrifice and is not a virgin, he cannot deceive God; or if anyone who has professed continence lives incontinently, or, giving alms, defrauds others, so as to turn into the joy of some what he seems to have made others mourn for, this is the act of a deceiver rather than of a believer, to bestow not one's own but another's: these are appearances of death. And so such conduct, which by living badly has taken into itself the works of death, cannot be called a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice, then, is love from a pure heart and an unfeigned conscience. A living sacrifice is faith without stain. A living sacrifice is a tongue without deceit. A living sacrifice is almsgiving without fraud. A living sacrifice is an eye without offense. A living sacrifice is a religious life, a pure faith, a sincere soul. And so the Scripture has named our reasonable service, that is, holy conduct, a living sacrifice pleasing to God. But since the figurative law commanded what was to be done spiritually to be observed first, for a time, in a fleshly way, so that spiritual things might be shown in place of fleshly ones, heavenly in place of earthly, invisible in place of visible, we must therefore go back over the kinds of cattle I have named. "You shall not offer," it says, "a blind victim." This is true, dearest brothers, because a blind mind, since it neither sees God nor does his works, cannot offer a sacrifice to the Lord. For there are many who want to please men for the present: they curse the works of sin, yet do the same things they blame in others, having their heart blinded, not knowing that in judging another they condemn themselves by doing the same things. And so these are called blind and are rightly rejected from God's sacrifice. But he added further: "Torn away," it says, "or having its tongue cut off." Torn away is he who, though he has believed in Christ and through the sacrament of baptism has cleaved to the Lord's body, as the apostle says, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ," nevertheless, if he is greedy for avarice, which is the root of all evils, greedy for worldly offices, greedy for vices and public powers, living luxuriously without regard for religion, he is rightly said to be torn away from Christ by his bad conduct; and not only torn away but also, as is written in this place, he is called crushed; for it says: "neither torn away nor crushed." For one who has rolled back from religion to the world is crushed on the earth, as he savors earthly things and broods over earthly acts; he has fallen from heaven to earth, and so is crushed and battered. And so, just as an animal torn away by force or by theft, crushed and battered, could not then be offered in sacrifice, so too the conduct of those who have been torn away from Christ by the vice of the world or the iniquity of the devil, crushed on the earth and battered by fleshly vices, cannot be counted in the sacrifice of God.

But he added further: "And having its tongue cut off." He has his tongue cut off who does not confess and proclaim his God, who does not meditate on the divine law, as it is written of the blessed man: "And on his law he will meditate day and night." Certainly he above all has his tongue cut off who in time of persecution, fearing the stench of prison or tortures or finally death itself, does not confess and praise his God. And so such people, who are said to have their tongue cut off because they do not confess their God, are rejected from the divine sacrifice. "Nor worm-ridden." Worm-ridden is said of one whose bodily members are overrun by the fault of an itch. These worms, then, are unclean spirits, which often insert themselves into the bodies of men and stir up the itch of lust and of various desires; they also send in the itch of avarice, the itch of unchastity, and the itch of all fleshly greed, and do not let the body or soul remain quiet in holiness and goodness, but corrupt everything and bring it to the rottenness of adultery. And so these worms, that is, unclean spirits, tempters and corrupters of souls and bodies, were first cast out by the salt of the heavenly word, so that they might restore the body, salted with the salt of divine wisdom, to its due holiness, as the Lord said to his disciples, "You are the salt of the earth," so that the flesh of man might no longer be worm-ridden earth, but wise salt killing the worm of sin. "Nor having," it says, "field mange." We must observe more carefully what field mange is. The Lord in his parables set down that the field is the world, saying: "Lord, you sowed good seed in your field; where then do these weeds come from?" and afterwards, in the explanation of the parable: "The field," he says, "is the world"; and again: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field," so that by the field he might indicate the world, and by the treasure the law, in which Christ is hidden. Since, then, it has now been proved that the field must be understood as the world, we must see what this field mange is. No one doubts, dearest brothers, that mange is customarily named for sin, as is the darnel that the enemy sowed in that same field. But let us see why he called it field mange: "Nor," it says, "having field mange." For the sin of the flesh is born in the world. So when he names field mange, he marks the sins of the Gentiles, that is, idolatry, incest, adultery, murder, lying with males, and effeminate men, who exceed every measure of sinning and infect not a part of the body but the whole body. Therefore, beloved, he named these worldly and most shameful vices of the flesh field mange, that is, worldly, so that, just as a mangy animal is barred from sacrifice, so too any man of the Church's body who has these crimes is rejected from the sacrifice of God. For such contagions often insinuate themselves into the bodies of Christians. And so, as I said, they are rejected from the Lord's sacrifice.

But he added further: "Nor having ringworm." Ringworm is one thing, field mange another. We have already said that field mange is the sins of the Gentiles, who exceed the measure of sinning. Ringworm is the gathering of heretics, which often plunges itself into the body of the Church. For as ringworm makes a round and moist circle, so heretics make gatherings both unlawful and round: that is, always learning and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth, they turn in endless questions. Hence the blessed apostle Paul forbids endless questions and genealogies without end. This, then, is the round gathering of heretics which he calls ringworm, which always turns in questions and has no end of resisting. For every circle does not know where it ends, because it always turns, and where it has ended, it begins. Though it is on the body, it is not the body but a blemish on the body. Hence the blessed apostle John says of such heretics: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us." So, when the divine Scripture rejects a victim that has ringworm, it certainly curses the teaching of heretics. "Nor," it says, "shall you offer in sacrifice a victim having its ear cut off." What do you think, brothers, a victim with its ear cut off must be understood to mean, if not the man who has ears to hear the word of God but does not do what is commanded? Hence the blessed apostle too accuses these two kinds of people, one that does not believe the Gospel, the other that does not obey. So this one too has ears to hear so as to believe, but has no will to do, and so his ear is said to be cut off, not one that never existed but one that seems cut away. These are those who hear the Gospel of Christ, but cut off their very hearing when they scorn doing what is commanded. Hence the blessed apostle Paul says that not the hearers of the law but the doers are justified before God. And by this it must now be plain to you that, when the figurative law rejects from God's sacrifice a victim with its ear cut off, it is not the condition of the animal that it rejects but the life of those who cut off their own hearing by not doing what has been commanded. "Nor," it says, "shall you offer a victim having its tail cut off." The tail is a kind of protection for animals, with which they drive off flies and gadflies and everything hostile. But in comparing these things (since the sacred law was speaking not of cattle but of men, as the blessed apostle also explains, "God has no care for oxen, but he said this for us"), so in this place too it was speaking not of an animal's tail but of a man's conduct. What should we understand by the flies and gadflies driven off by the tail, if not all the demons and wandering spirits of this air, which often harass not only the bodies but also the souls of believers? Hence the blessed apostle Paul mentions these flies and gadflies, that is, the wandering and flying spirits of this air, when he says: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of this world of darkness." So all the demons that harass the bodies or souls of believers must be driven off by the tail of religion. For what is the tail if not the grace of faith? For as the tail is at the end of the body, so in the last times the grace of spiritual faith has been given. And as flies and gadflies are driven off by the tail, so by the spiritual grace that has been granted to believers in the last times all these wandering demons flying through the air of this

world are driven off from the bodies and souls of the faithful. Not without reason, then, was the conduct of men shown by the comparison with cattle: for just as an animal whose tail is cut off cannot drive off what attacks it, so too a man who has lost the spiritual chrism received through faith in the last times can in no way be a sacrifice, but will be exposed to unclean and wandering spirits. And he added: "Nor castrated," it says, that is, with testicles cut off, "nor with them torn out; you shall not offer these to the Lord." Those are said to have their testicles cut off who, though they are males in body, give the use of their body in the place of women. And so, when he rejects such a victim, he condemns men re-formed into women; he casts out those who lie with males. Hence the apostle excludes such men from the kingdom of God, saying: "Neither the effeminate nor those who lie with males will see the kingdom of God." Nor, he says, is that gift to be offered which has been taken from a stranger. The stranger is he who is outside the faith and alien to the godly discipline, that is, the devil, as the Lord too says of Antichrist: "When another comes, him you will receive." And so he says "another," that is, an alien. And so, when he forbids the offering of a victim received from a stranger, that is, an alien, he rejects the man who, taking up the works of malice from the foreigner, that is, the devil, carries out an alien will. For what kind of sacrifice to God can such a man be, who does not do the things of God? And this is what Scripture says, that what is received from the hand of a foreigner must not be offered to God. But it is enough to have treated these things thus far.

"And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Send men to view the land of the Canaanites, which I am giving to the sons of Israel as a possession, one man,' he says, 'from each tribe, by their fathers' clans,'" and so on. The divine laws, which are not inscribed on stones but fixed in hearts, not cut in oak or bronze but placed in the soul and mind, contain either moral precepts or natural decrees; some of them are open and clear, others riddling and figurative and stored away in the secret of mysteries, which the spirit nevertheless attains by investigating with the greatest zeal, as the blessed apostle says: "The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God." Indeed this reading not only indicates the history of an event, but already then showed by figurative prefiguration what was to come concerning Christ. And since old things agree with new not in time but in meaning, we, comparing by that same meaning the new with the old and the old with the new, show that the two testaments have one cause and meaning through the one Spirit of God. For there is one God and his Word, that is, the Son of God, and one Holy Spirit, who works all in all, who spoke both in the law in types and in the apostles openly, as the Lord himself says: "The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure new things and old," that is, the law and the Gospel, because the law is the testimony of the Gospel and the Gospel the fulfillment of the law. But since there are, as has been said, not only appearances of things but also images of providence, which occur and appear at appointed times, new and old, ancient and present, early and antique, which nevertheless, their names changed while their cause and dignity remain or succeed, receive their end without destruction (for we take "end" to mean the perfection of a thing, not its failure), or follow after and preserve the first, all things nevertheless have their causes, orders, and arrangements. Listen, then, I ask, more carefully to what this reading indicates. "And the Lord spoke," it says, "to Moses, saying: 'Send men to view the land of the Canaanites, which I am giving to the sons of Israel as a possession, one man from each tribe, by their fathers' clans.' And when he had sent them, they came to the valley of the Cluster and looked at it, and they cut from there a branch with a cluster of grapes, and carried that cluster on a pole; and they also brought with them pomegranates and figs, to show the richness of the land by the quality of its fruits. When they had brought them, they nonetheless troubled all the people, saying: 'The land which we passed through to view, that land devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw are men of huge size. And we saw giants there too, and we were before them like locusts.' Hearing this, the whole congregation raised its voice, and the people wept all that night. And all the sons of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron. And they said to one another: 'Let us make ourselves a leader and return to Egypt.' And Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the whole congregation of the sons of Israel. But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb, these two of the twelve who had viewed the land, tore their clothes and said to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel: 'The land which we viewed is exceedingly good. If the Lord has chosen us, he will bring us into that land and give us a land flowing with milk and honey. But do not become deserters from the Lord, and do not fear the people of this land, for they are food for us. For their time has departed from them, but the Lord is with us;

do not fear them.'" And when the people wanted to stone them, then the glory of God appeared in a cloud over the tabernacle of testimony, intending to strike and crush the whole people of the sons of Israel. But Moses asked the Lord to spare them. The Lord answered him that all who murmured against the Lord would not enter that land; but to their sons, who they said would become the prey of their enemies, who did not know good or evil, to them, he says, "I will give that land. And all who provoked me will not see that land, except Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh; and the children who they said would be plundered, I will bring them in, and they will possess the land from which you have departed ..." Now that we have spoken briefly of the faithlessness of the Jews, it remains for us to follow the order of the prophecy. For "all these things," says the apostle, "happened to them in figure; but they were written for our correction, on whom the ends of the ages have come." If, then, all these things happened in figure, let us see what the figure of this matter was. Spies, it says, were sent into the land of promise, and from there they brought one cluster on a pole, and also pomegranates and figs. These are the great and rich fruits of that land which they brought to the people as the height of wonder. When all Israel saw them, they murmured against the Lord, judging themselves unworthy to possess the good things of that land. But we must observe more carefully who these spies are, or whose image they bore. I, dearest brothers, as far as I am able to fulfill the office of interpreter, understand that these spies bore the figure of none other than the scribes and Pharisees and all the priests of the people of Israel, who had been commanded through the law to watch for and seek the coming of Christ and the great things that were to happen at his coming, and thence ought to hope for and obtain the fruits of righteousness. The land of promise is the flesh of the Virgin Mary, because flesh is called earth by the Lord in the divine Scriptures, as the Lord says to Adam: "You are earth, and to earth you shall go." Notice carefully, I ask, what kind of fruits they brought from this land: "a cluster on a pole, and figs, and pomegranates." What is this cluster from the land of promise, if not Christ from the flesh of the virgin? For God had said: "Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb." Indeed, as that cluster carried on a pole hung suspended between two men, so too Christ was hung on the wood of the cross between two peoples, the Jews and the Christians. And since the cross of Christ, as the apostle said, is folly to those who are perishing but to those who are to be saved it is the power of God, therefore the one who went in front was the figure of the Jewish people, which because of its unbelief was going to leave Christ behind it; the one who came behind indicated the image of our people, which, believing afterwards and having Christ before its eyes, was always going to follow him as a servant his master and a disciple his teacher, as the Lord himself says in the Gospel: "Whoever wishes to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me." This, then, dearest brothers, was the meaning and the cause of the prophecy that the cluster was carried on a pole: the pole indicated the Lord's cross, and the cluster, as I have said, Christ, who was to be hung on the cross. The two men too were the figure of two peoples, as has been said. This cluster, then, pressed by the venerable wood of the cross, gave us who believe in him the wine of his blood to drink, so that the blessed apostles and the whole people of believers were said to be full of new wine.

But they brought with them not only the cluster but also figs. I will say briefly what the fig signifies. The Lord himself showed in the Gospel that the fig bears the image of the ancient law, saying: "A certain householder," he says, "planted a vineyard, and in his vineyard he planted a fig tree." Who is the householder, if not God, who is the father of his household? He planted a vineyard, then, that is, a people, since "You brought a vine out of Egypt," it says, "you drove out the nations and planted it." And certainly it was a people, not a vine, that he had brought out of Egypt, so that you may know that the vineyard must be understood as the people, as Isaiah says: "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." But in his vineyard he planted a fig tree, that is, he placed the law among his people. Indeed, when Adam and Eve after the transgression made themselves aprons of fig leaves, they signified that the transgressor would be under the shadow of the law, because the law, as the apostle said, "was given not for the righteous but for sinners." For just as the fig tree throws to the ground its first fruits, dry and useless, and then renews others, which it brings forth with rich sweetness to due ripeness, so the ancient law, which we have said bears the image of the fig, cast off the first people of the Jews as useless, that is, sinful, and thereafter, the early figs (to use a Greek word, the sycophants), that is, the first people of Israel, being rejected, afterwards through Christ renewed in us the rich and abundant fruits of the Gospels of sweetest taste. For there is a kind of fig tree that brings even its first fruits to ripeness, which is called the twice-bearing, as it is written: "The Lord loved them like the forerunners of the fig." The forerunners are the patriarchs and prophets, who in the old covenant bore before them the fruit of righteousness, preaching the coming of Christ, and, having hope in the new, received the sweetest grace of the Gospels. But of the people of Israel, and of ours, Jeremiah says: "And the Lord showed me two baskets of figs, one of very good figs, the other of very bad." This, as I have often said, already then indicated the image of two peoples. For those two baskets bore the figure of the Synagogue of Israel and of the Church from the Gentiles. Hence the basket of very bad figs shows the rejected people of the Synagogue, while the one of very good figs foretold the people of the Church, sweetest and richest in faith and truth. Though they are born from the root of one tree, that is, of one law, they are distinguished in the fruits of faith. For one fig is that which first comes out with the leaf but cannot reach ripeness, which befell the people of the Jews, which was begotten with the very leaf of the fig, that is, with the very first word of the divine law, but did not deserve to reach the perfection of gospel ripeness; another is that which, having lost its first fruits, is afterwards restored, and which is reckoned the best in the divine Scriptures: that is the Christian people, which after the stumbling of the Jews obtained the grace of divine sweetness, as it is written, "In your sweetness you have prepared your people," and "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet." Hence it must now be plain to you, dearest brothers, that this fig bore the image of the law, just as it is clear that the cluster is a figure of Christ, because neither can Christ be without the law nor the law without Christ. For the law is the testimony of the Gospel, and the Gospel the fulfillment of the law.

But the Scripture further adds that pomegranates were brought along with the cluster and the figs. What should these pomegranates be understood to mean? I, dearest brothers, understand that these pomegranates bore the figure of the Church. For as pomegranates have outside the very firm protection of their rind, which is neither knocked down by a beating wind nor struck by any injury, so the Church, fortified by the power of the Holy Spirit and hanging on the cross of Christ by the firmness of its faith, endures against all the storms of the world with firm and steady perseverance in the nature of its tree, that is, on the wood of the cross. And as this kind of fruit, though enclosed outside by one rind, has within many seeds, white with red, so too the Church, though fortified, as I said, by the power of the one Holy Spirit, contains and preserves the multitude of believers enclosed within it. For the many seeds of the pomegranate show the multitude of the people. And since those seeds are white with red, they doubtless show the type of baptism and of passion: for baptism makes people white, passion makes them red. They also have juices that are sweet mixed with sharpness, because we are commanded to be simple as doves and shrewd as serpents. For there is no goodness so sweet that it does not have the sharpness of the strictest discipline. And since we have already said that the many seeds indicate the multitude of the people, which, though enclosed outside by one rind, are nevertheless separated by an inner membrane, so too in the Church, though we are all brought together as members into the one body of Christ, yet within there are ranks and honors and divisions of dignities and distinctions of gifts, as the apostle says: gifts and graces and merits and offices are distributed to each by one and the same Spirit in one and the same Church. And so, since all these things were offered to the people of Israel in the figure of the divine law and of Christ's Church, and they not only judged themselves unworthy to receive this grace but even wished to return to Egypt, that is, to the world, they did not deserve to receive the land of promise flowing with milk and honey. For what land is it from which the Scripture testifies that milk and honey flow? If you say Judea, no one has ever yet recalled honey flowing from rock or milk from earth there. But the land from which milk and honey are said to flow is the flesh of Christ, from which the milk of the ancient law flows and is given as nourishment to believers, and honey, that is, the sweetness of the Gospels, is granted from the overflowing of Christ; as also the new wine from the cluster that was carried on a pole, and the ripeness of the law in the fig, and the pomegranates in the unity of the Church. And all the good things of the heavenly kingdom that had been promised to the Jews we have obtained through faith in Christ, we who are called by the Lord true Israelites.

"And Joshua son of Nun sent two men from Shittim as spies secretly." Hoshea son of Nun, then, whose name was abolished and changed so that he deserved to be called Jesus (that is, Joshua), in order that the army might hear its new commander inaugurated, namely, with the Lord's name, when he led the people of the sons of Israel into the land of promise, lest the people seem to have been led in as it were through the law of Moses, and not rather through the Savior whose name that Jesus had received as a fitting one, bearing the figure of Christ, gave proofs of many virtues. Since it would be long to review them all now, we must treat only the present reading. "And Jesus son of Nun," it says, "sent from Shittim two men as spies secretly, saying: 'Go up and see the land and Jericho.' And the two young men came and entered Jericho, and they went into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and lodged there." Attend to the arrangements of this mystery, dearest brothers, and inquire into the causes of things: why such great men, for whom the Lord was doing such great powers and wonders, went in to a harlot, as though they could not find lodging elsewhere. But I think they did this not by chance but deliberately, with a prophetic purpose. For in many places I find this harlot not only as the hostess of the saints but also as their wife. Indeed the most holy prophet Hosea is commanded by the Lord to take a harlot as his wife: "For the Lord said to me," he says, "'Take for yourself a wife of harlotry, and make children of harlotry.'" Our Lord and Savior himself too, when he sat down by the well in Samaria, spoke there to no one before the harlot. When he said to her, "You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not yours," then she believed and confessed that he was the Messiah, that is, the Christ. Moreover a sinful woman washed the feet of the Savior himself with her tears, wiped them with the hair of her head, and, kissing those feet, poured ointment on them. Let us see, then, whose figure our hostess put on. This Rahab, though called a harlot, nevertheless bore, foreseeing, the mysteries of the virgin Church and the shadow of the things to come at the end of the age; protected, she alone was preserved for life when all were perishing. For when it was said to the prophet Hosea, "Take for yourself a wife of harlotry," already then the image of the Church coming from the Gentiles was certainly prefigured, because from the harlotry of the nations and the fornication of idols (for "they committed fornication," it says, "after foreign gods") a people was to be gathered, whence it is called the Church, because "church," from Greek into the Latin word, means an assembly of the people. And just as, as the apostle says, "the unbelieving wife is sanctified through the believing husband," so too the Church, coming from the unbelief of the Gentiles and the fornication of images, was sanctified and counted in the body of Christ, whose members we have learned, on the same apostle's authority, that we are. So, since the Church gathered from the multitude of the Gentiles was then called a harlot, this Rahab is found as the hostess of the saints in the figure of the Church. Hence it came about that, when the trumpet of the priests, breathing the divine spirit, running far through the air, gave life to the song of victory, when the sevenfold walls of Jericho fell and the new slaughter of the falling peoples covered the whole crowd of the pagans, Rahab alone, as I said, was found worthy to be kept safe. This was prefigured because in the last times, when the disaster of the world comes and the sevenfold heavenly plagues, through the seven trumpets or the seven bowls of the angels, strike the whole human race with Antichrist, no one in this world will be saved except one who has been shut in the house of Rahab, that is, in the Church of Christ. For great grace, great power, great indulgence and happiness was given by Christ to the Church from the Gentiles, that, restored by the precepts of the law and sanctified by the benefit of the Gospel, she who once was common should become the chaste wife of the one Holy Spirit. For she is washed and purified of the other filth of shameful deeds by the divine washing, and becomes a virgin from a former harlot of sin; as the Lord himself said to the Jews, "Prostitutes will go before you into the kingdom of heaven"; she who, while she is joined to the holy body through faith in Christ and cleansed by the sanctification of the life-giving washing, is thereafter said to go before in the kingdom of God. Hence it must now be plain to you that Rahab our hostess, who received the two spies of Israel into her house, already then outlined the figure of the Church coming from the Gentiles.

But who are these two spies, if not the two testaments of the law and of the Gospels, whose precepts spy out the whole land, that is, all flesh, set in the grace of the law and of faith, since flesh is figuratively called earth, which the Lord will give back to believers as the promised inheritance in the first resurrection? These spies, then, that is, the law and the Gospel, no other house was found worthy to receive and keep than the Church coming from the Gentiles, because whoever keeps the precepts of the law is himself kept for life. Under this figure too in the Gospel the sinful woman, as I said, washed the Lord's feet with her tears; since she had put on the type of the Church coming from the Gentiles, she washed away her old crime with abundant tears of repentance, and with her hair loosened she already then wiped the holy footprints that would profit her. And she poured ointment on the beautiful feet, so that, while she kissed the Lord's feet, she might advance to approaching his mouth, and, while she believed the prophets sent before, she might also enjoy the Lord's living voice. For so it is written in that wedding song called the Song of Solomon: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, for your breasts are better than wine." This is the kiss of the Lord's mouth: that Christ the bridegroom should speak to his bride the Church face to face, and give the word of divine peace like a kiss. What is truer than the kiss of the voice? It is what he said: "My peace I give to you"; for joined by the honey of peace they were not divided even in death. See, so the Lord kisses the Church with the kiss of his mouth, when he draws forth into her the honey of the psalms, when, pointing out the honeycomb of the law, he speaks with his own mouth, when what he had foretold through the prophets he himself bestowed and fulfilled, as it is written: "I who spoke have come." This, then, is the kiss of his mouth, which the Lord, as I said, gave face to face to the Church, to whom he also sealed the ring of faith, as the pledge of spiritual marriage. And hence what we said before, that the famous prophet Hosea is commanded to take a harlot as wife ... of the Gentiles and from the harlotry of idols, the Church now rather cleaves to the Lord's body than the Synagogue, to which he testifies through the same prophet that he has given a bill of divorce. He declares that she is no longer his wife, nor is he her husband. Indeed, of the children he received from that harlot, he gave one the name "Not my people" and called the other "Not beloved": "For it will be," he says, "that not my people will be my people, and she who was not beloved will be beloved." For "It will be," he says, "that where it was said 'not my people,' there they will be called sons of God." This is because we, who formerly were not his people while we lived among the nations of the Gentiles, were, believing through faith in Christ, to be made his people and called sons of the living God, and the Church too, which once was not beloved before it was taken up by Christ, was afterwards to become beloved.

But the divine Scripture added further: "And when the king of Jericho knew," it says, "that two men, spies from Israel, had gone in to Rahab the harlot, he sent to her, saying: 'Bring out the men who came into your house by night.'" We have already said that these two men bore the figure of the two testaments, through which the whole earth, that is, all flesh, is explored by the Lord, and that the king of Jericho indicated the likeness of the devil, who is the enemy of the New and Old Testaments and has always persecuted all the saints, and also this prophetic and wise woman, who truly foretold the type of the Church in everything. For "she hid," it says, "these two men in the flax loft." That is, in the secret of her heart she hid the law and the Gospel, whom it calls men; she hid them, certainly, so that the devil should not have the power to tear the word of God away from those who were to serve God through the Gospel. Indeed in the Acts of the Apostles too the figure of the Church is shown to the blessed apostle Peter in a linen vessel tied at four corners, because the Church was to suffer in the world labors as great as the cultivation of flax is a manifold and laborious work. But there will be another, clearer place to discuss this; let us explain what we have begun. This keeping, then, is threefold. First they enter the house, second they are hidden in the loft, third they are moved to the upper part of the house. "But they came," it says, "by night," because she was still set in the darkness of the nations and in the night of ignorance, so that afterwards she who was called a harlot because of the worship of idolatry ... So too the Lord commanded Noah to make the ark with three stories in the figure of the Church. For first the word of the law enters the catechumen, as into the lodging of the body. Then, for the candidate for baptism, the mystery of the sacrament is hidden in the secret of the soul, as in the flax loft. Third, for the baptized believer, one arrives at the upper part of the house, through the steps of the virtues, at the summit of the Holy Spirit. Hence the blessed apostle Paul too, writing to the Thessalonians, says that man is threefold: "that your spirit and soul and body may be kept whole without blame for the day of the Lord." The flesh of man, then, receives the word of God as a guest; the soul keeps and guards it; the Spirit lifts and raises it. Hence this woman Rahab, who received the spies into her house, hid them in the loft and set them in the upper part of the house, asking them to show her mercy when they had won the victory. So too the Church asks God, through the law and the Gospel, through which he explores and spies out the flesh, which he calls earth, that she may be freed from the destruction of the world and from eternal death, at the time, that is, when he will judge the world by fire and comes to reign with the saints.

But listen more carefully, I ask, to what sign is set forth for preserving the house. "Hang scarlet tied to a cord from the window," it says, "and gather into your house all who belong to you. But if anyone is found outside, we shall be free from this oath which we ourselves have made with you." We must observe more carefully what this mystery is, that scarlet is hung from the window on a cord or rope of broom. A window gives light to a house and lights up its interior. Since we have said that the earth is the flesh of man, what else should we take the window to be than the belief of faith? For through faith light is poured into the mind, and all the inner parts of the heart are lit up. "But hang scarlet," it says. What does the scarlet indicate here, if not the glorious blood of the Lord's passion? By it those are saved who are destined for the reward of eternal life. Indeed something similar had gone before in the mystery of the Passover, that the doorposts and thresholds were marked with the blood of the lamb sacrificed in the figure of Christ, and, at the sight of it, the angel of destruction, who was to strike all Egypt, was kept from the houses marked with blood. Hence it is that the lips of the Church, which is flesh, are compared in the Song of Songs to a scarlet cord; for it says: "Bride, your lips are like a scarlet cord." For she had once dragged the cord of sin, while she still lived among the nations of the Gentiles, as Solomon says, "Each one is bound by the cords of his sins," and Isaiah, "Those who drag sins," he says, "like a long rope." But this cord of sin, which she had dragged before she believed, she afterwards dyed with the scarlet of Christ's blood, stained it with the juice of the Lord's gore. Hence it is that her cheeks too, in the same book, are said to be like the rind of a pomegranate. Hence the brother white and ruddy is heard of there, pierced by the soldiers' lance. Hence too he washed his robe, that is, his body, in the wine of the passion, the body which impious Judas had sold, which Israel pressed out like a winepress. Hence it is that he triumphed, bringing red firstfruits from Edom, which is the name of the rival brother. Hence it is that he came with red garments from Bozrah, which is assigned as the place of murder, slain by the Jewish people as by his brother Ham. See: so, for our offense, while righteous blood is shed, the cord of sins is dyed with scarlet. And so this scarlet of faith was hung from the window, which is the light of the mind, so that in the time of destruction, in which this world is to be destroyed, the house and family of believers might be preserved by the sign of the Lord's passion. As for his saying that the scarlet must be hung from broom or a cord, it is not as if there were no other kind of tie from which to hang the scarlet, but because the broom indicated the figure of the Gentiles, who, gathered from the forest of the world, rough, that is, and uncultivated, and bound with the bond of the Trinity, were to be set in order by the scarlet, that is, by the blood of the Lord's passion. Hence Solomon too says, "A threefold cord will not be broken": that is, the Gentiles who believe in the Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit cannot be broken.

But perhaps someone may ask why the divine Scripture promises grace to believers in one place white as snow, in another purple as scarlet: for Gideon too found a fleece and set the lamb's wool as a sign. What concerns the snowy whiteness of the wool indicates the mystery of baptism, by which alone sins are cleansed, by which the stains of crimes are washed away, as the Lord says through Isaiah, "If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow," and elsewhere, "The Nazirites were made whiter than snow." Purple is assigned to the martyrs, whom the happiness of their own blood adorns. Indeed from Christ's side too blood and water flowed, to show the blood of the passion and the sacrament of baptism: for baptism makes people white, the passion makes them red. But though scarlet and purple have one material, namely wool, there is a great difference between scarlet and purple. For purple does not give such light or prevail with such brightness, though it too offers redness. But if you lift up the dye of scarlet, it shines back, and raised up it gleams. And though, as I said, the material is one, since we too receive the wool of the lamb, yet as this is most beautiful in color, so that is more sublime in brightness. Let every prophet forgive me who, as it is written in the Gospel, was killed by faithless teachers as a forerunner of the Lord; let the glorious martyrs forgive me, I say, whose faith the purple blood of their own passion makes illustrious. I recognize no blood brighter than that of our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered for us. For this blood of Christ alone adorned and dyed all, according to the merit of their deeds. And so the chief brightness of the divine blood must shine through faith, by which ornaments shone on the others, though the material of the body taken up, like that of the wool, is one. And so in the scarlet the passion of Christ is shown, in the purple the blood of martyrdom. Hence Rahab, who bore the type of the Church, hung scarlet from the window as the sign of her salvation, to indicate that the Lord's passion is the salvation of the Gentiles. As, then, when the city of Jericho was destroyed and burned and its king killed, only the house of Rahab and those in it were saved through the sign of the scarlet, so too, when this world is set on fire and the devil, who now reigns in the world, is killed, no one else will be kept for salvation and eternal life unless he has been found within the house of the Church, which has been marked with the sign of the scarlet, that is, with the blood of Christ; just as in the flood no one escaped the shipwreck of the world except him who was found worthy to be kept in the ark of Noah, which foretold the type of the Church.

All that inspired men sang with foreseeing minds, or that the Jews established by their decrees and laws, as well as severe and weighty censures, histories of civil and foreign wars, and also the Lord's institutions and the discipline of morals, those who were called scribes stored away with the greatest diligence, sealed in the sacred writings, to preserve their memory forever. Our Lord praised their great zeal, their incredible memory, and their splendid office with magnificent commendation, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like [a householder] who wisely brings out old things and new." But you, on whom the same Lord laid the office of a greater service than that of the scribes, saying, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven," must certainly act more urgently than those who were called scribes, so that through the Lord we may be more excellent servants of righteousness. For they had written the histories of events according to the fleshly course of the deeds; but we show that the force and spiritual meaning of all the deeds pertained to the figure of the New Testament. For the ancient law, as the apostle teaches, was a shadow of good things to come and an image of the truth. So all that was then done in figure and image has now been fulfilled in truth and meaning. Listen, then, to the reading, and observe carefully what it indicates. "There was," it says, "from Zorah, of the tribe of Dan, a very famous man, and his name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and bore no children. And the angel appeared to her and said to her: 'Behold, you who are barren and have not borne will conceive in the womb and bear a son. And now take care not to drink wine or strong drink, and not to eat anything unclean,'" and so on. This barren woman, who bore no children, signified the Synagogue, which was barren in virtues but fruitful in vices. When she had been visited by God so as to conceive a son in Egypt, that is, a new people, and had conceived, as I said, in that womb of Egypt from the seed of the patriarchs, so as to bring forth a kind of offspring into the land of promise, then she received these precepts: let her not drink wine or strong drink. There is no doubt that wine has a double meaning. For in one place wine is set down for gladdening the heart of man, in another for fury and madness; in one place for the Lord's passion, in another for the severity of judgment. Indeed David says: "Wine gladdens the heart of man." On the other hand the apostle: "Do not get drunk with wine, in which is debauchery." And well the prophet: "Their wine," he says, "is from the vine of Sodom," and "The cup of unmixed wine," he says, "is full of mixture, and he has tipped it from one to the other; yet its dregs are not emptied: all the sinners of the earth will drink." So, when she is commanded not to drink wine, she is certainly warned to abstain from all debauchery, fury, and drunkenness, lest the mind, drunk with madness, go beyond its powers and, as if out of its senses, not know the meaning of its life, and finally, weighed down with the work of sin, be held as already dead and as it were buried.

"And you shall not drink strong drink," it says. What do we take strong drink to be, if not the pleasure of the flesh? In this place he calls strong drink the alluring pleasure of the body and, as some think, the sweetest pleasure of the soul. "But you shall not eat anything unclean," it says. He does not say this of foods, nor of wine and strong drink, in which the Jews boast that they alone are clean and think all others defiled, since it is written: "Food does not commend us to God," and the Lord says: "What enters your mouth does not defile you, but what comes out." But that is unclean which is forbidden to be eaten, so that she should do nothing impure, nothing unclean, nothing polluted. The angel announced these things to her, it says, in the field. Why does the angel address this woman in the field, and not in the city or in the house? Especially in the field, because it signified that this woman, the Synagogue, was going to abandon the city of the divine law and the house of faith, that is, the congregation, council, and assembly of the holy patriarchs and all the prophets, since she would receive neither the divine right nor the heavenly ordinances. And so, driven out of the city, that is, out of the dwellings of the saints, she was already then seen in typical prefiguration as wholly desolate in the field of the world and brought into captivity. "But the angel of the Lord came again," it says, "to the woman sitting in the field, and Manoah her husband was not with her." By the husband he names he means the law, which the woman, the Synagogue, received as a husband. The blessed apostle Paul proves this, saying: "The law," he says, "rules a person as long as he lives; and the woman who is under a husband is bound to the law while her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband." And again: "So," he says, "dearest brothers, you too have been put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead." Through this comparison, then, he shows that the husband must be understood as the law and the woman as the Synagogue, which, living until the resurrection of Christ and freed from the law of the husband, that is, from the power of the Old Testament, thereafter becomes his who rose from the dead. And so he says here, "Her husband was [not] with her," because she was still living set under the law. "But the angel himself," it says, "standing, spoke to her as she sat." What, then, does it mean that the woman sat and the angel stood? Not that she was doing or arranging anything; but it indicated that she was languishing in stupor and sloth and distrustful of the divine promises; at the same time it showed the ruin of her standing, since she was to fall back into earthly contagions; but it showed that those who announced her, namely the patriarchs and prophets and the Lord himself, would always stand, that is, would persevere in their standing. And so the angel stands, that is, the lawgiver and messenger of truth; the woman sits, so that her ruin, languor, and sloth might be noted, since she did not have feet, the apostles and prophets, on which to stand, and had rightly lost the upright and steady form of her standing.

"But he offered," it says, "a sacrifice, a kid of the goats." He did not say a lamb, nor a calf. For if he had said a lamb or a calf, he would have indicated innocence in the lamb and skill in the calf. But "he offered," it says, "a kid of the goats," so as to show already then the sin of his conscience by the offering of a fruitless sacrifice. For you remember that Moses said that whoever had sinned should offer a kid of the goats for his sin; and the Lord in the Gospel says, "I will set the righteous like sheep at the right hand, the sinners like goats at the left," so as to indicate the merit of a holy life by the mere standing and innocence of the animal. "But he offered this sacrifice on a rock." For what else did sins deserve than hardness of heart? For the rock is set in one place for firmness, in another for the hardness of the Synagogue. For though Christ is called the rock, as the apostle says, "They drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ," yet this rock is the foundation of faith; on the other hand the Lord himself shows that the rock is hardness of heart when he says in the Gospel: "The sower went out to sow, and some seeds fell on the rock"; these, when the sun rose, dried up in their very stalk, because, sown on the earth, they had neither a place to fix their root deeper nor moisture to be nourished. And so by the rock on which he offered the sacrifice he shows the hardness of heart of that same Synagogue, just as it received the law on tablets of stone. Hence the blessed Stephen too, the first martyr after Christ, called them hard of heart in his passion. "But after all this," it says, "she conceived and bore a son and called his name Samson." Samson is a Hebrew name which is interpreted in the Latin language as "moth." O wretched womb of the Synagogue, which brought forth a moth, that is, such a people as would corrupt, tear, and violate like a moth the garment of all modesty, honor, shame, and faith, and would tear apart even the institutions of the evil and Christ present! This Samson, then, bore in himself the general figure of the whole Jewish people: so he is shown to have done something of evil and something of good. For part of that people was barbarous, unbelieving, violent; and a certain part was devout and religious, which bore fruits worthy of repentance and attained faith in Christ: from there, indeed, the apostles; from there, as it is written, three thousand on one day and five thousand on another believed in Christ. But come now, let us see what Samson did as a type of Israel. "He took for himself as wife," it says, "a foreign, barbarian woman." So too that people, in whose likeness Samson was born, was joined as to a foreign woman, that is, a sacrilegious idolatress, as it is written: "They committed adultery," he says, "after foreign gods." For what is so barbarous, so monstrous, so inhuman, as that, forsaking the living God, they should offer to images and stones the blood of cattle and sometimes of their own sons and daughters? "But that woman," it says, "pleased his eyes." Attend to the sense of this word, dearest brothers. "She pleased," it says, "his eyes": it did not say she pleased his judgment, his scrutiny, his reason, but his deceitful eyes, which think good the things that are seen in the world: a kingdom, wealth, beauty of form, honors, the greatest weight of gold and silver. So the pleasure of wantonness pleased his eyes, luxury pleased them; it pleased his eyes, which often deceive and are deceived, to which nature gave such quick motion so that they might quickly shut out rushing desire. So what pleased him was not what God would approve, nor what would please his parents, but what deceitful eyes beheld. So too Adam and Eve were deceived, because the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil seemed to their eyes good to look at and excellent to eat; and, discerning by it, they at once confessed their nakedness, and received the sentence of death for the guilt of the crime. O wretched soul, whose heart desires, through the eyes, hidden things that are impious and harmful! ... and to pass over more, because I must discuss more necessary things.

This Samson, then, who was born, when he had passed the years of childhood and gathered all the strength of his powers, listen carefully, I ask, to what he did as a type of the Jews. "And it happened," it says, "when he went down to Timnah, behold, a lion's whelp roaring to meet him. And Samson turned aside," it says, "into the vineyard, and killed it, and tore it apart like a kid of the goats." See, most holy brothers, see, I say, the order of the matter, see the meaning, see the arrangement of so great a dispensation, because it was to fulfill in Christ the order in words, the meaning in deeds, the dispensation in figures; and notice with how much care and distinction these things are told. As Samson, it says, went along the way, a roaring lion's whelp met him. We have often said that Samson bore the image of the people of Israel, and that his strength must be understood as the powers of the rulers and priests, and also of the scribes and Pharisees. So, when the rulers of that people believed they were walking along the way of the law in their fleshly strength, which then flourished in the world, behold, a roaring lion's whelp met them. But who is this lion's whelp, if not the Son of God, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, of whom the patriarch Jacob said: "You slept like a lion, you rose like a lion's whelp"? He is called a lion because the nature of the Father is in the Son, and he is called a lion's whelp so that he may be believed to be not the Father himself but the Son. Of him the apostle John in the Apocalypse hears through the voice of an angel: "Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered," because this lion, or lion's whelp, was to be born according to the flesh from the tribe of Judah and the race of David. He calls him a lion to show significantly his kingdom and the power by which he conquered death and the devil. This lion's whelp, then, that is, the Lord God, the Son of God and our Savior, when the chief priests heard him roaring in the vineyard of the people of Israel, that is, preaching the kingdom of God and the coming judgment to the whole people, at once they were filled with anger and indignation. There is no doubt that the vineyard is the people. The blessed David proves this when he says, "You brought a vine out of Egypt"; and certainly he had brought a people, not a vine, out of Egypt. Isaiah too indicates it more clearly, saying: "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." Then, therefore, the power and license of the rulers and scribes turned aside from the way of the law and of discipline, when they heard the lion's whelp, that is, Christ preaching to the people. But what is turning aside from the way, if not bending away from the straight path of righteousness to a fall? It turned aside, then, to the worse part and fell into the vineyard, that is, it stirred up seditions and factions among the people. For this was the plan of the scribes or priests, to kill the lion, Christ. It is known to all that this lion or lion's whelp, that is, the man whom the Son of God had put on from the tribe of Judah, was killed in the vineyard of the people of Israel. "But he tore it apart," it says, "like a kid of the goats." Why did he not say like a lamb, but named a kid in particular? I have shown your charity that the kid bears the figure of sinners, as the Lord says: "I will set the righteous like sheep, the sinners and unrighteous like goats." And so he tore apart this lion's whelp like a kid, because he was reckoned among sinners and the unrighteous, as it is written: "Cursed is the man who hangs on a tree." Hence the apostle too says: "He was made a curse for us," so that believers might receive the blessing. But he was reckoned cursed, he says, so that he might consecrate us, freed from the curse through the cross, by the grace of his blessing. So he was reckoned among sinners in order to purge our sins. But he himself, as it is written of him, "committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth."

But listen carefully, I ask, to what was done after the lion was killed. "Returning," it says, "he came again to the body of the lion, and behold," it says, "a swarm of bees in the mouth and body of the lion, and honey was overflowing; and he put it in his mouth and walked along eating." "But returning," it says, "to the body of the lion he found bees." What is "returning"? As if correcting himself again toward better things. And afterwards he came to the burial of the Lord's body, that is, of the lion, so as to believe. For many of that persecuting people, converted after the Lord's passion and doing penance, believed through the apostles. But when he had come to believe, he found bees in the lion's mouth. What do these bees signify, if not the apostles and the other brothers abiding in Christ, all of whom the fervor of the same hope animated together, through whom many swarms of believing peoples sprang up? "And honey," it says, "was overflowing." What else can we understand by honey than the sweet preaching of the Lord and the sweetness of the gospel teaching? "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet," and "Your words," he says, "are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth." For this honey is sweeter than that of Hymettus, pleasanter than that of Hybla, more pleasing than myrrh-oil: the honey which the swarms of believing peoples gathered from the preaching of the divine mouth, from the many flowers of the readings, and brought together all of it in the mouth and body of Christ our Lord, so that, since all things had been preached in him, all might be fulfilled through him. "A honeycomb," it says, "in the lion's mouth." What is the honeycomb, if not the image of the heavenly kingdom, in which he said there are many dwellings with his Father? But what did they find stored in those dwellings of the honeycomb, wonderfully built? "Honey," it says, "was overflowing." What else do we take honey to be than the Lord's sweetness and the pleasantness of his word? By it we are fed, by it we live. Let us always have it in our mouth and heart, so that we may fatten the soul with heavenly things.

"And the Lord said to Gideon: 'With the three hundred men whom you saw lapping water I will save you, and I will give the camp of Midian into your hands.'" I am not unaware, dearest brothers, that I could incur the charge of rashness in venturing to preach on the arrangement of so great a mystery. For if we discuss lofty things humbly and great things thinly, not only is our inexperience laughable but our boldness punishable. For whoever wishes to interpret what the ancient law sanctioned or what the mouths of the most devout prophets sang otherwise than the spiritual meaning requires cannot escape the hazard of danger. But I, dearest brothers, relying not so much on confidence in my own study or ability as on the grace of divine inspiration, attempt to preach on this. "And the Lord," it says, "said to Gideon: 'With the three hundred I will save you, and I will give the camp of Midian into your hands.'" What is this, dearest brothers, that out of thirty-two thousand armed men only three hundred are approved as fit and brave? I could show in two words what this small number signifies: "For many are called, but few are chosen," and "If the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved." But we must now show what the reason for this merit signifies: why precisely three hundred are chosen, through whom innumerable enemies would be utterly laid waste. Among the Greeks three hundred is signified by the letter tau. This letter, since it has one stroke upright like the tree of the passion and another across its head like an extended yardarm, certainly shows the clear sign of the cross. And so Gideon, who had put on the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, conquered his enemies with this number. Indeed Moses, with hands stretched out, showed the sign of the cross in order to conquer Amalek. "But rise," it says, "and go down into the enemies' camp." Truly and rightly did he say this, because in his great power and might the Lord rose to ascend the cross and thence to triumph over and conquer all the powers of the world, as the apostle said of him: "Stripping himself of the flesh, he openly triumphed over the powers through the cross." And since the enemies' camp was in a valley, which valley indicated the site of the underworld, where ..., we have shown above that the three hundred are marked in the image of the cross, so that he might destroy and annihilate the innumerable number of enemies, that is, the legions of demons. But what moves me is that he says: "If you are afraid to go down, your servant too will go down into the camp." What strength, what power had the servant, trusting in whom Gideon was ordered to go down into the enemies' camp? Gideon's fear significantly shows that fear of the Lord's passion which the Lord himself, coming to his passion, spoke of: "Alas, why is my soul sorrowful even to death! Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." But he repeats: "Not as I will, but as you will." What is this? The fear was not of God but of the man he had taken up. And so he confessed fear deliberately, to prove that he had truly put on a man, who would fear death. See how many marks of his flesh were impressed: when he thirsts, when he hungers, when he is wearied, when he weeps and is sorrowful, finally when he dies! And yet there are many heretics who deny that he put on human flesh, but say he was a phantom. What would people do if these signs had not been given beforehand? And so he said, "if it is possible," let the cup of the passion pass, to prove that he had truly put on a man, to whom according to nature death would seem fearful. For God, who is life, could not fear death, he whom death itself feared. But who is this servant of whom it is said, "Your servant too will go down into the camp"? I understand this servant to be none other than John the Baptist, the forerunner, that is, and harbinger of the Lord's coming. For as he was sent ahead in the world to prepare the ways of the Lord and make straight the paths of our God, so too he was to run ahead into the enemies' camp, that is, to the underworld, to announce the coming of Christ to the dead there also. For it was necessary that after his passion he should also descend to the underworld, and rescue the souls of the patriarchs, which were held captive there by the enemies, that is, by the spirits of darkness, and bring them back with him, as victor, into paradise. Indeed, when John was held in Herod's prison, he sends word to the Lord thus: "Are you he who is to come, or do we wait for another?" He spoke of his coming to the underworld, where he himself was going to run ahead. For he knew that he had already come into the world, and had already pointed him out to the people, saying: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world." And so he says it since he was certainly to announce his coming in the underworld too, so that, sent ahead by the Lord's authority and not by his own presumption, he might indicate his coming.

But he added further: "And Midian," it says, "and Amalek and all the opponents were like locusts, and their camels were without number." Midian here foreshadowed the image of the devil, and Amalek that of death, who had set their seats and camp in the valley, that is, in the underworld. "But all," it says, "the opponents were like locusts." Wonderfully he compared to locusts all the opponents, that is, the powers of this air, of which the blessed apostle says: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." For these powers, like locusts flying in the air of this world, devour and consume by their savagery the crop of good character, that is, the fruitful fasts of men and their nature rich in righteousness, as if it were a harvest. The camels, of which he says there was no number, are the princes of the demons themselves, crooked, huge, and twisted, in whom no heart judges rightly, who, burning with the flames of madness, grind their teeth with gnashing to sharpen more fiercely the fury of their malice. But he added further: "And Gideon entered the camp, and behold, a man was telling his neighbor a dream and said: 'I dreamed, and behold, a barley loaf was rolling in a kneading trough into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent of Midian and struck it, and it fell and overturned.'" That kneading trough, then, in which the loaf was rolling that struck, scattered, and destroyed the enemies' camp, what else did it signify than the bosom or womb of the Virgin Mary, in which Christ, the bread of life, made under the law, born of a woman, was rolling, since our Lord had come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it? Hence it came about that from five barley loaves he fed five thousand men. This bread, then, was made of our body, as the apostle says, under the law, of a woman. It came and struck the camp of the enemies, that is, it crushed by the power of its majesty all the might of the devil and all the soldiery of Satan. Then Gideon divides those three hundred men by hundreds. He does not divide them so as to make parts, but to establish threefold beginnings, because the image of the cross, by which the three hundred are figured in the letter tau, had to consist in the distribution of the Trinity. For no one conquers except one who has believed in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit with equal power and undifferentiated strength. See by what mystery of warfare Gideon conquered his enemies, by which we too who believe in Christ are accustomed to triumph over all the wickedness of the opposing power. As for his saying that these three hundred men were chosen lapping water like dogs, the reason is that the Gentiles before they believe are compared to dogs, as the Lord himself said of the Gentile, that is, Canaanite, woman: "It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs." And she answered: "Even the dogs gather what falls from their masters' table." Hence it is plain that dogs clearly indicate the figure of the Gentiles. And since from the Gentiles were to come those who would believe in Christ, God the Son of God, and would win victory over the enemies, that is, the unclean spirits, through the sign of the cross, he therefore commands that those be chosen whom he had seen lapping water like dogs, to show that believers from the Gentiles would rather win the victory through the sign of the cross.

But there is still another mystery which Gideon used in this battle. When he divided the hundreds of men into three companies, "he gave them," it says, "trumpets into their hands, and empty jars, and torches in the middle of the jars. And they blew," it says, "the trumpets, and broke the jars they had, and each took in his left hand the torches and in his right hand the trumpets with which they blew, and they shouted: 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'" O most mighty war, O wonderful battle and victory to be proclaimed, that three hundred men, who marked the sign of the cross by their number, should utterly defeat an innumerable number of enemies with trumpets, torches, and broken jars! So too Abraham conquered five barbarian kings with their armies with three hundred and eighteen servants born in his house, and rescued and brought back all the property they had plundered, and also his brother's son Lot, whom they were leading captive. This number of servants, set at three hundred, clearly outlined, as has often been said, the sign of the cross. In the eighteen I will show the name of Jesus by evident reasoning. For eighteen among the Greeks is signified by iota and eta, letters with which the name of Jesus is written. But now let us see what these empty jars, what the trumpets, what the torches indicate. Among the Greeks hydriae are called water vessels. These jars bore the figure of our flesh, which was made from the mud of the earth and prepared for the water of baptism. That our bodies are compared to earthen vessels the apostle Paul proves when he says: "Having the treasure in earthen vessels." "But they were empty," it says. For they had not yet drawn the water of baptism, and so they were called empty. But perhaps someone may say: "If those jars signified our bodies, why were they broken?" No one doubts, brothers, that no Christian can win victory over his enemies unless he first breaks within his fleshly works by the power of the Spirit. And so he says: "And they broke," it says, "the jars they had, and each took in his left hand the torches and in his right the trumpets." But the broken jars must be followed out more fully. See, the prophet Jeremiah says: "And the Lord led me into the potter's house where he was making vessels. A vessel fell," he says, "from the wheel and was broken"; and he melted it again in water so that a better vessel might be formed anew. The clay, then, is what the hand of the divine potter had pressed from the mud of the earth into the form of the human body and fashioned in the image of God. Because this had been contaminated with vices through Adam, defiled with the filth of crimes, and shattered by the tree of transgression, since it had not yet been fired by the fiery Spirit in the furnace of the Church, it was therefore broken, and again tempered like clay in the water of baptism, so that the Lord, the craftsman, whom he calls the potter, might make the soul, changed in the pool of washing and then placed on the wheel of the Gospel, turned by frequent motions of profession, then compacted by pledges and bound by the bonds of discipline, and fired by the heat of the Holy Spirit, fit and able to receive heavenly grace. Nor is it surprising that in the service of the old man the jars were broken, since in the war of persecution we cannot conquer our enemy the devil otherwise than by breaking our bodies in martyrdom by various tortures and finally by death itself. As for their taking up torches and trumpets, this too is true, dearest brothers: when we crush fleshly vices, or, as I said, break our bodies by death itself in persecution for the name of Christ, then we take up the torches of martyrdom and the glowing firebrands of faith, with which, in the night of this world, we show to those wandering, blinded by the darkness of ignorance, the light of truth, or run to meet the Lord, the bridegroom, as he comes, so that we may more easily enter the bridal chamber according to the Gospel. And the trumpets, the praises of the divine works, we use either to train the soldiers of Christ by sounding the signal, or, roaring with a hoarse war-cry, to rouse the stubborn and sleeping of the earth.

"Elisha said to the people who were in Jericho: 'Bring me an earthen vessel and put salt in it.' And he plunged it into the river, and at once the waters were healed." You have heard the reading, dearest brothers, which tells how the most blessed prophet Elisha, when the people asked him to heal the barren and harmful waters of Jericho, brought those waters to health and fruitfulness by a mystery: "He took," it says, "a new earthen vessel, and put salt in it, and plunged it into the river, and at once the waters were healed." What do we say in this place, dearest brothers? Could Elisha not heal the waters by a word in the name of the Lord, he who was able by a word to call back the rush of the river Jordan to the head of its spring, holding back the ranks of its waves, so as to provide himself a dry path to cross through that river? Or could that earthen vessel full of salt do more than the word of God, by which he even raised the dead and often worked the greatest wonders? We must observe more carefully, then, what cause, what meaning, what power lay in that earthen vessel full of salt. This most blessed prophet Elisha, when he was asked to heal the barren waters, could seek the remedy from nowhere else than from Christ, in the mystery of his baptism. For that earthen vessel foreshadowed the figure of Christ's body, which he was to take from the first-formed, whose image is earthly. That the salt is the Word of God himself, namely the wisdom of the Father, there is no doubt; of this wisdom the blessed apostle Paul says: "Christ," he says, "is the power of God and the wisdom of God"; and so the apostles too, because of the faith they had in Christ, were called the salt of the earth. The prophet, then, knowing what was to come, which afterwards the holy apostle John relates, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," therefore, putting salt, that is, the wisdom of God, into an earthen vessel, that is, into a human body, in the likeness of the Word, plunged it into the water. This signified that all the waters which throughout the world were barren, which could not beget sons of God without Christ, would afterwards, when Christ was baptized, receive fruitfulness and blessing, so as to beget sons of God through the sanctification of the life-giving washing. Hence Christian wisdom ought to notice, most holy brothers, that as much as the truth of baptism in Christ can do now, so much its figure could do then. For from the time when the Lord deigned to go down into those waters and be baptized, carrying in his body the salt of the Word and bearing in the Word itself the material of the earthen vessel, that is, of the body, from then on everywhere, through faith in Christ, waters which formerly were barren began to beget and bring forth sons of God.

But lest perhaps someone ignorant of the heavenly mysteries should say, "Why was Christ baptized, who was God, whose flesh had committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, since the grace of baptism was divinely provided only for the forgiveness of sins?": hear the reason, and understand that our Lord willed to be baptized by John not to receive forgiveness of sins, he who had committed no sin, but deigned to be baptized so that he might sanctify the water itself by his washing, so that whoever was baptized in his name, now made a member of his body, might deserve to be a son of God by adoption, reborn of water and the power from above. Indeed elsewhere too we find this mystery of Christ's baptism similarly foreshown: for in Exodus we read that the bitter waters of the spring of Marah, when wood was thrown in, were turned to sweetness and health; for the prophets sought no other remedy for useless waters than from Christ. That wood clearly showed the mystery of the Lord's passion, by which the thirsty could drink healthfully the sweetened waters of baptism; hence the Lord himself, standing in the temple, said: "Whoever thirsts, let him come and drink the water of power freely." So too, when the people in the desert was in danger from thirst, Moses struck the rock with his rod, that is, with wood, and springs of water flowed: by which it indicated that the mystery of baptism was accomplished. For the blessed apostle proves that that rock bore the figure of Christ when he says: "For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ." There is no doubt, then, that that rock bore the image of the Lord's flesh, which flesh, struck by the wood of the cross, gave living water to the thirsty, as it is written: "Rivers will flow from his belly." He said this of the Holy Spirit, whom believers were to receive. And so those waters, brought forth from the rock, already then showed in typical prefiguration the rivers flowing from Christ's belly in the mystery of baptism, which would run from Christ's side as a healthful drink for the thirsty. For who does not know that our Lord, who is the fountain of living water springing up to everlasting life, when he had been hung on the wood of the cross, poured out from the wound in his side not only blood but also waters flowing in an abundant stream, showing that the bride, that is, the Church, after the example of the first-formed, consists from his side, as Eve too was formed from the rib of Adam, having two baptisms, namely of water and of blood, by which the faithful and the martyrs are made in the Church? But since it was necessary that, together with the mystery of baptism, it should also show the image of the holy apostles prefigured, therefore at Elim, a place read of in Exodus, the figure of the twelve apostles is shown in twelve springs. Of these springs David says in the psalms: "Praise the Lord from the springs of Israel," because these apostle-springs, proceeding from the people of Israel, were to give believers the grace of baptism. And lest anyone think the blessed apostle Paul excluded from their company, he added: "There is Benjamin, the younger," because the apostle Paul was found to be of the tribe of Benjamin, and was to give the gift of baptism to all nations together with the other apostles; he is called "the younger" so that no one should think this was said of the ancient patriarch Benjamin.

And since we are now speaking of the mystery of baptism, we must also show that the grace is one for all who receive it, and that one cannot obtain more and another less in the gift of baptism. Call me a liar if I do not prove that all the servants in the Gospel received one denarius each, and that the manna that was gathered was one measure for all, because "he who gathered more," it says, "will not have too much, and he who gathered less will not lack." For when in baptism all sins are forgiven, and where there is pardon without measure, every measure with its reckoning ceases, nor is it reduced to number, since the divine goodness offers the whole. Therefore the Scripture also tells, as I said, that all the servants received one denarius each, to show that the forgiveness of all sins has one measure, and that the judgments of God's goodness ran equal in all things without injury to anyone, lest goodness fall into the reproach of divine indulgence if there had not been equality toward all. For the Father does not give the Spirit by measure, and so neither is the grace of baptism offered by measure, so as to bestow as much as the abundance or scarcity of water; for it is not water that dissolves offenses, but it is God who through water forgives all sins. And though we all obtain one gift of pardon in baptism, so that no sin is excepted that is not washed away by the sacrament of baptism, yet afterwards we are distinguished by acts, conduct, and works in our way of life. For just as in the Gospel the sower sowed the seed of the divine word equally, but it did not everywhere advance alike to harvest: some fell among thorns and was choked; some on rocky ground, which, though it at once sprang up, yet, since it had neither deep roots nor moisture to be nourished, withered when the sun rose; some by the road, and the birds snatched it away; some on good ground, and it bore fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, some a hundredfold. So too the grace of baptism is one for all, as the sowing of the word is one, but afterwards the merits of each will be distinguished at the judgment according to the quality of their deeds.

"The vision which Isaiah son of Amoz saw against Judah and against Jerusalem." It is indeed a very great and splendid task, dearest brothers, and truly a remarkable kind of discourse, to open into the light of true knowledge the prophetic meanings wrapped in the coverings of allegory. But since this grace does not flow so abundantly into the minds of all that what is magnificent and divine can be quickly recognized, we are rightly tormented in the very search. Yet since our Lord and Savior gave us confidence to search, saying, "Ask and you will receive, knock and it will be opened to you, seek and you will find," and "There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing covered that will not be made known," the one who seeks to understand is therefore carried by this promise to preach on the reading. But before all things we must ask why this title does not agree with the discourse that follows. For it says: "The vision which Isaiah saw in the reign of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah." Surely this one vision was not shown in the times of four kings, as though one vision was seen at one time: for it does not say "the visions which Isaiah saw," as if many, but "the vision," it says, to show one vision; if it is one, it was seen, as I said, at one time; yet one and the same vision was not shown in the times of four kings. Then see that in the discourse that follows it does not present the vision itself, but rebukes the people with the gravest intensity. For it says: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth: I have begotten and exalted sons, but they have despised me." This is not to report a vision, but to rebuke the people with great indignation: for to tell a vision is one thing, to utter words of invective another; for a vision is shown to the eyes, words are conveyed to the ears. Indeed the prophet Habakkuk said not that he had seen but that he had heard: "Lord," he says, "I have heard what I heard from you, and I was afraid"; for he had believed what he had heard of God, and he feared because he had heard it of God. In this place, then, we must observe more carefully why he puts "vision" in the title and adds not the words of the vision itself but of invective. Since the title is set down obscurely, while the prophet announces the word of God, it was necessary that he first indicate the word of God for which the prophet had been sent, and so tell his vision at the fitting place and time. For the scribe entitled the head of the book "vision" because the prophet had first seen the vision itself before he heard the word of the one who sent him. For he says: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a high throne"; and this is the vision which Isaiah son of Amoz saw, that he saw the Lord sitting on a high throne, at which time all things that were to come were shown to him. Hence the scribe rightly put the vision first before indicating the prophet's invective, so that no one should think that Isaiah, not sent by the Lord, rose up to revile the people of Israel rather than to announce the word of the Lord; but the prophet wonderfully conveyed the word of the Lord to the people before setting out the text of his vision. Since this is so, we must nonetheless also discuss the reversed order, since we often find it written in the divine Scriptures that what was done first is placed later, and what is to be later is announced first. Hear the counsel of the Holy Spirit. For in almost all the Scriptures this principle of arrangement is found, that the series is not set out in straight order. For this reason, then, the divine words are put out of order, and many things are also said figuratively: some are related in riddles, or indicated in types, or narrated allegorically, or obscured in parables. For since the serpent once, having seduced him, deceived man in paradise by crafty words, persuading him by bad interpretation of the opposite of what God had simply commanded man to observe, and since the command given to man then was plain, so that the devil himself could understand it, he therefore deceived man by evil persuasion; and so it was necessary that the Holy Spirit should from then on provide for man and speak through parables and figures, and also, as has been said, reverse the order of prophecy, so that the enemy should never again take occasion and bring in sin through the commandment and through it kill man again. For this reason, then, the Scriptures were arranged in parables and obscure words and in a reversed series, so that the enemy himself would not know, would be mocked by the obscurity of the words, and would not know the times because of the reversed order, and so that no one else would understand the sense of the Holy Spirit except him who had the same Spirit that spoke in the prophets, while an alien spirit could not know it. Indeed the Lord himself spoke in parables, so that only his own might recognize what he was saying, while those who were not his, hearing, would not hear, as it is written: "Lest they hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted and I heal them, says the Lord." Not that God did not wish to heal them if they were converted, but because the enormity of their sins had gone before, they did not deserve to be either converted or healed.

Further, it is for this reason that the scribe put the times of four kings in the title, namely Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, so that it might be known for how long a time and how plainly the prophet rebuked the people of Israel and preached the birth and coming of Christ. And even so they would not believe him, as the apostle says: "Or do you despise the patience and forbearance of God, not knowing that God's patience leads you to repentance? But by the hardness of your heart you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath of the just judgment of God." And since a transgression of so long a time was going to profit the people nothing, the Lord is found to have spoken against it through the prophet: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken." "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth," as though this heaven or earth had ears of its own, so as to be able to hear. But when he named heaven, he was calling the heavenly powers, that is, the holy angels, and when he named earth, holy men, to hear the word of the Lord, because the sons of Israel were hastening to despise God and were entirely unwilling to return to repentance after such great crimes and misdeeds. So he calls heaven and earth to witness, that is, the heavenly angels and the holy men who consist of the substance of the earth, that they might hear what the Lord God had bestowed and what they themselves had done in contempt of the Godhead. "I have begotten and exalted sons," he says, "but they have despised me." O grave sin, and pardon almost beyond entreaty, that God testifies he has been despised by those whom he said were begotten and exalted by him! He had begotten them through the law and exalted them through grace, since power over all nations had been granted ... to them. And so they should not have despised him but followed and heard him: for in him is the substance of things and the principle of virtues and the fountain of all good things. For what is greater than God in power, or more perfect in reason, or more brilliant in glory? Since he had begotten them for wisdom and righteousness, it was not right for them, forsaking their God and the giver of life, to serve vain and fragile images and idols, nor, serving gluttony and lust, to depart from innocence and piety. For these vicious and deadly pleasures, which used to snare the soul of man with rich things, have been condemned to eternal death. And so here too he reproaches them, saying: "I have begotten and exalted sons," that is: I begot you by the seed of the word and the instruction of the law, and exalted and lifted you above all nations; for your sake I killed wonderful kings; I freed you from the land of Egypt with a strong hand and an uplifted arm; I went before you in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night; and, breaking the ... while mountains of water stood around him, I made you cross through the middle of the sea with dry feet; I also killed your enemies, the waves returning on themselves; I fed you with the bread of angels in the desert, and, splitting the hardest rock, I gave abundant water to the thirsty: see with what benefits I exalted you, and you have forsaken me!

And hear what comparison he added because of this: "The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's manger, but Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me." Why does he say this, setting dumb animals, lacking reason, before that people? For they recognize and follow those who feed them and their masters, and give voice when they see or hear them; but the people of the Jews refused to recognize its begetter and lord and the giver of all good things. For it is not said that they did not recognize because they could not, but because they willfully refused, as he says through Jeremiah: "The turtledove and the swallow have known the times of their coming, but my people has not known me." O wretched and detestable stupidity of the people, before whom the ox and the donkey, dumb animals, and the turtledove and the swallow, sweet birds, are set! So too in the Gospel the Lord himself testified with his own voice, saying: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!" He did not say "and you could not," but "you would not." For inability has pardon; unwillingness is contempt. But you are accustomed to ask why our Lord wished to compare himself to a hen in the Gospel, when in the law and the prophets he is compared to the eagle, the king of birds. For so it is written of him: "As an eagle protects its nest and will be renewed, as an eagle will carry its young on its shoulders, the Lord God protected them." We must therefore discuss why the Lord in the Gospel said he was like not an eagle but a hen. He was rightly then called an eagle, because he deigned to protect one nest and chicks of one kind, that is, the people of Israel alone, against all races and nations. But now he said he was like a hen, because of all kinds of birds none hatches by sitting on and warming the eggs of another kind, none either feeds or keeps and nourishes under its wings the chicks of another kind placed beneath it, except the hen alone. So too no one else could gather the peoples of different nations and foreign races under the wings of his cross and under the feathers of his powers, and animate them for eternal life by the warmth of the Spirit and satisfy them with heavenly food, except Christ, the Son of the living God, who not only wished to gather the sons of Israel under the wings of his cross, but also, as I said, deigns to defend all races and nations, bringing them under the protection of his wings, from every injury and danger, as it is written: "In the shadow of your wings I will hope until iniquity passes." This begetter, then, this defender and savior of the human race, the people of Israel refused to recognize when he preached with the voice of the Gospel, whom formerly too it had refused to hear through the prophets.

Therefore he added, saying: "Woe to the sinful nation, a people full of sins! Wicked sons, you have forsaken the Lord the Father," when you denied his Son, "you who still add iniquity, adding iniquity to iniquity": that is to say, you who heap crimes on these crimes, "you have forsaken God the Father and provoked to anger the seed of Israel." Not that they provoked to anger the Israel of the patriarchs themselves, who had gone before in peace many years before these things were said; but they provoked to anger the holy Israel, that is, Christ, by not believing him. For Israel, from the Hebrew language, is interpreted in Latin as "a man seeing God": and what man is there who has seen God, since it is written to Moses, "You cannot see my face, for no one has seen God and lived"? The Savior too in the Gospel: "No one," he says, "has ever seen God except the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father." So, since no one has seen God except the only Son, he himself is rightly Israel, who was both born a man according to the flesh and alone, being the Son of God, has seen and sees God the Father. This is Israel, the man seeing God, whom they provoked to anger by not believing him. But he added further: "Every head is in pain and every heart in grief." By head he means their rulers and priests, by heart the scribes and Pharisees, who conveyed the secrets of the sacred mysteries to the peoples. He said they were turned to grief and pain because they had not recognized Christ as their head, and the heart, which is wisdom, had despised Christ as the Son of God. "There is no place," he says, "to apply a poultice, nor oil, nor bandages": truly and rightly were all these things said of that people, whose soul, not body, lay wounded by the vice of unbelief. For a poultice, oil, and bandages are remedies of the body, not the soul: so their souls were sick; they could not apply these medicines to the cure of the soul. But if you want to make a poultice for a wounded soul, to reduce its swellings and cure its vices, take repentance for your offenses, with which a poultice made of the pigment of good works, so that you give alms to the needy; pour in diligently oil too, that is, the richest grace of the chrism; and bind on bandages, that is, the bonds of gospel discipline. Since that people would not use these, their souls could not be cured, as the wounded man of the Gospel was cured, who, going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among robbers; when the gospel Samaritan, gathering up his wounds, had soothed them with wine and oil, that is, bestowing the grace of the chrism and the redemption of his own blood, and had bound them with the bonds of the Gospels, he set him on the beast of the law, brought him to the inn of the Church, entrusted him to the innkeeper, that is, the angel of the Church, giving two denarii for his care: two royal coins, that is, bearing the inscription of the Father and the Son. This is the perfect medicine, this the method of cure that can free both body and soul from every sickness. With it, most holy brothers, let us cherish our soul and mind with as much good and benefit as we can, so that you may be truly healthy and happy before the face of God the Father almighty.

"In those days the hand of the Lord came upon me. And he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a plain, and it was full of human bones. And he led me around them, and there were very many on the face of the plain, very dry. And he said to me: 'Son of man, will these bones live?' And I said: 'Lord, you know these things.' And he said to me: 'Prophesy over the bones, and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord,'" and so on. This reading is simple, most holy brothers; it was not written by way of allegory but set down as an example for believers. Promising the hope of resurrection in the same body in which we die, it gives all Christians great confidence in eternal life. And though the catholic faith remains whole and secure in this hope of resurrection by heavenly mysteries and divine reasons, since it is fortified by the authority of many heavenly Scriptures, yet because the falsehood of heretics, which arose from the weakness of mortal senses at the devil's inspiration, often creeps in, I have proposed, God willing, to treat this hope briefly, to show that the resurrection of the flesh will truly come and to expose the cunning arguments of heretics. Many have arisen who outwardly are thought to be sheep but inwardly are, as the Savior said, ravenous wolves, who, like the serpent with Eve, wound and seduce the simple in conversations, taking the simplicity of the heavenly words by the sense of their own will and not according to the plain meaning of the truth itself, denying, as I said, the resurrection of the flesh. Though a full discussion is needed against them, we, aiming at brevity, will take care to answer in very few words, so as to offer a right hand to those who believe well and to show the way of salvation without ill will to those who err. For this reading, which has now been read and which plainly shows the resurrection of the flesh, they interpret otherwise, saying that those bones scattered on the plain were a figure of the sons of Israel, who were scattered by captivity on the plain of this world. And as those bones, they say, came together and were given bodies, so they too were to be gathered from captivity into Jerusalem and into their own kingdom, from which they had been shut out, and to return to their former state. Indeed they say that this resurrection of the house of Israel already happened then, when they were restored from captivity in Babylon to Judea after seventy years. But far be this from the catholic faith, since it is certain that a true resurrection of the flesh is to be believed according to the testimony of the heavenly Scriptures. Let us see now, then, with regard to those who bring in the question of flesh and blood on apostolic authority, whether the apostle absolutely disowns and excludes that same flesh and blood from the kingdom of God when he says, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God," or whether under the word "flesh" he marks and brands the vices of the flesh. See, the same apostle says: "We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed," and "Who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of glory." When will this body of our lowliness be conformed to the glory of God, if not in the resurrection of the saints, as the apostle John says: "Blessed," he says, "and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power"? And again the blessed apostle repeats, saying: "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy,

pleasing to God." How living, if they are to perish? How holy, if they are to be profaned? How pleasing, if they are to be condemned? Hence in this place too the one same Spirit of God, who spoke through the apostle, here also through the prophet then showed the resurrection of the flesh, saying: "Thus says the Lord: I will open your tombs and bring them out of your tombs into the land of Israel. And you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your tombs and bring my people out of the tombs, and I will put my spirit in you and you will live, and I will place them on the land. And you will know that I the Lord have spoken and will do it, says the Lord." This too is what the blessed apostle Paul preaches with all the strength of faith, saying: "What does it profit me," he says, "that I fought with beasts at Ephesus, if the dead do not rise?" And to the Corinthians, having arranged all church discipline, he closes their faith, according to the gospel rule, with the commendation of the Lord's death and resurrection, so as to draw from it the norm of our hope too, saying: "But if it is preached that Christ rose from the dead, how do some among you say that there will be no resurrection of the dead? If there is none," he says, "neither has Christ risen; our preaching is empty, your faith too is empty, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we testified that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. And if Christ has not risen, your faith is vain and you are still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. But now," he says, "Christ has risen, the firstfruits of those who sleep." And to the Thessalonians, written as if with a ray of the sun, what these light-shunners do not willingly accept shines out: "May the God of peace himself," he says, "sanctify you wholly." And as though it were not enough to have said "wholly," he goes on to the whole substance of man: "that your spirit," he says, "and soul and body may be kept whole without blame for the day of the Lord." He distinguished them by name, that is, spirit, soul, and flesh, to prove that the whole man is destined for salvation. "But for the day," he says, "of the Lord may it be kept," that is, for the coming of our Savior, who is the key of the resurrection of the dead. Let them learn, then, the apostle's meaning, if they do not understand in what sense he said, "Flesh and blood will not see the kingdom of God": for he who directed our hope too toward resurrection on the example of the Lord's resurrection could not with another weapon disown the same hope of resurrection, since every example is set from likeness, not from difference. For if you hear that Christ suffered, that he was buried according to the Scriptures, you must believe that he was raised in no other way than in the flesh: for the very thing that fell into death, that lay in burial, that is, the flesh of man which the Word of God had taken up, itself rose again in Christ.

Since, then, it has been proved concerning the resurrection of the flesh, it remains for us to consider on what terms the apostle disinherited the flesh from the kingdom of God, saying, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God." Who does not know, sweetest brothers, that the blessed apostle himself made mention of two men? "The first man," he says, "from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly." So if Christ, the Son of God, though from heaven and heavenly, can nevertheless be called man only because he too put on flesh and soul, being made, that is, the second Adam, and so from the fellowship of flesh and soul drew also the sharing of the name, so as to be called man. "But as is the heavenly," he says, "so too are the heavenly ones." You will ask: such in substance, or in discipline? If Christ put on a human body in substance, the earthly and the heavenly will in no way be separated in substance, because in the bodies in which they were earthly, while they still lived according to the vices of the flesh, in the same bodies, having received spiritual grace, they are called heavenly men for their holiness and righteousness, because they have been found worthy of the heavenly Spirit. And so you can distinguish nothing between the earthly and the heavenly except the observance of discipline alone, by which the apostle declared the heavenly man not from the substance of the body but from the future glory: "For one is the glory of the heavenly, another that of the earthly." It is true, because the closeness to God of the saints is one thing, the conduct of sinners another. Hence it must be plain to you that this distinction between the earthly and the heavenly man arose not from the substance of the flesh but from the difference of dignity. Indeed, "as we have borne," he says, "the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly." How have we borne the image of the earthly, if not through fellowship in transgression, through partnership in death, through exile from paradise? "But so," he says, "let us bear the image of the heavenly," that is, set in the same body. But how do we bear the heavenly image, if not according to the features of Christ, in all holiness, righteousness, and truth? So in the very flesh in which we have borne the image of the earthly through fellowship in sin and death, in the same let us bear in turn the image of the heavenly through good conduct, walking according to Christ in faith, holiness, and truth. It must now be proved to all that not the flesh itself but the works of the flesh are to be condemned, as the same apostle says: "The works of the flesh are plain, which are fornications, adulteries, drunkenness, avarice, luxury, the service of idols, and the like, for those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God." See, the apostle himself shows in what way he disinherited flesh and blood from the kingdom of God, when he spelled out the works of the flesh that are condemned. Clearly, if the apostle had never put the substance for the works, he would rightly be thought to have spoken of the flesh. But since he denied that those set in the flesh are in the flesh, because, having received faith, they had cast off the works of the flesh, and called those flesh and blood who because of fleshly vices had not deserved to receive the Spirit of God, we certainly ought not to overturn his manner of speech, so that, when he condemns works in the name of substance, you think the very substance of the flesh is to be condemned for its works. Indeed he says: "Those who are in the flesh," he says, "cannot please God. But you," he says, "are not in the flesh, since the Spirit of God is in you." Yet he was writing this to people set in the flesh, and he himself, still set in the body, was reciting this letter and already pleased God. For he had already been caught up to the third heaven and led into paradise and had seen the secrets of the supercelestial mysteries, and had heard unspeakable words which, as he said, it is not lawful for a man to speak. Since, then, set in the flesh, he was found worthy to hear and see these things, what thoughtlessness and madness it is, with eyes shut, as they say, to exclude flesh and blood from God's kingdom so abruptly, without distinction! For this is why the Son of God put on human flesh, and suffered and rose in that same flesh, to show in his own body the form of our resurrection. Hence he is consequently called mediator of God and men, who keeps the deposit of the flesh in himself and lives in heaven. He also holds the general pledge of our substance, so that, as flesh and blood already possess the kingdom of God in Christ, so we too, rising from the dead, may obtain the kingdom of God in the same flesh through Christ. Moreover, God fashioned the flesh of man with his sacred hands as his own work and animated it with his breath to the likeness of his own life, and set it over the habitation, the fruit, the dominion of all his work. He also clothed it with his sacraments and disciplines and granted it eternity in the resurrection. Indeed, the flesh is washed that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed that the soul may be saved; the flesh is overshadowed by the laying on of hands that it may be enlightened by the Holy Spirit; the flesh eats and drinks the body and blood of Christ that the soul may be fattened from God. Hence things that are joined in work cannot be separated in reward. Or do you think that God destined to eternal destruction the work of his hands, the care of his skill, the sheath of his breath, the model of his building, the heir of his holiness, the priest of his religion, the soldier of his covenant, the sister of his Christ, the bride of his Spirit, that is, the flesh? Far from it. But if they do not believe the prophet preaching the resurrection of the flesh, let them at least believe the Lord himself, who ordered Lazarus, as an example of our resurrection, released from the stench of four days' death, to live and be given back to his own. And at the passion, when the tombs were opened, the bodies of the saints rose, as it is written in this place too: "Thus says the Lord: I will open your tombs and bring you out of your tombs, and you will know that I am the Lord." And what wonder if the Lord raises the dead, he who formed man himself from the mud of the earth when he did not exist? For it is easier to re-form what has been than to make what was not. See, moreover, for our comfort all nature rehearses the future resurrection. The sun sinks into its setting and is born again, the stars glide away to return, flowers die and revive. So too will the bodies of the dead be in the tomb. As trees in winter hide their green and show dryness, so all things are preserved by the same one, so that all may be re-formed from destruction.

Much more, then, man too, among the rest, who was made lord of all things that die, so that he may also be lord of those that rise again. For this reason the Son of God put on the substance of man, which he raised from the dead. There is no doubt about the resurrection, even of those who, because of the consciousness of their deserts, would rather be nothing after death than rise to punishment. For just as there is no end of glory for the blessed, so there is no end of evils for the wretched, as the Lord says through Isaiah: "All who have transgressed against me, their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched, and they will be a spectacle to all flesh." The Lord too in the Gospel: "Go," he says, "into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels." This fire would not be called eternal if it ever had an end. This eternal fire, then, both burns and restores the limbs, consumes and nourishes them. It has, moreover, an example in the Jebusite mountain of the Hivites and in lands everywhere burning: they blaze and are not consumed, they burn and do not turn to ash. So that penal fire of Gehenna does not arise from the losses of those who burn but is fed by the unending rending of the body. Therefore, sweetest brothers, since it is well established concerning the resurrection of the flesh, and punishment is laid up for the faithless and the hope of the heavenly kingdom promised to the faithful, it remains that we strive by persisting in good deeds, remaining in all holiness, faith, and righteousness, so that we may rise not to punishment but to glory, brothers.

"In those days, in the eighteenth year, King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue." Although the solemnity of the day and the present reading urge us, sweetest brothers, to preach on the good of martyrdom, yet since the very matter of which I must speak is so sublime and so magnificent that it cannot be worthily proclaimed and praised in human speech, I fear that poverty of speech may diminish the so illustrious titles of the most blessed martyrs by pursuing them with less than due praise. But what shall I do, dearest brothers, when on one side the honor of the day and the present reading compel me to preach, and on the other the loftiness holds back a mind confused with joy? So I am tossed on both waves of my heart: I do not say what I feel, and yet I cannot keep silent; I want to suppress my joy, but the more firmly it is held in, the more it breaks out; I venture to make it public, but I am hindered by the smallness of a thin and slender speech. Wretched me, who cannot unfold in words the splendor of so great a gift! Of the saints, certainly, I blush lest I speak falsely. And yet it is better to knock and seek than to grow numb in the languor of sloth, because, even if I cannot render due service, it is enough that I had the wish to serve. These three devout youths, then, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, because they shrank from worshiping the king's statue, are at once handed over to the fires. But they, fearing nothing from the fire, answered the king most steadfastly and faithfully: "But there is a God whom we serve, able to deliver us from the furnace of burning fire and to rescue us from your hands, O king. And if not, be it known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods and do not worship the golden image." O glorious faith and unconquered devotion, which, presuming entirely on the power of the Lord, promises itself victory either way: either because God was able to deliver them from the furnace of burning fire, or because, secure of future immortality, they counted the present life worthy of contempt! For though they would rather die than violate the sacred laws of religion, yet so that they might not seem to the king to have lied about the power of God, they were found worthy to be delivered from the middle of the blazing furnace. For they had said: "God is able to deliver us from the furnace of burning fire." Hence it came about that, though the flames flew with frequent roar and in surging whirls, yet the fire, with its pitch retreating, gave way from touching the innocent bodies. Indeed, refreshed by a breath of dew, their clothing remained unharmed in the middle of the furnace of burning fire: their tongues unfolded hymns, and as with one mouth they honored God with praises and song. For there is nothing, dearest brothers, that is denied to sincere faith, because God asks nothing else of us than faith. This he loves, this he seeks, to this he promises and grants all things: "Your faith," he says, "has saved you," and "Be faithful unto death," and "The righteous lives by faith," and "Whoever perseveres," he says, "will be saved." He withheld nothing from faith, then; nothing ... to be impossible for it. Indeed, "To him who conquers," he says, "I will give of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of my God." So too he promises that he will give that manna to those who conquer; now he binds and places the crown of eternal life on the head, now he holds out a white stone to the right hand that receives it, now he hands over the morning star blazing with the brilliance of its rays, now he grants the power to sit on his throne in the court of his honor, now he makes them receive the iron rod, unconquered, of power, now he promises that he will be their companion at the feast of joy and delight: to define it briefly, "what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love him," urging us by these promises that faith should not only begin but persevere. For faith is not great when it begins, but it is glorious if it never ceases. And so these three youths,

devout, broke all the threats and terrors of the cruelest tyrant by the unconquered strength of their souls, because they remained faithful in the Lord. But I confess I wonder how Nebuchadnezzar, a pagan and a barbarian, could recognize the Son of God in the furnace of fire, the fourth among the three youths. For he says: "Did we not throw three men into the furnace of burning fire? See," he says, "I see a fourth, like the Son of God." He had not known him before nor ever heard of him; but that ancient enemy, the deserting angel, who had entered into Nebuchadnezzar to compel him, in the mystery of Antichrist, to make a golden image and destroy righteous men by fire, himself, conquered by divine power, said through Nebuchadnezzar that this was the Son of God. He knew that he had come for the salvation of the three youths, as he himself had known him then, either while he was an angel or when, already a transgressor, he received the sentence from him in paradise. Hence Christian wisdom should observe how much faith can do, which was able to change the nature of flame into the coolness of dew. Nor should it be passed over in silence why King Nebuchadnezzar ordered this statue to be worshiped. What gain, what dignity or glory was he going to obtain if men had worshiped this statue? If, beyond the power of his kingdom, he was still greedy for some greater glory, he would rather have ordered himself to be worshiped than that image, which had no sight, no hearing, no motion of its own, no sense. But this image properly outlined the figure of Antichrist: so it was completed not so much by the will of King Nebuchadnezzar as by the command of the devil, who reigned in him. Nebuchadnezzar did not know what he was doing. It was golden, then, because that Antichrist will be the most powerful king of this world: for, having conquered the ten Roman kings who will be in that time, who were revealed to Daniel in the ten horns, he alone will hold monarchy over the whole world. That its height was sixty cubits and its breadth six indicated the mystery of the name of Antichrist himself. For so blessed John says in the Apocalypse: "The number of the man," he says, "and of the beast contains, by its several Greek letters, six hundred sixty-six. Let him who has understanding understand." For by this number his number and the whole mystery of his iniquity is carried out, and when he comes he will be recognized by it. This number of the name of Antichrist was matched by the measure of that statue, which was made sixty cubits in height and six in breadth. But where are the six hundred that ... the reckoning of the number? Nebuchadnezzar [was] a part ..., [Antichrist] the fullness, and so he made a part of the number in his statue. But the fullness of all iniquity Antichrist himself will fill up when he comes. And so its height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. Indeed that accursed one too, when he comes, will likewise make a golden statue, as the scripture of the Apocalypse testifies, which will bear not some part but the whole fullness of his number. The world, then, in which good and bad meanwhile dwell, was made in six days and blessed on the seventh. So too during six days of the Lord, that is, six thousand years, the work of the world, as I said above, goes on, and on the seventh day of the Lord there will be the kingdom of the saints. Seven times seven make forty-nine: when they are completed, the furnace of Gehenna is opened and the second death is revealed, so that then a sevenfold brightness, like a breath of dew, may be granted to the righteous, but a sevenfold punishment, according to the seven heads of the dragon, and, as the scripture of the Apocalypse relates, the fire of Gehenna may be inflicted on sinners.

But it is enough now, sweetest brothers, to have recalled a few things out of many, so that you may know in what mystery of iniquity the devil made that statue through Nebuchadnezzar, which the three devout youths refused to worship, lest in this statue they should seem to worship Antichrist, whose image it was. If, then, they, for whom Christ had not yet suffered, endured so much for God and for the sacred laws, how much more ought we, for whom the Son of God deigned to be born according to the flesh and to suffer, who freed us from the dead at the price of his blood and made us debtors of his immense benefits, to bear every kind of punishment for the name of Christ with a calm mind, because he who has once been set free in Christ does not endure tyrannical slavery. For Christian freedom does not know how to fear anything. For this we were reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, for this we obtained pardon for our old crimes, for this we testified before many witnesses that we believe, to this, as soldiers of Christ, we swore the words of the sacraments, for this we enlisted for our contest. Therefore we have received the pay of salvation and obtained from Christ the bounty of his gifts. Moreover we are seen to be covered with the shield of faith and clothed with the breastplate of righteousness, so that on this battlefield we may follow our captain without fear. From these things the facts themselves plainly teach: on this battlefield we must not turn our backs or step back, nor lay down our arms or throw away our weapons, nor seek the enemies' camp; but rather we must die for God, for the sacred laws. For a new kind of thing has been discovered through Christ: to perish so as not to be lost, to die so as to live, as the Lord himself says: "Whoever saves his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my name's sake will find it for eternal life." And hence it is that all tortures are easily overcome when the glory of those very tortures is set before the eyes; nor is what tears considered, when a great reward is given for the punishment. Small things, then, as you see, must be exchanged for great, slight things for immense, dying things for lasting. Let us leave this world, so that this world may become the more ours; let us give up a brief life, so that while we die we may restore in ourselves the eternal one, as the Lord says: "Do not fear those who kill your body but cannot kill your soul." For by falling we rise, being extinguished we live, being driven from the earth we take possession of heaven, and we who stood under sentence pronounce sentence. And so we ask and entreat your holiness, O blessed martyrs, that you deign to be mindful of us, so that we too, who believe with equal faith in Christ the Son of God, may deserve to obtain and possess with you the same glory from the triumph of passion in martyrdom.

"Let all flesh be silent before the face of the Lord, for he has risen from his holy clouds. And the Lord showed me Jesus the high priest standing before the face of the Lord, and the devil was standing at his right to oppose him," and so on. A great and divine mystery was shown here to the prophet in that typical prefiguration, who says that a high priest was revealed to him, and, so that there should be no doubt who this high priest was, he also expressed the name, saying "Jesus." Whom, then, do we say was shown in revelation to Zechariah as high priest named Jesus? The son of Jehozadak, who was already living then, or Christ, who had not yet come? For a revelation is never made of present things, but of things to come. And what reason was there for the son of Jehozadak to be revealed in figure, who was then present and seen daily in his office? Nor could the prophet call this Jesus, son of Jehozadak, the great priest, before whom there had been great and illustrious priests, such as Melchizedek, Aaron and Eleazar, Samuel and the rest. For no one can be called great and greater to whom someone is found not only equal but even better. He pronounced this Jesus, then, our Lord, great, because not only can no one be found greater or better than he, but not even like him. This, I say, is the great priest of whom it is written: "You are a great priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek," so as to show that this Jesus of ours is a priest not only great but eternal. "But he was standing," it says, "before the face of God." For he always ministers to the Father, dwelling in his sight, being obedient in all things, even to death, the death of the cross. As for the devil standing at his right, he resisted and opposed him when he deigned to come as man, as we read was fulfilled in the Gospel: sending against him first King Herod, to try to kill him among the infants; then by himself, when he attacked him in the desert with a threefold temptation; after this through the Jews, so that they persecuted him beyond belief; then through Judas the traitor, so that they hung him on a cross. And there is no counting how often, with what and how great snares, the devil opposed our God and Savior when he had put on man: but he was conquered and laid low as often as he set about tempting Jesus. Hence in this place too he received sentence from the Lord, when it is said to him: "May the Lord rebuke you, he who has chosen Jerusalem." He means that heavenly Jerusalem chosen by the Lord, of which the blessed apostle Paul says: "The heavenly Jerusalem," he says, "which is our mother"; which John too in the Apocalypse describes as built of gold and gems, to come down from the new heaven onto the new earth, so that there may be, he says, the dwelling of God with men. And so: "May the Lord rebuke you, devil, he who has chosen Jerusalem." The same Lord rebuked him in the Gospel too, when he said: "Get behind me, Satan; you shall not tempt the Lord your God"; and he will rebuke him again at the judgment, when he condemns him with all his own to eternal punishment in the lake of fire, which is Gehenna, as the Lord himself testified in the Gospel that he would say to the unbelievers: "Depart from me, you cursed; I do not know you; go into the eternal fire which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels." This is the rebuke from the Lord which the same Lord threatens against the devil for the future, saying: "May the Lord rebuke you, devil, he who has chosen Jerusalem."

"But Jesus," it says, "was clothed in filthy garments." First we must ask whether Jesus son of Jehozadak ever put on filthy garments, who was not allowed to put on any but clean ones, that is, priestly garments, in which to perform the priestly office. This Jesus, the Son of God, the supreme and true priest of the Father, was seen in filthy garments. We must now show what these filthy garments are. For he took on the flesh of man, liable to sins, like a garment. The prophet too had foretold this: "As I live, says the Lord, I will clothe myself with them all as with a garment." This flesh, then, he put on for our sake at his birth from the Virgin Mary, and put off at his passion, as the apostle says: "Stripping off the flesh, he openly triumphed over the powers through the cross." In bringing in filthy garments, he approved the human flesh which he put on: he called it filthy not because it committed sin in itself, but because he had put it on, by the lot of birth, soiled by the sentence on the first-formed and by the offense of transgression. And so he was seen, as I said, in the filthy garments of the flesh. And this is what the prophet says in this place: "And Jesus was clothed in filthy garments." The blessed apostle Paul too mentions this, saying: "Though he was not a sinner," he says, "he was made sin for us," certainly by putting on a body liable to sins. Hence at the beginning of the Gospel too he is seen wrapped in swaddling cloths and in the rents of the human race, while he takes them on himself, until the tunic of innocence was woven by the shuttle of the cross. That he is found laid in a manger signified that he was to be heavenly food for us, once sinners, as a net of eternal salvation. But hear what he adds: "Is not this," he says, "a brand plucked from the fire?" We must notice to whom this is said or proclaimed. Certainly he said to the devil: "May the Lord rebuke you, devil, he who has chosen Jerusalem." Is this too said to him: "Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?" Many of the simpler sort think so, that he called the devil himself a brand plucked from the fire, though the devil has not only not been plucked out but has been condemned to eternal fire, as the Lord says: "Go into the eternal fire which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels." But a brand plucked from the fire is shown half-burned, not burned through. For the Lord put on this body of the human race, which had been scorched by the transgression of the first-formed and the flame of crimes, and freed it, like a half-burned brand, from the fire of Gehenna. As, then, the brand of flesh which the Lord had put on from fellowship with the human race did not have the appearance of a brand, and so the flesh which he freed from the fire of Gehenna, like a brand plucked from the fire ... might return,

Then after this: "Take off his filthy garments, and clothe him in a long robe." The priest used this kind of garment long ago. Fittingly and rightly, then, he took on the priestly garment through the resurrection, because he is the high priest who offered himself to God as a sacrifice for us: having abolished the offenses of the human race, he alone, worthily clothed with immortality, ascended into heaven, so that, ceasing now to be in our filth, now joyful and strong, he shines in the priestly robe, death subdued, clothed, that is, with the glory and honor of the second coming, as the apostle says: "And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we know him so no longer." This priest, then, always offers acceptable sacrifice to God the Father, offering him his own obedience as an outstanding victim. Indeed we know and believe that all the sacrifices of the fathers which God deigned to regard were always offered through this priest: through this priest, then, God looked on the gifts of Abel; through him he received and smelled the fragrance of Noah's sacrifices; through him he approved Abraham's victim; through him Isaac sacrificed acceptably; he stood by Jacob's sacrifices; without him Moses could not offer; he commended Aaron's sacrifices, he Samuel's. He, not to be long, approved the offerings of all the other priests: hence we cannot estimate what and how great this priest is, without whom the priests themselves could not offer their sacrifices. This supreme and great priest of God the Father, I say, exercises his priesthood not in some one place but in the whole world. Indeed, since not even the world can contain him, he exercises his priesthood in heaven, so that he is priest not only of men but of angels, as the apostle says: "Who made peace through the blood of his cross, both for things in heaven and things on earth." This priest of ours, I say, proves by his very deeds and powers what and how great he is. He touches lepers and is not defiled. For leprosy, which, if it remained, could have polluted the one who touched it, could not defile when it fled. And while the other priests were polluted if they had handled the bodies of the dead, this priest touches the dead and is clean. For how could death defile him, when whatever he touches at once lives? He handles the eyes of the blind, and they see: for he is light. He touches the mouths of the dumb, and at once they speak: for he is the Word. He touches the ears of the deaf, and they hear without delay: for he is the voice. Likewise he strokes the lame with his hand, and they run: for he is the way. Indeed he touches and cures every kind of illness: for he is health. He absolves the guilty: for he is innocence. He sets free from the slavery of offenses: for he is freedom. He brings back from the underworld: for he is resurrection. He carries up to heaven: for he is king. He raises the dead: for he is life. And, to put it briefly, he is himself whatever he does, nor does he fail in the work, since before the work he is about to do he himself already was in the power of his substance. This priest of ours, I say, for the salvation not of some one man or race but of the whole world, offered not some fat animal, as the old priests did, but gave himself in sacrifice, being led like a lamb without malice to be sacrificed in Jeremiah, or snatched like a sheep to the slaughter to be sacrificed in Isaiah, or slain like the calf in the Gospel for the son who returned, so that joy might be provided. Hence we can now judge whether he offered an acceptable sacrifice, when he who offered was himself offered. But since we have now spoken briefly and in haste of his majesties and powers, let us make an end of this matter.

"In those times, when the days of Pentecost were being completed, all the apostles were together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a rushing, mighty wind." Moses, the renowned prophet, lawgiver and messenger of truth, asked the Lord to be excused from carrying out an embassy to the people, pleading the slowness of a stumbling tongue, that his uncertain voice gave a doubtful and imperfect sound, and that words reported uncertainly and heard less than fully would not be believed, since, with the joints of syllables frustrated and the proper sound of letters scattered, his speech was dragged out haltingly in the effort of an uncertain mouth. For so he says: "Provide, O Lord, another whom you may send. For I am of thin voice and slow of tongue." Yet he could not excuse himself from what the Lord commanded. So I too, most holy brothers, since I am unskilled in words and can say nothing adequate about the greatness of such matters in rustic and countrified speech, ought to ask your charity to excuse me, so that I might pass over this reading in silence, lest our empty words, bursting from a very slender spring of knowledge, overcome by the greatness of the matter as by the mass of an outpoured sea, be unable to proclaim things so great and lofty. But I will do it, dearest brothers, since both my office and my love for your charity do not let me keep silent, because it is necessary that by constant preaching some increase of faith and knowledge be given you through the Lord. This reading, then, which has been read, suggests that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which the Lord long ago promised to believers through his prophets, was afterwards made present under the apostles on the day of Pentecost. For so it is written: "And when the days of Pentecost were being completed, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues distributed as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in various tongues, as the Spirit gave them to utter." But individuals, not knowing what it was that they were speaking in tongues, said: "These men are full of new wine." Hence the blessed apostle Peter says: "Men of Judea, and you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is the third hour of the day. But this is what the prophet had said: And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and daughters will prophesy, and the young men will see visions, and the old men will dream dreams." To receive this Spirit, then, let us offer all our senses and a capacious soul. For so the Lord says in the Gospel: "For the Father does not give the Spirit by measure," but grants him abundantly and generously. For just as, if anyone wishes to draw water from a great and immense river, he will draw as much as the vessel he has brought holds, so too the mind of man will receive as much of the Spirit as it is willing, according to its disposition and faith, to hold and draw. This Holy Spirit, then, who came like tongued fire and filled the hearts of all believers with the power of his majesty, is not new in the Gospel, but, renewed in Christ, has been given to all, as the Lord himself said that new wine must be put into new wineskins. This, I say, is he whom he now calls the Paraclete, now names the Spirit of truth, who both in the prophets accused the people of the Jews and in the apostles provided advocacy for the Gentiles.

But perhaps someone may say: "If the Spirit of God came down upon the virgin and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, as it is written, 'The Spirit of God will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,' why did he come again upon the Lord in the likeness of a dove?" Hear the reason, brothers, so that you may lay aside from your mind every scruple about this question. The Son of God first came to the virgin in order to form for himself a man from it in the virgin's womb. Just as he had formed the first Adam from the mud of the earth, so too he formed this second Adam from a virgin mother as from untilled earth, so that what the first Adam had lost might be restored in Christ, and as death had come through the first Adam, so through this second Adam life might be given back to all, as the apostle says: "The first man from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly," and "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive." It was therefore necessary that the Holy Spirit should first come to that man whom the Word of God had put on, and so through him, as from a fountain of powers, the grace of the same Holy Spirit might overflow, distributed, to us too; because so great a power of the Paraclete Spirit could not dwell in a human body unless he had first grown accustomed, resting in the flesh of the Son of God: so that, while he grew accustomed to come to the Son of God, he might from then on remain in man and spread through all flesh baptized in Christ. And so the whole fullness of the Holy Spirit came upon Christ, because he is the entire body of the whole Church. In us, however, who are counted as members, the several gifts of graces of the same Spirit have been distributed, so that the good things of the same Spirit might be brought to us, as a kind of first taste of graces, with the rest following, as from the fountain of Christ's gifts and works. This, I say, is the Spirit who works from water a second birth by a kind of seed of divine lineage and the consecration of a heavenly birth, who makes us the temple of God and makes us a holy house, who intercedes for us with unspeakable groanings, fulfilling the office of advocacy and providing the services of defense; he has been given as an indweller to our bodies, made a witness of holiness, working in us to lead our bodies to divinity and to the immortality of resurrection, while he accustoms them to be joined with the heavenly power of the mystery and with the spirit of divine eternity. This, I say, is the Spirit who desires against the flesh, because the flesh fights against him. He restrains insatiable desires and breaks immoderate lusts, extinguishes unlawful ardors and conquers burning impulses, casts out drunkenness, checks avarice, flees the revels of luxury, binds love, ties affections, repels sects, seeks the rule of truth, refutes heretics, drives out the wicked, guards the things of the Gospel. Of this Spirit the apostle says: "For we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God." Of him he exults and says: "I think that I too have the Spirit of God." Of this Spirit he says plainly that in the last days some will depart from the faith, giving heed to spiritual teachings of demons in hypocrisy, speaking lies, having their conscience seared. No one set in this Spirit denies that Christ is true God and the true only-begotten Son of God, born of the unbegotten; no one repudiates God the creator; no one utters any words of his own against Scripture; no one establishes other and sacrilegious decrees; no one writes different laws; no one betrays the faith; because whoever blasphemes against this Spirit has no forgiveness either in this age or in the age to come. For this Spirit bears witness to Christ in the apostles, shows the faith of religion arousing in the martyrs, encloses in virgins the admirable constancy of sealed flesh, guards in the rest these uncorrupted and undefiled laws of the Lord's teaching, destroys heretics, corrects the perverse, convicts unbelievers, exposes pretenders, restrains all the wicked, guards the uncorrupted, immaculate, perpetual virginity of the Church. This, I say, is the Spirit who on this day, that is, Pentecost, was sent by God to the Church, who does not distinguish ages, does not separate the sexes, does not respect persons, but offers and gives himself to each according to the merit of faith, choosing not age or person but a soul into which he gladly brings himself. For one and the same Spirit works all things in all. For this reason, then, the Lord said: "When I go away, I will ask my Father, and I will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. When that Advocate comes whom I will send you from my Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from my Father, and he will receive of mine, and he will teach you all things."

To receive this Spirit, then, dearest brothers, we must prepare our soul and minds in all holiness and righteousness. For he is delicate and clean, and does not dwell, as it is written, in a body subject to sins. He always seeks for himself a house pure and without any pretense, in which, when he has begun to dwell, he will make that body a temple of God. Strengthened by this Spirit, the apostles feared neither prison nor chains for the name of Christ our God, having in themselves the gifts which this same Spirit distributed and arranged for the Church, the bride of Christ, as a kind of ornaments. He set prophets in the Church, instructs teachers, directs tongues, works powers of healing, performs wonderful works, contributes governments, suggests counsels, and arranges whatever other gifts there are, so that in all things the Church of God may be preserved perfect by the protection of this Spirit.