Eleven Tractates 7.112–10.141

Holy David, establishing the teaching of divine instruction and laying among men the foundation of the indissoluble word, while he exults in all that he had been chosen for, directing the work of the first psalm, both showed the glory of the divine nature and set down a discipline of living for all, saying: "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence." To this psalm, necessarily, since it is first and the beginning of all, no title is placed in the superscription; for whoever has known what was first and has not acted otherwise is not held by the title of sin possessing him, as it is written: "For who calls himself by name?" and elsewhere: "The law is not laid down for the righteous." Although the prophetic word assigns this to God alone, who alone was able to do it, it nevertheless persuades us too so to serve Christ, God, that, the cloud of sins wiped away and Christ's birth renewed in us,

if we know that Christ is the beginning of all things and recognize man as Christ's dwelling, we may prepare a home worthy of such an inhabitant, which the error of worldly ambition does not bend, nor lust deprave, nor avarice discolour, but which, enriched with the splendour of everlasting life, will be found a temple of Christ, God, a testament of the law, and a dwelling worthy of the Saviour, as Paul says: "You are the temple of God, and God dwells in you"; and elsewhere: "Know that if anyone violates the temple of God, which you are, God will destroy him." Understanding this, we know that we are the temple of God and God dwells in us; the fear of crime is greater and the punishment of sin more evident when we have the same one as our daily witness and as our judge, and owe death to him whom we understand to be the author of life. For we are all the body of Christ and members in part; for that we are reborn to salvation is a matter of mercy, not of nature,

so that, if, bound by the birth of the flesh and tied to the vices of the world's evil, we did not escape the way of sinners and the counsels of the ungodly, or, baptized in Christ and putting on Christ, we may so follow the heir of everlasting life that we are found neither sharers of him whom we renounced nor faithless to him in whom we believe. And therefore, understanding the speech of the prophetic word, be such as God the Father made you, be such as the hand of the Father formed you; since the image and likeness of God, which you are, does not seek the enticements and blandishments of corruption, and every counsel of the ungodly and way of sinners, the seat of pestilence, is the cunning of corrupt flesh and the workshop of a polluted body, as it is written: "The corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things." For this is the tune of desire, the blow of anger, the incurable promise, the weapon of the serpent, the craft of the enemy, the flattery of a stranger, the subjugation of ourselves, its own corruption. Through this the assailing enemy

inserts his arts, and the devil creeps in with his snares deceiving in secret, now striking to terrify, now flattering to deceive. So the apostle Paul, showing what he himself willed and resisting what should not be done, said: "I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin"; and elsewhere: "I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for with the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." So too the prophet, speaking of this, says: "Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not fear; say to this people: All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man like the flower of grass; the grass has withered and the flower has fallen, but the word of the Lord remains for ever." And elsewhere he says: "I will stand upon my watchtower, to see and hear who speaks in me and what I shall answer in my accusation"; and elsewhere:

"Hear, my people: those who call you blessed lead you astray and confuse the paths of your feet." If we understand their nature and have no fellowship with vices, we necessarily attain the kingdom which flesh and blood will not inherit. So Rebecca, chosen for the faith of the working mystery, seeing the battles of two peoples in her womb, bore Esau in the pain of her childbirth, who would lose his birthright, and brought forth Jacob to salvation, whom Christ would make heir. In this you too, dearest brothers, as faithful servants and, as it is written, sons of God and fellow heirs with Christ, working in the testimony of what is to be spoken, purify your souls for obedience to the faith, and, not conforming yourselves to the desires of a life of ignorance, of which you are ashamed, do not want to receive the wages of sin, but, entering on the road of the psalmist's word, walk in the law of the Lord, so that, like a tree planted beside the streams of the waters of the divine

words, watered by their springs, you may bring forth the branches of a flourishing understanding and the ripe and lasting fruits of an honourable life, which the pleasure-loving time of a corruptible dwelling did not bring forth but the instruction of the divine word made fruitful; so that, as the leaves of the commandments do not fall, covered with perpetual light, we may reject the punishments of sinners and have the rest of the righteous through Jesus Christ.

"Lord, why have they multiplied who trouble me? Many rise up against me," and the rest. Although the title of the psalm keeps the order of events—why holy David turned aside from the face of his son Absalom—yet we, who speak of heavenly works, must not search out fleshly matters, so that, having found by the tracking of inquiry what is in secret, we may attain the rewards of the work discovered, as it is written: "Seek," he says, "and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you"; and elsewhere: "All things are possible to him who believes." We must therefore gather by faith what was done in appearance, and track visible works by the invisible secret of the mind. For the apostle asserts that all things were done in a figure, and that the things done before show a type of us, so that the labour of the work might enlighten through the knowledge of the law those whom ignorance had previously veiled in darkness, as was said by the apostle to the Ephesians: "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light." We must therefore keep watch,

[the inner man] who is joined to us, which, though [the outer] is corrupted by the change of time, is renewed day by day, so that we may count great not what comes before the eyes but what comes into the mind, not devoted to bodily things but to spiritual, labouring as the apostle Paul, the chosen vessel of Christ, the teacher of the nations, sets down and says: "The law," he says, "is spiritual, but I am fleshly"; and most blessed Peter: "All prophecy or Scripture," he says, "needs interpretation." Hence our meditation night and day in the law of the Lord; hence the attention of an inquiring mind upon it, as far as merit allows; hence the knowledge of ourselves; hence the confidence of glorying to reject what is of the flesh and choose what is of the Spirit, to direct the sharpness of the heart to the knowledge of the truth, to know the secrets of the heavenly precepts, to provide for the good of the soul while there is time. Hence, brothers, as I look more carefully at the providence of the sacred reading, the order of the psalms seems to me not undeservedly arranged by the prophet, nor what the Spirit of God dictated set out without order,

since it shows that man's rude birth, formed in the simple purity of innocence, is equal to the blessed if it remains in these things, saying: "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly nor stood in the way of sinners"; in the second it shuddered at the poison of envy incorporated in us, when it says: "Why have the nations raged and the peoples meditated vain things?"; this, in the third, teaches that hatred of the son against the father is born from us, showing the things that persecute us. And that too, dearest ones, has warned the reader's mind and slowed the anxious mind in its inquiry into the truth: that he placed at the beginnings what he suffered at the end of his reign, fitting, I believe, a prophecy to the life of man and circumscribing the nature of worldly evil. The things of youth or of the age of ignorance, tossed by whirlwinds, are bitter with sins; in the calm of age they become ripe by the correction of knowledge; for which the same man prays: "The sins of my youth and of my ignorance do not remember, O God";

and the apostle, rousing us to the liberty of righteousness and reproving the slavery of sin in us, says: "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness; what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?" For this is the third psalm, as Absalom was the third son, ungodly, cruel, unjust, who, having killed his brother and obtained pardon, tried to pursue in war his religious and most indulgent father, to strip him of his kingdom, to deprive him of life. All these things, I think, must be referred to us as a figure, and the things generated by us prove to be our enemies. Hence the first enticement nourishes guilt, and the appearance of evil gives occasion to the enemy; then by the impulse of the will a man is urged down the slope of crimes and is shown to be a man, that is, a son of perdition. For the first fault is of lust, the second the addition of the will, the third the fulfilment of the desired deed. These, conversely, in good works we have learned by reading …

… to show that he could not do it, as the prophet says: "Who is wise and will perceive these things, and understand and know them? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but the ungodly will grow faint in them." For this reason you too, clothed in the armour of faith, purify your souls for obedience through the Spirit, and, building yourselves into a temple of the Lord, show a simple love in brotherhood to the glory of the divine love; for so it is written: "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man like the flower of grass; the grass has withered and the flower has fallen, but the word of the Lord remains for ever"; as the Lord says in the gospel: "Enter through the narrow door, for I tell you, many seek to enter and will not be able." In this we should understand, not that the entrance of the saints is set narrow, but that, because all friendship with the world is enmity with God, and human nature is persuaded more easily by pleasure than by labour, where the will for present things is sought, the promise of the future life is not held.

So in the gospel the poor woman's drachma is more welcome; the bosom of Abraham is called rest, and that of Phinehas; the dwelling of the unmerciful rich man is found to be the fire of hell—not that punishment is laid down absolutely for the rich and despair of returning to the Lord is established for the wealthy, but because nothing is settled at the beginnings, and no one climbs by sheer cliffs, as the apostle says: "Command the rich of this world not to be proud, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but to be rich in good works," so that, while through almsgiving and a good life we make the road toward the Lord, we may come to the highest things as by steps gradually taken.

The history of the prophetic word, steeped in divine words and arranging events as the theme proposed by the title it announces, does not speak of the memory of mortal times—which, with the connivance of human sense, always come into being through chance movements—as if for the instruction of public opinion; but, recounting the deeds of kingdoms, as one attacks another in order to conquer, it teaches what is the one gift of the prophetic work in us: after escaping the things that are in the world in the lust of a lost life, to keep a conscience free from all fault amid so many wars of vices; and so to recognize that we owe God, the giver of so great a gift, as our parent, so that whoever has recognized that all that the prophet endured in persecution and that Christ, God, conquered in his passion was written for our instruction, striving along the road of the commandments, useful and necessary for understanding, amid so many unexplored troubles of human life and

the measurable battles of the world unworthy of God, may take up the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of confidence, the shield of equity, and, as it is written, the two-edged sword of the divine mouth, and, clothed in the armour of faith, set on fire with the zeal of a burning mind, the bonds of the world broken, may give himself wholly back to the divine nature from which he came forth, from Christ, God, of whom he is likewise debtor and witness to his image, understanding that among the walks of the divine words all Scripture is the whole man, the gospel word testifying that every narrative of events has been fulfilled in us, as Paul too says: "Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or death or life, all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's"; since, in whatever examples we enter while living in the world, whether by the training of a good disposition or by the lust of a transgressing life, after death we are gathered into their company, whether in glory …

And therefore whoever, converted to the faith of Christ, has come to know the first, middle, and last of all things done through the Lord and those that are to come after, necessarily separating temporary things from perpetual, false from true, and perishable from certain, when he sees himself to be of the divine race, holding to one God undivided for himself, exults in the things that are subject neither to beginning nor to end; and all that holy David did, trusting in God amid the uncertainties of contests and the slaughters of wars with foreigners, he receives not as a memorial written of the world, but recognizes what in us—partly from our own fear, partly from the body's—the daily wars of sins and the variety of worldly wishes can do, as we pursue uncertain things in place of certain and contend among things that are another's, as David himself says in the psalms: "Lord, free me from my hidden faults, and spare your servant from those of others; for I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me." For all things

that were done or written were written so for this reason: that the mind of God, showing invisible things by visible ones, might speak in the language best suited to human understanding, and every man who wanted God, whatever he saw in the Scriptures as acceptable to God—in the election of a people, a fatherland, prophets, place, time, day, month, delight, contest—if, arranging himself by the things provided through God, he had advanced to the level of religious understanding, might recognize that all that is written was written about himself; and, walking in newness of life, whether something was given to powers or to kings, he might grasp from the prophetic voices this one thing: that whatever is friendly to the world is found hostile to Christ, as the apostle says: "All friendship with the world is enmity with God"; and again: "All lust of the flesh and desire of the eyes and ambition of human life are not from the Father but are from this world, and the world passes away, and its lust,

but the word of the Lord remains for ever." For although the weakness of human understanding compels the utterances of the prophetic word to seek the appearances of earthly things as indicators of higher powers, so that, with the familiarity of visible things gently admonishing us, we may widen the narrow straits of human weakness toward unaccustomed meanings by a religious expectation of learning, yet nature itself teaches us that these are the things which, in those converted to the faith, either fight or rule in us, by the tribulation of fears or the flattery of good fortune, (so that) we may return, rebuilding what we destroyed, to the things we renounced; since it makes no difference to the devil whether occasion and material for the sin of a life estranged from God is supplied by fear of evils or by the persuasion of prosperity—except that in our captivities the habit of miseries is now more bearable than the ruin of prosperity,

as the prophet says of this: "Hear me, my people: for as your oppressors circumscribe you, so too those who call you blessed lead you astray, to confuse the paths of your feet." And therefore holy David brings in the title of the psalm, set for the instruction of converts, after the two Syrias had been conquered, for the exultation of one triumphing, so that whoever recognizes the title of the psalm set for instruction, and the thanksgiving of David saved amid wars, into the understanding of the prophetic word, working at the task of divine understanding and seeing in himself the wars of his own wishes, might reject the errors of human weakness, and, conquering the two Syrias—that is, the two sources of sins, since to will or to do something worldly is given, the one to the office of the soul, the other to that of the body—clothed, as it is written, in the armour of faith, might celebrate a triumph over the vices and earn, as wages of a victorious campaign, the unfading crown of a life dedicated in Christ,

since this is the glory of perfect good, if, as it is written, the purification of the body is cultivated by the price of the will. Indeed, since with us there is no end to things endless, and with a foot planted on slippery ground we set no measure for uncertain things, we are taught even by apostolic voices that the wars of daily contests take place in us, Paul saying to us: "The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; these quarrel with one another, so that we do not do what we want"; and because the sense of human understanding and the reasoning of common opinions would not at once be capable of the apostolic word and the heavenly counsel, the apostle Paul next shows why, when we sin, the flesh, conquered by vices, and the ambition of human life lie subject, saying: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the princes and powers of this world, the rulers of this darkness,

against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavens"; as John too says: "I saw three unclean spirits like three frogs coming out of the mouth of the false prophet and out of the mouth of the beast; and these are three spirits of demons, who go out to throw the kings of the earth into confusion"; and again David himself, showing what fights in us, says: "Lord, I acknowledge my iniquity, and my offence is always before me"; and the apostle, speaking of it, says: "Where do wars, where do quarrels among you come from? Is it not from your desires, which war in your members?"; so that whoever wanted the work of the divine precepts in himself, conquering all the wars of vices in himself, might abstain not only from the lusts of the flesh but also of the thoughts, that is, of spiritual wickedness, and, despising the sorceries of pagan demons in himself, might recognize to whom man, given over to the world, would owe the tributes of sins, the wages of vices, the fears of terrors, the honours of passing dignities,

and, having rejected all things whose end is death and by which he is instructed when rebuked, owing himself wholly to God, having himself become what the psalm is, he might enter into the exultation of the psalmist's word, David saying: "O God, you have rejected us and destroyed us; you were angry and had mercy on us." In this word of the psalm the mind turned to God is carried beyond the sense of natural understanding, and through these things the … of incorruptible blessedness is opened to everyone who understands himself. For here it is pleasing, in such a word of the psalm, against the cunning of the devil lying in wait, to cry out with the free voice of a man saved in Christ: "Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O death, is your victory?" Behold, God, when he rebukes, loves, and teaches by the knowledge of sin rather than punishes; and since your nature is nothing else than either to drive into the evils of sin or, after striking, to urge the one caught by poison into the things you have persuaded, we know, Christ teaching, that the baptized in Christ,

when we are destroyed in the things foreign to God, are reformed in the things proper to us; and what is punishment for those who sin to the end is, for us who have turned, teaching through rebuke, as David himself says: "Who is like you, Lord? For you showed me tribulations, and, giving life to me when I turned, you taught me"; and again Isaiah says: "Lord, in the womb we have received and brought forth the spirit of salvation which you gave upon the earth." In this, although we ourselves prove in ourselves what kind of man he ought to be who, living by faith into a new birth, governs his mind toward things worthy of God's substance, yet, so that the arrangement of the Scriptures might use, for our understanding, examples of deeds as uncorrupted testimonies, and, commending the love of God in us, might more easily show the opinions of mortal things fighting in us, if it proved its sayings by forms of words and parables of things—

so Rebecca, mother of a happy womb and bringing forth the decrees of the divine promise, showing the works of the world and of God wrestling with each other in us, when she bore impatiently the fighting in her womb, broke out into a prophecy of free sorrow, saying: "What are these to me, if they are so?" The voice of the Lord answered her and taught her: "Two peoples and two nations are in your womb." Of which the apostle Paul too, making it plain and explaining, says: "I see another law fighting in my members against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin"; and, to show in the two nations and two peoples what the people and nation of God was and what the people of vices, he wished the old man to be put off from us with all his acts and lusts and us to be reformed into the new, saying: "As we have borne the image of him who is from the clay, let us bear the image of him who is from heaven"; so that whoever believed himself to be of the divine race, despising earthly things and following Christ, might consecrate himself to heavenly glories.

So the two testaments, set for faith—one loosing the yoke of slavery, the other distributing the work of grace—received the names of old and new, so that in both one man is placed, possessing in himself the work of the divine nature and of the earthly flesh; since light has no fellowship with darkness, nor Christ with Belial, he would restrain what belonged to the flesh by the law of discipline and not deny himself to God, whose image and likeness he appeared. So, understand, on one side the discipline of curse, on the other the grace of blessings was established, so that, although there are various mansions with our God, and he wills all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, yet none of you may be unaware that our life's conduct lies between two kingdoms—between the synagogue of Satan and the church of the commandments of God, that is, the works of the world and the words of God—and what is God's is called ours,

but what is the world's, because it is contrary to God, is therefore found to be foreign to us as well; and that we renounce, this we believe. And so, for those placed between such things, on this side the promise of the divine commandments presses, on that the aim of the devil's temptation; on this side the faith of Christ, on that the faithlessness of the world persuades; on this side peace, patience, long-suffering, gentleness, and the rest of this kind; on that anger, sister of avarice; sexual immorality, friend of darkness; ambition, ignorant of its own fortune; the guarding of wealth, more wretched than its lust; fury, ignorant of God; pleasure of the belly and throat; glory in shame; desire of the eyes and the persuasion, as if simple, of the devil's pomp in the deception of spectacles. When a man is pulled in different directions among these, the condition of life and death being set before us, we do not know the struggles and wars of the world in us so long as, living in (God) and rebuking what is foreign, we hold to the words of the Lord;

for if we recognize why we are rebuked and conquer what is hostile, necessarily, walking in newness, as the text of the psalm shows, having received the wine of compunction, we avoid the bow and darts of the devil who pursues us, recognizing that we cannot be free from sins unless we are saved by the forgiveness of baptism and the redemption of the divine cross. In this part of the psalmist's word, those whom steadfast faith calls to the pursuit of truth should not only receive it by hearing but look into it with the mind: how the psalm adapts itself to every weakness of our understanding, and, tempering the measure of the prophetic work by the arrangement of its words, softens the steep road of divine understanding as by a gentler slope and makes the ascent easier, so that—since for converts it is easier to know the evils of their sins than to understand the dispensation of the divine nature in themselves, and it is readier for a man not to will sin than to will what is divine—

so in the psalm an order most suited to the progress of readers follows, so that, the knowledge of himself being kept for God in the course of the psalm—since he is not known except through himself—first the Lord's rebuke, the recognition of sin, might make an entrance for the divine gift, and when man had become a place for his nature and recognized what God wanted, the word of the understood history might follow, saying: "God has spoken in his holy one," so that whoever had sanctified himself to God, the Lord speaking in him, might hear God speaking in the holy one; and all that the virtue of men was thought to have done in the histories of the saints, measuring by the laws of its own nature, he might weigh among the divine declarations of the testimony made about himself; so that the prophetic word, speaking once and proclaiming two things, carrying round as a twin emblem the exultation of man saved in Christ and the glory of Christ triumphing in man, might open them for the instruction of our learning, so that, as we come to know the deeds of the saints,

we may hold the triumph of a good life, with the dispensation of the sayings explained. For Shechem, whose division is the joy of man and of Christ, is a land of foreign regions, where the daughter of Jacob, the chosen man, seized on the occasion of a passing journey, captured by what her eyes saw and admiring foreign things, lost both the dignity of the chosen race and the glory of virginity; Shechem, punished in vengeance for the crime committed, is divided, and, as a testimony to memory lest the people of God [do] any such thing among foreigners, is subjugated. Ephraim and Manasseh are the two sons of holy Joseph, whom, having subjected Egypt to himself, he earned for the fruitfulness of offspring as for the fruit of perfect truth. Gilead possessed their firstfruits; from Judah, from whom the king is sought, God was born in the flesh; and because Ruth the Moabite earned by the perseverance of her faith a divine race in her offspring, Moab is called the tabernacle of hope.

Idumea is the land of faithlessness, over which the shoe of the divine journey is stretched out. The Philistines, when the ark of the Lord was released and the idol Dagon defeated, are subjected to the divine instruments. Through all these things the reasoning of our teaching, extending itself, shows the work of God saving in Christ and the road of the sanctified man: since Shechem is conquered and the valleys of the tents are measured, if, as we believe in Christ born of the virgin, the nature of fleshly lust, which was the cause of corruption, is conquered, and the body, given back not to sexual immorality but to the Lord and divided by the immortal words of the precepts, is held worthy of the tabernacles of Christ and of the glories of the future resurrection. And so, the world having been conquered, as Egypt subdued, fruit is given in Ephraim and Manasseh to those who labour, and no leader is sought except from Judah, since for those saved by the passion of Christ nothing else is found as leadership except that God willed to come into flesh,

nor is there any other hope for those who persevere except that the circling of the world, that is, the land of faithlessness, be conquered; that, the shoe of the Lord's feet, that is, the gospel of peace, being shown, Dagon, the work of the world, be destroyed; and that, the ark of the testament—which we are—being released, the speech of the Philistines urging foreign things be overcome; (so that) whoever has come to know what is set in regions, spoken in places, and proclaimed of kings, conquering in himself by disciplined work the places, kingdoms, and regions of vices, though he understands that it was prophesied of God, may yet recognize it as set before himself as a pattern of life; since from the beginning to the end, those coming into this world, as we are deceived by the united ways of malice, so we are saved by united faith and correction.