Eleven Tractates 5.82–6.111

… while the power is kept for us, an end is promised to passing things, punishment to sinners, and eternal things to mortals, as it is written: "The heavens themselves will perish, but you will remain, and all will grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will fold them up; but you are the same, and your years will not fail." Indeed holy Moses, taught by the divine words and chosen for the work of the gospel dispensation, who at the beginning of his birth merited such a beginning as one who comes in the flesh, so that he experienced the caresses of upbringing from those who set snares for his life, and afterwards, Egypt having been struck and the people of God freed, made the first beginning of signs, and, joined in fellowship with God and nourished by the increase of divine precepts, gave the beginning to the canon, whose fullness he had brought forward in himself as testimony, teaching, that is, by the words of what he wrote, and showing the work of the word by the works of his deeds; so it is written of him: "And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to his friend."

Seeing, then, the future doctrines of heretics and the various cleverness of disputers—that some like to think the world was not made but always existed, and therefore that what has no beginning will always be eternal; others, flattering themselves in pleasures, want to impute every sin they commit not to themselves but to the malice of the devil or of the world, although it is written: "Ephraim himself set a stumbling block for himself, loving the Canaanites," and elsewhere, the apostle saying: "Where do wars, where do quarrels among you come from? Is it not from your desires?"—so, accusing the nature of the world through these things, because they judge it evil, they affirm that God made nothing of what appears, and, delighting in bodily lusts and assigning the making of their body to the devil, they think that they do not know what they do and that the sins they commit in their bodies are not held under the care of the divine order, although it is written: "The corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things,"

others, thinking that the Sun and Moon, lights established for the service of men, are gods, attribute power to the principalities of the world's elements, although it is written: "What is brighter than the sun? And yet it will fail"; and elsewhere: "He who calls the water of the sea and pours it on the face of the whole earth, the Lord God almighty is his name." But all these, dearest brothers, wrapped in the darkness of ignorance, overturn the wavering and lead those who agree with them into the perils of their own perdition. For these are, as it is written, clouds without water, carried about by the winds, autumn trees without fruit, dead and uprooted, and fierce waves of the sea foaming out their own shame, deceitful stars for whom the storm and the gloom of darkness have been reserved; whose judgment from of old scarcely suffices, and their destruction will not slumber. For they do not know that all this that is seen will perish at an end set by God, and that therefore the darkness was illuminated and the nature of the creation was devised,

so that, divided by the numbers of seasons and days, it might provide a dwelling for man labouring at the work of Christ, and not exceed what the divine will had established, since he had wished it to keep the divine ordinances in order to provide its service to us; for so it is written of them: "Your father the devil was a liar from the beginning"; and necessarily one to whom nature gave the beginning of lying cannot keep the way of truth. For this reason I urge and admonish you, who, baptized in Christ, have put on Christ, to cast off the darkness of the world and walk honestly as in the day, and, as the apostle says, let no one plunder you according to the philosophy of this world and not according to Christ; for the wisdom of this world is folly with God, and the things that are seen are mortal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. Paying attention to the sense of the reading that has been read, which says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," know that God made all things that have been made, and, the elements having been joined

together, he stretched out the solid nature of the heaven, and so, the use of the air being given to the powers of the winds, he established, in the fourfold change of seasons, the course of the year and the arrangements of the stars. For when the Word of the divine power appeared, saying, "Let there be light," all things that were in darkness lay open, and, the night of evening being divided from the splendour of the light, and each thing set apart into the place of the appointed order, the earth was made solid, so that, with the ministry of the elements running before one another in equal change of seasons, it might bring forth, animated by the spirit of life, the use of the appointed work—not that earth or heaven, or the earthborn principalities given from kindred elements, received anything of the spirit of their own power, but that, the matter of things being prepared, the divine word, entering the work of creation, might fulfil the ordinances of its wise precepts, keeping the forum of the world established as a dwelling for men. Finally, all these things which the order of the world possesses having been made according to their kind,

God made man in his image and likeness, and, taking the clay of the earthly dwelling, he animated our body, so that, man being set over as lord of all things, he might place in him his sabbath, that is, his rest, where he had embodied his image and likeness; and that afterwards, nature being passed on, man taking from man the bodily lodging, flesh might be born of flesh; so that in us, placed in it and following the commands of the divine precepts, purified flesh might overcome the work of the world and the nature of earthly matter, and man, using the service of the world, not deceived by the will of lust, might have in himself the testimony of the image and likeness of God, and, glorified in body, might become a temple of the Lord, so that, the world being sabbathed in all things, he might present the rest that he had promised to God in himself. Indeed, our God himself, arranging all things in himself through all Scripture, wished himself to be called everything that is said, so that he alone, able to save and to destroy, in each work of the named word, might not deny punishment to sinners

and glory to those who labour in him, as it is written: "Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, chosen, and whoever believes in it will not be put to shame; to you who believe, then, is this honour; but to those who do not believe, the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence; they stumble at the word and do not believe"; so that you may understand how the name of one thing was for some an increase of faith, for others an offence, the punishment of sin. For he made himself the door for those who enter, the way for those who walk in God's precepts, the fountain of righteousness for the thirsty, the bread for the hungry, the vine for believers unto salvation, as it is written in the gospel: "I am the vine, you are the branches"; so that whoever recognized all in all might believe that Christ is one God, with no part of name or power granted to anyone else, whom he would find one in all things, as it is written:

"that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father"; as he himself says through the prophet: "I am God, and before me there was no other, and after me there will be none like me; I am God, and there is none besides me who saves"; likewise there: "I am first and I am hereafter, and besides me there is no God; who is like me?"; likewise through Jeremiah: "This is our God, and no other will be reckoned beside him, who found every way of wisdom and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men." And therefore you too, my dearest ones, purify your souls for obedience to the faith, and, putting off from you the old man with all his acts and lusts, put on in yourselves the new man, and, entering through the understanding of spiritual powers into the work of the lesson that has been read, prepare in yourselves

the heaven and earth of the Lord, as it is written: "The heaven of heaven is the Lord's," and elsewhere, the Lord saying: "Be to me a willing land," so that, the evening of ignorance being dissolved, it may be cried out in you: "Let there be light," as it is written: "Be enlightened, be enlightened, Jerusalem," and, the darkness of the corruptible body being chastised and set in order by the light of the divine Spirit in you, you may be called days of the Lord. For whoever does these things in the works of Christ, first completing the day in the knowledge of himself, placed on the second step rightly learns the firmament of all the commandments, so that what was barren in him, made fruitful by the word of the Lord and receiving the rain of divine preaching, may grow into every grace of catholic profession; and so, ploughing in hope and gathering the fruits of his faith, and growing in work to the glory of the perfect week, he reforms in himself the church of the Lord through the faith of Christ, as it is written: "Wisdom has built herself a house and founded it on seven pillars"; in which house you too, as stones

living, are built into spiritual houses, offering unblemished sacrifices acceptable to God, as those reborn not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of the living God that abides for ever, so that, having become the Lord's sabbath and resting from all the works of the world, you may owe nothing to the world, but rest in Christ.

… yet, because all Scripture needs interpretation, and the weakness of human understanding compels us to seek the appearances of earthly things as indicators of higher ones, so that, with the familiarity of visible things gently admonishing us, a religious sense of understanding may be built up toward unaccustomed meanings, it is necessary for us, for your sake, to extend the lowliness of our speech to things that seem unspeakable, so that, when something visible is set down in the law of God, what is set down may not be taken to be God, but—since all speech comes from meaning—according to the manner of necessary speech, while the nature of the thing sought is recognized, the understanding mind may express for itself what God seeks in us. For this you must understand first: that all Scripture, in everything that is said or spoken, is divided into a threefold work of understanding: either, destroying the work of the world in us, it chastises the dwelling of earthly flesh in its lusts, as the prophet says: "Chastity will guard and justify the heart,"

or, recalling the divine kind of the soul, it shapes those things in us that seem bound by days, months, seasons, wishes, and the idolatrous vices of earthly birth, as the apostle says: "If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit"; or certainly it shows God in man, daily his own witness, who suffered for us and is our judge, so that, since he willed us to be partakers of the divine nature, he binds us in body, soul, and spirit by a threefold observance of the precepts, so that, reformed in spirit through the shadow of the law and trained in the works of cutting away the flesh, we may enter the solemnities of the heavenly Pasch, and, raised from death, Christ dying for us out of immortality, we may understand that, having become all things for us, when he asks for days, months, the forms of cattle, the natures of animals, the varieties of trees, the fruits of earthly seeds in his offerings, he does not desire things of the elements or earthly things, but, showing that all are his own, he demands the purification of earthly flesh and spirit,

for which reason he himself also suffered for us in the flesh, in triumph over sin at work; and, speaking himself wholly through the nature of all things, he wishes the institutions of the world not so much to be worshipped as destroyed, so that what is written may be made manifest: "Man, when he was in honour, did not understand, and was made like the beasts." For although the grace of the divine sacrament, directing the work of the paschal mystery and sending ahead the law of the old testament, as if building the future road of our salvation, establishes the entry of the God who was to suffer, coming into new light, and, in preparation for the paschal day, demands that a lamb be killed, speaking of Christ—and this is called the Lord's Pasch, that the sacrifice of Christ—and the beast of the earth and the God of glory are very different from each other, since indeed the one is earthly, mortal, perishable, and animated for the use of the formed world by the command of a living soul, while Christ, the origin of all things, is wholly in himself, taking what he is from nowhere else, without beginning,

without end; if you consider him through all things, you will find one in all, and speech about him will fail sooner than his nature, since what always is has neither the end of ceasing in God nor began with a beginning; yet all this, he who was to come in the flesh or who suffered in the flesh did for us. God wished us to understand in ourselves that, since there is one author of both sayings, and the peaceable understanding of the divine sayings must be so fitted to each kind of cause that the new testament agrees with the old—even if both are one, yet because they are thought to be divided by the very institution of the law, by time, and by name, and in the old testament the offering of cattle and the circumcision of the flesh are sought, in the new only the faith of the mind—we may recognize in ourselves that, since in both testaments a perfect man is sought in body and spirit, as Christ was in the flesh, as in two parts, the old testament is assigned to purifying the body for God and the new to the instruction of the soul,

and it is not at variance with itself but divided by reason, so that, as God is one in these two testaments, so in us the perfection of the good may be glory, if the purification of the body is cultivated by the fruit of the divine will, as the apostle says: "Behold, the old things have passed away, and all things have become new"; and elsewhere he says: "As we have borne the image of him who is from the clay, so let us bear the image of him who is from heaven." Indeed, in the testament that comes first, as the present lesson teaches, so that, Egypt having been struck, the people of God might be brought into joy, the forms of cattle, the days of months, the season of years are required for celebrating the Pasch; but in the one called new, when the cattle had been driven out of the temple in the gospel and the world nailed to the cross, Christ, ascending to the gibbet for us, is offered, and that is called the Lord's Pasch, this one ours, so that, understanding the dispensation of the words, we may understand that everything that is done and has been done is shown for the salvation of men,

so that the nature of the body, which through the apostle is called the form of the world and the old man, although it was made by the hand of God, yet, because by its taking from the clay it is akin to earthly birth and, divided among the natures of vices by days and seasons, years, months, and all things under the sun, has dulled the divine race of men in the traps of the earthly dwelling—as the prophet says: "The corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things"—necessarily chastised by the law of the old testament and offered in the tabernacle of God, may owe nothing any longer to days and seasons, but, as the flesh of Christ, made sharer of the virginal body, may kill before the face of the Lord the form of sin working in itself, and, as on the cross of Christ, like a perfect, male, spotless lamb, may die with the complete abolition of vices, as the apostle says:

"I have been fastened with Christ to the cross, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." For whoever understands these things, confirmed in faith and buried with Christ by baptism into death, freed from days, seasons, and months, deserves to be of God's number, not the world's; and, despising the earthly things that live, walking in the flesh but not warring according to the flesh, he becomes the Lord's Pasch, and, reborn in the new testament and made like the body of God, when he has offered himself to God as a whole burnt offering, then, in what he suffered, he knows that Christ his Pasch has been sacrificed, as Paul says: "If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer serve sin"; and elsewhere he says: "For the death he died, he died to sin once; but the life he lives, he lives to God." Indeed our God, taking flesh, assigning in himself the form of God and of man, that is, of a divine soul and earthly flesh,

while he shows that one of these is the form of sin and the other the divine nature, and shows the one as weapons of iniquity for sin, the other as weapons of righteousness for our salvation, the Word made flesh—while the invisible is seen, the unbegotten is born, the incomprehensible is held, while he dies as man he rises as God—now complains, as if afraid, that his soul is sorrowful even to death, now declares, beyond human confidence, that he will sit at the right hand of God; now asks that the cup of the passion be taken away if it is possible, now confidently insists that he will drink it as received from the Father; now complains as a man that he has been forsaken by God in his sufferings, now as God promises paradise to the confessing thief; while he is called son and Joseph is not his father, while he is called son and Mary is a virgin before conception, a virgin in conceiving, and, when the flesh was brought forth, about to give the world a miracle, a virgin after the birth,

since among these things so different and so discordant, according to the understanding of a human creature, virginity would not agree with childbirth, death with eternity, distrust with exhortation, trembling with freedom, while he shows one thing to be ready according to the spirit, another weak according to the flesh: so God willed himself to be understood as suffering for men in the flesh, so that, if the mind is sought in us, God is one; if the word, Christ is one; if the work, Jesus is one; if the nature is sought, he is the Son; if the source is sought, he is called the Father; if the creature, he is Wisdom; if the ministry, an angel; if power, a man; if condescension, the Son of Man; if what has been made through him, he is life; if what is outside him, nothing—so ordering all things that, since he was one in all, willing in himself one man, the one who searches him out could have no other kind of perfect work than to believe him one God, whom he would find almighty in what he is and in what he is called. For do not think that it belongs to the dishonour of true divinity,

if God, commending his love in us and bearing our infirmities for us, asks for the offerings of earthly birth in such a way that he does not distinguish himself in anything according to the elements of the world, so as to prove how far the power of eternal infinity exceeds the grasp of the earthly mind, but so that, understanding God through these things, steadfast faith may reject the captious and useless questions of the world and recognize the sin that works in our mortal body, and man, dividing himself, God showing all things in himself, may discover what must be nailed to the cross, with the body chastised, to destroy the work of the world; what must be given to God spotless in himself; what, because the divine dwells in us, must be kept impassible; so that, as we said above, perfected in body, soul, and spirit in the threefold work in God, we may fulfil what is written, Paul saying:

"As you presented your members to serve uncleanness for iniquity, so now present your members to serve righteousness for sanctification, since the wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." And therefore, looking at all things in yourselves—although the working of the world, by the mutual motion of its nature, commends the dispensation of worldly things as beautiful, yet, because the maker must far surpass in glory the sense of the whole creation—know that God needed nothing of this kind for himself; but, because, when man had been deceived, the demonic nature of idols had confounded the simple arrangement of the divine works, divided by place, time, number, day, month, and reckoning, by introducing households of uncertain gods and ascribing the incommunicable name of God to days, months, cattle, birds, wood, and stones, and the war against faith was such that, abandoning God, the giver of so great a gift, they worshipped bodily and visible forms of the creation in things

earthly and heavenly—as the apostle says of them: "They became futile in their thoughts, and their senseless heart was darkened, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents"—necessarily our God, tempering the measure of his religious sentence so as to soften the steep road of divine understanding as by a gentler slope, first, the law having been given through Moses, forbidding every idol that was in heaven or on earth or in the waters, detesting the host and principality of the world that works in harmful thoughts and purifying the work of the flesh in them, so that man might want nothing as god apart from the one God, restrained them by the limit of a precept; and when he asked for anything in sacrifice, he did not want the blood of cattle to be shed, but that there be killed in us those things that the nature of vices had occupied with idolatrous forms in the flesh, as the apostle says of such things:

"Not that an idol is anything, but what they sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God"; so that, these things being corrected in man, afterward the very nature of good things, entering the virgin's womb as the place of a perfect man's making, the forms of idols in the slain cattle, might offer his own blood for the redemption of human atonement, and, passing through all the indignities of our nature—conception, birth, wailing, cradle—with the world nailed to the cross, might rejoice in man saved in himself and through himself for himself. As for the first month being required at the Pasch, it is not so that attention may be paid to the month, whose number will certainly perish with the countable world, but so that, because the creator of all is in all, what is written may be recognized: "Christ the firstfruits of all"; and of the propitiated passage of the enemy: where the first month is required for the sacrifice, there, because, as it is written, the number of man is the number of the beast,

the work of the world and of [birth] in us may first be conquered, and, beginning to owe our being born to God rather than to the world, we may understand that this is our first month and day—not the one in which we appear in the world, but the one in which, Egypt having been conquered, that is, the world rejected, we are restored by a divine birth into God. The course of the moon is ordered to be observed, not so that observance of religion may lie in it, but because every man is conquered by visible things, and flesh, akin to the elements and bound to days and seasons, thinks the rulers of the world to be gods; necessarily the nature of the elements, circumscribed by God in number, must be understood, and, because it wanes or waxes, the elements must be believed, first, not to be of their own power, having no freedom of voluntary action; then, the teaching of worldly wisdom rejected, body, soul, and spirit, in which man is conquered, being restored in us by the threefold law of the decalogue, the month may become the Lord's, and birth, circumscribed by time,

may be conquered in us, since, as it is written, the boundaries of the nations having been set according to the number of the angels, when the decad of the world is conquered, the commandments of the Lord's decad are restored; and hence it is that, in the mystery of the Lord, either tithes of the fruits are required in the law, or, in conquering Egypt, the tenth of the month is demanded for preparing the Pasch, since he who is mighty in three recognizes that he came to conquer the beginning, middle, and end of the world working in him, not to be bound by time, and, believing in eternal things and made timeless, he understands that all that waxes or wanes, the sun by day, the moon by night, is not the rule of our captivity but the working constitution of nature, and all that we have lived, as we return to our kind, will be called the Lord's Pasch, not the work of the world, as it is written: "I created all the host of heaven, and I did not command you to worship it."

As for a spotless year-old lamb being required, taken from the lambs and the kids: it is so that, as it is written, imitating the work of Christ, as little children in malice and spotless, we may work, imbuing ourselves with the law of the Lord, and, while man is returned to God, with the whole world conquered in the number of a year, the innumerable nature of Christ may be held; and so from the lambs and the kids, that is, from two into one new man, the purification of body and spirit being undertaken, the Lord's Pasch and our Pasch, that is, Christ in man and man … in Christ, and what is written may be fulfilled: "He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one." As for the purification of the house being required: not the cleansing of a house made by hands, which itself falls with the age of time, is demanded, but, as it is written: "whose house we are, if we hold fast to the end in blameless strength of faith"; nor does God want lintels or doorposts made of wood and stones to be touched with the blood of a slain animal, for God is not concerned about such things,

but, Paul saying, "Christ is the head of every man, and God the head of Christ," it prophesies in us the mystery of the future baptism, to be enriched by the outpouring of the divine blood; and, as some of you already know and others hope to know, he wants all things that we see, hear, pray, or speak—given in the doorposts or lintels of the animated body—to be fitted for the entrance of the divine word, that is, not to be carried off into the wandering errors of the world, but, as we sign ourselves to the glory of the cross of Christ, to be signed as with the blood of the spotless lamb by the testimony of the divine passion; so that, as we walk in newness of life and not in the oldness of the letter, the body received by us in victory may no longer be called the earth of the world but the house of God, not a dwelling of sexual immorality but the image of the body of Christ. For this reason you too, understanding that the law is spiritual, but we are fleshly, sold under sin,

purify your souls for obedience, and offer yourselves as spiritual sacrifices, an acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God; and, understanding the present lesson, do not gird the loins of the body, but, as the apostle says, girding the loins of your mind, sober in all things, believe perfectly in him in whom you have been sealed with the Spirit, and, as if cleaning a house, prepare the dwelling of your flesh worthy of the commandments of God, so that, imitating the vigils appointed at the Lord's Pasch, living in the night of ignorance, you may keep watch for God, and finish everything that is offered by you before the day of the Lord comes in the morning; and if it is not possible at once to finish what you wish, call your nearest neighbour—that is, understanding the Spirit who dwells with you—to help in completing the work, since, as Paul says, it is his to will and to work in us and to accomplish.

And as the present lesson says, the Lord speaking: "And the blood which you have put on the doorposts and lintels will be for a testimony; for I, seeing this blood, will protect you, and there will be no plague of destruction on you when I strike the land of Egypt"; so, when the Lord comes to judgment, he himself bearing testimony for us and crying out in our hearts, "Abba, Father," we may not be condemned with this world, but, sealed on our foreheads with the testimony of the precious blood, may be acquitted in Christ. Among all these things, although the Scriptures of God speak openly to you, yet, because I too am held as your witness in Christ Jesus, I give counsel as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord: that, putting off the old man with all his acts and lusts, having become a Pasch, and in the seven days, in which the world either begins or goes on or ends, without leaven, that is, without vice, sincere, that is, unleavened, owing nothing to the days of the world, keeping the nature of God and his law in yourselves, we may live by the flesh and blood of the Lord,

so that, when God comes to judgment, as you read in the Apocalypse, we may not be the number of the beast or the measure of the world, but—where you read that John too wept over the seven sealed seals—we may be held as a book of heavenly teaching, and, enrolled among the twelve thousand sealed in the numbers of the patriarchs, may be called not the number of the beast but the measure of a man, which is an angel; that what the Lord said in the gospel may be fulfilled: "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, beget and are begotten; but the sons of God neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither beget nor are begotten, but are like the angels of God."