Tractates on the Psalms 150.1–150.2

We have often treated that the book of Psalms is filled with great mysteries of heavenly things: whether because the arrangement of each has received an order and number contrary to the reasoning of time and events, or because some superscriptions have been ascribed otherwise than they are contained in the books of the Hebrews, or because many titles are set at the head where there are none. Since, then, the volume has been arranged with the sense of a loftier understanding beyond the opinion of the letter, it was fitting that it be concluded with a worthy end, so that the book of so great a prophet too might stand completed according to the glorious perfection of our hope. For first it was divided into that number which was to be filled up by the threefold fifty, although among the Hebrews the number is not connected with each one, and among them many psalms were joined, so that this number of three fifties would not fit. There was, then, this spiritual understanding in the translators: that they divided into number this series heaped up and run together in very many places, so that this order and number of all the psalms, which is in these three fifties, might be filled up, and this might stand as the state, as it were, of the whole book. Of faith, as we treated in the fiftieth and hundredth psalms, of which one, according to the prescriptions of the law, after the sabbaths of sabbaths, embraced the confession of sin and its remission; the other, under the fullness of the same number, comprehends not the pardon of sin but the fruit and duty of righteousness. After which again, the city of God now built for ever and all admonished to rejoice over it and praise it, under the power of the same number again the hope of the saints is completed, all now renewed to spiritual glory and nature, so that by steps through this one might come to fellowship with God, since the remission of sins would earn innocence of life and constancy of judgment, and the innocence of life and constancy of judgment would take on the dignity of spiritual glory. And so all are contained: baptism, resurrection, change, since the first fifty of this book regenerates us to innocence, the next leads us by resurrection to the judgment of innocence, the third establishes us in the nature of the spirit and in praise. For after the kings bound in fetters and the nobles tied with shackles and the written judgment of the saints, when glory had consisted in all these, yet this completion of glory itself followed.

The psalm before the preceding called us to the praise of God for the magnificence of the creations; but after the hymn of the new song, God is no longer to be praised in his works, but to be praised in his saints, whom after the written judgment he will have placed in the glory of eternity and given, now unchangeable, a heavenly honor: for which he is to be praised in the firmament of his power, because he will have brought in the firmament of eternal power, death being swallowed up in victory, when incorruption will have devoured corruption. And therefore the praise of powers follows the firmament of power, because immortality will have consumed death, granting what eye has not seen, nor heart thought, nor ear heard. ... in the saints and for the praise ... his ... God, according to the apostle, blessed us before the foundation of the world with spiritual blessing in the heavenly places; to the glory of whose praise all the duties both of voice and of works incite, by the diversity of dwellings and by brightness. We praise therefore with well-sounding cymbals; this praise is completed with cymbals of exultation. And all this praise is in the saints: that he has driven away from them the corruption of flesh and blood, that they have been reformed to the image of their creator, that they have now begun to be conformed to the glory of God's body, that they are filled with all the fullness of God, that, since God is spirit, it will no longer be flesh but spirit that will praise God.