Letters 76.1–78.3

Although I am conscious of many sins, and daily in prayer on bended knees I say, 'Do not remember the sins of my youth and my ignorances,' yet, knowing the apostle's saying, 'lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the judgement of the devil,' and what is written in another place, 'God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble,' there is nothing I have tried so hard to avoid since boyhood as a swollen mind and a stiff neck that provoke God's hatred. For I know that my Master and Lord and God said in the humility of the flesh, 'Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart,' and before that sang through the mouth of David, 'Remember, Lord, David and all his meekness.' And in another place we read, 'Before glory a man's heart is humbled, and before a fall it is exalted.' So I beg you not to think that I kept silent after receiving your letter, and not to lay on me the unfaithfulness or negligence of others. For what good would it do me, when invited to this duty, to keep silent and repel your friendship by my silence, I who am accustomed to seek the friendship of good men of my own accord and to press myself on their love? For 'two are better than one, and if one falls he will be held up by the other. A threefold cord is not broken,' and 'a brother helping a brother will be exalted.' Write boldly, then, and overcome the absence of our bodies by frequent letters.

Do not grieve if you do not have what ants, flies, and serpents have, that is, the eyes of the flesh; but rejoice that you have that eye of which it is said in the Song of Songs, 'You have wounded me, my sister, my bride, with one of your eyes'; the eye with which God is seen, of which Moses says, 'I will pass over and see this great sight.' Indeed, we read that even some philosophers of this world put out their own eyes, in order to concentrate all their thought on the purity of the mind. And the prophet says, 'Death has come in through your windows.' And the apostles hear: 'Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' So they are commanded to lift up their eyes and see the white fields that are ready for harvest.

As for your prayer that through my admonitions Nebuchadnezzar, Rabshakeh, Nebuzaradan, and Holofernes may be slain in you, you would never ask my help if they were alive in you. But because they are dead, and with Zerubbabel and Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and with Ezra and Nehemiah too, you have begun to rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem, not putting your wages into a bag with holes but laying up treasures for yourself in heaven, therefore you seek my friendship, thinking me a servant of Christ. My holy daughter Theodora, sister of Lucinius of blessed memory, who commends herself, I commend with my words also, that she may not grow weary on the journey she has begun; that she may reach the holy land with much toil through the desert; that she may not think virtue is complete in having come out of Egypt, but that one reaches Mount Nebo and the river Jordan through countless ambushes; that she may receive the second circumcision at Gilgal; that Jericho may fall for her, overthrown by the blasts of the priestly trumpets; that Adoni-bezek may be slain; that Ai and Hazor, once most beautiful cities, may fall. The brothers who are with me in the little monastery greet you. Through you we warmly greet the saints who deign to love us.

It is several years since I consoled Paula, that venerable woman, on the falling asleep of Blesilla, while the wound was still fresh. The fourth summer is rolling round since, writing Nepotian's epitaph to Bishop Heliodorus, I spent whatever strength I could muster in that grief of the moment. About two years ago I sent my Pammachius a short letter on Paulina's sudden departure, ashamed to say more to a most eloquent man and to press on him what was his own, lest I seem not so much to console a friend as, in foolish boastfulness, to teach one already perfect. Now, my son Oceanus, you lay on me, willing and even eager, a duty I owe: to make an old subject new by the newness of the virtues. For in those cases a parent's affection, an uncle's grief, or a husband's longing had to be soothed, and different medicine from the Scriptures applied to suit the different persons.

You now hand over to me Fabiola, the praise of Christians, the marvel of the Gentiles, the grief of the poor, the consolation of monks. Whatever I seize on first becomes cheap in comparison with what follows. Shall I proclaim her fasting? Her almsgiving comes first. Shall I praise her humility? The ardour of her faith is greater. Shall I speak of the squalor she sought, of the plebeian dress and the slaves' clothing she chose in condemnation of silk garments? It is more to have laid aside one's pride than one's finery. It is harder to do without arrogance than without gold and gems; for when these have been thrown away we sometimes swell with a glorious squalor and offer a saleable poverty to the popular breeze. Virtue that is hidden and cherished in the secret of the conscience looks to God alone as judge. So she must be extolled with new praises, and, passing over the rhetoricians' order, all must be taken from the cradle of her conversion and penitence. Another, perhaps, mindful of the schools, would bring forward Quintus Maximus, 'the one man who by delaying restored the state for us,' and the whole Fabian clan; he would tell of their fights, describe their battles, and boast that Fabiola had come down through the ranks of such nobility, to show in the roots what he could not show in the branch. I, a lover of the inn of Bethlehem and the Lord's manger, in which the virgin mother brought forth God as an infant, will present the handmaid of Christ, not from the nobility of ancient history, but from the humility of the church.

And because right at the beginning a rock, as it were, and a storm raised by her detractors stand in my way, namely that she left her first husband and took a second, I will not praise her conversion until I have acquitted her of the charge. Her first husband is said to have had such vices that not even a prostitute or a cheap slave could have endured them. If I chose to tell them, I would spoil the virtue of the woman who preferred to bear the blame of the separation rather than defame a part of her own body and uncover its stains. I will bring forward only this, which is enough for a modest and Christian matron. The Lord commanded that a wife must not be put away except for the cause of sexual immorality, and that, if she has been put away, she must remain unmarried. Whatever is commanded to men applies consequently to women. For it cannot be that an adulterous wife is to be put away and an adulterous husband kept. If he who is joined to a harlot becomes one body, then she too who is united with a fornicator and an impure man becomes one body with him. The laws of the Caesars are one thing, the laws of Christ another; Papinian commands one thing, our Paul another. Among them the reins of chastity are loosened for men, and, with only seduction and adultery condemned, lust is allowed free range through brothels and slave girls, as if rank made the guilt and not the pleasure. With us, what is not lawful for women is equally not lawful for men, and the same service is judged on equal terms. So she put away, as they say, a vicious man; she put away one guilty of this and that crime; she put away (I almost said what the whole neighbourhood proclaimed and the wife alone did not betray). If, however, she is blamed because after repudiating her husband she did not remain unmarried, I will readily admit the fault, provided I may state the necessity. 'It is better,' says the apostle, 'to marry than to burn.' She was a very young woman; she could not keep her widowhood. She saw another law in her members warring against the law of her mind, and felt herself bound and captive, dragged toward intercourse. She thought it better to confess her weakness openly and to undergo the semblance of a wretched marriage than, under the glory of being a one-man woman, to practise a harlot's trade. The same apostle wishes young widows to marry, bear children, and give no occasion for reproach. And he at once explains why he wishes this: 'For some have already turned aside after Satan.' So Fabiola too, because she had persuaded herself and thought that her husband had been rightly put away by her, and did not know the rigour of the gospel, in which every pretext for marrying is cut off from Christian women while their husbands are alive, while she avoided many wounds of the devil, unwarily received one wound.

But why do I linger over old and cancelled matters, seeking to excuse a fault for which she herself confessed her penitence? Who would believe that after the death of her second husband she would come back to herself, at the very time when careless widows, having shaken off the yoke of servitude, usually behave more freely, go to the baths, flit through the streets, and carry harlots' faces about; that she would put on sackcloth, confess her error publicly, and, with the whole city of Rome looking on, before the day of Easter, in the basilica of that Lateranus who was cut down by Caesar's sword, stand in the ranks of the penitents, and, while the bishop, the presbyters, and all the people wept with her, bow her dishevelled hair, her pale face, her soiled hands, her grimy neck? What sins would such weeping not purge? What ingrained stains would such lamentations not wash away? Peter blotted out his threefold denial by a threefold confession. Aaron's sacrilege and the calf's head cast from gold were set right by his brother's prayers. David, a holy and most meek man, amended both murder and adultery by seven days of fasting. He lay on the ground, rolled in ashes, and, forgetting his royal power, sought light in darkness, and, looking only to him whom he had offended, said with a tearful voice, 'Against you alone have I sinned and done evil before you,' and, 'Restore to me the joy of your salvation and strengthen me with a guiding spirit.' And so it came about that he who had first taught me by his virtues how to stand and not fall taught me by his penitence how to rise again when I fall. What king do we read of so wicked as Ahab, of whom Scripture says, 'There was none other like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord'? When he had been rebuked by Elijah for Naboth's blood and had heard the Lord's anger through the prophet, 'You have killed, and also taken possession,' and, 'Behold, I will bring evils upon you and sweep away your posterity,' and the rest, he tore his clothes, covered his flesh with sackcloth, fasted in sackcloth, and walked with bowed head. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 'Have you not seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself in fear of me, I will not bring the evil in his days.' O happy penitence, which drew God's eyes to itself, which by confessing its error changed the Lord's angry sentence! We read that Manasseh did the same in Chronicles, and Nineveh in the prophet, and the tax collector in the gospel. The first of these deserved to receive not only pardon but his kingdom as well; the second (a king) broke God's impending anger; the third, beating his breast with his fists, did not lift his eyes to heaven, and went away far more justified by the humble confession of his faults than the Pharisee by the proud display of his virtues. This is not the place to preach penitence and, as though writing against Montanus and Novatus, to say that it is a sacrifice pleasing to the Lord, that 'a sacrifice to God is a broken spirit,' and, 'I prefer the penitence of the sinner to his death,' and, 'Arise, arise, Jerusalem,' and many other things that the trumpets of the prophets sound.

This one thing I will say, which is both useful to readers and fitting to the present case. She was not ashamed of the Lord on earth, and he will not be ashamed of her in heaven. She laid bare her wound to all, and Rome with tears beheld the scar on her discoloured body. She had her sides uncovered, her head bare, her mouth closed. She did not enter the church of the Lord, but sat apart outside the camp with Miriam, the sister of Moses, so that the priest who had cast her out might himself call her back. She came down from the throne of her delights, took the millstone, made flour, and with bare feet passed through rivers of tears. She sat upon coals of fire; these were a help to her. She beat the face by which she had pleased her second husband; she hated jewels, could not bear to look at fine linen, fled from ornaments. She grieved as though she had committed adultery, and by many costly remedies sought to heal a single wound.

We have lingered long on her penitence, settling on it as in shallow places, so that a larger field for her praises might open before us without any hindrance. When she had been received back into communion before the eyes of the whole church, what did she do? Did she, in the day of good things, forget the evil, and after shipwreck wish to try once more the dangers of sailing? No; rather she broke up and sold all the property she could lay hands on (and it was very large and suited to her rank), and, turning it into money, set it aside for the use of the poor. And first of all she founded a hospital (nosokomeion), in which to gather the sick from the streets and to nurse the limbs of the wretched, wasted by sickness and hunger. Shall I now describe the various calamities of men, the noses cut off, the eyes gouged out, the half-burned feet, the livid hands, the swollen bellies, the wasted thighs, the dropsical legs, and the worms seething from eaten and rotting flesh? How often did she carry on her own shoulders people consumed by jaundice and filth! How often did she wash away the purulent matter of wounds which another dared not look at! She gave food with her own hand and moistened a breathing corpse with sips of broth. I know that many rich and religious people, because of a weak stomach, practise such mercy through the service of others, and are merciful with their money, not their hands. I do not blame them, and I by no means interpret tenderness of mind as unfaithfulness; but while I pardon the weakness of the stomach, I extol to the skies the ardour of a perfect mind. Great faith despises such things; it knows what the rich man in purple once failed to do for Lazarus, and with what retribution his proud mind was condemned. The man we despise, whom we cannot bear to look at, at the sight of whom we vomit, is like us, formed with us from the same clay, compacted of the same elements. Whatever he suffers, we too can suffer. Let us consider his wounds our own, and all hardness of heart toward another will be broken by merciful thoughts about ourselves. Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths and a voice of iron could I run through all the names of the diseases which Fabiola turned into such relief for the wretched that many of the healthy poor envied the sick. Yet she showed the same generosity toward clerics, monks, and virgins. What monastery was not supported by her wealth? What naked or bedridden man was not clothed with Fabiola's garments? On whom did her swift and eager bounty to the needy not pour itself out? Rome was too narrow for her mercy. So she went round the islands, the Etruscan sea, the province of the Volsci, and the hidden bays of the winding shores where companies of monks live, either in person or by her bounty sent through faithful and holy men.

Then suddenly, and against everyone's expectation, she sailed to Jerusalem, where she was welcomed by a great crowd and for a little while enjoyed our hospitality. When I recall her company I seem to see her still as I saw her then. Good Jesus, with what fervour, what zeal she applied herself to the divine books! As if longing to satisfy a kind of hunger, she ran through the prophets, the gospels, and the psalms, putting questions and storing the answers away in the little chest of her heart. Nor was her desire to hear ever satisfied, but, adding knowledge, she added sorrow; and as if you were throwing oil on a flame, she caught the fuel of a greater ardour. One day, when we had Moses' book of Numbers in hand, and she modestly asked me what such a heap of names meant, why the individual tribes were joined differently in different places, how the soothsayer Balaam prophesied the future mysteries of Christ so that hardly any of the prophets foretold him so plainly, I answered as best I could and seemed to satisfy her question. Then, turning the pages of the book, she came to the place where the list is given of all the stations by which the people coming out of Egypt reached the streams of the Jordan. And when she asked the causes and reasons for each, in some I hesitated, in others I ran on with unstumbling foot, and in most I simply confessed my ignorance. Then she began to press me all the more and, as though I were not allowed not to know what I do not know, to remonstrate and to call herself unworthy of such great mysteries. In short, my shame at refusing forced from me a promise of a separate work for her on this little discussion. This, delayed until now, as I now understand, by the Lord's will, is paid to her memory; so that, clothed in the priestly vestments of the former volume, she may rejoice that she has at last come through the wilderness of this world to the land of promise.

But let us go on with what we began. While we were looking for a dwelling worthy of so great a woman, since she so longed for solitude that she did not wish to be without the inn of Mary, suddenly messengers ran here and there and the whole East trembled: swarms of Huns had broken out from the farthest Maeotis, between the icy Tanais and the savage peoples of the Massagetae, where the gates of Alexander hold back the wild nations behind the rocks of the Caucasus; and flying hither and thither on swift horses they filled everything with slaughter and terror alike. The Roman army was absent then, held in Italy by civil wars. Herodotus relates that this people held the East captive for twenty years under Darius, king of the Medes, and exacted a yearly tribute from the Egyptians and Ethiopians. May Jesus turn such beasts away from the Roman world henceforth! They were everywhere before they were expected, and outstripping rumour by their speed they spared neither religion nor rank nor age, not even wailing infancy. Those who had only just begun to live were forced to die, and, not knowing their misfortune, laughed amid the hands and weapons of the enemy. There was a unanimous rumour that they were making for Jerusalem and hurrying to this city out of excessive greed for gold. The walls of Antioch, neglected in the carelessness of peace, were being repaired; Tyre, wishing to cut itself off from the land, was looking for its ancient island. Then we too were compelled to prepare ships, to stay on the shore, to take precautions against the enemy's arrival, and, though the winds were raging, to fear the barbarians more than shipwreck, providing not so much for our own safety as for the chastity of the virgins. There was also at that time a certain dissension among us, and domestic wars outdid the fighting of the barbarians. We were held in the East by homes now fixed and a long-standing love of the holy places; she, since she was wholly packed and a stranger in the whole world, returned to her native land, to live poor where she had been rich, to stay in another's house, she who had once had many guests, and (not to prolong my words) to spend on the poor in the sight of the city of Rome what she had sold with Rome as witness.

We grieve only for this, that we lost from the holy places a most precious jewel. Rome got back what it had lost, and the insolent and slanderous tongue of the Gentiles was refuted by the testimony of their own eyes. Let others praise her mercy, humility, and faith; I will rather praise the ardour of her spirit. The book in which, as a young man, I once urged Heliodorus to the desert she knew by heart, and when she looked at the walls of Rome she lamented that she was shut in. Forgetting her sex, unmindful of her frailty, and longing only for solitude, she was there where her mind dwelt. The advice of friends could not hold her back; so eager was she to break out of the city as from chains. She called the careful management and cautious distribution of money a kind of unfaithfulness. She wished not to give alms to others, but, having poured out her own goods, to receive alms herself for Christ's sake. She was in such haste, so impatient of delay, that you would have thought she was about to set out. And so, since she was always getting ready, death could not find her unready.

In the midst of this woman's praises my Pammachius suddenly rises before me. Paulina sleeps, that he may keep watch; she goes before her husband, to leave Christ a servant. He is his wife's heir, and others are the owners of the inheritance. Husband and wife vied with each other to pitch Abraham's tent at the harbour, and the contest between them was which should excel in kindness. Each won and each was beaten. Both confess themselves beaten and victorious, since each accomplished what the other desired. They join their wealth and unite their wills, so that what rivalry would have scattered, harmony might increase. No sooner said than done: a hospice is bought, and a crowd flocks to the hospice. For 'there is no toil in Jacob nor grief in Israel.' The seas bring those whom the land takes into its lap. Rome sends those in haste, whom the gentle shore cherishes before they sail. What Publius once did in the island of Malta for one apostle and (not to give room for contradiction) one ship, these do often and for many. Nor is only the need of the poor supplied; their generosity, bent on all, provides something even for those who have means. The whole world has heard alike of the hospice at the Roman harbour. In a single summer Britain learned what Egypt and Parthia had known in the spring.

What is written, 'For those who fear the Lord all things work together for good,' we saw proved in the death of this great woman. With a kind of foreboding of what was to come she had written to many monks to come and relieve her of a heavy burden under which she laboured, and to make for herself friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, who might receive her into the eternal dwellings. They came; they became her friends; she fell asleep, as she wished, and, her burden at last laid down, flew the lighter to heaven. How great a marvel Rome had in the living Fabiola it showed when she was dead. She had not yet breathed her last, had not yet given back to Christ the soul she owed him, and already 'flying Rumour, herald of so great a grief,' was gathering the people of the whole city for her funeral. Psalms resounded, and the Alleluia, echoing on high, shook the gilded roofs of the churches. 'Here a choir of young men, there of old, who in song celebrate' a woman's 'praises and deeds.' Not so did Furius triumph over the Gauls, nor Papirius over the Samnites, nor Scipio over Numantia, nor Pompey over the peoples of Pontus. They conquered bodies; she subdued spiritual wickedness. I hear it still: the troops going before and the multitude surging in crowds to her funeral could not be contained by the squares, the porticoes, or the overhanging roofs from which people looked on. Then Rome saw all her peoples in one place; all congratulated themselves on the glory of the penitent. No wonder if men exulted in the salvation of one over whose conversion the angels rejoiced in heaven.

This, Fabiola, is the gift of my aging talent, these the funeral offerings of my duty, that I have given you. I have praised virgins, widows, and married women, whose garments were always white, who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Happy the eulogy that is stained by no filth in the whole of life! Away with spite, let envy be gone! If the householder is good, why is our eye evil? She who had fallen among thieves has been carried back on Christ's shoulders. There are many mansions with the Father. Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. He to whom more is forgiven loves more.

In the seventy-seventh Psalm, which, following the evangelist Matthew, we believe to be spoken in the person of the Lord, the history of the ten plagues in Egypt and of Israel's going out into the wilderness is told. And though no one doubts that what is written took place, it is as if the letter sounded one thing and the spirit held another shut up within: 'I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter propositions from the beginning, such great things as we have heard and seen, and our fathers have told us.' So the apostle too, in the same words because in the same spirit, says: 'All these things happened to them in figure; they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.' And: 'I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ.' If, then, part of the history of the journey out of Egypt is taken spiritually, the rest, which the apostle passed over for lack of time, is shown to have the same meaning. For the same prophet, who had said in another place, 'I have dwelt with the dwellings of Kedar; my soul has long been a sojourner,' unable to bear his absence from the holy land, groans tearfully and says: 'These things I remembered and poured out my soul within me, until I pass over into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and praise, the sound of one feasting'; and in another psalm: 'Unveil my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law.' Paul too says, 'The law is spiritual'; and the Lord himself: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me'; and the Gospel according to Luke: 'Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things that were said about himself.' So let the Jews, who are little children and cannot swallow solid food but are still fed on the milk of infancy, read of a fleshly Pharaoh and of the Red Sea, over which men sail to India, and of manna like coriander seed; and let them hear in a bodily sense everything that is written: the leprosy of houses and the leprosy of skin and of warp, the bull that kills a man, the beast guilty of adultery, and the ear of the Hebrew pierced with an awl because he wishes to remain a slave for the sake of his wife and children. But we, leaving Capernaum, once a most beautiful field, and going out with Jesus into the desert, are fed with his loaves: with barley loaves if we are foolish and like beasts, with wheaten loaves if we are rational creatures, loaves ground from the grain of wheat which, falling into the ground and dying, bore much fruit. Egypt was struck with nine plagues and Pharaoh broken, so that he would let God's people go; at last he loses the firstborn, so that the firstborn of Israel might be consecrated to the Lord. Those who before wished to hold them now drive them out in haste. The destroyer passes over, and does not dare to touch the land of Goshen, a pasture land watered by rain; for their doorposts were marked with the blood of the lamb, and they said in deed: 'The light of your countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord.' So the feast itself is called phase, which we may call 'passing over', because, going on from worse things to better, we leave dark Egypt behind. But it is now time to fulfil my promise and follow the order of Israel's stations.

It is written in the last part of the book of Numbers, which the Hebrews call Vaiedabber: 'These are the camps of the children of Israel who went out of the land of Egypt by their companies under the hand of Moses and Aaron.' The Greeks call these apaseis, 'departures'; we, for the sake of the character of our language, have translated them more expressively as 'stations', or, since an army is spoken of, 'camps'. A list of the stations is given from the first to the last, and forty-two are counted in all; of which Matthew speaks: 'From Abraham to David fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ fourteen generations,' that is, forty-two generations in all. Through these the true Hebrew runs, who hastens to pass over from earth to heaven and, leaving the Egypt of the world, enters the land of promise. It is no wonder if, under the mystery of that number, we reach the kingdom of heaven, under which the Lord and Saviour came from the first patriarch to the Virgin, as to a Jordan which, flowing with a full stream, overflowed with the graces of the Holy Spirit. That they are written to have gone out 'under the hand of Moses and Aaron', understand as the law and the priesthood, works and the worship of God, each of which needs the other. For it is no use practising virtues unless you know the Creator; nor will the veneration of God profit for salvation unless you fulfil the Creator's commands. With these two hands, as with two seraphim, we break out in confession of the Holy Trinity, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts.'

'And they set out from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the day after the Passover the children of Israel went out with a high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians. And the Egyptians were burying those whom the Lord had struck among them, every firstborn in the land of Egypt; and on their gods also the Lord executed judgements.' Rameses is interpreted by some as 'turbulent commotion' or 'bitterness and the commotion of the moth'; but we think it more truly means 'thunder of joy'. At this city, which lay on the farthest borders of Egypt, the people gathered who wished to go out into the desert, because, leaving the tumult of the world, it was being moved away from its former vices and from the moth of sins that had been eating it, and was turning all bitterness into sweetness, so as to hear the voice of God thundering from above on Mount Sinai. That the divine words and the utterances of Scripture are called thunder in the wheel of this age and world the psalmist declares, saying, 'The voice of your thunder in the wheel'; and those who heard the voice of God the Father at the Saviour's baptism thought it was thunder. And when we have been moved by the gospel trumpet and roused by the joy of the thunder, we go out in the first month, when winter is past and gone, when spring begins, when the earth is in labour, when all things are renewed. We go out on the fifteenth day of the first month, the day after the Passover, with the month's light at the full, after eating the spotless lamb, with our feet shod as the apostle says, our loins girded with chastity, and staves ready in our hands. For although we ate the lamb in Egypt when we kept the Passover on the fourteenth of the month, yet the full light is completed for us when with a high hand we leave Rameses. The hand is called high either because it struck Egypt or because it protected Israel while the Egyptians looked on, who marvel that we go out from the world, are tormented with envy, and afterwards, wishing to hold us back, are drowned in their persecutions, when the Egyptians too bury their firstborn and fathers dead in earthly works bury their dead sons. The firstborn of the Egyptians seem to me to be the doctrines of the philosophers, by which they held men deceived and entangled. When the living Israel has escaped these, they wrap them round their own dead, lest these follow the example of those who go out. Further, as to what follows, 'On their gods he executed judgements,' or, as the Seventy translated, 'vengeances', the Hebrews hold that on the night when the people went out all the temples in Egypt were destroyed, whether by an earthquake or by strokes of lightning. Spiritually we learn that when we go out of Egypt the idols of error fall and all worship of perverse doctrines is shaken.