Tractates

The greatest happiness of Christian fidelity is to know the nature of faith, which is such and so great that it is not lent to anyone by another, but is born of his own will. Otherwise, if, as some think, it hangs on the mouth of a teacher, then without doubt it is used up when that same teacher either falls silent or teaches otherwise. Add to this that unless faith, girded with all devotion, goes before and embraces the instruction of the law, a faith that by believing gives effect both to itself and to the law, the instruction will be empty, because it cannot give the fruit of a believer to an unbeliever. Indeed, Abraham pleased God by believing without the law, and the Jewish people displeased God by unbelief with the law. Hence there is no doubt that the law cannot exist without faith, but faith can without the law; otherwise this countless crowd, happier in its simplicity, would still lie under the dominion of death, if only those learned in the law had been found worthy to be justified. But since it is written, 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,' because we are not under law but under grace, which compels us to love God and to serve him alone in the sacrament of the one Trinity once believed, not by argument, not by necessity, but by will, I think it most evident that the simple man is better than the over-clever: for the simple man simply believes all the words of God, while the clever man, made foolish by too much wisdom, confounds himself with vain inquiries.

But someone will say: if this is so, then the law profits no one. Far from it. It profits, and indeed very much: for through it God's will is made known to the peoples; through it heavenly discipline is gathered and held; through it, I say, every kind of sin is exposed, so that no one may perish through not knowing. It never ceases to warn, so that no one may excuse guilt by ignorance; now stern, now gentle, it shows the reward, it shows the sword too, ready to give each what he has chosen, so that it may rightly fulfil what it bears. From those who come to it, it demands only the profession of belief, because it cannot see their faith; and if it finds that faith absent from their conduct, at once in anger it punishes as faithless the one it taught; and it testifies that it was promulgated for no other reason than that faith might be avenged on the unfaithful. In short, take away sin, and the rule of the law ceases. For the law, as it is written, is not laid down for the just but for the sinner, because the just man lives by faith, the unfaithful unjustly. So whoever thinks that disputation about the law is faith is mistaken; whoever confuses two different things into one. For disputation, as it cultivates the law, so, if it is crafty, uproots faith, because there is certainly no faith where faith is being searched for. Then, because the law is common, but faith private; because the law always flows from its native book, but faith clings tenaciously to its own purpose alone. The law passes from one to another; faith dies if it ever turns aside from its own state in any way or toward anyone. The law can only reproach a man's conscience, but cannot see it; faith cleanses the conscience to the marrow, so that it owes no guilt even within; for he who does not fear his own conscience is the one who does not fear God. Add that the law is learned and taught in parts. Add that it is neither understood nor kept as a whole. Add that it is asserted by arguments by anyone according to the quality of his wit. Add that it is sought by all and fulfilled by none. Add that it is a sign of God's will, not of God's origin or nature.

It follows that we must know whether we should assert that the treatise belongs to faith, or faith to the treatise. If we say the treatise belongs to faith, we shall be badly mistaken: for the nature of faith does not allow itself to be subjected to the craft of talkativeness; it labours for nothing else than to be approved by its own virtues alone; for that cannot be perfect which expects anything it needs from elsewhere. But if we begin to say that faith belongs to the treatise, it will surely be neither ours, nor its own, nor even his whose it is said to be: because the treatise, when it builds faith up, by that very thing by which it builds it up, tears it down; and it will give no one what it does not have, but rather is still searching so as not to have it. Moreover I see, as the names of their champions show (take these away and there is no quarrel left by chance), that there have been many treatises, many faiths, and new ones at that, nourished by the toil and favour of litigation: and since the true one can hardly be found, I think they were set out for sale so that the peoples should not suffer want. Yet which of all these is to be chosen cannot be known or grasped, because what has a state always uncertain will be neither one's own nor firm: since the choice of one is the rejection of another; or if all of them altogether must be embraced, so that a man has as many faiths as he lacks words, he will have far more nothing, because the treatise that bore them, or bears them daily, can still bear more; provoked from the other side, it consumes them again by retracting and refuting them according to the strength of wits and arguments. But if, as is necessary, there is one faith, that noble and ancient one, which (I will not say by a treatise, but by its very birth) is greater than the law, which merited God from God by believing, and which did not learn to believe but took it for granted; then let this pernicious invention of the treatise tell me what its fighting gains. 'So that faith may not perish,' it says, 'when it is wrongly believed or taught.' How bad this reasoning is we shall soon see.

Now I wish to know whether faith consists in teaching, or in believing, or in both. If it consists in teaching, then those who do not know letters do not have faith; nor do those who know them, because they can by no means bring the knowledge and keeping of the law to perfection. If in believing, it needs no interpretation, because as it is believed once, so once, from the very fact that it has been believed, faith is complete and is neither lessened nor increased. But if in both, the faith of the patriarchs is half-eaten, and for that reason the books of our ordinance would have to be assigned to them so that they could be perfect. O how wretched is a faith that words put together! O how weak, whose limbs are daily torn apart by various arguments! O how defenceless, that needs from moment to moment the patronage of kings, judges, the rich, and sometimes even, what is worse, of the Gentiles! O how shameful and slippery, a faith which another's opinion plays with! O how adulterous, that does not acknowledge by whose authorship it was born! O how ridiculous, that when two Christians are in conflict is called by one of them perfidy if it is not won over, and faith once it has been won over! O how untrue, if it is strong through factions! O how public, whose secrets even the profane gossip about! O how presumptuous, that would rather its own new tradition be believed than antiquity, than God the Lord, who says: 'You reject the commandment of God to establish your traditions.' But I do not say this to make the benefit of teaching thankless, but so that each may know that faith is one thing and the treatise another, and that faith cannot be given, or known, or destroyed by a treatise. It cannot be given, because if it can be given by words, it could also be taken away by words. Likewise it cannot be known, because it can happen that one carries one thing on his lips and another in the depths of his heart. Similarly it cannot even be destroyed, because if it is true faith, it cannot be other than what it is. Since, then, it is not within human power to see the secrets of faith, your curiosity, brother, gains nothing anywhere, your fighting gains nothing, because the man you think most faithful even among your own zealous followers is unfaithful, and the one you think unfaithful is faithful. Perhaps someone may think himself more faithful if he speaks cleverly, when in fact the truly faithful man is the one who in sacred preaching has not stretched the edge of his mind beyond what is lawful; for things have come to this, that our faith is sought out to the injury of God. Solomon foretold that this would happen and taught what is to be avoided in these words: 'Better is he who lacks understanding with fear than he who abounds in cleverness and transgresses the law.' And again: 'Do not be very wise, and do not argue more than you ought.' Likewise Paul: 'Do not be high-minded, but fear.'

Since this is so, why do you tear law apart with law? Why, under the appearance of faith, do you lay faith aside? Why do you try to drain the very fountain of divinity with philosophical arguments? If you wish to show your skill in the law, clear away the clouds of the readings. Teach that it is not contrary to itself; teach that all it sings is to be believed. Otherwise, if you approve part of it and reject part, how do you seek faith through it, when you make it guilty of unbelief, since you do not believe the whole? But if you are skilled in the faith of the spirit, show some power. Command the mountains to move themselves. Let the rage of lions vanish with fawning jaws in admiration of you. Let the wave of the sea, thickening under your steps, be made solid with a marble stiffness. Let the whale as a boat faithfully carry your faith amid the anxious hollows of the seething sea. Rein in the course of the sun and moon by the bridle of prayer, from the shelter of the western prison. Let the fire raging out of the panting furnace, its nature conquered, itself feel refreshment through you and with you. Breathe into the souls of the dead brought back to life by right of return. Drive away diseases from the suffering, cure weaknesses, rejoice in temptations and in torments for the name of the Lord. If hard things come, show that you have faith as a grain of mustard seed. But if, which is more, under the sound of the law and of faith, inflamed by love of worldly boasting, you presume to be able by arguments to compel, examine, measure and distinguish the inestimable and incomprehensible eternity of the divinity of God born of God and of the Holy Spirit, by the very right by which it is from itself; here I dare not answer you: for it is safer to seem unskilled than to be sacrilegious. And yet I have one who will stand against you for me: for the law, by which you would compel me, perhaps less skilled, to sin, will itself greatly beat you back, refute and confound you, as Solomon says: 'Do not seek things too high for you, and do not search out things too strong for you. What God has commanded you, think on these always; and in his many works you will not be curious: for their conjecture has led many astray and held their minds in vanity.' Likewise Paul writes back to the curious man, saying: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of God?' And you seek his nature? But in another place too he plainly expressed the matter at hand, when he speaks to Timothy, to instruct him, in these words: 'I urged you to charge certain persons not to use perverse teaching, nor to attend to fables and endless genealogies, which promote questions rather than the true plan of God, which is in faith. The end of the command is love from a pure heart and a good conscience, from simple faith.'

So if you are a servant of God, avoid foolish and ignorant questions, knowing that they breed quarrels. A servant of God must not quarrel, because a quarrel is the enemy both of love and of faith; and whoever has lost these surely knows neither divine nor human things. If you are religious, keep these things; if truly God-fearing, guard them; avoid disputing about what exceeds the measure of human understanding. Whoever defends God in a way denies God: for defence is given only to the weak; nor can a man revere him whom he thinks owes it to his own wit that he is esteemed. But this is the true nobility of faith: to serve God faithfully; to place trust in him alone; to know that one is called faithful from fidelity and trust; to live with blameless conduct; to presume that one is known by a good conscience, not by talkativeness, which is surely the mother of sin; and not to violate but to honour the one fullness of power of the Trinity, which is grasped by one mind and one belief.

The foundations of the Christian summit rest on three things, that is, on hope, on faith, and on love; and these seem so joined to one another that each is necessary to the others. For unless hope goes before, for what does faith labour? If there is no faith, how will hope itself be born? If you deny them love, both will cease: because neither faith without love nor hope without faith can work. So the Christian, if he wants to be perfect, must be built on three things; for if any of these is lacking to him, he will not have the perfection of his work. Hence first of all the hope of things to come must be set before us, without which we see that not even present things can stand. Take away hope, and all humanity grows numb. Take away hope, and all arts and virtues will cease. Take away hope, and everything is destroyed. What does the boy do at the schoolmaster's if he does not hope for the fruit of letters? Why does the sailor commit his ship to the deep flood, if gain never meets him, if the longed-for harbour never does? Why does the soldier despise, I will not say the injuries of bristling winter or scorching summer, but himself, if he does not carry hope of future glory? Why does the farmer scatter seed, if he does not gather the harvest as the reward of his sweat? Why does the Christian believe in Christ, if he does not believe that the time of everlasting happiness promised him by Christ will come?

But hope comes from faith; although it is placed in the future, it is nevertheless subject by right to faith; for where there is no faith, there is no hope; for faith is the substance of hope, and hope the glory of faith; since faith earns the reward that hope holds; faith indeed fights for hope, but wins for itself. It must therefore be embraced tenaciously by us, brothers, and guarded with every kind of virtue; we must lean on it strongly; for it is the immovable foundation of our life, an unconquered bulwark and weapon alike against the assaults of the devil, the impenetrable breastplate of our soul, the brief and true knowledge of the law, the terror of demons, the strength of martyrs, the beauty or the wall of the church, the servant of God, the friend of Christ, the guest of the Holy Spirit. To it both present and future things are subject: the present because it despises them, the future because it presumes they are its own. Nor does hope fear that they will not come, because it always carries them with it in its virtues. This is why Abraham against hope believed God in hope, that he might become the father of many nations. 'Against hope' is what is impossible and is not seen; but it becomes possible by this hope, when God's word is believed without doubting and firmly; for the Lord says: 'All things are possible to him who believes.' Hence Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness; he was righteous because he was faithful, for the righteous man lives by faith; faithful because he believed God; for unless he had believed, he could have been neither righteous nor the father of nations. Therefore it is plain that hope and faith have one inseparable nature, because if either of them fails in a man, both die.

Faith, then, is above all our own possession, as the Lord himself says: 'Your faith has saved you.' So if it is ours, let us keep it as ours, so that we may rightly hope for what is another's; for no one entrusts his estate to a spendthrift, nor will he honour a deserter with triumphal rewards, especially since it is written: 'To him who has, it will be given, and he will abound; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.' Through faith, brothers, Enoch merited to be carried away by God with his body, against the law of nature. Through it Noah escaped and found no one with whom to compare the flood he had come through. Through it Abraham came to the friendship of God. Through it Isaac shone out beyond the rest. Through it Jacob prevailed in wrestling with God. Through it Joseph brought Egypt under his rule. It made a glassy ground for Moses in the Red Sea. It put reins on the sun and moon, so that the measure of their usual course was disregarded to obey the desire of Joshua son of Nun. It brought triumph to the unarmed David over armed Goliath. In Job it did not despair amid frequent and enormous evils. In the blindness of Tobit it was the physician. In Daniel it bound the mouths of lions. In Jonah it turned the whale into a boat. In the army of the Maccabean brothers it alone conquered. In the three young men it made the fires pleasant. In Peter it dared to believe that the sea could be walked on. Through it the apostles stripped many of the contagious, scabby crust of deforming leprosy and its swelling ulcers, restoring clean skin. Through it, I say, they commanded the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the mute to speak, the lame to run, the paralysed to be restored, demons to flee from the possessed, and the dead themselves often to return from the tombs with their own funeral trains, so that all marvelled that tears of joy came which had just been tears of bereavement.

But it would take long, brothers, to go through each one, especially since love brings forward stronger things; it is so endowed over all things that it is by right the queen of all. Let faith triumph with whatever virtues it will, and let hope set forth many great things; yet without love neither will stand: faith first of all, if it does not love itself; hope, if it is not loved. Add that faith profits only itself; love profits all. Add that faith does not fight for nothing; but love is accustomed to bestow even on the ungrateful. Add that faith does not pass into another; love, it is too little to say, passes into another, for it passes into a whole people. Add that faith belongs to few; love to all. Add that hope and faith have their time; but love has no end; it grows at every moment, and the more it is trusted by those who love one another, the more is owed to one another. It loves no one for his person, because it does not know how to flatter; not for honour, because it is not ambitious; not for sex, because to it both are one; not for time, because it is not changeable; it is not jealous, because it does not know what envy is; it is not puffed up, because it cultivates humility; it thinks no evil, because it is simple; it is not angry, because it gladly embraces even injuries; it does not deceive, because it keeps faith itself; it lacks nothing, because nothing beyond what it is is necessary to it. It keeps countryside, cities and peoples ordered and at peace. It makes the swords at the sides of kings secure. It suppresses wars, removes lawsuits, empties the laws, restrains the courts, uproots hatreds, extinguishes anger. It crosses the sea, goes round the world, supplies the nations with what they need by trade. Let me quickly tell, brothers, its power. Whatever nature has denied to places, love restores. This, as conjugal affection, draws two persons by a venerable sacrament into one flesh. It gives humanity its being, in that a person is born. It is its gift that a wife is dear, that children are noble, that fathers are true. It is its gift that others are as near to us as we are to ourselves, or nearer, as neighbours or friends. It is its gift that we love slaves as sons, and they gladly serve us as masters. It is its gift that we love, I will not say acquaintances or friends, but often even those we have never seen. It is its gift that we come to know either the virtues of the ancients from books, or books from their virtues.

But why should I linger longer on human things, as if they alone were endowed with this affection? Do we not see every kind of living creature bear witness to love by gathering together and by concord, and all their movements so turned as if by one sense under the teaching of affection that anyone may understand this could not happen without the discipline of a natural friendship? What they do for one another in need is shown by the everyday and almost delightful examples of the fight put up by pigs, known to all: when one of them, perhaps caught from the herd by the rage of a bold wolf, begins to be dragged by tyrannical attacks into immediate danger, they all suddenly rush together; they help the one in trouble; they keep throwing themselves almost onto the enemy's very weapons; they throw him into confusion with a great din; and with their filthy tusks thrust out they resist as if in a kind of tortoise formation; and by love they more easily conquer what one by one they could hardly overcome by bare strength. The elements themselves too, brothers, so different and so opposed, an attentive observer would long ago have found at war, had not kindly love bound them together, endowed one with another by mutual and equal gifts of balance, in the faithful lineage of a perpetual marriage. There is absolutely nothing that without love can be pleasing, peaceful, faithful, secure, glorious, joined to God, or perfect. Indeed, when the Lord was asked what was the greatest commandment of the sacred law, he answered thus: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' From this it is plain that love is the substance and natural teacher of all the divine virtues, because it is learned from the law but is born in minds: for the law hangs on love, not love on the law, as holy Scripture says: 'The law is not laid down for the just but for the sinner.' The sinner is the one who does not have the love of God, and therefore he who works wrath is rightly subject to the law. Yet perhaps someone may say: the law is to be despised, because it is not necessary for the just and is troublesome to the sinner. Far from it, brothers; rather it is to be revered, because it is the mirror of truth, because it is a certain stern form of love: for whatever the just man has learned from it, it compels the unjust also to do; glorious in two ways, by glorifying the one and correcting the other.

So the whole of Christianity is placed more in love than in hope or faith, as a clear example testifies. Judas Iscariot, the Lord's betrayer, lost both hope and faith, because love did not remain in him: for heresies and schisms too are sown in this way, when faith and hope, puffed up, are torn away from the foundation of love. And what not only these but other virtues too are without love, learn from a little pointer: 'And if I have all faith so as to move mountains, and do not have love, I am nothing. And if I distribute all I have for the food of the poor, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.' For love, brothers, loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Not without reason, then, does the Lord God commend love of neighbour, since he presumes that it alone can keep what he commands.

So the first duty of love is to pay back to God that we were born, to owe to him alone that we live, and to keep nothing at all in the depths of our heart that we would hold under another's right. But when, invited by this devotion, we have begun to be inhabited by him, or to dwell in him, as John says, 'God is love; he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him,' then at last, brothers, we shall worthily return love to him through himself, because, an exchange having been made, what is his becomes ours in our part. Next, we should love our neighbours too with the same affection with which we love ourselves, especially since the very laws of kinship demand this: for the prophet cries, 'One God created you. Is there not one father of you all?' Whoever, then, keeps the consciousness of his nobility loves his brother, and does not wait to hear anything from the law, lest by admonition something be taken from devotion; and he loves himself in his brother so much that he hates himself without him. Add to the heap that God made man in his image and likeness for this reason, that by contemplating the image we might feel reverence for the truth; and the matter was left on this condition, that if we do any evil or good to anyone, we are seen to have done it to God. For this reason John, the special confidant of the Lord's secrets, firmly declares, not without cause: 'If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he sees cannot love God whom he does not see.' Let us then contend among ourselves, brothers, in a glorious rivalry of mutual love; and by most worthily revering the image of God, let us declare what we owe to the truth itself, knowing that if anyone harms the image, he provokes the truth to the destruction of his own soul. Nor is the proof far from the saying. If anyone in any way has defaced the likeness of some famous king (yet only a man), does he not at once pay the capital penalty as if for a sacrilege committed? How much more must one guard against it in the cause of God, whom alone all that kings themselves fear in the powers of nature reveres?

But each must necessarily know the property of sincere love, lest under the sound of the name the rule of truth be betrayed; for there is also another love, plainly contrary to our salvation, to which the form of a man is rightly given, because it is known to be temporal and fragile. It is painted with a boy's features because its wanton slipperiness is not tempered even by old age. It is naked because its will is shamefulness. It is winged because it rushes swiftly into whatever it has conceived. It is equipped with arrows and torches because a sword is always joined to unlawful burnings. And it is blind because when it has caught fire it considers neither age, nor beauty, nor sex, nor rank, nor even that sacred affection of sound devotion. This love set Eve's breast on fire with its torches. This love killed Adam with its arrows. This love tried either to subject Susanna to the monstrous fires of two elders or to cut her throat with a murderous sword. This love demands that a woman do violence to Joseph, whom, even while she stripped him, she did not find unchaste. This love overcame the synagogue by giving up its weapons to it. It is turbulent everywhere, carried along madly everywhere. It promises, deceives, gives, takes away; now sad, now merry, now humble, now proud, now drunk, now fasting, now accuser, now accused. It jests, plays, grows pale, wastes away, sighs, hides, complies; it either tempts or deceives, and is worse when it flatters than when it rages. It passes over no opportunity at all to do harm. Do you want to know how evil it is? In its very fruit it hates even itself. With its poisons the whole world seethes daily, and all things are so corrupted by pestilent pleasures that whatever is done in the world, since we are commanded by sacred words not to love it, rightly seems detestable to the wise, as John says: 'Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him: for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father but from the lust of the world.' For through this love the devil, when he captures and deceives the minds of men in various ways, began to be called Cupid by his luxurious followers, his worshippers.

Now then let us see where true love comes from, where it rests, and to whom above all it is owed. Surely to him who made man; who gave him his likeness as a gift of everlasting love; who gave him the world; who subjected all the elements of the world with their living creatures to his power; who commanded years, seasons, months, nights, days, and the two most brilliant chariots of the royal orbs to serve him with the ever gift-bearing delight of alternation; who, when man had been killed by the evilly sweet poisons of that love mentioned above and sunk into the seat of hell, gave him life by the sacrament of his majesty, and enriched him besides with a share in the heavenly kingdom. O love, how loving and how rich! O how powerful! He has nothing who does not have you. You were able to change God into man. You made him shortened, for a little while, to travel abroad from the immensity of his majesty. You bound him in a virgin's prison for nine months. You restored Eve in Mary. You renewed Adam in Christ. You provided the holy cross for the salvation of a world already lost. You emptied death by teaching God to die. Yours is it that when God, the Son of almighty God, is killed by men, neither of the two is angry. You hold the soul of the heavenly people, when you adorn peace, guard faith, embrace innocence, cultivate truth, love patience, make hope present. You make men different in conduct, age and rank, from one nature, one spirit, one body. You do not allow glorious martyrs to be separated from confessing the Christian name by any torments, any novelty of death, any rewards, any friendships, any affections, which are worse than any torturer for the bite they give to devotion. To clothe the naked, you are content to be naked yourself. Hunger is your feasting. If the hungry poor man eats your bread, it is your wealth to have all you have in mercy. You alone do not know how to be begged. You rescue without delay the oppressed, set in any distress, even at your own cost. You are the eye of the blind, the foot of the lame, the most faithful shield of widows, a better parent to orphans than both their parents. Either mercy or joy never allows your eye to be dry. You so love your enemies that no one can tell what difference there is between them and those dear to you. You, I say, join heavenly secrets to human ones, human to heavenly. You guard divine things. You command in the Father; you obey yourself in the Son; you exult in the Holy Spirit. Though you are one in three, you are in no way divided; you are moved by no slander of human curiosity. From the Father's fountain you are poured wholly into the Son; and yet, wholly where you are poured, you do not withdraw. Rightly are you called God, because you alone turn round the power of the Trinity.

Perhaps one of the learned standing round may burst out laughing that I, a most unskilled and tongue-tied man, dare to argue anything about justice, about whose nature men excellent in talent and learning have set down nothing certain in huge books. But I would not care how anyone jests about me: for in the church of God it is not painted speech that is sought, but pure truth; from which all those have, not undeservedly, strayed far who thought that the justice of God lies in the powers of eloquence. In short, since they could not grasp it (for they could not without the teaching of divine wisdom, of which they had no knowledge), they asserted two justices, one civil, the other natural; of which the Apostle made mention most plainly when speaking to the Romans, saying: 'For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, they did not submit to the righteousness of God.' But since they suppose nothing about the future and look only to the advantages of the present life, and defend the false against the true as if it were the true, they have lost both out of their very hands, with their eyes open: God's justice, because they think it foolish that it should labour, at the cost not only of its means but even, if need be, of its safety, to benefit another rather than itself; their own, because, although it is clothed with the false name of wisdom, yet by looking after its own advantages, which cannot at all be secured without the disadvantage of others, it cannot be denied to be unjust even by the most truly foolish.

But if they had been able to know true justice, whose reward is immortality, covered with the veil of a seeming folly so that a great thing might be sought with great virtues and great labours, they would without hesitation prefer to be judged foolish and just rather than wise and unjust; especially since their fraud is already all out in the open: for they could not change the thing, only the names, slandering justice with the name of folly and injustice with that of wisdom. If you correct these to their proper terms and restore them to their own seats, you will find that folly fits injustice better, and wisdom justice; which I shall not cease to prove by the testimonies of the sacred law too, whose words are these: 'For since the world did not know the wisdom of God through wisdom, God thought it best to save believers through the foolishness of preaching.' And again, more plainly: 'If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may be wise: for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.' For this reason the same God protests through the prophet: 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man glory in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, to understand and know that I am the Lord who do mercy and judgment and justice on the earth.' O in how very few words he has summed up the whole business carried on so strenuously in this world! For by these three things, which are the foundations of all vices, as if by violent storms, the whole human race is shipwrecked at every moment and driven to destruction. For wisdom, seething with dense arguments, adorned with the persuasive and delightful lie of brilliant speech, armed with the trumpet of the voice and the sword of the tongue, draws all affairs to itself, gathers crowds, harangues; settles lawsuits so as to sow them; collects depraved and slippery habits; fights its own laws with its own laws; pulls law apart with law. Who does not see that it never does or has done anything right in what it has done? Do you want to know how just it is? It thinks itself wretched unless it has overturned the truth. Then strength, which men share with beasts, has all right in force; what it has prevailed to do, it thinks right; and so without any reverence for divine and human religion it suddenly wipes out with fire and sword inhabitants, cities and countryside with all their substance, fearing nothing at all in its trust in a friendly death; in short, what wisdom gathers by industry through laws, strength sometimes scatters in one rush with its eyes shut. Third, the rich man is avarice, and both of the others strive with wonderful speed to heap up its wealth; the whole world serves in its army, every age serves it. Oh, the wickedness! What darkness is this? It is in everyone, and is reproved by everyone as if it did not exist. It is accused and yet worshipped; it kills, and is loved. Truly invincible is the kind of calamity which virtue will serve, once wisdom has been subjugated.

Do you not now see plainly that the wisdom of this world is not justice? Nor indeed true wisdom: because it cannot be that a truly wise man is not also just, nor likewise that a just man is not also truly wise: because no one can be just and foolish, nor wise and unjust, as reason itself teaches: for he who is foolish does not know what is good and evil, nor can he know what to reject and what to hold; and so he always sins, which is contrary to justice; but the just man abstains from all sin, which he does because he has knowledge of the evil and the good, which is surely the mark of a wise man. Hence it comes about that the one who is foolish can never be just, nor the one who is unjust wise. And if either the just or the wise man lacks one of the two, as those men thought, he will surely be neither wise nor just.

Enough, I think, has been laid bare of the world's trickeries; since all men deal in them more skilfully than can be told, it is superfluous to linger. So now let us come to true justice, the fountain and mother of all virtues, which beyond the others gathers and spreads itself wholly for the benefit of others, knowing what is owed to God first of all, gaining nothing for itself, leaving nothing as its own except that it faithfully carries out his will without any boasting. It stands forth and is spread wholly in public, yet so that it would rather be felt than seen; plainly cautious, too, about which side it turns to, lest it should blame itself in anything, lest it should ever fail in a work begun. It breaks the yokes of captives by ransoms; it knows the prison better than the imprisoned, by gentle and watchful care in healing them; it shares sickness with the sick; it does not allow cast-out corpses to lie uncovered and unburied; among the poor and wretched, neglected in their need, it scatters the seeds of devotion generously and secretly; it does not let itself be asked, nor be repaid with the reward of praise in return: this it thinks a heavy loss, this a crime: for by leaving nothing for itself it outruns avarice with a blessed greed: for avarice possesses men, justice God. Hear further with what love and with what devotion it hastens to its own seat and the palm set before it. If anyone takes it to court to take away its tunic, it willingly gives him its cloak too; it is cursed and blesses; it is beaten and gives thanks; it is killed and does not resist; and besides it entreats God for those who strike it. Its one chief care and greatest caution is that it should owe nothing to the world, that it should suffer none of these things deservedly. Those who have either not read the divine Scriptures, or have thought them void when read, because of their lowly and unpolished language, though they say, 'Unless you believe, you will not understand,' think this justice foolish and mock it as vain, because, when it could enjoy the goods of the world, it neglects them and makes itself unhappy of its own accord; not believing that, by keeping God's commandments and offering up the pleasures of the world through such duties, when it has conquered and is free from the bonds of the flesh, it will enjoy the inestimable blessedness of promised immortality.

But what does it matter to us what they say? As our distinguished man says: 'God knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are foolish.' Let them leave our folly to us; let them keep their wisdom to themselves; whose followers indeed I see almost all Christians to be, who think that perfect justice is to protect one's own and not to seek another's, neglecting the command of true wisdom, which is contained in these words: 'If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give to the poor, and take up your cross and come, follow me.' On this I do not know what anyone can put forward; but one thing I know, that there is none of us who does not labour at every moment to have more than he had; and when he strives for this he certainly plays the part of avarice, which is the enemy of justice. So it is that the barns of a few are full of grain, and the bellies of the many empty. Hence prices are worse for the peoples than the measures, worse than scarcity. Hence fraud, perjury, robberies, lawsuits and wars; daily gain is sought from the groans of others, and confiscation is called industry; and the craving for another's property is pressed with the most cunning arguments under the pretext of defence and diligence, so that a man left undefended, or innocent, loses what he has through the laws; which is worse than any violence: because what is seized by force can sometimes be reclaimed; what is taken by the circumventions of the laws cannot. Let whoever wishes glory in such justice; yet let him know that he who grows rich on the miseries of others is more wretched than the wretched. Can anyone think him just who puts the advantage of his household property before devotion? Who, while men suffer from hunger and nakedness, feeds moths, weevils and worms? Who, by unhappy tenacity, withholds what he has not only from others but even from himself?

'But,' you will say, 'it is just that I keep what is mine and do not seek what is another's.' The Gentiles too are accustomed to say this. But how unjust it is before God we shall soon see. Now first of all, best of Christians, I wish to know what things are yours, since all things are common to those who fear God, as it is written: 'The multitude of those who had believed acted with one soul and mind; nor was there any distinction among them, nor did they think any of the goods they had their own; but all things were common to them,' like the day, the sun, night, rain, the condition of being born and dying, which divine justice has granted equally to the human race without exception of persons. Since this is so, beyond doubt he is not unlike a tyrant who alone has what could serve the advantage of many. What? While the poor man is dying daily from oppression, hunger, cold, injury, you cultivate gold as your friend, you guard silver, you hold costly clothing and proud and superfluous ornaments as something sacred, like an idol; you adorn yourself from moment to moment, rich in public, richer in secret; and you do not understand that he who, when he could help a man dying of want with such wealth, does not help him, is himself seen to kill him? O how many souls' deaths hang on the trappings of adorned matrons! If you sold just one of their ornaments for its price and distributed it to the needs of individuals, you would learn from their recovered breath how many people's misfortune that adornment costs.

'I have children,' he says, 'whom I must not strip.' This is the excuse of unbelief, which the Holy Spirit beats back through the prophet, saying: 'I have been young and now am old, and I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread.' And again: 'The rich have been in need and gone hungry, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.' This is very easy to prove by example. We remember it is recorded in the books of Kingdoms that in a time of famine, when the whole people was dying everywhere, the memorable widow gave to Elijah, who asked for food, the last substance of her own and her children's living, not divided but whole, and preferred to die with her children rather than pass by justice: in return for so illustrious a deed she received from God undying food, which consumption could not diminish, for it grew by its own diminishing. In the end the state of their vessels always remained whole and full, and as much as the need of daily outlay had taken from them, so much a reviving fruitfulness put back. Therefore if you wish to be a good father, a provident one, a useful one, you must, like Abraham, love God more than your children, so that you may deserve to have them whole, unharmed and blessed. It is foolish to want to provide the substance of life for those to whom you did not give birth, into whom you did not breathe souls, and to whom you cannot give salvation. So, even late, suppress that sacrilegious voice, remembering human frailty, you who do not know what may happen in the very moment we are speaking; and lay aside the deceit of a vain excuse. You store up avarice by sin for the ungrateful. It is the power of God alone to provide for the advantage of the future.

He who cultivates chastity easily recognises how noble it is: for it is of such virtue that it is honoured even by its enemies. It strengthens the foundations of the whole human race; it gives to all affections the proper meaning of their names; it guards the sacred rights of parents, spouses and children; conspicuous in both sexes, admirable at every age, not doubtful in any condition, devoted to itself alone, always of good conscience, subject to nothing at all, fearing only one thing, that it may no longer be what it is called. In solitude, which the fearful call an opportunity, it fears itself as a witness; and it reveres every secret place more than a public one. It hates the pestilent flatteries of the hostile flesh; and whatever the world offers of pleasure or of gifts, it spits out entirely, presuming that it has everything if it is pure. It desires no one shamefully, and likewise makes itself desirable to no one. It remains in its state in every place and at every time, considering honour more than advantage. Do you want to know how happy it is? If it loves you, both he who has it and he who does not have it love it. If then its glory often exults among the Gentiles (although there it cannot be fruitful or true, because it lives under a shameless robber), how much more glorious ought it to be in the Christian people, which serves God, its inviolable sanctifier? For if the church is the bride of Christ because she is chaste, and honoured with the yoke of the heavenly bridal chamber because even after the wedding she remains a perpetual virgin, we who are born of so great a marriage must strive in every way to prove the nobility of our lineage not only by descent but also by the faithfulness of likeness. Yet I rejoice, dearest brothers, that this claim shines out in you, and not doubtfully: for you show that you both have and possess God as Father, since you do not only love chastity, in which God dwells, but adorn it with shining conduct. It is great glory, then, to adorn that by which you are adorned, to keep that by which you yourself are kept. In the end your praise equals the praise of chastity: for it gives you holiness, you give it love. Through it you reach Christ; rather, through you it embraces Christ with you. Through it you obtain from God the Father what you ask; rather, through you it obtains, for which you labour anxiously, lest it blush while it asks for something. Blessed is it when it plays among children; more blessed when it happily fears falls among adolescents; most blessed when it labours to put out carnal fires in the young. In the old, as it is to be honoured, so it is not to be wondered at: because, although it is victorious, it shares the palm of its triumph with the stiffness of old age: for the fight of lust ceases where, as diseases grow frequent, by necessity even the members of the unchaste become chaste.

Come now, let us briefly expose the madness of its rival too, even by a comparison of names, so that what is to be sought and what is to be fled may very easily be recognised. Under the veil of the name of Christ, brothers, Antichrist tries to present himself; in the same way unchastity tries to present itself as chaste, in order to deceive; it trails the sound of the name of chastity behind it, but its author shows what fruits it has. It runs madly about among the peoples, and with the burning goads of lusts it hurls the slippery minds of men into stench, sparing neither sex, nor age, nor family devotion, nor itself, because he who seeks another's modesty first loses his own. For it night and day do not even follow each other in purity, for it is always drowned in the storm of its own muddy flood, while the shamefulness of lust, ever seething, is carried out in reality or in imagination. It gives or receives rewards; it corrupts or is corrupted; it casts in love, soon to make hatred out of love. It sows unlawful heirs, and knowing the crime, excuses it with the names of family affection. It either kills its own or strips them of affection. It thinks nothing at all shameful to suffer or to do, so long as its attempts succeed. Yet even in its very fruit, in which it is accustomed to rejoice from the stain of another's violated modesty, it is always unhappy. In the end, after the business is done, it hates both itself and the one it has conquered. It has often declared war on peaceful nations; it has sometimes overturned strong kingdoms; it has triumphed over other men's bridal chambers, subjugated either by shameful or by cruel deeds; it has taught men, maddened with lust, to fight against their own nature, by an unheard-of wage paid to women; it has placed the price of lust above all in the deaths of parents, children, husbands and wives; it has sometimes destroyed the names of family devotion by monstrous intercourse, persecuting the chaste, but killing only the unchaste in its embraces; it, I say, at every moment both bears every evil and has borne every worse one; for among the idols it is a goddess, among their worshippers a servant. It contrives to be revered in the temples, merry in the theatres, importunate in public places, opportune in any secret place. Wanton, sparing neither tongues, nor eyes, nor ears, it jests, hopes, canvasses, complies, is jealous, rages, arms itself with prayers, arms itself with anger, and likewise sometimes extorts by force what it could not obtain by flatteries. It always rejoices in varied change of lusts; and it repents, never reaching satiety in its slippery profit. It desires to do what it fears to have made public; it tries everything so as to claim everything for itself. It is a new kind of monster. It hates chastity, and yet it wants to seem what chastity is.

Meanwhile it cultivates itself with wonderful arts, and seeks in itself a face of its own that it does not have. It paints itself over itself, and with the varied rouge of the master cosmetician acting as pander, it clothes its own face with the faces of others, to be not what nature gave, but what a passing whim dictated to it at the mirror's test. Now it corrects, now it erases the looks it had loved, now it substitutes others, now it gives birth to new ones. Made by its own hands a hydra of forms, it always walks boldly, because it does not know how to blush under other people's colours, known neither to the household, nor to relatives, nor to husbands, nor to itself, because what is always uncertain cannot be known or true. Moreover it never loves God, whom it knows to be contrary to its works. It is plainly the slave of the devil, for it possesses his kingdom; for it gave birth to the gods itself, it brought into the world the gods through whom or in whom the devil is worshipped, whose origin is shown in their deeds. It made Jupiter 'greatest' by countless, varied and great crimes. It shamefully conquered Hercules, worse than a stepmother, in his lust for Omphale, whom a terrible crowd of monsters could not overcome. It set Venus too before the gaze of the whole world, after many adulteries, stripped of all clothing on her limbs, trying to cover herself with curved hands, rather displaying the vice of her mind and body. There is no need to go through each one; although these things were not worthy to be said, yet they seemed necessary to express the force of unchastity, so that each may know that luxury belongs to idolatry. It, I say, turned the tombs of the dead into temples, burial mounds into altars, corpses into images, funeral feasts into sacrifices, customs into rites. Thus, thus it snatched the human race away from the worship of God, persuading it by flattering festivity to imitate the criminal deeds of criminals and to worship crimes.

So it unhappily inspires in men, against God's law and God's justice, a seeming free licence to wander outside the lawful bed into foreign luxury, and so it tears their wives too away from modesty; and they, deserted, driven by passion or grief, if they do such things, think they are either imitating or avenging themselves. For this reason the Lord says in his commandments: 'Whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of adultery, makes her commit adultery.' What slippery husbands can answer here I do not see; deceived by the unjust impunity of human laws, not knowing true justice even from their own will, they willingly do what they do not wish to suffer: distracted by the detestable theft of profane lust, no longer content with shameful hiding places, they sometimes (oh, the wickedness!) sweat in mad intercourse under the very eyes of their wives, not noticing, wretched men, that in such a matter, with God as judge, what is not permitted to wives is not permitted to husbands either; as the apostle Paul says, laying down the rule for such men: 'The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife.' Since, then, they are one flesh, one sacrament of a divine work, since the woman was made from her husband, and each is held bound to the other, and so by the right of the law too they are touched by one line, there is no doubt that whichever of the two has transgressed will be consumed by the everlasting torments of a horrible punishment. But neither do those go unpunished who, without wives, so as to sin more freely, buy for themselves uncertain and dishonourable wages of lust, not noticing that whatever is outside lawful marriage is unhappy and unchaste: for I do not think, brothers, that anything more is permitted to a Christian than to be either continent or a husband.

I come now to examples, which are above all necessary to the matter, because what is done counts for more than what is said, so that both the evil of unchastity and the good of chastity may very easily be recognised from one and the same platform. Joseph, a Hebrew youth, famous by birth, more famous for his beauty, and most famous for the uprightness of his conduct, was among the sons of Jacob younger in age but greater in spirit. Driven by the envy of his brothers, he was carried down into Egypt and sold by them; and his master's wife began to love him, in a worse way, whom his brothers hated: for when the woman was burning to the marrow with the fire of mad passion, armed vehemently with arguments for sacrilegious persuasion, she seizes on solitude, she seizes on a secret place, the sort of place in which youth, even unprovoked, has often been accustomed to be violent towards unwilling women. But when, bursting out towards her goal, she realises that neither flatteries nor promises help her, she lays hands on him and, reversing the roles, tries with all her strength to draw the youth's fire into her own tinder. But he, in resisting, left behind the garment violently torn from him and fled naked out of the pit of unchastity; but, clothed in the splendour of chastity, after a slanderous condemnation he was both freed and honoured by God. In the end he who was already before a distinguished king of modesty was made by right the second king of the kingdom.

Susanna too, the pillar of matronhood, whose unaffected beauty was a lovelier ornament than her beauty itself, a distinguished witness of chastity, two of the elders, set on fire by one monstrous passion, began to be madly in love with, otherwise than was fitting. When they noticed that she was enclosed by the wall of chastity, which is surely true and eternal beauty, in the solitude of a paradise, where they remembered Eve had been deceived by the author of her ruin, they took counsel from this very thing and set about catching her by a trick, threatening, unless she gave way to sin, great ruin as though she had been caught in adultery. But she, not an Eve, though shut in by the boundaries of a two-edged choice, in which either her modesty or her life had to be killed, calling God alone to witness as the one who knew her conscience, chose an honourable death rather than a shameful life, thinking it better to present herself as guilty before men than before God. Meanwhile they press on, turned from lovers into accusers, and while they artfully heap up their own crime, transferred onto the simplicity of the woman they had trapped, they already condemn themselves first. But (oh, the wickedness!) age is believed, authority is believed; the adulterers exult; integrity is condemned. Already Susanna was being dragged, undeserving, to punishment; already the whole people was swelling for her blood; already her own household, struck by the atrocity of the new event, groaning pitifully, with heads bowed, had abandoned all effort at defence. Already she herself hated the delay of death, as a short road for modesty, displeasing to all but pleasing to her own conscience alone. When suddenly God, who is never deceived by any cunning, is at once present in the boy Daniel. All at once he tore down the whole stage of malice; the fabricated crime is quickly laid open; the wickedness returns upon its authors; and modesty is cleared by innocence. And so victorious chastity brought Susanna back, proved and vindicated, with great triumph to her husband's bedchamber, whom the lie of unchastity had dragged into public.

But O how wonderful you are, chastity, who wish to be praised in no other way than by being guarded, content with the sole ornament of a good conscience! You are happy in virgins, strong in widows, faithful in marriages, pure in priests, glorious in martyrs, bright in angels, and queen in all. You are never subject to the flesh, never to any law. You are born of the will, but you bear the will itself to good things: for afterwards will becomes your delight, when through it you daily gather fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold. You are rich in the poor, richer in the rich; you are made complete equally in all. You are the honour of bodies. You are the treasure of souls. You are the foundation, summit and fruit of all your peers. You are the eternal, indissoluble knot of your own purpose. Through you lawful fasts are celebrated. Through you prayers that are offered are accepted even before they are poured out. You are a sacrifice dear to God; you are God's lawful temple, the sanctuary of modesty. Corruption does not know how to enter you. Through you the world is conquered, all lust is crushed, the devil is subjugated, Antichrist is not feared, the Holy Spirit is brought in, Christ is glorified, God the almighty Father is made favourable. In the end, happy is he who will reign in the future, having come there with you.

If what we say confidently, brothers, perhaps seems harsh and hard to anyone, a thing almost against nature, let him stop being disturbed at once, understanding that this is the greatest glory of Christian virtue: to trample on nature itself. But since virtue always darkens pleasures, and nothing is right to anyone except what he has loved, especially what all peoples cultivate with one desire, there is no doubt that whoever dissuades from marriage is judged either a public enemy or certainly mad. But I shall not fear what the envy of public talk may gossip about me: for I do not condemn marriage, but I set better things before marriage, and indeed with the apostle Paul urging thus: 'I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they are not continent, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.' And in another place he says: 'I say this by way of concession, not of command: I wish all of you to be as I am.' And so marrying is better for this reason, that burning is worse. 'All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient.' Here now, Christian, recognise and choose what you want: the remedy or health.

In short, if it seems good, let us compare the difference between a virgin and a married woman. The married woman thinks how she may please her husband; the virgin, how she may please God. The one is adorned with outward ornaments; the other is far more adorned, because she does not know how to be adorned from outside. The one is fragrant with various ointments and scents; the other, more pleasing than any meadow with her one flower, breathes to heaven itself with joyful honour. The one rejoices in children; but the other does not fear the loss of children. The one is fed on their budding endearments and delights daily in their growing up; but the other, sick with nine months' discomfort, does not carry the weight; in an uncertain childbirth she does not groan for the safety of mother and child, and is tormented at every moment by the care of no shifting anxiety.

But someone will say: 'The virgin Mary too both married and gave birth.' Let some woman be such, and I yield. But she was a virgin after marriage, a virgin after conception, a virgin after her son. In short, if there were anything better than virginity, the Son of God could have granted it rather to his mother, to whom he granted that she should excel in the honour of divine virginity. So, remaining a virgin in the state in which you were born, glory in it; subject to no law, guard the flower of holy modesty, the treasure of faith; be holy both in body and in spirit; extinguish the fire of the flesh by the love of Christ, to say nothing of the glory of the resurrection, which you already claim for yourself here, in which, as the Lord says, 'They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but will be like the angels.' You will gain a great benefit if you live for God, free in pure conduct, and are not the handmaid of a man.

But you, widow, why do you desire a second marriage, when you see the Apostle restraining the first? These are his words: 'The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none; for the form of this world is passing away.' And since this apostolic edict was at work almost four hundred years ago or more, when men were longer-lived and Christians very few, why should I, now that the Christian world is almost complete and the vigour of men is worn away as the world grows old, blunt the edge of truth with coaxing words and not fully declare with what perfection of observance the worship of God ought to be kept? Especially since it is written in Solomon: 'Even if your children multiply, do not delight in them if the fear of the Lord is not with them; do not laugh with their souls; for one who fears God is better than a thousand ungodly sons.' Since this is so, come, widow, you who often hurry to marry like an innocent virgin, answer my question: did you lose a good husband or a bad one? If a bad one, and you desire to marry, you deserve to be afflicted by a worse. If a good one, keep the seal of fidelity: he to whom you bear witness does not deserve to suffer an injury. Where is that first day of marriage which, as you longed for each other, seemed slower to come than the others? Where the festal slaying of precious virginity, sweet to both? Where is the love which, in an equal and united marriage, does not die while one of the two survives? Are you not the one who washed your husband's laid-out body with tears, wiped it with kisses, veiled it with the loss of your hair, with torn cheeks and breasts disfigured with bruises, covered more with dirty dust than with clothing? Are you not, I say, the one who, now bursting heaven itself with your wailing, cried that after such a husband you could not live a moment longer? Now, with your groans shut in by grief, often dead in spirit among your relatives, your limbs sinking to the ground, you made the funeral uncertain: to whom should they give their tears, to the dead man or to the dying woman? After this, if you choose to marry, all that was a lie. What is this? See, you return again to the panders' arts; you borrow colour from the box, colour you condemned a little earlier. See, you tend your hair indulgently; you change the dust of mourning for scented powder; you shut your weeping in a little jar; you bind with ornament the neck you had vowed to the noose; you seek oracles from the mirror about how conveniently you can ensnare a suitor. Whatever you do, you will not be a virgin again; but one thing I know, that whoever changes both appearance and conduct for another's sake differs nothing from a monster.

But you say: 'The heat of my tender age drives me.' I believe it. See, you have married. To say nothing of human frailty and other mishaps, see, the day after, some necessity snatches your husband away and keeps him banished far from you for ten years or more, as often happens. What will you do? Will you wait faithfully for his return, or will you seek a remedy for your heat elsewhere? If you promise to wait, you are without doubt deceiving, since your profession of impatience is already on record. But if you are going to take a remedy, there is no doubt that this is the only one: to restrain your flames by thinking of your husband's sword. Believe me, lust has no place where patience rules, where one lives soberly, where death is feared. So transfer this observance, this fear, to God, which is truer and more just, and whatever that fire may be, it will suddenly be extinguished.

But I linger on matters that are almost sound, as if the crimes that are truly detestable were already corrected. I am ashamed to say among a serious people that old women are often seen as new brides, whose marriages are almost more than their birthdays; who are asked not to marry but to sleep, who are invited when nearer the tomb than the bridal chamber; who, as they perish themselves, by their detestable example compel young girls too to perish. What son could love them? What husband? They confuse the rights of blood, blot out the merits of husbands, flatter the living, sigh for the dead, now hating their old children, now their new ones, and likewise their husbands. And let them consider on the other side what it means that in such solemn vows it often happens that they have neither children nor husbands. Such too is the case of husbands, to whom it is superfluous to say anything, because if wife and husband are one in the flesh, there is no doubt that what one hears belongs to both. What am I to do, where to turn, I do not know; for I do not see what I am to preach to the Gentiles in exhortations to divine and true worship. The happiness of virginity? But they have their virgins: even if not happy ones, still they have them. If I call them to the glorious toil and palm of widowhood, they may perhaps mock us, because our sacred virgins and widows labour for the great reward of immortality, but theirs for nothing. But in this alone we surpass them, that Christian women marry more, in the name of their holiness. Add that they marry Gentiles: which cannot be said without great grief or groaning.

For what voice, what rebuke could worthily reprove these women? They endow their disgrace with sacrilege, hand over the members of Christ to the slaves of demons; open the temple of God to the profane; strip bare even the very sanctuaries; confound the sacred things, having lost the joyful light, living in darkness, having shrines, not homes. They are rightly slain who, ungrateful for Christ's benefits, of their own accord return to the death from which they had escaped. Since the devil always lies in wait for those who do not seek him, consider what he does when invited: all the approaches for harm are thrown open to him, and they give him victory without a fight, without any toil: for he will not try to bring under his rule the woman who canvassed to be his handmaid. In short, what is done in the house, and even in the very shrines, cannot happen without you, faithful Christian woman, because you are an unhappy wife if you do not know what goes on in your house; certainly more unhappy if you know.

Let us suppose, then, as often happens, that the feast-days of the different religions fall on one and the same day, when you must go to church and he to the temples. In what manner will each of you provide for your sacrifice? At what expense? With what vessels? Or with what servants? And if these things are done separately, it does no good: for, setting out from one house and returning to one, they become one, if not by confusion, then by mistake. What of the fact that his sacrifice is public, yours secret? His can be handled freely by anyone; yours cannot be seen without sacrilege even by Christians not yet consecrated. Finally, it is a detestable condition of life where a wife may not do what pleases her husband; where you propose to do nothing unless he has arranged it and completed it first. If it is not done, or if what is done displeases him, then the whole house will roar with quarrels, God will be blasphemed, and perhaps, seizing your very sacrifice, he will beat your breast, disfigure your face, granting you even a benefit at times when he orders you not to come to church. But it is much worse if you please your husband: for you cannot please a sacrilegious man without sacrilege. To settle the matter briefly: returning from the temple he will necessarily tell you, when you ask, what replies were given about the safety of both of you or the agreement of the gods. If they are terrible, struck with fear, perhaps when he stops you will offer unlawful vows to them, as many women have done for their husbands even among the faithful, worse than Eve, not her pupils but her teachers; for she was deceived, but these have given themselves to the devil of their own accord. But if they are peaceful and favourable, you will surely rejoice, and an obliging wife, for such news, even if you do not press peace upon him, you will not refuse it.

What are you doing, wretched woman? Why do you rejoice, mad woman? This is not peace but war; not a kiss but poison. Oh, the wickedness! You embrace limbs still smoking from the funeral pyre, and wipe off on your own flesh the sweat of the steam of filthy altars; you jest, flatter, comply; if by chance some solemn mystery is received or brought back by the devotee, you yourself take it, you put it away, you guard it. Besides, you take food together, you drain with your lips the remains of the cup he toasted you with, and you inaugurate, as it were, the first fruits of a future draught; you willingly conceive through your husband the whole spirit of iniquity: unhappy woman, more is now in you than has remained in the temple. But if you keep yourself and hold back, he will think that this is contrived as an insult to him, not from love of divine worship but from desire for someone else; he will turn the virtue of chastity and observance into a crime. For what evil would he not suspect, not do, serving cruel gods, adulterous gods? Therefore from now on flee, virgin, flee, widow, such marriages. No excuse at all applies to you. If you cannot be continent, at least do not lend your marriages out at interest, lest on that day of resurrection you be unable to recognise, among very many husbands, whose wife you were. Do not be sacrilegious, do not be a betrayer of the law. Why marry a pagan, when you can marry a Christian?

Although the blessed life, for whose desire humanity sighs and burns at every moment, is sought through various virtues, yet all, by one and the same consent, are carried as it were into the harbour of patience, without which nothing can be heard, conceived, learned or taught. For surely it alone is the one to which everything looks; since there is no doubt that hope, faith, justice, humility, chastity, uprightness, concord, love, all arts and all virtues, and even the elements themselves, cannot stand without its teaching or its bridle. For it is always mature, humble, cautious, prudent, provident, content in every need, calm in any storm of disturbances. It does not know how to cloud its serenity. It knows no regret; it does not know what quarrelling is; it either avoids or bears all injuries. It is uncertain whether it should be judged impassible, since when it has suffered something it is found as if it had suffered nothing. Finally, brothers, it is impossible to estimate the virtue of that for which to be conquered is victory. No force twists it from its place, not toil, not hunger, not nakedness, not persecution, not fear, not danger, not death, not torments heavier than death itself, not power, not ambition, not good fortune. It always remains immovable, firmly balanced by a certain lofty and divine temperance, restraining all the agitations of minds with calm moderation; and, not to labour at conquering all things, it first conquers itself.

Virtues could not be virtues, the states of the elements could not be perennial, the seasons could not pass in related connection into their solemn returns, unless patience, like an anxious mother, guarded the discipline and turning of things. The sun, for instance, although it lights the alternating limits of the world with wonderful speed, yet never outruns the beloved and modest dawn; and, what is greater, it could not divide itself equally into twelve, I will not say spaces, but moments of hours, if impatience pressed on its courses. The moon too, which seems to some to wander in its monthly course, never brings forward importunately the solemn fires of its age, nor holds them back; what else is given to be understood than the most skilful discipline of a distinguished patience, serving the moderation of its maker? The sea too, when it rages, provoked by the winds, although in reciprocal alternation, now beating against heaven, now seeking the earth, armed on every side with glassy mountains, raves with its whole body in violent heaps of savage waves; yet as its furthest rolls come back pale, as if acknowledging the right of the land and avoiding violating it, it breaks upon itself with wonderful patience, and is reined in by the same waves by which it is driven. Patience gives both happiness and grace to budding meadows, yellow harvests, curving vines and half-pale olives, since impatience does not let the offspring of each season rush in a raw birth into the time of another. What of the seemly and orderly comings and goings of the various birds? What of the cranes of the air in their high flights? What of the countless wedges of different fishes, graded by age, with their own leaders? When they obey the invitation of the seasons, and with the handsome course of their solemn oarage furrow the waters or mark out the air, do they not both come patiently and go patiently?

Man alone is headlong, man alone impatient; he delights daily in perverse changeableness; he is eager for variety; he thinks himself wretched if he stays himself, and does not understand that it is like madness for the mind not to remain in its state. For what is impatience, but a slippery mind always storming itself with frequent and rapid agitations; an unfaithful soul; an action improvident even to itself, unstable, blind, incautious, inconstant, driving all things into ruin; a thing without substance, a business without a person: it tries everything quickly, upsets everything in a moment, mother of crimes, teacher of curiosity, sharp point of rashness, author and teacher alike of detestable evils: for it was from impatience that death burst forth, to slay, and still to slay, man's salvation from the cradle of the world. In short, Adam, while he was still set in the citadel of paradise and, most blessed, enjoyed rule over a blessed world, lived happy and indestructible as long as he kept the commands of the royal edict. But when by a sinister consent he borrowed impatience from the slipperiness of the envious serpent and tasted the evilly sweet fruit of the sacred tree, he found tears, procured for himself pains and groans, thorns and thistles, and, troubled by his last sweat, left to his descendants the inheritance of a disordered death, which soon gave birth to murder. Indeed there was no delay. Cain, impatiently envious of his brother's offering, pants for his brother's destruction; and with God looking on, he commits the murder: nor is he checked even by God's restraining voice, but presses on more and more, until the sin conceived is doubled by the shedding of blood. The empty world marvels that it is too narrow for two. The elements marvel that man, made in the image and likeness of God, can be slain, and by a brother. The raw earth blushes, defiled with pious blood. Cain alone, unhappy, exults, and because the deed lacks a witness he thinks he has escaped the crime: he whom God saw, whom conscience convicted, whom his brother's blood accuses. What of the impatient men of Sodom? Where men were unlawfully overpowered by men, divine fire burned the fiery fire of monstrous lust; and the compact of their domestic crime, by which, more unhappy than those they subdued, they ravaged the backs of guests, pursuing them with infamous spear, a rain poured from heaven by the Lord, armed with flames and sulphur, wiped out with a penal storm. The Jews swell with assemblies; while they revere the divine altars they overturn them; they crush the prophets with various kinds of slaughter; they try to stone Moses out of excessive love; always ungrateful towards the Lord, they fight him with various schemes, and they long to serve many gods and kings, who through impatience could by no means serve one God.

But let the examples of impatience brought forward so far suffice; for what you want to restrain should not, I think, be dwelt on zealously; especially since its nature is such that it never stays among its own, but is spread wholly in public, thrives on rumours, and, seething this way and that, bursts out blindly in various ways; but it is conquered if concealment darkens its fame. Now let us return to the virtue of patience, which by its illustrious power brought our ancestors everlasting glory and salvation. Abel was a martyr because just; just because patient; from him the martyrs learned to suffer, gladly suffering what they did not deserve. When God announced the flood, by which all flesh would be utterly destroyed, Noah both believed and feared that it threatened at any moment; and the ark, by which he with his family would be saved, which he was ordered to make, he did not knock together in headlong haste; nor did he seize so great a gift like a presumptuous or mad man, but built it patiently, fitted it out patiently, filled it patiently with various living creatures. When he would be ordered to go in, when to shut the door, he waited patiently; worthy to escape, he who in such a terror of the world did not hurry to escape.

Now I must recall Abraham's wonderful trial, which would have made him either sacrilegious, if he despised God, or cruel, if he killed his son, had he not, by a certain singular and truly divine patience, balanced the matter between religion and family devotion, not denying to God in hope what he had received from God against hope. So he despises Isaac, his sweetest son, a sweeter victim for God, in order to keep him; he determines to slay him so as not to slay him, sure that he could not displease by that deed which was done with God as its author. O new spectacle, and truly worthy of God! In which it is hard to decide whether the priest or the victim is more patient. Neither the colour of the striker nor of the one to be struck falters; limbs do not tremble; eyes are neither downcast nor fierce. No one pleads, no one trembles, no one excuses himself, no one is troubled, lest it should truly be a murder of kin. The one carries before him the wood by which he is to be burned; the other builds the altar. The one draws the sword, the other the neck, with one vow, one devotion; lest anything be profane, what is celebrated by the other is done diligently and patiently. Under so great a fear, I will not say of humanity, but rather of nature itself, they are glad. Affection yields to devotion alone, devotion to religion; religion favours both. The sword stops in mid-air, held back by no obstacle, having brought glory, not crime, by a terrible sacrifice. What is this? See, savagery passes into faith, and crime into sacrament; the slayer of his son returns bloodless, and he who was sacrificed lives. Both are a glory to each other, both an example of renown, both an admirable testimony to the ages of the worship of God. The world would have been happy, brothers, if all became slayers of their sons in this way.

Jacob through patience gained both the blessing and his brother: he securely gives way to anger, so that he may return home; he entrusts himself to his father and departs gradually and gently, to prove that he both deserved and did not canvass for what he deserved. And lest anyone obscure this patience with the name of timidity, in taking wives too his condition was the same. He willingly accepts; he observes long periods; he willingly bears all his father-in-law's commands; if he had been impatient, deceived by cunning, he would never afterwards have served for Rachel for a time that could not be recovered. Likewise Joseph is found patient when he is seized from the pasture by his brothers, patient when he is let down into the pit, patient when he is sold under the hard spear, patient in prison, more patient in the kingdom, most patient when he recognised the brothers he had longed for: and where boasting cannot restrain itself, he restrained himself, set in honour. Truly heavenly is this patience, which neither hardship, nor happiness, nor affection could move from its state.

Against Job, one may judge what the devil, who is not said to be gentle, could contrive when roused; especially since he had received permission from God to strive, with whatever weapons and whatever strength he could, in testing the just man with his inveterate cruelty. So a new and almost incredible battle is joined. The devil fights beyond his custom, but Job fights more by not showing it. First he destroys his great and very rich estate in a single moment; and with a most atrocious blow, the roofs and walls confounded in ruin, in his excessive cruelty he hurriedly buries the most flourishing company of his sweet children before he kills them. Finally he clothes the man himself, whom he had stripped of great riches, with great ulcers, into which he also sends worms that eat them out, so that, in the torments of a dying man, the newly come wound might be finished along with the man by the indwelling wound. But Job, having routed all the forces of the opposing side by calm waiting, very strong within himself, having recovered for the better everything the war had destroyed, did not lose, but changed, the state of his former happiness by not showing his suffering. Here I dare not mention the patience of the Lord, lest God, counted among men, suffer some injury: for praise is not fitting when comparison takes away his pre-eminence. And since all those mentioned, and all the happy, are such by his gift, it is an insult to praise the Lord, whose servant you cannot worthily praise.

But O how I would wish, if I could, patience, queen of all things, to celebrate you more by conduct! I know that you rest more gladly in your own ways, your own foundations and your own counsels than in other people's bare words, and that you place your praise not so much in multiplying virtues as in bringing them to completion. You grant virginity that its flower may not wither by any disease at any time. You are the most faithful harbour of widowhood, always set amid the frequent whirlwinds of various storms. You, like a skilled charioteer, with gentle reins, arrange those who go under the most holy yoke of marriage with untried necks into an equal effort of labour or of love. You taught friendship to will the same and to refuse the same. You, the one and strongest consolation of slavery, often give birth to freedom. You grant poverty that it has everything, content with itself, when it bears everything. You called forth the prophets; you glued the apostles to Christ. You are the mother and crown of the martyrs' daily witness. You are the wall of faith, the fruit of hope, the friend of love. You gather the whole people and the divine virtues, like flowing hair into the knot on one head, into honour and beauty. Happy, and eternally happy, is he who will always have you in himself.

The men of Greece who are wise, as they wish to seem, curious beyond the rest, have by a hateful business lifted their heart beyond what is lawful with insolent arguments. When they ascend to heaven in words, when they persuade that God is what they wish, when they pretend to know the secrets of the nature of things; when they impose names on the stars and labours on the sun; when they ascribe their errors to the circle of the moon; when they desire above all that the song of their own wit be worshipped; thus they have destroyed themselves and others: for, the name and the worship changed, as if it had been advanced by dreams, they passed on those scholastic slanders against God even into the church, so that in it too, if anyone chooses to be mad, God is for him not to be worshipped but to be searched out. This is what the unfaithful now do, about whom let us hear what the divine Scripture pronounces, whose words are these: 'They have diminished the truth from the sons of men. They have spoken vain things each to his neighbour; with deceitful lips they have spoken evil in their heart. May God destroy all deceitful lips and the boastful tongue. Who have said: We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is our Lord?'

Avoiding this pride of a swollen heart, the prophet says thus to the Lord: 'Lord, my heart is not lifted up,' since he knows it is written: 'Man sees in the face, God in the heart.' Will it not be thought insulting or superfluous to tell God what he knows? Far from it: he tells it, but to us, whom he wishes to imitate what he does and proclaims. So he says, 'My heart is not lifted up,' teaching that the best sacrifice to God is a contrite heart. Therefore, brothers, we must not be lifted up in prosperity, but held in by the fear of God within the bounds of gentleness with the bridle of modesty, so that we may deservedly earn what Scripture says: 'God is near to the contrite of heart, and he will save the humble in spirit.' But hear too what the Lord himself urges us with his loving promise. 'Come,' he says, 'you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your souls.' Our God, brothers, is humble of heart, and that ineffable power of his wisdom and might lies within the man he assumed all the more wonderful, because he is so great and such. And does curious man lift up his heart and try to grasp the height of him whose humility he does not follow?

He goes on and says: 'Nor are my eyes lifted up.' The case of the eyes is worse, because lifting up of the heart belongs to few, lifting up of the eyes to all; about which what John preaches to his disciples is in everyone's use: 'Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the age.' For by these as authors is conceived, by these as leaders is carried on, by these as servants is fulfilled whatever burns daily in the world with lust, ambition and avarice. Therefore both are vain: because the lifting up of the heart finds no fruit, and the lifting up of the eyes, raised from one thing to another, at once loses with fleeting changeableness whatever it has seen.

Then follows: 'Nor have I walked in great things, nor in wonderful things above me.' The words of God are great; he himself is wonderful on high. Since the prophet would be in danger if he did not walk in these, how does he besides assign himself a good work by withdrawing from those in which he ought to have walked? The later words, brothers, answer the earlier: for he is speaking of worldly things. He says he has not walked in great and wonderful things, not those of God, but in those that men think great in this world. And when he added 'above me', he showed that he had never been lifted up when he could have been: for none are more easily lifted up than those whom the height of an unexpected honour raises. For David, humble, cast down, of no account, lay in his father's house, always feeding the sheep, almost a stranger, counted innocent among the innocent. He pleased God, was anointed king, inspired as prophet; he does not grow insolent in the kingdom; he overshadows no one with a prophet's terror; he does not avenge his injuries with a power that might be feared; he loves those who hate him; he spares enemies; he forgives sons who tried to kill their father; his persecutor, and, what is more, a king handed over into his hands by God more than once, he always prefers to fear rather than kill; grateful in a reversed duty, he means to please God by keeping God's gift. A gentle king, a loving father, a modest prophet, he can do everything and holds back from everything; he is not changed by the great and wonderful things of the world; he keeps everywhere the gentle and humble shepherd.

Afterwards he added: 'If I did not think humbly, but exalted my soul.' Let us see whether the prophet perhaps contradicts himself by exalting his soul, he who boasts that he has not exalted his heart. He does not contradict himself, but shows that the loftiness of the soul is to have overcome higher things, because he who exalts himself is humbled, and he who humbles himself is exalted: for a lifted-up heart is the soul's lowering; a restrained heart is the soul's advancement. Of this we have as witnesses two men who explain the prophetic song by their deeds, the Pharisee and the publican standing in God's temple. The Pharisee foolishly stretches to heaven hands which are often servants of slaughter, often of robbery. He shamelessly lifts up his eyes, by whose enticement the world is unhappy. He thunders with a tongue that is never without the serpent's venom; and, what is greater than all madness, he praises himself to God. But the publican prays to God not with his members but wholly, because he is wholly humble in fear, confessing his sins; according to the Lord's saying, the heart from which all kinds of sins proceed, he frequently strikes his breast, in a way modestly chastising his heart with his hand, and asks only pardon for his offences, by silence, not by voice. Hear what each obtained. He who had promised himself everything went down from the temple empty; he who presumed nothing went down justified.

The word 'fear', dearest brothers, is one, but when reason is applied fear is distinguished from fear; for they become two: one of God, the other of nature. That of nature is born in man; that of God is both learned and taught, because it consists not in trembling but in the reasoning of doctrine, as it is written: 'Come, children, hear me: I will teach you the fear of God.' The natural fear, then, is not learned, but meets us by the impulse of our weakness: for it is no art to fear what you dread; and you dread what you do not want to happen to you. It arises in various ways: when the conscience seethes with some guilt; or when a hostile hand, threatening, presses on one's safety with the sword; or when a swollen snake, rearing to bite, blazing with fiery scales, sets itself against the traveller in his path; or when the rage of a wild beast, eager for slaughter, has tried to load the back of one fleeing with its roaring close by; or when, the rudder lost, among the warring waves and winds a groaning ship is in labour with shipwreck. Among all these the fear of conscience is the worse, because the things we have mentioned, and others like them, pass away with their own passing; the fear of conscience is not wiped out.

Now let us see how we are to understand what the prophet says: 'Blessed are all who fear the Lord.' If all who fear the Lord are blessed, then no one is not blessed: because there is no nation, there are no flocks, in short no nature of living creatures, that does not fear God. When we are oppressed by bursting noises, the hinges of the world shaken on every side; when heaven, thundering beyond custom with a terrifying crash, resounds; when amid blind darkness drawn together by thick clouds, frequent flashes glittering with curving fires at once imitate the light of the intercepted day; when many things burn with thunderbolts; when the earth either trembles or takes itself back into itself with a chasm; there is no place here for blessedness, where what is feared is feared from necessity, not devotion. So let us hear what Scripture says, whose admonitions are these: 'And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but that you fear the Lord your God and walk in all his ways, and love him, and keep his commandments with all your heart and with all your soul, that it may be well with you?' Do you see that this fear is necessary for us, which consists in the love of God; which gives birth to itself by its own will; which builds beauty by knowledge of the divine law; which directs itself fearlessly to all kinds of virtues; which faithfully obeys all the commandments; which, once begun, lives innocently, cultivates justice, and strives without end to fear, so as to fear nothing except God, whom it loves?

Indeed, with its support Daniel, unarmed, kills the dragon terrible to the peoples; thrown to the lions, he dines in danger, he who was accustomed to fast outside danger. And Jonah, fearing the Lord, does not fear to go of his own accord to shipwreck: as the whale gapes, he is buried more pitiably than he is thrown down, and yet he finds the shore he was heading for before he sees it, happier in a tomb than in a ship. At his prayer the mountain trembles: the trembling is the mountain's, not the apostles'. Peter is carried on the sea's surge not as one shipwrecked but as a traveller; he fears that the deep may swallow him who did not fear; and yet he does not wholly conceal it, lest he not believe he had walked on the sea with his feet. Against Thecla the fiercest accuser draws the sword of his tongue; the public laws rage with their servants; savagery is sharpened by goads into ferocity, and yet it is found gentler than men. Lest anything seem lacking to so dire a scene of humanity, sea monsters too are sent in; the girl is stripped of all her garments and clothed with fire. Among so many instruments of death, while the spectator is afraid, she tramples securely on all kinds of terrors; unharmed, as if the world were subdued, she goes out of that deadly cage no longer pitiable, but with a pitiable funeral procession, bringing back the triumph over a conquered world, she whom all had believed would perish by so many punishments. O necessary fear! It does nothing else but make men blessed; it fears by art, not by chance; by will, not by necessity; from religion, not from guilt; it fears God, not nature. Do you want to know its property? All fears, whomever they have invaded, wear them down by their growth; this alone grows so as to make immortal the one it has possessed.

It is no singular or trivial crime, brothers, especially for a Christian, to be bound in the fetters of greed and, blinded by the deadly darkness of deep night, to be carried pitiably down to the depths. But because the whole world has caught fire with the burning of an inextinguishable plague, avarice, as people think, has ceased to be a crime, because it leaves no one who could rebuke it: for all everywhere are hurled with insatiable fury into shameful gains; nor can anyone at all be found who would put the reins of justice on it even for a single moment. Always restless, it seethes, rages, fights, seizes, gathers, hoards, tenacious of its own, craving another's, content neither with its own, nor with another's, nor with the world itself: it possesses everything and always complains of want. In the end its wishes never reach their goal. The more it has increased, the more wretched it becomes, without rest, without satiety. By right and wrong, armed with many arts, ways and tricks, it rages like a bacchant, despising its own and others' safety, fearing only that someone may lack what it can scrape away. Hence all nations fall from moment to moment by mutual wounds; shaken cities groan; worn-out countryside cannot breathe; the seas are more savage through pirates than by nature. Roads barred by swords grow fat with human blood; wills marvel that unknown heirs are read out from them; under the deceit of a friendly hand a draught of poison drunk off securely finishes off innocent souls; by the new rage of hatred an unknown offspring is buried before it is born, no longer in its mother's womb but in her tomb, which could feel neither a lawful death nor life. Rightly then does the Apostle say: 'The root of all evils is avarice'; for with this as mother and teacher, everything we have said, and much else too, indeed all the evils that gush out everywhere without pause, are born and celebrated, which humanity falsely pretends to condemn: for swallowing the camel, it strains out the gnat; it rejects the drops of crimes, and drinks up the fountain of avarice from which the streams of crimes are poured.

No rights, no laws, no honour of any kind stand in its way, because whatever is either bought or sold is not free: not nobility, because nobility trusts in it, cultivates it, and through it finds its very name; not holiness, not fortification, because nothing is so holy that it cannot be violated, nothing so fortified that it cannot be stormed by money; not the bond of blood, not friendship, because a man is loved or hated not for his own merit but by the benefit of gold, silver and resources. In short, this is why we see the pious names of brothers more often friendly to swords than to each other; why rich parents, the holiness of their name abolished, let their children wander, subject to the street-corner coin, to the disgrace of both; why children, judging their parents' life their own loss, laying violent hands on nature itself, seize inheritances before their time and compel their parents to live in misery and to die by their means. Oh, the wickedness! What do you take away from your own, unhappy man? What would you do to a stranger, you who are avaricious against yourself? O evil more detestable than the detestable! While they rob one another, persecute, deceive, they approve enemies, praise robbers, excuse brigands; and it never comes into their minds that tomorrow is not in human power, nor even the very day on which business is done; because what always turns, what it may bring in a moment is doubtful. But, blind with eyes open, they enlarge barns, narrow lands, join woodland to woodland, and if they possessed the whole world, they would hate its boundaries: they think it unlawful to have a neighbour. They build estates, dig tombs, fear an omen who do not fear death. Thus, thus they often lie slain, given to dogs, birds and beasts, scattered everywhere, lost in every way, their bones half-eaten, stripped even of their own flesh. Behold an end worthy of the avaricious man. He, he who had a large estate, does not have a small tomb. Such men the distinguished prophet rebukes, saying: 'What has pride profited us? Or what has the ambition of riches brought us? All these things have passed away like a shadow.' And the Lord himself says: 'What does it profit anyone to gain the world and suffer the loss of his own soul?'

Go now, insatiable man, and with new arts compel even the elements themselves into the deadly gains of detestable heaping-up. Though your inner rooms shine, filled with the many-coloured shapes of precious stones, though the earth groan under the weight of silver, though your whole house, blazing with gold, fight the sun with its flames, and the ranks of honours, emptied out on you, find you, whatever it may give you; yet you ought to remember that death fears neither riches nor honours. O blind mind of men, how variously, yet towards one death, it strives: the poor man, when he unhappily seeks the wealth he happily does not have; the rich man, when he thinks he does not have the riches he has. Avarice strains in the one, rages in the other, grows in both, and does not stop in either. Yet in one moment a little earth both makes them equal and fills them, which gold with all its ambition cannot do.

Hence one man puts out his money like a hook to draw other people's resources to himself, and never stops nursing it while it is abroad by a deadly reckoning, so as to seek a sum not that the loan gave, but that days, months and fingers have borne it by the yearly count. But often the moneylender is himself stripped by his own industry, when by some chance fraud, want, flight or death has wrested the debtor from him: for it is natural to avarice to make one more avaricious; it has often taken more from the avaricious man than it gives; and so it often happens that he who desires what is another's deservedly loses even his own. There another closes the roads to travellers; he keeps them from the grasses, keeps them from the woods, keeps them from the waters. And indeed, though very much lies vacant and plentiful, he denies to men what he cannot deny to birds, serpents and beasts. It is surely sheer madness to envy the benefits of nature. Another then buys up the supply of all goods, watches for the time to sell, smaller in measure, greater in price; he denies he has anything to sell, so as to be asked, so as to cut throats; and would that the goods sold were at least uncorrupted. Besides, he groans if the year is barren, much more if it has been fertile: in the one case because he sells little, in the other because he is not the only one. Do you want to know in what darkness he is wrapped? He is angry with God if he is not always made rich by public mourning. Well, well, when someone seeks gold, he finds the sword.

Amid these things no one considers the condition of human frailty, no one the enemy, no one the treasury, no one the robber, no one the servant of the house, who by knowing its secrets is worse than all, no one the flames of the day of judgment that threaten, through which we shall all pass naked. Only that is worshipped of which it is said: 'The idols of the nations are silver and gold,' for which a man is either killed or kills. Yet I should like to know what pleasure so great a madness for it holds, what it gives its worshipper? It does not extinguish fever, does not drive away diseases, does not heal wounds, does not take away pains, does not repel death, except that it kills the healthy; it is surely never eaten, nor drunk, nor will it go down into hell with its plunderer; only it hurls unhappy eyes and an empty conscience into the dire desire for its baleful glitter, with the hope of getting it, lest a man seem to have been killed for nothing.

But we have made our sermon not to the avaricious but about the avaricious, brothers: otherwise we should have had to conclude with divine examples alone, if any such man were here. But since in you faith and devotion, which is a fit expeller of avarice, remains and glories, you are all worthy not so much to have gold and silver as to be them; for you are God's living gold, you are Christ's silver, you are the riches of the Holy Spirit; you, if you despise earthly metals, are by far a greater treasure of your life than these. For you that heavenly city built of gold is destined: there is no delay for those who wish to enter; twelve gates stand open, dwellings without number have been prepared, let no one be anxious about a lodging. It will be a distinguished mark of our sure glory if we make the city of God narrow by the happiness of our numbers. So be secure: nothing is ever lacking in it, nothing is taken away from its state or declines; all good and everlasting things abound everywhere. Certainly, what is first, no one is in need, no one envies, no one is anxious, no one robs, no one confiscates, no one kills, no one dies: all are happy, all of one mind, all immortal, all always equal: what is one's is all's, what is all's is each one's. Do you want to know what blessedness dwells there? No one hides his clothing, no one his pearls, no one precious stones, no one gold, no one silver, and yet no one fears theft.

Would that avarice could be as easily not loved as it is easily reproved by all: for it is a crafty and sweet evil, and always hostile to all men. To those who do not have riches it brings the desire of having; from those who have them it takes away satiety. So it hurls all into madness in one storm, so that you do not know where it is greater. It is like a fire feeding on dry fodder, which does not end unless the fodder ends. The middling cultivate it with frauds, the rich with lawlessness, judges with favour, the eloquent with a mercenary and double tongue, kings with pride, merchants with cunning, the poor with an empty wish, worshippers of God with feigned hatred, and whole peoples and all nations with the sword. It rages madly through the whole world, burning with new and varied arts: never quiet, not by day, not by night, not in war, not in peace; never full; more wretched for the enormity of its gains. It is a new kind of calamity, which only grows and does not know how to grow old. Neither the devotion of parents breaks it, nor the sweetness of children, nor conjugal affection, nor dear brotherhood, nor the right of friendship, nor the tender orphan, nor hard widowhood, nor pitiable poverty, nor the contemplation of God: for see, with all these, as far as it can, by various arts it either flatters or harms, if they have anything, only to take it away. And whom would it spare, when it hastens to die at every moment even for trivial and shameful gain?

Why then, wretched man, burning with vain desire for the metal of gold and silver, are you tortured by vain care? Why do you heap up great piles of talents? Why do you guard untouched what will remain here, sleepless with empty anxiety, not even granting yourself anything from it? Besides, you complain of want, you who do not know what you have. Whatever you do, you will carry none of these things with you to the underworld; for what belongs to nature can be carried from place to place, but cannot be taken from it. In fact, the gold and silver that is dug with great effort out of the bowels of the earth is again committed to the earth to be hidden: for it is a thing whose possession is a false joy, whose display is a most certain danger. But there is no need to go through each point, since all its evils are known from one example, as the prophet says: 'The idols of the nations are silver and gold.' Hence it appears that he who loves gold and silver not only worships the gods but imitates their ways and deeds, of which the proof is easy. Meanwhile let us look at what concerns us.

Gold and silver, Christian, if the truth must be told, you curse only in the images, not in your own inner rooms; for there too, in countless gold and silver coins struck in round form, as in so many temples, you likewise recognise the faces and emblems of kings; and there is no other difference except that in your house they are small, in the temple larger: if you spend them, they are money; if you hoard them, they are idols. Handmaid of Christ, you spit out the false idol: believe me, you worship in yourself the one whose ornament, whose image you do not lay aside. You come forward to the church of God with your whole body gilded with various work, loaded with the accursed metal, delicate everywhere, strong under your necklaces. In short, by the very stiffness of your attire you do not bend in prayer, you do not stretch out your hands, you disdain to prostrate a breast swollen with necklaces. Indeed you bow your neck, not from religion but from weight. When will you make your confession, you who are more anxious for your ornaments than for your salvation? What do you believe you can obtain from God, you who entreat him by means of that which angers him? Open at last the eyes of your heart; you will find that you are insulting rather than asking. In the end, brothers, she cannot fear her husband who does not fear Christ.

Hence it is that spouses, resisting the most holy nuptial yoke, each striving for himself, out of excessive love, of course, each hunts for the other's inheritance; that parents hate their children and children their parents; that friendship plays on the face rather than dwells in hearts; that the whole human race delights in its own ruin and its own calamities, holding the soul cheaper than money. Hence it is that justice, honour, devotion, faith and truth perish; that God himself suffers insult at every moment, whose commandments are despised, to whose worship and love the love of the world is preferred; for whoever's heart implacable greed has filled with its pestilent flame willingly commits any sin, crime, disgrace or wickedness.

But these things are not for you, brothers, whose generosity is known to all the provinces, whose pious seeds are scattered, as it were, through the members of the whole world. Many redeemed by you, many freed from deadly edicts, many released from hard conditions give thanks. Your houses are open to all strangers; under you no living or dead person has ever long been seen naked. Already our poor do not know how to ask for food. Already widows and the needy make wills. I could say more in praise of this blessedness of yours, were you not my own. Yet one thing I cannot keep silent for joy: by lending to the poor, you transfer all the subdued resources of avarice into your own estate without envy. For what can be richer than a man whose debtor God professes himself to be? Who is blessed for ever and ever.

Rightly, brothers, as you have heard, God hates avarice: for it is a deep lust, a blind greed, an insane storm, a rapacity without end, an anxiety without rest, never reaching its wishes, because it does not know how to be filled: it breaks faith, neglects love, denies justice, does not know affections, despises divine laws, shuts out human laws with cunning arguments, so as to seize the whole world if it could. Do you want to know what kind of calamity it is? Plainly it rages more against the one who loves it; but he who conquers it will have eternal life.

If anyone, from zeal either to know or to attack the nature of the sacred law, has unrolled the book of Moses on the creation often in reading, perhaps, as are the wits we see daily, glad of cunning disputes, he may bring against us a slanderous question from the Apostle's saying: 'The first man was from the clay of the earth, the second from heaven': since there is no doubt that one man only was formed by God from the clay of the earth, and the woman was taken from his side as conjugal comfort, from whom the whole human race has flowed; but the heavenly man cannot be shown to be mentioned there, or made, or born. Add to this the very reversed order of mention, since it is an incongruous and absurd thing that the second should be immortal and the one who is mortal the first, since immortality does not admit the order of time, mortality does; or if the heavenly one is first, what need was there for the earthly one too to be made? The Gospel saying too may be struck by a similar argument; for it is written: 'No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who was in heaven.' How could the Son of Man, or of what man, be born in heaven so as to descend from heaven, when both the possession and the nature of humanity are far removed from heaven? Come, rouse your understanding, reader, and you will find the truth. He who was in heaven descended from heaven; he who descended is the same who ascended into heaven, the Son of Man, who was in heaven: Son of Man by name, not by nature: for the Lord did not put on flesh twice; but it was fitting that he should be so preached, because before he was what he had willed to become, he published it both by figure and by frequent oracles. So 'Son of God' belongs to his ineffable origin, 'of man' to the sacrament; the secret of this sacrament I shall try to open by plain reasoning, as with a kind of key, so that anyone may very easily recognise both the providence of God, and the force of the union of flesh and soul, and where man's highest good has been placed.

After God, brothers, had with wonderful skill completed this world, as a kind of house for the future human race, fitted and furnished in many ways with elements, riches, living creatures, foods, and various, great and numerous useful things, so that the inhabitant should have no cause for complaint, then he made in his own image and likeness a sentient and intelligent likeness of himself: for taking clay of the earth he shaped man, and poured into him the soul by which we breathe from the proper fountain of his own spirit; and he gave him the name 'man' from the ground: I believe, as the matter itself teaches, so that by contemplating the maker and the material he might always both fear and revere his craftsman. After this he subjected to him all the good things of the world; and because he was already created with wisdom, equipped with senses for choosing death or life, and admonished by the instruction of a commandment, he entrusted him to his own will. But that envious accuser, who received the name of serpent because he creeps along gradually, inflamed with detestable envy, since he could not prevail by himself, flattering him in another's form, through the woman, by persuading him to transgress God's commandment, slew him miserably: and from then on, worn out by an inherited condition, the whole human race uniformly perished. Nor was there any place for any comfort: for labour, groaning, impiety, pain, sickness and misery consumed man living, as they still do; and when he was dead, the devouring earth blotted out for ever his body and that most flourishing form; and the implacable underworld afflicted his soul too, banished to deadly darkness, with the perpetual penalty of an everlasting prison. Neither those above nor those below spared the image of God: for death had claimed for itself the whole empire.

When things had long been so, that most skilful craftsman of the world, the Son of God, whose wisdom has no end nor his strength measure, out of love for his image came down from heaven; he made glorious the lodging of a virgin's womb; and there he enclosed God in man. He used both a mortal form and a mortal condition. He teaches that justice is the procurer of immortality; he completes his precepts by deeds. Finally he took on death, so that, having conquered it, rising again, he might bring to man, through the man he bore, both the hope of conquering death and admission to the rewards of immortality. So it came about that, as through one man's condemnation condemnation came to all men, so through one man's justification the justification of eternal life ran to all men. Do you not now see plainly that there was providence in assuming man, a sacrament in the passion, the highest good in the resurrection?

Here now first of all we must know that the structure of man is made of two different and opposing things, joined by a discordant concord, and that the soul is enclosed by the outlines of the body. Hence two lives too have been given to us by God: one, by which, without knowing it, we are poured forth by nature under a law common with the beasts, which is bodily and therefore also brief; the other, of the mind, which we procure for ourselves in this life through faith from the living flood of the sacred fountain, noble and eternal: because the mind which has conquered the world by recognising and keeping the true religion and true justice must, as the reward of its labour, enjoy the immortal blessedness of immortality. Hence it is that within man a hidden war rages at every moment, as each part strives to subjugate the other, as the Apostle says: 'The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; these two are opposed to each other.'

On this side the flesh, flowing all over with delights, crowned with the various gifts of the seasons, promises, displays, offers and gives manifold and deep riches, and sets forth its own beauty; and its face, always uncertain, as the mirror helps, it changes daily with foreign colours into whatever shapes it pleases: cultivated by the toil of the gullet, sleek from the bath, smeared with ointments, varied in dress, picked out all over with necklaces, merry with the crowds of banquets, soaked with wine, crowned with gems or flowers, wanton with the festivity of eyes and jests, blind with avarice, excited by lust, proud in the feathered tomb of a delicately swelling and puffed-up couch: it tosses itself playfully through groves, springs, meadows, Baiae, cities and countryside: hedged about with all pleasures, inviting both sexes, all souls, all ages to desire for itself with this song: 'Short and wearisome is the time of our life, and there is no relief at a man's end, and no one is known to have returned from the underworld: for we were born from nothing, and after this we shall be as though we had not been; and there is no return from our end, because it is sealed, and no one returns.' And below: 'Come then, let us enjoy the good things that are, and let us use creation swiftly as in youth; let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let not the flower of the season pass us by. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither. Let there be no meadow that our luxury does not pass through. Let us leave signs of gladness everywhere: for this is our portion and this our lot.'

On the other side the spirit, like a most skilful general, forewarns flight from all these things: that one must stand most readily in arms, keep careful watch, fortify the camp on every side, defend the royal standards bravely and tenaciously; bear heat, cold, hunger, thirst and all dangers with an even mind; trample the world by renouncing it; and that death itself, followed by everlasting blessedness, is the prize of victory rather than death. In a brilliant speech through John it harangues thus: 'Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him: for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father but from the lust of the age: and the world will pass away, and its lust. But he who does the will of God abides for ever, as God too abides for ever.'

But someone says: if this is so, why is the spirit most often overcome in itself? First, because the human race consents to pleasure more than to virtue; then because it loves delights more than toil. Add that it finds the goods of the flesh without seeking them, and prefers to enjoy even small present goods rather than huge goods that are slow in coming. But the goods of the spirit are not only invisible, slow and hidden, but also set in such a very steep place that no one can reach them except with the greatest difficulty, toil and great dangers. Add that the flesh lives on its native soil, while the spirit is a stranger. The flesh crams its gifts on anyone indiscriminately, without regard to merit, especially on the unworthy, so as to gather crowds to itself; the spirit never rewards anyone unless he first, as victor, passes beyond the laws of death. This is what makes us, whether from fear or unbelief, prefer present things to future, evil to good, fragile to solid, false to true, earthly to heavenly, temporal to eternal.

O blind mind of men! Why do you mock yourself with the fleeting flattery of present carnal things? Why do you compel the better to be subject to the worse? For you know it is written: 'All flesh is grass, and its glory like the flower of grass'; and if you care for it, you recognise that you are a beast. Or do you love its strength? Any pain breaks and undermines it. Or its beauty? It is a light and changeable thing, and is very easily destroyed by one fever or any injury. See, the eyes, its stewards or pilots, sink down extinguished by some blow. Is it not a living corpse? See, a wasting lung, eaten away by thick spittle, strips all the bones of its bearer with detestable leanness. Will not that fleshless shadow, still to be handled, shudder in a way even at itself? It is long to go through each thing. See, some fatal disease lays the whole machine low on the bed. See, the storm of death presses on from every side. Does not that which was the mistress of pleasures at once become the prey of diseases? Finally death claims the remains as they lie, besides preparing for them the punishments of Gehenna. Then that carnal enemy is ended, and all those ornaments, now of no help, are no remedy to the bloodless body, except that they are snatched by false mourners while it is still alive.

Therefore, brothers, as true Christians, as guests and strangers, abstain from carnal desires, which war against the soul; and let it not break your affection that you do not know the soul's secret and form; if you despise it because you do not see it, you could likewise despise God too, who is invisible; for he who does not love his likeness, it follows, hates the truth. Hence it is that fools put the body before the soul, the idol before God. But we who have cast off Adam have put on Christ; we who, with God as teacher, have learned what the force, the end and the reward of the flesh is, and what of the soul; we who are not ignorant that by the victory of the flesh both are extinguished, by the victory of the soul both are saved; let us follow better things, at least with the zeal with which we follow evil things. No excuse applies to anyone, especially since the matter has been entrusted to our will, as the prophet says: 'Before man are good and evil, death and life; whatever he chooses will be given him.' Hence there is no doubt that our will gives the victory to whichever side it joins itself, and in the resurrection either enjoys an everlasting reward with it, or is punished with a like penalty.

Most carefully, dearest brothers, an account seems due of circumcision, which the most blessed Paul has mentioned not only in the present reading but in several places, so that both the Christian may know the truth and the Jew his error. For the Jew often boasts with loud cries that this is the nobility of his nation, this the power of a heavenly sacrament, this the lawful mother of eternal life, this the perpetual partner of the future kingdom, without which no one can come to the knowledge of God at all. Hence first of all I think we must define what circumcision is, so that then at last what sort of thing it is can rightly be recognised. Circumcision, brothers, is a scar made in a circle by iron, to the loss of a round wound. If the Jew thinks this a glory, to say nothing of others, greater is the glory of the man who, in honour of his goddess (a shameful old woman and a lover at that), sacrificed in fouler mysteries not a little skin of that same member but the member itself cut off at the root; for the reason, of course, that the Jew after the sacrament can sin through this part, but that man can no longer sin through this part.

It follows that he must declare whether he maintains that it is carnal or spiritual. If spiritual, why does he glory in the flesh? If carnal, it cannot profit the soul, because flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God. Add that circumcision fights against the sabbath, which he proclaims must not be violated by any work at all. For it often happens that a son is born to him on the sabbath; and unless he circumcises him on the eighth day, that is, on the coming sabbath, according to the law, the infant's soul will perish from his people. Here, dearest brothers, let him choose which he wants, to circumcise or to postpone. If he circumcises, he breaks the sabbath; if he does not circumcise, he has emptied the appointed rights of circumcision with the destruction of an innocent soul, because the eighth day alone received from God the privilege of circumcision, not the seventh, not the ninth; and so both must be empty, if one of the two can be weakened.

What of the fact that Abel was found just without this wound? That Enoch, we read, was taken up by God uncircumcised? That Noah, uncircumcised, while the flood raged, was appointed by divine providence heir and father to the human race? That Melchizedek, that high priest most acceptable to God, knew nothing of this scar? That the people of the Ninevites with their foreskin was freed by God's mercy? He would surely have commanded all of them to be circumcised if he had foreseen that circumcision of the flesh was necessary to the salvation of those he loved. Certainly he would have done so before with Adam himself.

But perhaps someone may say: was Abraham then a sinner, that he should be circumcised? Or just, and he should not have been circumcised? Abraham, brothers, was both a just man and yet necessarily circumcised. For what does Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.' Did it say, 'Abraham was circumcised, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness'? Since, then, Abraham was justified while uncircumcised, like Enoch and the others, and afterwards circumcised, it is plain that circumcision was not necessary for Abraham, but was procured as a sign of the Jewish people, which was to be carnal. In short, it brought him nothing: because he pleased God before, not after, he was circumcised; and he received the reward not of circumcision but of the promise earned in uncircumcision. Hence it is plain that Abraham bore in himself the type of a twofold people, so that the mark of circumcision should express the Jew, the righteousness of belief the Christian.

Add that this circumcision does not so much promise salvation as point out the place and head of the crime. For when Adam plucked the forbidden fruit with this member, he thus brought the law of death into the human race. So of necessity God gave this sign to a luxurious people, so that while it marks the place of the original fault, they might know that other crimes too must be fled. 'By your own mouth, Christian,' he says, 'you have been defeated. That is why I too maintain that I possess eternal life, because I recognise that a special cure for death has been given me by God.' The Jew would rightly say this, brothers, if this cure could have helped both sexes. Since the graver case remains, he recognises that he will perish unless he seeks the truth: for if it cures Adam, it certainly cannot by this remedy cure Eve, in whom lies the whole sum of the offence. What of the fact that I see it does not help even the man himself? Because the marking of this sign is subject to the power of the heart, and unless the heart has been purged by the spiritual sacrament of true circumcision, the man in question will perish for ever: for the flesh can suffer loss, but it cannot command the mind: for the mind, by the command of royal power, compels the body subject to it to fulfil the desires of its will in servile duties; and if it is vicious, a man can commit as many crimes as he has members.

In short, Scripture marks the Jews in this way, beginning from the ears: 'I called to them,' it says, 'and they did not hear; they will call to me, and there will be no one to hear them.' Likewise it speaks of the hands: 'For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins. Your lips have spoken wickedness, and your tongue meditates injustice.' And again of the other members: 'Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have acted deceitfully; the poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.' And of circumcision itself it says, in signs: 'They inquired, and declared by their rods; they were led astray by a spirit of harlotry, and they have played the harlot away from their God.' Recognise then, Jew, even late, the wretched danger of your error, which must be blotted out, and tell us whether you observe circumcision or the law. If circumcision, the law is not necessary for you, because just Abraham, who lived by faith, earned God by belief, not by law. If the law, despise this circumcision of yours, which we see emptied by the law, as Jeremiah says: 'Thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and to all who dwell in Jerusalem: Renew newness among you, and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, lest my anger go forth like fire and burn, and there be none to quench it.' You see then, brothers, that God not only does not promise salvation to men circumcised in this way, but also, unless they are lawfully circumcised in heart, threatens the punishment of unquenchable fire. And Moses himself too, whose disciples they often claim to be, speaks to Israel in the same spirit, saying: 'In the last days God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God.'

So now I will say to you again: Pharisee, answer, where do you have your heart placed? If in the region of the breast, why do you measure the lower parts with an ugly wound? If, as indeed you rightly suppose, in the lower parts, then beyond doubt you surpass all the sacrilegious, since, rejecting the saying of Moses, you presume that you can please God by this injurious coin of the body. 'Already,' he says, 'the second circumcision, which Moses announced, has been fulfilled in me through Joshua son of Nun at the Lord's command; for it is written: And God said to Joshua: Make for yourself very sharp knives of stone, and sit down and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time.' Let us see now, dearest brothers, in what manner that second circumcision by Joshua son of Nun was performed with those stone knives: did it circumcise the heart or the foreskin? For if, according to them, we too understand it carnally, both prophets will be held guilty: either Moses is a deceiver, if circumcision is circumcised again, so as to do the same thing, or to lose what it does not have; or certainly Joshua son of Nun is a murderer, if he cuts men's hearts with knives.

But far be it from us, brothers, to touch spiritual men with any error, especially since the prophecy has now reached the truth of its saying: for Joshua son of Nun bore the image of Christ, who is known to be the true saviour of all both by his deeds and by his name: for he, because he himself is also called the rock, rightly made stone knives (hence not without reason he also gave the name Peter to Simon, on whom he built the church), that is, he appointed as apostles and all his disciples men formed by his teaching and sharpened by the file of the Holy Spirit; and by their saving admonitions, with singing tongues, as with spiritual knives, he cut, according to Moses' saying, not the foreskin of the flesh of believing peoples to man's loss, but the foreskin of the wicked heart to man's increase.

But perhaps someone may still say: why did he himself also receive the seal of the flesh, if it was not necessary for him? Hear, brothers, what is the reason for this proposition. He who had come to give life to man through man had to fulfil all the edicts of the law, lest he be thought a phantom: for he could not have been either the end of the law or the true Christ if he had omitted anything that could have been given for men's salvation by another. Add that it was sung that according to the flesh he would be the son of David; and unless he had answered to the ancestral seal of his race, he would not be the son of David, nor could Christ have come except as the son of David. He was circumcised because he had been promised to the Jews; he was born with a foreskin because he was to be of benefit for ever to the uncircumcised nations.

We have spoken of the first, carnal circumcision, which is the Jews'; now let us briefly tell of the second, spiritual one, which is ours, which has so much power that it began from a woman, which was impossible for the first. Indeed, the cure of circumcision begins from the woman who had sinned first. And because the devil, creeping in by persuasion through the ear, had wounded and slain Eve, Christ, entering Mary through the ear, cuts away all the vices of the heart, and heals the woman's wound while he is born of a virgin. Receive the sign of salvation. Integrity has followed corruption, virginity has followed childbirth. Adam likewise is circumcised by the Lord's cross; and because both sexes had received death through the woman who alone had touched the deadly tree, on the other side the whole human race was given life through a man hung on the tree. And lest the beginning should seem not to be restored wholly to its state, the first man is consummated on the cross; and when he had happily fallen asleep, likewise from his side, by the blow of the lance, not a rib is torn away, but through water and blood, which is baptism and martyrdom, the spiritual body of a spiritual woman is poured out, so that Adam might lawfully be renewed through Christ, Eve through the church.

By this sacrament, brothers, men and women alike are circumcised; by this we are enrolled not with a mark but with the sign of the Holy Spirit. By this circumcision we lose nothing, but find that we grow with heavenly increase; we do not shed blood in a barren rite, but we keep the blood of modesty, which we often pour out eagerly when in persecution, for the name of the Lord, we lay waste the devil by dying. Finally we cut off what we ought not to have had, what we recognise as added to men by the enemy, as the Lord says: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds on top among the wheat.' These we necessarily tear up by the roots by circumcision, so that, cleansed of the contagion of the dire seed, we may remain whole in the abundance of the Father's seed. This, I say, given for man's salvation, is not driven away by day, nor night, nor hour, nor sex, nor age, nor condition, nor place, nor race, but is always found glorious in all. In short, the first circumcision cuts the flesh, the second cuts the vices of the mind; the first with iron, the second with the spirit; the first a portion, the second the whole man; the first only the male, the second both sexes; the first the foreskin of a little skin, the second the foreskin of all worldly lust. The first serves the eighth day; the second is served by seasons, days, hours and all moments. The first, before or after the eighth day, does not help even a dying boy; the second, from the very cradle of infancy to the last end of any age, imparts its saving gift to both sexes. The first rejoices in blood, the second in grace; the first in image, the second in truth; the first in loss, the second in gain; the first acts captive under the law, the second grants all the freedom of good faith in Christ. So you who are circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the flesh, but with the circumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ, labour that your integrity be not mutilated; lest the nakedness of sins creeping in again condemn your spiritual foreskin, as with Adam and Eve; lest the new man seem to have anything of the Jew or of the Gentile. For both of them are carnal, both without fruit. Hence there is no doubt that neither foreskin is anything, nor circumcision, but only the observance of God's will is necessary for those who live faithfully.

I should like, dearest brothers, to use a kind of triumphal speech and to double the sacred citadel of this new work with praises. But although it is best to praise the things that are God's, yet that is not the chief thing which can be common with Gentiles or Jews; for they too, if they were allowed or wished, might perhaps build synagogues more elegantly, raise capitols more elegantly; but in all these works, by true judgment, the builders can please more than the priests. What of the fact that there is no part, or hardly any, of a place of prayer throughout the whole church of God that can so far be compared in any way with the buildings of idolatry, which now sink into themselves by whatever ruin? For we have heard that the temple of Solomon too was built with splendid work, and so elaborated that the viewer did not know what in it to admire most, the size, the work, the ornament, or the material: for all things had so come together into one beauty that that perishable ambition was thought the lawful house of God. If this were so, it would always be found unequal in worship among the things mentioned.

But God protests that these worldly things, without a lawful and devoted worshipper, are neither sufficient nor necessary for his honour, saying: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet. What house will you build for me? Or what place for my rest? For my hand made all these things.' In the Gospel too he says thus: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wished to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! See, your house will be left to you.' And again: 'There will not be left in the temple one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.' So he rejects so immense, so distinguished, so rich a temple, because there was no true temple in it; for this weaving together of walls is a meeting place of men; but the faithful people is the temple of God, as the Apostle says: 'You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.' And it is true; for just as like temples suit senseless idols, so living temples are necessary for the living God; for in these alone the building of God's priests is both proper and perennial; in this we surpass both Jews and Gentiles and the rest. And it is an incomparable glory, and truly worthy of God, when with one consent, one faith, each commending the other, both priest and temple turn to God with like devotion. Rejoice then, brothers, and recognise your own building from this new building, whose capacity too you have made narrow by your happy numbers: for from the very fact that the place cannot hold us, it is understood that your faith holds God. So, lest anyone perhaps ask me about the work, I will set it out in a few words.

In the foundations of the whole building there are not, as in the temple of Judaea, many stones, but one stone, great, splendid, precious and beautiful, which alone supports the whole mass of the square tower: no countless and most powerful line of columns serves it in various ways, because seven alone suffice for it: no bronze sea is attached to it, because the living sea of its perennial font is in it: not a sea that makes shipwrecks, but one that leads the shipwrecked to sweet life: no gold, no silver; because it counts everything in its martyrs. It does not beg the light of windows, because the eternal sun remains in it. It has three inestimable members of one fullness, one sanctuary, and twelve gates always open, which a wooden beam, projecting in the shape of the letter Tau, defends from hostile assault. O thing truly to be wondered at! It is built daily and dedicated daily; it is adorned at every moment with perpetual flowers and various gems, stones and pearls; and because it is a living work, it has no roof but heaven.

I will tell besides what the daily wage is, what supply is provided. To all alike is given one bread with wood, water with wine, salt, fire and oil, a rough tunic and one denarius; and whoever gladly accepts it, and does not despise it once accepted, but perseveres in labour to the very end, will, when the tower is completed, dwell in it and possess inestimable riches.

It must necessarily also be recorded by whom each thing is done in the temple. The priest calls, belief opens the door, simplicity leads in, understanding invites, truth persuades, fear keeps watch, discipline restrains, continence reins itself in. Faith stands in the sanctuary, chastity in the secret place, innocence in front, equity in the middle, patience at the end. Peace gathers, love binds, care guards, justice distributes, devotion ministers, purity supplicates, the spirit asks, hope promises, wisdom, mistress of the house, bestows the gifts. Rejoice, elders, you are the supports of this work. Rejoice, young men, you are better than adamantine stones. Rejoice, children, sweet and priceless pearls of the sacred tower. Rejoice, happy marriages: you carve gems better than yourselves for its adornment. Rejoice, widows: by the squareness of your virtue you cling in union to the cornerstone. Rejoice, virgins: you adorn all this celebration with the honour of your flower. Rejoice, rich men, made truly rich by frequent and just bestowals: for this perennial praise of the divine work is owed to the advancement of your heavenly dignity. Rejoice, poor in spirit: through you and in you the house of God is greater: for you are equal to all, and you surpass all the measures of your body in extent. In short, the holy rich are few; you are many.

These, dearest brothers, are your gifts of grace; these the virtues by which the spiritual Jerusalem is built, by which this new place of sacred prayer and the people are daily made ready by the providence of Christ our God and Lord. This is our illustrious labour; this the glory of all priests; this a mystery to God, this a dear work, this living work is carried out in the flesh but advanced in the spirit. And God the almighty Father will grant that, as we give him thanks in this earthly dwelling, so in the heavenly kingdoms we may render him richer thanks with all the saints.

In every matter, dearest brothers, unless one first knows the person and the reasoning, one cannot know its truth; for this has made and makes the Jew, and the Christian worse than the Jew, not believe that the Son of God is God; I should like them to be present for a little while and lend an ear to the present reading, so that they might tell us who this God is who says: 'Hear, my people, and I will speak; Israel, and I will testify to you: for God, your God, am I.' And below: 'Mine is the world and its fullness. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of your trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will glorify me.' If it is the Father speaking, brothers, who is this to whom he defers so much? Who is the one he calls the Most High, since he alone is the one than whom none is higher? But if these are the words of the Son, deferring with all honour to the Father, you must recognise with what chains of darkness the mind of the unbelievers is bound and labours.

'Offer to God,' he says, 'a sacrifice of praise.' First of all, learn, new Christian, that there are three kinds of sacrifices, lest you be led astray by any error. One is detestable, another reprobate, the third clean. The detestable is the Gentiles', the reprobate the Jews', the clean the Christian people's. The sacrifice of the Gentiles, then, is as accursed as it is empty: for the vain worship vain fictions shaped into any forms, faces, sexes, ages, figured, at the loss of gold and silver, by the measured tooth of the mother file. What madness is this? To provide sacrifice for those who do not know, to bring light to the blind, to burn incense for those who do not breathe, to address prayers to the deaf; to ask protection from those whom the thief does not fear to fly off with. With them God is rightly angry, saying: 'Do not walk after other gods to serve them, and do not worship them, lest you provoke me in the works of your hands and I destroy you.' And what these works of human hands are the Holy Spirit declares in the ninety-fifth psalm, saying: 'All the gods of the Gentiles are demons; but the Lord made the heavens.' And in Deuteronomy: 'They sacrificed to demons and not to God.' And lest anyone think that sacrilege would go unpunished for him, Scripture says again in the same place: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, unless to the Lord alone.' This divine sentence remains for the Gentiles unless they are converted; for they know that they have neither a lawful God nor a lawful sacrifice.

Now learn that the sacrifices of the Jews too have been repudiated by God, who says to them in the book of Isaiah: 'What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of lambs. I do not want the blood of bulls and goats: for who has required these things from your hands?' Through another prophet likewise the Holy Spirit cries out and says: 'Gird yourselves and lament, priests; mourn, all you who serve the altar: for sacrifice and offering have been taken away from the house of your Lord.' There is much that could be said; but it is quite idle to linger on things which no longer exist at all.

We shall necessarily bring forward one example which shows both that the Jew's sacrifice is hateful and the Christian's acceptable to God. In the prophet Malachi: 'I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord, and I do not accept a sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a clean sacrifice: for my name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord.' 'Offer to God a sacrifice of praise.' Offer, he says, to God, not to demons, a sacrifice of praise, not of reproach, 'and pay your vows to the Most High.' He pours back the whole honour on the Father, from whom are all things. By saying 'And call upon me in your trouble, and I will rescue you,' he shows that he has carried out all things through himself. 'And you will glorify me': this saying, brothers, you must not take as if he testified that the praise of his work is owed to himself alone, he who says in the Gospel: 'If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if you will not believe me, believe the works, and know that the Father is in me and I in him'; said to signify the one majesty and the undivided affection of love; because the praise of the Son is the Father's, and the praise of the Father is both's.

Now it is fitting for us to know the property of our own sacrifice, which is easily recognised from its opposite: for if a bodily sacrifice suits bodily gods, surely a spiritual sacrifice is necessary for the spiritual God: one that comes not from the purse but from the heart; that is procured not with wintry beasts but with sweetest conduct; that is offered not with bloody hands but with clean senses; that is not slain so as to perish, but, like Isaac, is sacrificed so as to live, as the apostle Paul urges us, whose words these are: 'Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God': for this is pleasing to the Lord, when a pure mind has sacrificed itself to the Lord; but all else will be of no profit if the worshipper's mind is not pure, as Solomon cries in Ecclesiasticus: 'The Most High does not approve the gifts of the wicked.'

Here ask, Christians, whether your sacrifice can be acceptable, you who know every little clod, pebble and shoot of your neighbours' estates, but do not know the shrines smoking everywhere on your own estates, which (if the truth must be told) you subtly guard by pretending not to see. The proof is not far off. You go to law daily lest anyone take from you the rights of the temples. Not only those who are such displease God, but also those who run about among the tombs; who sacrifice banquets to the stinking corpses of the dead; who, for love of revelling and drinking, in disreputable places with flagons and cups have suddenly produced martyrs for themselves; who observe days; who make Egyptian days out of bright ones; who take auguries and seek their safety in the violently cut bellies of beasts; who make the marriage yoke bitter and, trampling on affection, waste the household property they should protect on substituted persons, to cover up the thefts of a most shameful profit, from love not of faith but of lust; who forcibly subject public women to themselves and show themselves viler than they are; who swell with anger, rage with lawsuits, give birth to slanders; who rob the poor, widows and orphans; who, neglecting God's way, contaminate the divine sacraments by calling others away with profane tales. Now let each see how he either receives or offers the sacrifice: for as offering unworthily is sacrilege, so eating unworthily is deadly, as Scripture says in Leviticus: 'Everyone clean shall eat the flesh. But the soul that eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation, which is the Lord's, while his uncleanness is upon him, that soul shall perish from his people.' These things, brothers, as we must beware of them, so we must embrace, as you do, what is good, pure, simple, devout and holy: so that men seeing your good works may glorify your Father who is in heaven. So, my sweetest flowers, procure such sacrifices as the Holy Spirit may gladly offer, the Father approve, and the Son, who is our teacher, glory in when approved, through the same who is blessed for ever and ever.

Whoever denies the resurrection condemns his own life himself: for why should one deserve to see the happiness of the future age whom you see detracting from God's power by sacrilegious unbelief? But they do this from love of their crimes, so that they think what they do secretly will go unpunished: for if they noticed that the course of the day of judgment is already approaching, they would beyond doubt both hate the present and believe the future, and fear it as well: for no one is so starved even of the taste of this world's wisdom as to dare say that souls perish with bodies, that heavenly things are consumed with earthly; especially since the wisest of them says that this is death, when the mind is held shut up in the body as in a prison; and that is true life, when the same mind, freed from the custody of the prison, returns to the place from which it came. If, then, he who did not know Christ thought this, why should the Christian doubt, who both hears of the future resurrection, and hopes for it, and presumes it is laid up for him by Christ?

So first of all I think it must be proved that our souls, stripped of their bodies, are not dissolved with the decay of this fleshly dwelling in this first death; but that, according to the quality of their deeds, some are banished to places of punishment, some refreshed in peaceful abodes: so that then at last it may be believed that what is plain to all does not wholly perish rises again. The Gentiles, who do not believe these things, nevertheless run to the tombs with ill-omened libation, and maintain that food is sometimes requested of them by the dead whom they have recognised in the quiet of silent night; and so they give credit to the thing they reject. The philosophers have said various things about the soul; but that it is immortal they prove, refuting by plain argument the folly of Epicurus, Dicaearchus and Democritus. The poets did better, who place a twofold way in the underworld: one of the wicked, which leads to Tartarus; another of the pious, which leads to Elysium; adding the stronger point that there not so much the forms as the deeds of the dead are known, and they necessarily receive according to what they carry in their acts of earthly conduct, rightly saying: 'Each of us suffers his own shades.'

But we, brothers, whom no ingenious conjecture but God our teacher has instructed, proving in himself for our sake what he taught, are able not so much to say as to prove by things seen with our eyes that the souls of the dead live. In short, wandering and unclean spirits break into the bodily houses of the living of both sexes, by the deceitful capture of flatteries or by violence, and seek a hiding place for themselves in their ruinous captivities. But when it comes to the field of the divine contest, and they begin to be struck by the weapon of the sacred name, then you see one whom you know, and pity another who is being made to fight. The colour changes from moment to moment, the face loses its natural shape, the orbs of the eyes turn madly into oblique horrors, the row of teeth, bristling with foaming bubbles, gnashes between livid lips, all the limbs, twisted everywhere, shake with trembling; he groans, weeps; he dreads the announced day of judgment and laments that he is being driven out: he confesses his sex, confesses the time and place of his assault, confesses his own name and his departure; or shows by plain signs who he is, so that we often recognise some of them to be persons whom we remember lately living in idolatry and especially dying by some violence. Here now answer me, you who maintain that nothing of a man survives after death: how did that dead man whom you knew speak through another? But you say: 'The demons pretend these things.' The proof is all the better, because even deceivers bear witness to the truth. And why should they pretend names, when their confession is true in all else, or for what reason should they rely on this argument, which draws men, whom they desire lost, rather to the fear of God, and profits them nothing? Indeed they would be thought to do this rightly if under the pretext of another's name they could have kept what they had seized. But since by the divine adjuration, on the spiritual rack, they declare against their will who they are and depart unwillingly, they are beyond doubt what they confess themselves to be to everyone.

Take other examples too, and more certain ones. First, in the book of Words, Samuel, that distinguished priest, already discharged by the law of death, not only shows his presence without ambiguity to King Saul, who desired him, but also answers his questions, and the dead man prophesies more freely than he had been accustomed to prophesy while alive; so one may cry out: this man has departed rather than died. In the Gospel too Peter and the sons of Zebedee see by the freedom of the spirit Moses and Elijah standing shining with the Lord, whom because of the hindrance of the flesh they could not then see, understanding from this that what is seen to perish for a time in this world rests safe, deposited in nature's treasury. Likewise in the underworld that most tenacious rich man, whom an immense chasm separates from the poor man's happiness, imploring refreshment in his burning, recognises too late Lazarus as the truly rich man, and dead longs to be touched even with one finger by those hands to which living he had refused a coin. He now hates without cause what he loved before; he proves happier what he had hated. He groans that the pressing punishment cannot be relieved by any of his well-known resources, ready without delay to offer them all, if it were allowed, for one moment of rest. He longs at least for his surviving brothers to be cared for. He earnestly begs father Abraham that some messenger may go to make them certain of so great a matter; to whom Abraham answered: 'They have Moses and the prophets; if they do not believe them, neither will they believe one sent from here'; plainly showing that the truth lies not in the eyes of the flesh but in the faith of believers.

For the Lord too, confirming these examples, said to one of the robbers who believed in him, who were hanging with him from the gibbet on the right and the left: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.' So if a dead man perishes for ever, then the Lord lied, who promised paradise to a man who would afterwards be nothing. And the man himself whom the Lord had assumed perishes, if Jesus has not risen. But if he has risen, he has given a pattern to the human race, since God tasted the law of death for man for this purpose, that man through God might recover the right of immortality which he had lost. For this reason the most blessed Paul says: 'We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who sleep, that you may not grieve as the others who have no hope: for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so too God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.' For God too speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: 'Behold, I open your tombs and will bring you out of your tombs, and lead you into the land of Israel: I will give my spirit into you, and you shall live.'

Since this is so, why, Christian, do you not believe in the future resurrection? Why do you mourn so stubbornly those who pass from the ruin of this world to better things? Oh, the wickedness! Here a mother, her garment torn, her hair torn, her cheeks torn too, her whole breast bruised with frequent blows, raves madly with Gentile vanity around the body of the one she has lost, and does not recall the memory of the Maccabean mother, who, girded with hope of the future, while Antiochus raged, gladly at one time, I will not say buried, but rather herself happily slew her seven sons by her exhortations, trusting religiously that she had borne her sons for God, not for the world. Here a wife testifies that she cannot bear the desolation of her lost husband; she complains of her cold side under a roof made too wide; with envious words she stirs up envy against God; she sometimes breaks with profane wailings the divine rites themselves, by which those at rest are customarily commended by God's priests; disfiguring all her attire with foul squalor, she embraces the corpse already mourned; she warms its cold lips with frequent kisses; she washes the whole body with showers of tears, covering it with the loss of her hair; with pitiable addresses she kindles into fuller weeping even those whom the cause does not touch, the more ostentatious in grief the richer she is; and indeed, wretched woman, after a moment (and would it were only once) she will marry from excessive grief. Here, here I do not see how anyone can excuse himself; for there is no lack of someone who can say: 'If there is a resurrection, why do you mourn? If you do it from love of your husband, why do you marry afterwards?' It is a detestable thing, brothers, to keep neither love for one's spouse nor faith for God. This rebuke awaits men too.

So the Christian must not doubt at all that the dead are raised to their former state, and that on the lawful day they are brought out from that secret of nature before the sight of God such as each was received, according to his quality, as the Apostle says: 'We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive the deserts of his body according to what he has done, whether good or evil.' For, brothers, it is easier to re-form what has been than to make what was not before: if what was not now is, much more can what was be again; especially since it is the very practice of that most powerful craftsman, the founder of all things, to assert the possibility of the impossible, to make what is out of what is not, to create nature outside nature, to find nothing at all difficult, and to lack only this, that he should not will to be; for this is the property of God, to do what cannot be believed.

So not men only, but almost all things live by their deaths. Hence I will touch on a few things out of many, so as to set out without doubt the proof of all in a few. The stars fall headlong from heaven, and with a long trail of whitening flames behind them, with the solemnity of a funeral torch, they are led to their settings as if in a kind of funeral procession: if you look for them across the regions from which they were unfixed, you will recognise that they have risen again to their seats by the law of reviving light. The sun is born every day, and on the same day on which it is born it dies; and yet it is not frightened by the lot of its approaching end so as to slow its course, to prolong hours and moments, to linger a little longer at least in the life of its day; but always faithful, always fearless, it hastens to the tomb of its kindred night, knowing that in it it has what makes it live: in short, its rising is taken from it if its setting is taken away. The moon too, which truly paints in itself all the lines of human reckoning, born in blood-red tenderness, first appears with a doubtful horn as if from the cradle, and growing little by little, now a girl, now a maiden, advancing with the increase of her daily age, she spins the world's tasks in the windings of her wanton course. But when, mature, burning with the golden fire of the light-bringing charioteer, equal to her brother's labours, she has completed her silver globe in august circles, she gradually declines into old age, until, consumed in the last old age, reviving by her death, the solemn seed of her monthly fire kindled, she takes again a beginning from her end.

Likewise the phoenix, that precious bird, plainly teaches us the laws of resurrection; it does not receive the nobility of its race from parents, nor hand it on to offspring: it is itself both sexes to itself, it is every affection, it is its race, its end, its beginning: it is not born from intercourse, nor nourished by another's service: it does not die unwilling or unaware, but when the ripe time of death has come, it is most gladly burned up by itself in sacred fires it has invited. Its tomb is its nest, its embers its nurses, its ash the seed for propagating its body, death its birthday. In short, after a moment it exults in a festal tomb, not a shadow but the reality, not an image but the phoenix, not another, but, though better than another, yet its former self. Blush, Christian conscience; from so many and such great things at least learn how you will again be the same as you are, and better.

Besides, the grain of every kind of wheat, buried in the earth, dies, and yet what is within it revives; it does not take death to the marrow, but breathing out into its own generative shoot, the surface of the old body destroyed, or rather transferred into the laws of a better nature, it lifts its happy head, crowned with green tresses, into the upper world as if it had come up from the underworld, to hold the glory of perpetuity in a teeming harvest; as Paul confirms: 'Fool, what you sow is not given life unless it dies.' And he added, saying: 'So also is the resurrection of the dead: it is sown in destruction, it rises in perpetuity; it is sown in lowliness, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual one.' The truth of the resurrection, I think, is clear enough to all.

But it must necessarily be discussed what distinction there is in it between the unjust and the just, lest the generality of the name drag down the glory of Christian happiness by comparison with the wicked. So there is a twofold form of rising: the first, of the saints, in which, summoned by the royal watchword of the first trumpet, they will take that kingdom of blessedness with great triumph under Christ the eternal king; the second, which destines the ungodly, with sinners and all the unbelieving nations, to everlasting punishment, as the Holy Spirit says in the psalms: 'Therefore the ungodly do not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the council of the just; for the Lord knows the way of the just, and the path of the ungodly will perish.'

It follows that we should know in what condition this man of ours who strives toward heaven will reign, lest perhaps he perish with the flesh by vain hope, if he is caught by the perishable and carnal flesh of which the Apostle says: 'Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God.' But on the other side I seem to hear someone cry out: 'If this is the condition of the flesh, what is it then that we believe in the church, the remission of sins and the resurrection of the flesh?' This conflict is easily reconciled, brothers, and the quality of the future state is opened, if the faith is held unimpaired. So I will set the matter out in a few words. All flesh, as long as it is driven by the shameful enticements and deadly darkness of this world, is surely a beast's, and lives under a wretched, fragile and detestable law. But when, by the pure faith of the believer, it has been put to death by saving baptism, it rises new from the flood of the Father's sacred font, now pure, now free, now a stranger to the conduct of this world, now superior to death, now aspiring to heavenly things, now despising, I will not say the mockeries of the age, but itself, so as to be more honoured, now seeking the truth, not the image, now desiring spiritual things, not its own; of which Paul says: 'Not all flesh is the same flesh: there is one of man, another of beasts, another flesh of birds, another of fishes. There are heavenly bodies and there are earthly ones.' So by the seed of immortality, of which even the wisest poet had a presentiment, saying, 'Fiery is their vigour, and heavenly their origin, for the seeds', namely by the conception of the Holy Spirit implanted in it, it is made fruitful beforehand, so that when the times of its dissolution and lawful restoration have come, answering to its seed, it may by right deserve what we believe. Nor is the matter in doubt; for just as that prince of iniquity, by his seed, through envy brought the first-formed from angels down to men, so the Lord by the seed of the Holy Spirit will raise all who believe in him from the dead again, glorious, into angels.

For this let us bring forward one further plain example, although a likeness cannot have as much force as the truth. The wild olive is unhappy and bitter in its nature; but when it has been cut down by the hand of a most skilled farmer-craftsman with necessary foresight, it is made pregnant by the nobility of a foreign seed, and is nourished by the very thing it nourishes, until, taken up by the adoptive richness of the guest shoot, or rather made richness itself, and wholly transferred into the honour it has received, adorned with branches rising again by the advance of new foliage, it is no longer a wild olive but an olive; though it is a wild olive, and yet even itself in a way marvels that it is not a wild olive. So if man can make a tree be what it was not, saving what it was, how much more will God be able to raise man to what he was before he sinned in paradise? This reasoning about seeds the most blessed Paul too subtly set out, saying: 'He who sows according to the flesh will reap destruction from his flesh; but he who sows in the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.' And the Lord, plainly teaching this, says thus to the disciples: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds on top among the wheat.'

But perhaps someone may still say: 'If the flesh perishes, how is the one who rises recognised?' The flesh, brothers, is like a kind of mirror filled with the fullness of the one who looks into it, which bears not so much its own image as that of the one whose use it serves. In short, it makes as many faces as the inner man makes sad or cheerful movements; Paul teaches us this reasoning: 'We see now,' he says, 'through a mirror in an enigma, but then it will be face to face.' Hence there is no doubt that in our bodies, while they are being refined by the law of death, not the substance, not the image, but only what is useless is shaken off, what is worn is changed, as it is written: 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality'; for that robe of immortality is not otherwise put on unless first this fleshly spoil, the flattering poison of the soul, is poured back, according to God's sentence, where it was taken from; for God says to Adam: 'Cursed will the earth be in all your works; in the groaning of sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life: it will bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the fodder of the field: in the sweat of your face you will eat your bread until you return to the earth.' And the Lord too, in the person of the man he had assumed, says: 'My soul is sorrowful to death.' This saying is not so much of one fearing as of one exulting and teaching. Surely; for he could fear nothing, he who raised the dead, who had power to lay down his life and to take it up again; but he said it to teach that while the just man lives in this world, he is always in tribulation, always in suffering. But when death, which is thought fearsome, is tasted, then the promised happiness of eternal glory in blessed abodes is shown to him, never again to feel the hardships of the world, as holy David says: 'Return, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has done good to me, for he has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling: I will please the Lord in the land of the living.' This happiness awaits us, this gift expects us. So let us live that, adorned with good works, we too may deserve to please God the Father, with the help of our Lord Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever.

Men of carnal mind, dearest brothers, are scandalised, not from zeal to know but to frustrate the truth, whenever God the Son of God, who is the Father's greatest glory, is preached by the Catholics as equal to the Father. In short, this is why, despising the foundations of the law, with cunning disputation, passing over God going forth from God, they hasten to the common human names of Father and Son, which can be reached by arguments; and they do not understand that at the beginning of the sacred song God, compared with God in his own divinity and name, excludes all the opinions of human sense: since he says, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness'; he does not say, 'Make him in yours,' but he says, 'Let us make him in ours,' lest the Son, who was to put on man, should seem to suffer injury. Do you see, dearest brothers, that here no one expressly commands the other, no one is idle in the work? O holy equality of the undivided Godhead, most worthy of itself alone! One man is formed in the image and likeness of two, and yet in him it is not found what belongs to whom. If, then, the sacred equality cannot be distinguished in an external work, how can God be inferior in another to himself? For whatever you take away from one of two who in all things are indistinguishably like each other, you do not know from which you have taken it.

'But he to whom he gives commands,' you say, 'is inferior.' What? From that very thing he is proved not to be inferior: because the one from whom he proceeded is the executor of his Father's heart; for it is no less to do great things than to say them. Although whatever has been said or can be said by the Father is not without the Son, because the Son is the Word; and whatever has been done or can be done by the Son is not without the Father's consent, because the Son is not without the Father, as he himself says: 'If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe me; but if you will not believe me, believe the works, and know that the Father is in me and I in him.' It is established, then, that he is equal, since they hold each other mutually, together with the Holy Spirit.

Unless one defeats the enemy who attacks him, he can never enjoy his goods securely: for there are many who try to assert that chaos was in the beginning, that is, a shapeless and undigested mass of hidden nature, remaining by itself in itself in a heap of its own magnitude; and that afterwards God divided it and from it constituted the world and adorned it. If then, as they would have it, God did not make the matter he used, but it is eternal as he is, then there are two principles, and opposed ones at that; and so we shall necessarily have to ask which of the two is stronger, that which has sense or that which lacks sense. But who would doubt that that is stronger which feels, which knows, which thinks, which moves, which is moved, which by wonderful providence made chaos itself cease to be chaos, which separated its members, arranged them by reason, decorated them with colours, defined them by measure, and commanded them to serve their duties more fittingly? Hence that is not a principle which grows old; which is a work made by another; which is not placed in its own power; which is taken away from its own substance; which is changed; which is moved by another's impulse; which can never perceive what it is, what it was, what it will be. So God alone is the principle, who gave himself his own principle from himself. He alone is before all things and after all things, since all things are enclosed in his hand; he is from himself what he is. He alone is conscious of himself, how great and what he is. He alone is perfect, because nothing can be added to him or taken away. He alone is almighty, because he constituted all things from nothing, rules them by his power, guards them by his majesty. He alone is unchangeable and always equal, because he admits no age in himself. He alone is everlasting, because he is the Lord of immortality. This is our God, who unfolded himself into God. This is the Father, who, his own state remaining whole, gave himself back wholly into the Son, so as to take nothing from himself. In short, each exults in the other, shining with the fullness of the Holy Spirit in one original co-eternity. As (if it is fitting to say so) two seas which lean on each other, joined by a strait that brings their alternate tides into one, which, although by their property they are distinct in place and name, yet have one force, one substance, one nature of bounding the threefold deep; nor can the incomprehensible magnitude of the common water be divided, as it flows abundantly from each into each, proper to both, private to neither: for they would suffer loss of abundance and grace if what makes each beautiful from the other in one and the same tide were taken away.

The Beginning, dearest brothers, is without hesitation our Lord Christ, whom before all ages the Father embraced in the depth of the secret of his sacred mind, in an unsuspected consciousness known to himself alone, not without the affection of a Son, but without unveiling. So that ineffable and incomprehensible Wisdom propagates Wisdom, Omnipotence Omnipotence. God is born of God, the Only-begotten of the Unbegotten, the Only of the Only, the Whole of the Whole, the True of the True, the Perfect of the Perfect. Having all that is the Father's, taking nothing from the Father. He who was before he was born proceeds into birth, equal in all things in the Father; because the Father begot into him another self from himself, from his own unbegettable substance, in which, remaining blessed for ever, he begot a Son having all that he has, equal, who is God blessed for ever and ever.

As holy Scripture testifies, before all things there was God, abiding one and the same, other to himself, from himself into himself, alone conscious of his secret; from whose mouth, that the nature of things which was not might be formed, came forth the only-begotten Son, the noble indweller of his heart, thereafter necessarily made visible, because he himself was to make the world and to visit the human race, otherwise equal in all things to the Father: for whatever the Father commanded to be done, the Son, as being the power of God and the wisdom of God, completed all of it with wonderful work together with his word. Now the curious try to violate this with vain opinions; now the wretches understand that curiosity makes one guilty, not skilled.

The Beginning, brothers, is without hesitation our Lord Christ, whom before all ages the Father, still God in both ways in himself, in the undivided fullness of the spirit of blessed perpetuity, embraced veiled in some consciousness of his own, not without the affection of a Son, but without distinction. But to set in order the things he had conceived, that ineffable power and incomprehensible wisdom belches forth a Word from the region of the heart; omnipotence propagates itself. God is born of God, having all that is the Father's, taking nothing from the Father. Each shines in the other; the glory of either is a common honour, because what is the Son's is the Father's, what is the Father's is both's. The Father rejoices in another self whom he begot from himself. But how he who came forth was begotten, it is madness to suppose; for the Son tempers himself for the sake of the nature of things, lest the mediocrity of this world be unable to bear the Lord of unveiled majesty. When the Father commands the world to be made, the work is completed by the Son together with the word. But how, how great or what it should be made, no one instructs, no one asks; for it could not be without injury to the Father, if he had need of this who, dwelling in the Father's bosom, had not learned the perfection of his will but possessed it.

So, the world completed, last of all man is formed from the clay of the earth by the finger and hand of God. A movable image is built, wholly ignorant of itself; and, to be the image of God, it is breathed into a living soul by God. It likewise conceived a spirit which it does not know; it does not see it entering; it cannot prevent it leaving: and does anyone think he can know God's secret, who does not know the secret of his own body? Therefore, brothers, for the purpose for which we were made and born, let us fear, love and honour the God whom we have found. Let those indeed seek him who do not have him with them.

Divine Scripture, when it speaks of the Son of God, does not contradict itself, but distinguishes with necessary moderation between God and the man he took up. For if it always preached him as pure God, there would be no room for the passion and resurrection, and Christ would have given nothing to the world; if as man alone, as some think, who took his beginning from the virgin's womb, what hope of future blessedness would there be for the believer, since it is written: 'Cursed is the man who has hope in man'? So where it signifies pure God, it says thus in Genesis: 'And God made man in the image and likeness of God'; and in the psalms: 'But God our king before the ages has worked salvation in the midst of the earth'; and in another place: 'Your throne is prepared, O God, from of old, and from the ages you are.' Where it signifies the man joined with God, it continues thus: 'Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your king comes to you, just, holy and saving, gentle, sitting on a young ass'; and again: 'Lift up your gates, you princes, and be lifted up, you eternal gates, and the king of glory shall come in'; and again the Magi: 'Where,' they say, 'is he who is born king of the Jews?'

This, brothers, is he who was announced through the prophets as the one to come; who according to the flesh was born in time; who is exalted in the highest, humble on earth; the begetter of the ages, the son of a virgin; immortal for himself, about to die for man; he tastes death to conquer death; he enters the underworld to bring the dead back from there alive. Only-begotten by coming forth from the Father before the origin of things; firstborn from the dead, as the Apostle says, after the deaths of many peoples. This is he to whom has been given power in heaven and on earth, a new thing for his name from his God, as he himself says: 'I have glorified you on earth: I have completed the work which you gave me to do. And now glorify me with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was made.' Who, rising, says: 'All things have been handed over to me by my Father.' This is he who came down pure from heaven and ascended into heaven made flesh. This, I say, is he of whom Paul says: 'He who receives the kingdom reigns, and will hand it over to God the Father,' and so on.

Why are you scandalised here, Christian, and suppose the divine mysteries of loving providence from your own nature? If you think less of the Son because the kingdom is handed over to the Father, the injury to the Father is greater if he is ever without the kingdom. Add that we pray daily that the kingdom of the Father may come; we hope for that of the Son too. Then the government of the present time would be vacant, with both ceasing; and it would be all over with the world and the whole substance of the world, if the rule of the divinity ceased even for one moment. But if, as reason itself proclaims, this variation of the kingdom can by no means cease on the part of the founder of the law, it has been assigned to the man assumed by God, and to his just ones, when things have been set in order, not to God, not to the everlasting ruler; especially since it is said thus in the Gospel: 'The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.' Solomon in Wisdom likewise says, when he speaks of his servants: 'And if before men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been troubled a little, they will be well rewarded in much; for God tested them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he proved them, and as burnt offerings he accepted them, and in time there will be regard for them. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and their Lord will reign for ever.' What is this? If he reigns for ever, Paul was wrong; if he is going to hand over the kingdom, these are lying. Far from it. There is no error here, no difference. For Paul spoke of the temporal kingdom of the assumed man, in which he will come and judge the living and the dead, as the whole reading testifies, which proclaims that Christ must reign with his saints until, every principality and power and virtue and dominion being made void, all his enemies are put under his feet and the enemy death is destroyed. But those others referred it to the principal power, in whose perpetuity the Son, abiding for ever, neither ever received the kingdom from the Father nor laid it down; for he always reigned with him, according to John, as he himself says: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Paul expressed this more openly, saying: 'For this you ought to know, that no fornicator, or unchaste person, or defrauder, which is idolatry, has an inheritance in the kingdom of God and of Christ,' showing that the kingdom of the Father and of the Son is one.

Rightly, then, will he hand over the kingdom to the Father who said in his admonitions that a divided kingdom does not stand. Hence, brothers, it must not be thought that the Father will receive what he did not have, or that the Son by handing over will lose what he has; since the Father has what he is to receive, and the Son does not lack what he is to give. The Father possesses all, the Son possesses all; what is both's is one's; what one possesses is each one's, as the Lord himself says: 'All that the Father has is mine'; and again: 'Father, all mine are yours, and all yours are mine'; because the Father is in the Son and the Son abides in the Father, to whom he is subject by affection, not condition, by love, not necessity, for beauty's sake; through whom the Father is always honoured. In short, he says: 'I and the Father are one.' Hence the Son is subject to the Father by a subjection not of diminishment but, as I said, of reverence; with whom there is held one possession of the original and perpetual kingdom, one substance of co-eternity and omnipotence, one equality, one power of august majesty, one dignity in a single light; for if you take anything away from the Son, it will touch the injury of the Father, whose all he has; nor is there anything in him that is inferior, because, like the Father, he can have neither more nor less; for each has been poured into the other's fullness, so that God may be all in all, the blessed Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Although there are many sects that strive to tell tales to Christ's injury, yet there are in a way three chief ones, which pretend to be worshippers of the very one they desire to see perverted. One, then, asserts that Jesus Christ took his beginning from the womb of the Virgin Mary, and was thereafter made God because of his righteousness, not born so. Another, harming more moderately but more bitingly, says indeed that the Son of God is God, but not begotten from the Father in the perpetuity of his nobility; and that there was a time when he was not. The third is the truly blind Jewish one, which, though it reads everywhere in its law (as it is accustomed to say) that two persons, of the Father and the Son, are designated, yet still contends that God has no Son. For all of them the examples or reasoning which we are going to pursue will cut all the sinews of their whole argument at one stroke. Therefore the Christian people must necessarily know that there are two births of our Lord Jesus Christ, lest it suffer any error: one, by which he was born; the other, by which he was born again. But as the first, spiritual, is without a mother, so the second, carnal, is without a father. The latter is wonderful, the former unspeakable, as the prophet says: 'Who will tell his generation?' But why it is unspeakable, let us learn as the Father speaks. The Lord himself teaches us: 'My heart has uttered a good word,' and so on. And in Solomon he says: 'I came forth from the mouth of the Most High before every creature.'

Since this is so, cunning humanity, recognise it even late, and put the reins of silence on your intemperate tongue. It is a kind of madness to want to form opinions about the secret of the invisible and incomprehensible, and to examine the inner things of him whose outward things one cannot even guess: because God is what he is; but what man has thought to define, he is not. For hear, brothers, what the apostle John too preaches in the Gospel: 'In the beginning,' he says, 'was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: this was in the beginning with God.' Admirable grace, dearest brothers, of the manifest truth, which, while it can be distinguished, yet cannot be external to itself. For if the Word is in God, and the Word is God, and that in which it is is what he is who is in it, there is a twofold person, a twofold name, but one substance of original perpetuity and deity, as the Lord himself says: 'I and the Father are one'; which he surely did not say so as to confound two by reducing them to one, but to teach us that the omnipotence of divinity and power of the two is one. He goes on and says: 'All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.'

Let us see now, best of Christians, how you insert time between the Father and the Son: for if they owe it to time, not to themselves, that each is bound to the other, beyond doubt, as you wish, nature is greater than God. But since Christ made nature out of nothing, and time comes from nature, it is quite absurd to put a work before its craftsman: and so the only difference is what they alone know of themselves. In short, in Isaiah the Lord God of hosts says thus to the Son: 'Egypt is wearied, and the trade of the Ethiopians: from Saba tall men will pass over to you, and they will be your servants, and will follow you bound in fetters, and will worship you, and will pray in you, because God is in you, and there is no other God besides you.' And Jeremiah too speaks in the same spirit, saying: 'This is our God, and no other will be reckoned besides him: who found the way of prudence and revealed it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.' In what appearance, let us learn as the Holy Spirit speaks: 'And he is a man,' he says, 'and who knows him?' If so, how then could he be recognised, Isaiah revealed in these words: 'Hear then, house of David: it is not a small contest for you with men, since God provides the struggle. Therefore God will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and his name will be called Emmanuel. Butter and honey he will eat before the child knows good or evil.' This sign he made clear in another place from the designation of his forerunner too, in these words: 'Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way.' Who is this angel, brothers, but John the Baptist? To whom belongs the preparation: 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God.'

Now let us see what follows. At the same time two kinswomen conceive, one against hope, the other by the word. The one marvels that she has what she does not know; the other rejoices because she learns. Elisabeth's barren womb swells happily with fruitfulness, Mary's with majesty. The one carries the herald, the other the judge. Rejoice, women, and recognise the advancement of your sex. The old guilt blotted out, see, through you we are joined to heaven: for an old woman bore an angel, and a virgin God. This is our God, who, laying aside his dignity for a time, but not his power, out of love for man, whose form and condition as a creature he was to take on, was called angel, man, child, bridegroom, giant, crucified, buried, firstborn from the dead. This, I say, is he who is all in all, since through him and in him are all things. Nor let the worldly and truly childish disputation of thoughtless men move you, brothers, who suffer a just error because they consider that Christ was made man not from God but from man. But if they had spiritual understanding, they would preach this above all in what they think weakest. For God would not truly be perfect if there were anything which, wishing to be, he could not be. In short, do you want to know the truth briefly? He became what he was not, and yet did not cease to be what he had been before.

The true knowledge of the unsuspected secret and the revered majesty is that God is known by none but God; and nothing more is to be sought from it than that one should know his will, without which one can neither serve him lawfully nor please him. But to want to form opinions by vain arguments about the dispensation of the provident God from God is the mark not of a worshipper but of a madman: especially if God, as the contentious think, is subject to dispensation; for remove for a little while the names of Father and Son, and you cannot know which of the two suffers injury; except that both suffer it, because the one name of both is God. So, Christian, ignorant or negligent, learn that there are two births of our Lord Jesus Christ, lest you be deceived by any error: one, which you may not inquire into; the other, which you are allowed to be taught lawfully, if you can. The first birth of our Lord, then, remains in the consciousness of the Father and the Son alone, and has nothing in between, nor any witness, since it proceeded from the affection of the Father's mouth by one consent. But the second, carnal one, as it was foretold by frequent oracles, so we find it fulfilled.

For God the Son of God, at the appointed time, concealing his majesty for a while, set out from his heavenly seat and pitched his camp in the temple of the predestined virgin, in which he is secretly poured into a man, to be born, and there, saving what he was, he plans to be what he was not. So, mixed with human flesh, he forms himself into an infant. Mary's womb shines out proudly, not by a conjugal gift but by faith, by the Word, not by seed. She knows nothing of the ten months' discomforts, since she conceived in herself the creator of the world: she gives birth not in pain but in joy. Wonderful thing: rejoicing, she brings forth an infant greater than all the antiquity of nature. Meanwhile the new mother does not groan. The infant, coming forth into the world, does not, as usually happens, inaugurate of his own accord with preceding tears the life of one who creeps. His mother, exhausted by the weight of so great a birth, did not lie pale with her whole inner parts loosened. The Son was not smeared with any filth of his mother or his own; for in truth he could have nothing unclean about him, who had come to cleanse the sins, filth and stains of the human race. In short, no losses of the mother's inner parts followed the purgations, which are dangerous by their slowness. No warm applications were given to the new mother in the usual way; for, brothers, she could not need these who had deserved to receive into her womb the Son, the saviour of all souls. O great sacrament! Mary, an uncorrupted virgin, conceived; after conception she gave birth as a virgin; after the birth she remained a virgin. The hand of the unbelieving midwife, who tested the woman who had given birth, is set on fire, for a testimony that her virginity was found intact; when the infant was touched, that devouring flame at once died down; and so that doctor, happily curious, then marvelling at the woman as a virgin, marvelling at the infant as God, exulting with great joy, went away healed, she who had come to heal. Thus Christ caused himself to be born into man in a way in which a man cannot be born. In short, he bore a body resplendent wholly with its own light, without shadow: humble in flesh, but exalted in the majesty of omnipotence. He deigned to put on flesh for this reason, that no one should be able to excuse himself through the flesh when the day of judgment has come.

According to what God had promised his own through the prophets, that he would send his Son as saviour to the human race at a fitting and ripe time, laying aside the dignity of divinity for a while, but not his power, he went out from heaven and, a chaste guest, glides into the sanctuary of the virginal temple foretold as his lodging; and there he arranges what he wills to be. Rather, what he had long arranged to be fulfilled he willingly assumes; for he rests gladly in the most flourishing dwelling of chastity, and in the inner parts of the sacred virgin he prepares for himself a body, to be born by his own judgment. Fitted into man, God is enclosed in the covering of flesh; and he who gives eternity to the times borrows human life from time. Wonderful thing: Mary conceives by him whom she bears; her womb swells with majesty, not seed, and a virgin holds him whom the world and the world's fullness cannot hold. Meanwhile the members advance their maker, and the work clothes its craftsman with its own form. Mary gives birth not in pain but in joy: the Son is born without a father, not wholly his mother's, owing to himself that he was conceived, giving to his mother that he was born; and she is above all amazed that such a Son has come to her, who would not be believed to be born of her, were it not that, as she was an uncorrupted virgin after conception, she remains such after the birth too.

O new reasoning! Constrained by love of his image into an infant, God wails, and allows himself to be bound in swaddling clothes, he who had come to pay the debts of the whole world. He is laid in the manger of a stable, testifying that he is the shepherd and the fodder of the peoples. He subjects himself to the stages of age, whose eternity admits no age in itself. Against his own consciousness he suffers all as a weak man, so that immortality may be given to man consumed by the law of death. For this is the power of God, that saving what he is, he can be what he is not. This is our God, the co-eternal Son of the eternal God. He is both man and God, because he stood as mediator between the Father and men, proving his flesh by weaknesses and his majesty by mighty works. He is our sun, the true sun, who from the fullness of his brightness kindles the brightest fires of the world, the brothers of the stars and the shining poles. He set once and rose again, never to set again. He, I say, is surrounded by a crown of twelve rays, that is, of the twelve apostles; he whom not four dumb animals, but the four Gospels with their saving preaching carry round the circuit of the whole world. What force his garment and chariot have, the prophet testifies in these words: 'God will come like fire, and his chariot like a storm, to repay vengeance in wrath.'

What gift of divine love Abraham received, dearest brothers, the deeds of the old law testify. His wife Sarah, not inferior, after the courses of a long life had passed, perceived in the outpouring of birth what a son she had borne. But because age had taken away from both the hope of offspring, they deserved a substitute pledge. Thus faith earned what time had taken away; belief extorted what nature had denied. Abraham our patriarch, tested by God, received in old age an only son, yet nothing to make the father anxious; though his age was turning in declining years toward the end of its setting, and the time for bringing up was short, and death already near to old age. See the first devotion: to accept gladly what is given late, and in the saddest old age to rejoice in taking up the burden of anxiety; for Sarah too laughed, taking up the gift of youth in old age; from which the infant received his name, who after these things proves Abraham's mind consecrated to God.

That only son of the anxious old man, still a little boy, to whom greater tenderness and pity are owed, is demanded as a victim; if, by human frailty, some weakness had arisen in his body, or a human death had befallen him, the father could hardly have lived through his misfortunes, if he had died in tender years. So this infant, on whose life a father's and a mother's affection hung, is demanded as a victim by the divine voice to test his faith. 'I want,' said God, 'a sacrifice to be made to me, Abraham, by your hands on the mountain from your son: this victim pleases me, with this blood you will appease me, this one is owed to my rites: I now order him to be sacrificed.' The most devoted Abraham does not sadden his brow, nor does grief persuade the father to tears, but he exults and rejoices. Nor did he fear lest murder of his son be imputed to him, but rather he was eager to obey in devotion: he rejoiced that God had commanded this. He prepares a victim from his son; he hastens to complete the sacrifice, lest delay should make it a sin. What is needed for the rites is at once prepared; the mountain is climbed. When the whole mystery and sacrifice had been arranged, the son is led, rejoicing, with his father rejoicing, to be struck by his father's right hand. Before he came to the pile, when he asked his father where the victim was which he was arranging and sacrificing, the father, secure of the faith of his race, disclosed to his son, of whom he had no doubt, that the Lord had demanded him; and he showed what he himself had promised the Lord. The boy rejoiced in his faithful father, himself even more faithful: and he did not refuse the death which God, who had given life, commanded. The father rejoices as his son rejoices too, and with joy binds the hands of his only pledge, which the boy more gladly offers to be bound. He binds his feet too, lest in the departure of death the victim, roused, should kick: for the best father, secure, feared lest pain should be allowed anything against the death.

O, brothers, secure devotion! O father, seizing on the spirit, but despising the body and death! O man who remembered that he was the Lord's servant so as not to know he was a father! What sort of father is this? See, his son lies before his eyes bound with chains. Where are the tears? Where is the grief that usually dwells in human feelings? In such misfortunes of his son he rejoices and is glad, and triumphs that he has earned the Lord's favour. He has already received the rewards he deserves; for the trials of the divine testing are held out: he draws the iron indeed and lifts his armed right hand; but the voice of the one who had demanded the victim forbids it. 'Look behind you,' said God, 'and before you look, spare him.' See, the chief merit has earned the divine indulgence in the midst of danger: for looking behind him Abraham found a victim which he might sacrifice innocently. With the same iron with which he was already preparing to strike his son, he slew the ram. He transferred his right hand from his son to the lamb, always rejoicing and glad. Nor was his face changed when the victim was changed. He offered the ram with as much joy as he had offered his son: for where there was faith there was no grief. In that sacrifice God alone grieved, because he provided another victim: for Abraham with his son was so proved by God that, without asking, he deserved mercy.

Let us look, dearest brothers, at the secrets of the law and bring out the understanding more deeply. Abraham was not under the law, but he alone fulfilled the law; and he who was held by no right of the law kept above all every divine right: in his sacrifice he too would rejoice who was being prepared as the victim. The ram was caught in a thicket, entangled in thorns, bound by the head. This is he who was sacrificed to God in place of Isaac. Him Abraham offered; him he was ordered to sacrifice.

For virginity is not called forth by command, but neither is continence rejected when it is left aside. For faith in this, dearest ones, we have as authority the holy Abraham, who once had a son Isaac. A simple name indeed, but a manifold proclamation. For he, dearest ones, despaired of by his parents but received when God promised, is conceived in the flower of an age that had passed for begetting and generating: he deserved to be procreated not so much from his parents as by divine command, and in the last courses of life the son opened Sarah's womb by his first name, to whom modest old age had already brought the reverence of a grandmother. Begotten, then, dearest ones, under this despair of birth and with wonder, in the first rudiments of infancy he is offered as an innocent martyr to God who commanded and demanded him, a spotless offering, and no unprepared victim: as a witness of divine fear he is demanded for faith by the Lord, brought by his parent; but an offering not of blood but of salvation. To this glory, then, the abundance of a late birth and despaired-of fruitfulness are brought forth.

Abraham's wife, knowing nothing of childbearing, since with her inner parts in chilling old age she could neither hope for offspring nor trust she could carry it, took up the duties of a mother when she no longer knew the functions of a wife. And the birth is brought forth at the time when warmth was already leaving the organs of generation. Wonderful indeed, dearest ones, and not to be hoped for by later ages, is the offspring formed by divine ordinance: an age that had run its course is called back to its beginning; fruitfulness girds itself out of barrenness, so that what was written through the prophet might be fulfilled: 'Rejoice, barren one who did not bear; break forth and cry, you who are not in labour: for many are the children of the desolate.' For see, dearest ones, in Sarah, her sinews drawn by age, the juice of blood failing, her veins drying up, her skin hard on her inner parts, a deformed and lurid pallor already almost loses her human features, nor is there any movement of pleasure in her limbs. Nothing remained in the substance of the body; and yet nothing was denied to the infant in the womb: and she whose age testified she was a grandmother, birth adorned as a mother, when tenderness wavered under an uncertain name of affection, and when the womb brought forth a son, old age wished for a grandson. So at last, against expectation, to the one born through the discord of time and nature, the angel gave the name Isaac, so that joy might confirm what the weakness of age had despaired of. The new parents' affection grows around the son, who was thought more certain from the promise, sweeter from the delay, happier from the despair. One in number, and already first in the solidity of love, he had taken over the whole breast of maternal tenderness: brought up in haste, he was to offer God a victim, and his parents a devout slaying of their son.

See, dearest ones, as the Apostle says, Abraham leads to the altar, at the Lord's command, the son born against hope, to sacrifice him to the Lord: nor is a sword lacking for the service, so that he might be father and priest alike. The son's security too is like his, coming from the divine will: since he did not see the victim in whose place he had been chosen, he asked for it. But his still tender hands are handed over to chains; and so that nothing less might be seen than in a victim, binding constrains his foot, lest the victim, roused, should displease. So let the abominable suspicion of impiety cease here, dearest ones. Abraham put the Lord before his son, the priest before the father; nor did he believe himself devout unless he had proved himself faithful. In short, dearest ones, he arms himself fearlessly for the service of sacrifice; his secure mind searches out the blow of the wound, but his hand is more secure; the sword raised for the sacrifice is poised; nor does approaching death sadden the boy, lest trembling betray a weak faith. Under this constancy, then, of the one sacrificing and the one to be sacrificed, he deserved to be released, while he lays aside human fear from himself; and as far as faith is concerned, the father fulfilled what he promised, and the Lord, his will proved, forbade the slaying of the son.

To the person of Christ, then, this modest birth is referred, but the hall of the virgin womb is more secret: the womb of a body not wasting away bore within itself one formed by the art of the divine Word. But the impious counsels of the Jews blazed against the most certain Lord, begotten as heavenly offspring, not of seed: and the wicked led him, silent as if guilty, and grieving only for their blindness, to the cross to be lifted up, as Isaac was led to the altar not to perish. But because eternity does not know how to die, the Lord came to life again after the tomb, and with the Jews remained only the odium of a condemned will, because they would not recognise the Lord, and believed that he was punished by thought alone, whom it had been wicked even to worship too late. At the savagery of their monstrous daring the form of the elements is changed in fear, and nature betrays the injury to God before the Jewish people understands it. So the horror of the fury began from its author. The deadly crowd girds itself, and the point of swords is turned against the invisible one hanging there. Nor, as I said, did the cruelty of their crime gain any fruit from it: because as in Isaac one thing is offered and another sacrificed, so too in the passion of Christ, what had sinned through Adam is set free through Christ.

Abraham, to be the father of many nations, did not learn justice but begot it. The approach of cities had not infected him. He did not have a law, he whose way of life was law. He hears exile commanded him by God, that he should leave both his kindred and his land. And then Abraham, looking up with his eyes, saw three; he ran, worships prostrate on his face, offers a sacrifice. 'Refresh yourselves,' he says, 'under this great tree.' He sprinkles fine flour, butchers a calf. After this a son is promised him from his lawful marriage, by faith, not by age. Sarah conceives; she who could not walk carries the burden of the womb without labour; she learns to be a mother when she ceases to be one. Withered breasts show an abundance of milk, and from a fasting age a sturdier boy is fattened. Nothing is difficult for faith, which has as much as it believes.

So Isaac, the only son, the hope of peoples and nations, the origin of so many kings, clung to the embraces of his dear father. He had bound his father's tenderness to himself because he was the only one, because he came late, because he was promised, because he alone, the only hope, made up for the losses of all the past barrenness. A cause was found in which Abraham's faith might fight more strongly in temptation. Armed with a sword, he is commanded to kill the dearest limbs which his mouth used to press on the skin. What was tenderness to do? The command cannot be postponed. You had been granted, mother, when you were barren; the boy is born for the sword. No one grieved over such a misfortune except the mother who had borne him. No one laments the living funeral, and no one waters beforehand with tears the obedience of the innocent man, lest the father should seem to have doubted, if he had wept. Devoted, with set face he leads the boy to the altar; he draws the sword halfway, his breast fought for faith; his face does not grow pale, his hand did not tremble. The boy asks where the victim is; which soon, lest his tender age be struck, he comes upon, so that the father could not strike, because the Lord did not demand human blood. The religious executioner draws the sword. It was the father's that he raised it; it was God's that he spared. Neither did the one being struck fear, nor did the one striking take fright. The Lord's sacrifice is not given up but changed. He kept his son better by not sparing him: for faith alone walks safe among swords, a friend among hungry beasts, cold in the fire; faith alone is to be preferred. By it let us, who through faith have become sons of Abraham, believe that we come into his bosom.

Truly, dearest brothers, his heart does not sleep who knows the dream and secrets of this man: for prophecy always speaks with varying figures; but one thing is found in all. So Jacob bears the image of Christ; and so too does the stone which he is known to have placed at his head, since the head of man is Christ, who is sometimes called a stone. The ladder signifies the two Testaments, which, woven with the precepts of the Gospel, have been accustomed to raise believing people who do God's will into heaven as if by certain steps of observance. This John in the Apocalypse called the two-edged sword with one hilt, which he described as coming out of the Lord's mouth. For the sword is the Holy Spirit, having one hilt, that is, one substance, power, deity, majesty and will of the Father and the Son; bearing two edges, that is, carrying the two Testaments; by whose royal admonitions the credulous and devout are kept, and the unbelieving and deserters punished. Isaiah saw this in the form of tongs, by which, he prophesied, a coal was taken from God's altar by one of the Seraphim to refine his unclean lips. For by the unclean lips we must understand the two peoples, of the Jews and the Gentiles: since they were defiled by the crimes of their former life, one by blaspheming and persecuting Christ, the other by asserting gods and worshipping abominable fictions, by the touch of the coal they are known to have been fused into one people through the confession of Christ's name. For fusing signifies both purity and unity: for the coal is the word of God, the altar the law, the tongs the two Testaments, which hold the believers and cut the unbelievers.

But David too called this a pen, saying: 'My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly.' A pen is split, brothers, and bears two points arranged in the fineness of one tip, making one letter with both; if you take away one, its use is thereafter empty. Hence rightly there are two Testaments, which likewise with two heads trace one letter, that is, by the two edicts of the sacred law they write one Christ, the Son of God, with spiritual blending. They cannot be useful without each other, because as the new gives faith to the old, so the old bears witness to the new, as it is written: 'Once the Lord has spoken, and we have heard these two things.' And the Lord himself in the Gospel expresses this reasoning, saying to Peter: 'Cast a hook into the sea, and take the first fish that comes up, and opening its mouth you will find two denarii; give them for me and for you.' By the first fish rising from the dead we must understand Christ, from whose mouth two denarii, that is, the two Testaments, were brought forth, which have benefited two peoples for salvation, with the glory of the Lord and the happiness of Peter, on whom he built the church. That the sea signified the world is not doubtful. The hook means preaching, because as a hook cast into the sea shows the death of the fish, so the Gospel preaching sent through the world testifies to the Lord's death and coming, as it is written to the Corinthians: 'You will proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.' 'You will open the mouth of the fish,' that is, the sacrament; or, 'what I have spoken in proverbs, you will explain to those who do not understand.' In short, elsewhere he says this more plainly to all the disciples: 'Go therefore and teach all nations, dipping them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you.' 'You will give for me and for you,' that is, you will preach my cross, and you too will rejoice likewise in the dignity of your own cross.

Of what material this ladder was, on which the Lord leaned, we learn from David's saying: 'Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me.' The rod and staff are surely the two Testaments, which are compared to the material of wood either because in its use the testator's will remains written perpetually and wholly, or because, running together as if crosswise into one faith, they announced that the Son of God was to be crucified; and they confirm that he was most rightly placed on the ladder, because the history of the whole of Scripture was fulfilled both for him and by him as author. In short, he says thus to the disciples: 'Every scribe learned in the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasures new things and old.' The scribe, brothers, is the preacher; the householder Christ; his treasures the Father's substance of undiminished deity and the Father's will; the new and the old the two Testaments, which you see were rightly clothed by the Lord here too without ambiguity in the figure of two denarii, for this reason, that he wished the two Testaments to be understood in his treasures by newness and oldness as two denarii. These two denarii the Lord recalls were given by the Samaritan to the innkeeper for the man who had suffered the robbers' assault; and this parable, removing all doubt, laid open the sacrament of the ladder to those who look spiritually: for the man who suffered the assault is known to be Adam, the robbers the devil, Eve lust, the Samaritan the Lord, to whom the Jews said: 'This man is a Samaritan and has a demon.' The innkeeper is the teacher of the law, who, having received two denarii, that is, the saving admonitions of the two Testaments, receives in the inn, that is, in the church, into which the divine flocks come, by the venerable sacrament, the man who suffered the robbery of the devil and his angels and this world, and cures him with the daily medicines of preaching.

As for his saying 'angels ascending and descending', some think the ascending are angels of light, the descending angels of darkness. But I notice, dearest brothers, that this is quite absurd and unfitting; because neither do the fugitives descend, who are known never to have been received into heaven after their sin, nor do the angels of light ascend, because they never remained on earth but always in heaven. Hence I think that men are rightly called angels, to whom the Lord says through the Holy Spirit: 'I said: You are gods, and all sons of the Most High; but you will die like men.' And we remember it was said thus of John the Baptist: 'Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way.' So it is plain that in the manner of prophecy just and unjust men are generally called angels. But who the ascending and descending are, we recognise from examples. The descending are those who, renouncing the world, turn back again to the world, of whom the Lord says: 'No one who looks back and puts his hand on the plough is fit for the kingdom of God.' And again: 'Remember Lot's wife.' And the Apostle thus: 'How do you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elements?' The ascending are the just, who with upright conduct are carried daily into heaven by the steps of the observance of the divine precepts in the glory of the spiritual journey, whom the apostle Paul exhorts and shows, saying: 'If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.' We can also understand this, brothers, as said of the ministers and angels whom we find to have served the Lord when he was on earth, as he himself says: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man'; as indeed happened, as the Evangelist says: 'Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.' Hence there is no doubt that the way to the airy summit is one for the angels of light and for just men.

All these things, then, combined, are brought together into the sum of one fruit, since all of them, though known to be twin, yet flow from one root. The Testaments are two, but the testator is one. The writing reed is divided, but the pen is one. The tongs extend into two blades, but their bite is one. The sword bears two edges, but they are the sides of one body. The denarii are two, but stamped with one coin. The ladder has two shafts and many steps, but its ascent is one. And its steps, dearest brothers, if you wish to know what they are called, hear: conversion, hearing, understanding, belief, fear, wisdom, sobriety, gentleness, temperance, chastity, devotion, love, faith, truth, humility, grace, honour, modesty, patience, perseverance, completion. The names of the shafts are the two Testaments. But the ladder by its proper name is called the cross, because through it the Lord Jesus Christ, accomplishing and concluding all the mysteries, brought Adam back to the Father and opened the way to heaven for all who follow him.

Judah had three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. He took a woman named Tamar as wife for his eldest son. When this son behaved wickedly before the Lord, as Scripture testifies, he is said to have been killed by God. Judah commands the second to go in to his brother's wife according to custom and raise up seed for his brother; and he went in and spilled his seed on the ground. When this too seemed wicked to God, he condemned him to the same death. But Judah excuses the union of the third son with his daughter-in-law because of his age, frightened lest he too should likewise die, and he instructed the woman to remain a widow in her father's house and wait for a timely marriage. When things stood so, his wife dies. When, comforted, he was going to shear his sheep, and this was reported to Tamar, who had seen that Shelah was grown up and yet she had not been married to him, she puts off her widow's garment, puts on summer clothes, arranges herself handsomely, and places herself where Judah was going to pass. But he, seeing the woman, thinks her a harlot, she who showed the integrity of her modesty by veiling her face. He propositions her, asks to go in, promises to send her a kid. But she asks for a pledge of the promise, more content with it than with the reward. And she received from him his necklace, ring and staff. Then, the business done, marked by conception, she again put on the widow's garment, which true harlots hate and always avoid. Meanwhile, as agreed, the kid is sent, the harlot is sought, and the inhabitants report that none was ever there. But with the passing of time our Tamar's womb advances too. See a truly wonderful mystery. She who had hidden her face does not hide her belly. The pregnant widow is reported as guilty of fornication without the trouble of an accuser. Her father-in-law is angry and orders her to be brought out and burned. But she stands firm, she who had procured the business not for unchastity but for the future in herself, and says she owes the conception to the man whose necklace, ring and staff she held. When this was recognised, Judah not only restrained himself from her but also declared her righteous.

Judah, as far as can be understood, was partly the type of the prophets, partly of the patriarchs and fathers, who because of the justice of God counted all men as sons. So Er, the firstborn son, is the first people, that is, the demigods, all the most powerful men and kings, who, fighting with ferocity of strength and rage of lust, had corrupted the whole world, decreeing besides temples for themselves instead of houses, raising altars to their own name, not knowing what tombs they would have, promising themselves heaven, at whose deeds, if it could, the earth itself would blush; finally asserting that they were gods against God: they whom men of sound mind judged not worthy even of the name of men. For these reasons they were not only destroyed by God but also destined to perpetual penal punishment.

Onan, the second brother, is the Jewish people, who is commanded to raise up seed for his brother, not of course that which was seen rightly condemned by God, but so that he might rouse the remaining nations, which the poisons of idolatry, which we mentioned, scattered abroad, had consumed, to the worship of God by examples of good life and religious exhortations from the sacred law. But he spilled his seed on the ground. The seed signifies not that of the creature but of the heart. For the seed of the heart is the word of God, as the Lord says according to Luke (this is the parable): 'The seed is the word of God ... Those along the way are those who hear the word, and the devil comes and takes the word from their heart, lest believing they be saved.' The ground signifies man and the idol, because God formed man from the earth, and man made the idol from the earth. So he spilled his seed on the ground, that is, he neglected God's commandments and poured them out on idols: for which he too likewise received from God the present sentence of condemnation, because as he is detestable who, being a man, makes himself out a god, so he is more detestable who worships a god whom he has himself arranged.

Shelah, the third and youngest of the brothers mentioned, painted the image of the new people coming from the Gentiles; Tamar that of the church, who was rightly not married to him, because, reborn in her bosom by the spiritual water of baptism when Christ came, he was to be the church's son, not her husband. Judah loses his wife, that is, the faith of the synagogue dies. When it says 'he was comforted', it is certainly understood by the hope of Christ's coming, who not only gave comfort to the prophets desolate at the synagogue's fall, but has also been accustomed to refresh all of us placed in any distress. He goes to shear his sheep, that is, he asks of just men the fruits of good works. Hearing this, Tamar, being in her father's house, that is, in the temples and the infamous places of all the shows (for the father of all who live corruptly is designated as the devil, as the Lord rebukes the Jews thus: 'You are of your father the devil, and you want to do your father's desires'), laid aside her widow's garment, that is, cast off the filthy rites of a filthy religion. She puts on summer clothes. Summer clothing, brothers, is both clean and well fitted, with which work can easily be done and the heat of summer endured, that is, of temptation; and it cannot be doubted that this is belief: because whoever has it must live unencumbered and clean. Then, so as not to be recognised, she necessarily covers her face with a veil, because Christ, the champion of her modesty, had not yet come. She is not recognised by her father-in-law: for the prophets had been sent to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. He rightly thinks her a harlot, because she served the people of the gods. He desires to come together with her, because the Gentiles rather than the Jews were to believe the prophecy, as the Lord says: 'Amen I say to you, the tax collectors and harlots will go before you into the kingdom of God.' He promises her a kid, that is, he shows what the wages of sin are for the sinner. This she avoided receiving, because in the time to come he who has received the pledge of the Trinity is counted among the lambs, not among the kids. In short, she is described as asking for and receiving the necklace, the ring, the staff. To what is this meaning fitted? The necklace, dearest brothers, is the law, which has been accustomed to adorn with saving admonitions (monita), with diverse virtues and diverse gifts, not the necks but the hearts of all believers. The staff through its wood announced the sacrament of the Lord's passion, as a plain example declares, which is found thus in the book of Psalms: 'Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me. You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me. You have anointed my head with oil, and your cup that inebriates, how excellent it is!' Surely, brothers, the cup signifies the blood, the table the body, the oil the gift of the Holy Spirit, the rod with the staff the cross, on which God deigned to hang for man, so as to change into God the man he had put on. The ring too is the seal of faith, which is Christ, by the shining of whose majesty we are impressed and sealed, by which, living sincerely for the safekeeping of our salvation, we reproduce through the Holy Spirit the image we hold. That he came together with her signified the sacrament of the holy communion of the faithful. Tamar conceived in her womb, the church conceived in her heart: the one by seed, the other by the word. A kid is sent to her, the sign of temptation: for whoever follows justice must be tested. In short, the harlot was sought and not found; because he who is reborn through water and the Holy Spirit ceases to be what he was and begins to be what he was not. It follows that she again put on the widow's garment, not of course to do what she had done, but to lament having done what she had done; for otherwise no one can be saved, however just, unless, making confession, he both extinguishes his present sins and repels future ones. Tamar is accused of having conceived from fornication. And the church, as if an adulteress against the law, is accused by the elders of the Jews of breaking the sabbath and casting off their traditions. Tamar brought out the necklace, the ring, the staff, and freed herself from the threatening punishment by the sacrament of the number. The church, by the truth itself in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, not only extinguishes the present fires of the devil but will also overcome the burnings of the future day of judgment. The one went away justified; the other, glorified by the increase of the true number and of faith, will remain with Christ for eternal ages, through our Lord and preserver Jesus Christ, who is blessed with the Father and the Holy Spirit before the ages and in the ages and for all ages of ages. Amen.

The narrative of sacred history, dearest brothers, has been handed down to us to be read for this purpose, that we may imitate the conduct of our ancestors, if possible, at least in some part, if we cannot imitate their virtues: for they lived with such uprightness that it is part of happiness to know what they did. So Job was a just and truthful man, set apart from all the lusts of this world, clear in his way of life, clearer in mind, so circumspect and irreproachable that he was praised by God's testimony. Hence not undeservedly the blessed man enjoyed a blessed life. For he had a most splendid house, a rich estate; a rich number of children too, and (what is pleasing to parents) of both sexes, and loving one another; for whose number he offered daily sacrifices to God. And he was fortified by so great a wall of purity and faith that the devil did not dare attack him without God's permission. Now consider, brothers, how he raged when roused, who cannot be borne when gentle. So a famous battle is joined. On one side the devil, thundering horribly with all his arms, and rousing his servants besides to help, sounding the terrible trumpet, the hearts of robbers set alight with a furious torch, with frequent assaults invades everywhere all the resources of the man of God: suddenly by robbery, fire and sword he destroys everything in one moment. On the other side Job, strong with a deep root of faith, is battered by so many mournful messages, and is not moved; but only blesses God, and keeps his resources by despising them. But when the devil recognises that he has gained nothing by such great assaults, he pours out all the rage of his impiety on his children. For when they were feasting together as usual in one house, suddenly, its four corners shaken with all his force, he buries that most holy band of brothers under a confused mass, as walls and roofs collapse, before he slays them; and the destruction devised by impiety is such that, in that crowd of a single funeral, a father's grief was not enough for the bereavement, not knowing whom to mourn first, whom to find first, to whom first to pay the dues of a cruel funeral. On receiving this message the servant of God tore his garments, not to stir up envy against God, but to fight the enemy unencumbered. In short, he despised the rich man in his lost resources; he concealed the father in his lost children, the just man in the punishment of his body. For struck by the enemy's blow from the top of his head to the lowest nails of his feet, he was not spotted with crowded ulcers, but became wholly one wound. Yet in all these things he says nothing wicked against God. He does not yield to his wife urging what is unlawful; he does not give way to friends insulting him; but, victor over cruelty and impiety, he sits on a stinking dunghill swarming with worms, as if he had suffered nothing, content with the fear of God alone. O happy man! who by wonderful patience deserved God's favour, conquered the devil, recovered his health, and did not lose but changed his resources and his children.

Job, as far as can be understood, dearest brothers, bore the image of Christ. Let the comparison bring in the truth. Job was called just by God. The Lord is justice itself, from whose fountain all who are blessed drink: for see, it was said of him: 'The sun of justice will rise for you.' Job was called truthful. But the Lord is the true truth, who says in the Gospel: 'I am the way and the truth.' Job was rich. And what is richer than the Lord? Whose servants all the rich are; whose is the whole world and all nature, as most blessed David says: 'The earth is the Lord's and its fullness, the world and all who dwell in it.' The devil tempted Job three times. Likewise, as the Evangelist reports, he tried to tempt the Lord three times. Job lost the resources he had. And the Lord neglected his heavenly goods for love of us and made himself poor, to make us rich. The raging devil killed Job's children. And the mad Pharisee people killed the Lord's children, the prophets. Job was spotted with ulcers. And the Lord, by taking flesh, was soiled with the filth of the sins of the whole human race. Job's wife urges him to sin. And the synagogue presses the Lord to follow the corruption of the elders. Job's friends are said to have insulted him. And the Lord's own priests, his own worshippers insulted him. Job sits on a dunghill full of worms. The Lord too lived on a true dunghill, that is, in the mire of this world, among men seething with various crimes and lusts, who are the true worms. Job recovered both health and resources. But the Lord, rising, gave not health only but immortality to those who believe in him, and recovered dominion over all nature, as he himself testified, saying: 'All things have been handed over to me by my Father.' Job begot children in place of his children. The Lord too after the prophets begot holy sons, the apostles. Job rested blessed in peace. But the Lord remains blessed for ever, before the ages and from the ages and for all ages of ages.

Whenever in this perverse age manifold snares are laid against praiseworthy men, and factious lawsuits arise with various kinds of slander, whatever a pestilent man may devise, or the devil may contrive, let the just man not fear, because God is with him. Hence Susanna, the illustrious Hebrew woman, taught women the beauty of true chastity by the example of her own purity. Susanna stood in the court of the wicked, oppressed by the lies of false witnesses, yet content with the good secrets of her conscience, not so much to receive a sentence as guilty, as, dedicated to God, to die bravely for chastity; and her whom the perverse sentence of the judges had thrown down, the integrity of her illustrious conscience raised up. So for chastity conscience is enough; God is witness. Chastity did not look to what the false witnesses said, or how the deceived judges condemned, or how the devil defamed, who could not overturn the foundations of modesty. Not an adulterous body went to punishment, a body in which the old men's last lust had blazed up, but one which the devil had defamed, virtue had protected, and unharmed modesty adorned. Then the Holy Spirit, entering the holy boy Daniel, said, as she was being led to punishment: 'Return to the court: for these men have borne false witness against her.' The people are astonished that a condemned woman is called back from punishment to a renewed trial. Fear seizes the false witnesses. The devil trembles that his inventions are stripped bare. The angels rejoice that oppressed truth is at last defended on earth. The husband triumphs that he has found his wife chaste. The whole household rejoices that rumour finds nothing in her to strike. The devil is tormented that he has accomplished his will in no part: for he neither carried out the adultery he defamed her with, nor found the murder he was procuring.

It is the religious confession of human devotion to know of God what is lawful: for as his testimonies are to be searched out in a simple heart, so his secrets are not to be inquired into with curiosity. For who can know the causes and natures of this heaven and of the higher things? Who can falsely claim that he can discuss the bodily emptiness of this air, as some think? Who would presume to know that the earth is carried by water, or that water is contained in the bosom of the earth? Who will boast that he has grasped the airy spirits, the shapes of the winds, the swellings of rivers among the tides of the sea, in short the workmanship of the Lord and the counsel of God? since the Apostle says: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unspeakable are his judgments and how untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?' For it is not seething in the search for these things that the prophet says: 'Out of the depths I have cried to you, Lord'; he cries out of the depths, that is, from his inmost heart; he cries out of the depths, but those with which he was hemmed in, sad and sorrowful, by human calamities; and he cries not with his voice but with his heart, not with shouting but with faith, which he knows God gladly hears. Crying thus out of the depth, Peter likewise obtained from the Lord that he might both walk over and escape the slippery hollows of the deep sea and the backs of the liquid plain not subject to human steps, by which the trembling traveller was being swallowed up. Paul too cries out of the depths, overwhelmed by blessed calamities, when for the name of the Lord he suffers robbers on the roads, robbers in the cities; when, beaten three times with rods by the Jews, he is washed by a threefold shipwreck; when he is happily hailed on with showers of stones by the furious storm of a mad people; when, having spent a day and a night in the depth of the sea, crying to God, he is spat out from there unharmed.

Likewise the prophet Jonah was sent by God to the Ninevites to announce that destruction threatened their city: for they were weighed down by huge burdens of sins. But he, turning aside on another road, boarded a ship to go to Tarshish; when suddenly the sea, provoked by the violent blast of warring winds, roars, and the anxious flood, with the white rolls of its steep mountains, beating the foaming mouths of the resisting shores, threatens shipwreck at every moment: the gusts grow more frequent and rage, the ropes whistle horribly, the yards groan as the sails give way, the prow, beaten back on all sides, finds no way. The sailors tremble, they hasten in vain, by throwing out the cargo, to lighten the ship of its weights, a ship that was weighed down by the weight of the prophet. Then Jonah, whom alone that good storm sought, chosen by lot, is given over to shipwreck, or rather is transferred from a wooden vessel to a living ship: who, when he was let down into the deep and received in the lodging of the beast's gulf, keeps watch in the whale, he who snored in the ship. Wonderful thing! After the shipwreck, after the swimming tomb, unharmed on the third day after, he enlightens the Ninevites, to bring salvation by terrible oracles to a believing city.

As far as can be understood, brothers, the ship is the type of the synagogue: by its pilot we take the priestly body, by the sailors the scribes and Pharisees, by the throwing out of the cargo the rejection of the prophets and all the saints, whom the Jews, having driven them out of the synagogue, slaughtered with unworthy murders to the loss of their own salvation. The raging winds are various kings, who with the mournful blare of trumpets and the terrible crash of arms, the storms of battles pressing from every side, pitiably scattered Judaea through the whole world. Jonah sleeping in the ship bore the image of the Lord's sacrament: for the material of the ship signified the cross, and sleep the passion. The sea is this swollen world: by its waves we understand the peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles, who raged in vain against God. The lot gave up Jonah to be thrown over; prophecy proclaimed that the Lord would suffer; both willing, the one by his condition, the Lord by his love. That the whale is the underworld is not doubted: for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, and, vomited out, betook himself to the city of Nineveh, so the Lord, rising from the underworld on the day after, betook himself to the city of Jerusalem before heaven. But Nineveh bears the image of the church, in which our people from the Gentiles was already dwelling, which not in vain was called by God a great city; for it was to come about that, with the peoples of all nations believing in Christ, the whole world would be rendered to God as one city. In short, the saving deeds, which remain in us too, confirm the comparison. When, brothers, destruction was announced to the Ninevites, they believe and fear; and the more they know that the Lord is not a liar, the more readily they presume upon his mercy; and at once, condemning the deeds of their old life, to redeem their salvation they do not run as usual to stupid images, nor kindle deadly fires on stinking altars, nor burn incense, nor pour out wine, nor consult the fibres of the breathing liver of beasts snatched by an unexpected death, nor by vain conjectures inquire into the state of feathered salvation through the various flights of birds; but they ask a saving remedy from their own heart, and eagerly sacrifice their spirit contrite with all humility: and so, having lawfully celebrated repentance, they made God favourable to them. This we too have done, and ought often to do, so that we may deserve to escape both the temptations of the present time and the punishments of the future judgment, through Christ our Lord.

While we commit to the annals, to be celebrated in triumph, the deeds of the blessed martyr Arcadius, Christian ardour is always roused to the contest for immortal praise. There will be a twofold exchange of religion, when the people are kindled to the heavenly reward and the martyr's merits are not passed over in silence. But who could set out in fitting speech the crown of an illustrious martyrdom, bearing the palm with its trophies, when in one body there seem to be as many martyrdoms as members? The devil, the ancient champion of an old hatred, had armed his satellites against the Lord's people, and was troubling the whole household of the Lord with the rampage of unfed ferocity. He had declared war on God in man, and with the tomb of an ill-omened superstition he had rekindled a funeral pyre, conscious of wickedness, for the whole world. The public crime swarmed through the tops of the roofs, nor was there any place in which there was not sacrilege for religion. The people of Christ were compelled to take part in vain superstitions, and for the worship of the unspeakable either to pour out libations impurely, or to drag victims adorned with garlands, or to light incense heavy with fumes, or amid smoking fires to offer favourable sacrifice with pale fat and deadly blood, so that by the administration of this notorious service God might be driven out of Christian minds.

But while the war of this hard contest was being waged, and the Lord's household was being tested with heaven looking on, Arcadius, most blessed martyr, struck with horror at this unexpected sacrilege, put off the fight a little, though already destined for the crown. For when he learned that the city was being thrown into confusion by a deadly assembly, and that each person was being dragged to that deadly spectacle, despising all his possessions, the roots of the world cut away, he hid himself and entrusted himself to the shelter of withdrawal, showing, I would say, the Christian's way in both respects, so that he should not seem too far from the battle and, by withdrawing, should be encouraged by the example of the Gospel's command. See, the band of raging satellites rushes headlong into his lodging as into an enemy's spoil: it hastens to catch the servant of God; and a relative of the blessed martyr, who happened to be living in his dwelling, kept crying out that he was absent. Him, as he declared this, the agents of a guilty mind seized for that unspeakable custody, and the most cruel governor orders him, when brought before him, to be held under sharp watch. As a testimony to future glory, the blessed Arcadius had in a way set aside this pledge of his due martyrdom, in which he would abandon neither Christ nor his relative. At once the blessed martyr would not allow himself to stay hidden; offering himself of his own accord to the judge, he voluntarily excused his delay before the proceedings. When the governor of the province promised him pardon for his earlier flight on the condition that he should, even late, join in the unspeakable superstitions, the most holy martyr leapt out against him with such words: 'What,' he said, 'most vain of all judges? Do you think that the household of God can be frightened either by unfitting interest on this light or by the sudden losses of an untimely death, when we know it is written by apostolic faith: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain? Devise heavier torments with whatever punishments you can; kindle yourself with greater goads of fury; however great the mass of torture you apply, you cannot overcome us for all that.'

At once the judge, stirred with the gall of viper's venom, orders the executioners to rage against the martyr's limbs, not with the usual infliction of punishments nor by the usual law for the accused. The claws became cheap, the blows of the leaded whips seemed useless, the rack stood despised, the frequent showers of clubs were neglected in contemplation of a greater penalty. A new and astounding punishment is devised, by which he believed he could conquer God in a man. 'Let his hands be cut off at the joints,' he said, 'his feet at the legs; let him see himself a living corpse.' To him the blessed Arcadius said: 'O most insane of men! Your fury has cheated you: there was still something in the Lord's victim that you could offer. You did not know to order the tongue to be cut off, which in the wrestling of martyrdom is accustomed to confess the Lord first.' At length the blessed Arcadius was led to the place longed for in his righteous prayers, and, looking to heaven, he stood secure with God looking on. He had stretched out his neck ready for the coming blows; he had bared his throat to the coming swords; he had thought he would satisfy the judge's deadly madness by the lot of a swift death; when suddenly he is ordered to stretch out his hands and, thrown naked face down on the turf, to bare the extremities of his feet. See, even amid the punishments he is not allowed to be idle, but through the executioner's tortures he meditates, as in prayer. The mad executioner had raised the axe and, marking with his eyes the line for the wounds, was poising the deadly blow with constant gaze. The martyr's fearless hands clung with the glue of his confession; nor did his fingers twitch or throb at the destruction of coming death. So great was the constancy in the martyr's devotion that he came to glory ready in his whole body.

Soon, when the executioner saw the devoted body, at once the blow of the falling axe loosened the connections of the sinews, and, the framework shattered, broke all the joints of the body. The severed hands leapt out, and the stream of blood, rushing back into itself for a little in the stupor of the veins. Then, with the hams and calves stretched out, the boundary of the soles is cut off from nature's sisterly union by the sword of the savage brigand, and the martyr's body is widowed of the service of the feet. Let those count the martyrdoms who can count the punishments; and in one body let it be recognised that the Lord triumphed as much as the devil was shown publicly to rage. But amid these things the martyr's spirit endures, and, preserved by the many delays, he stays alive, already buried in part of his body. O worthy end of a glorious departure! About to ascend to the height of heaven, he sends ahead the hindrances of his body, and himself goes before his own funeral. To what is this confession to be compared? It is to be joined to the number of the Maccabees: it is to be made equal to the purpose of Eleazar, compared with his counsel. Arcadius, most blessed martyr, still lingers in the world, and is already read out as a martyr in heaven.

Nothing, dearest brothers, is above all so necessary and fitting for a man who fears God as to know himself: for it is a kind of madness that one who cannot give an account of his own life should search out the reason of nature's secret; for the substance of nature can in no way be grasped by human opinions, which no one knows except he alone who made it. So, as for what belongs especially to our part, let us see what it means that God says: 'Let us make man in our image and likeness.' 'And God made,' it says, 'man in the image and likeness of God'; and in another place he says: 'I am who am, and I do not change.' Since this is so, how does man bear the image of God? Man, whose face is passible, subject to every change, altered at every moment by toil, age, sickness, anger, joy, sorrow, and puts on as many faces as there are movements of the mind; and there is no day at all on which he seems continually like himself. Since things are not otherwise, do we then not have the image of God? We plainly have it, and indeed manifest, from the very fact that it is not known to us who bear it. For the image of the incomprehensible God must be invisible. In short, it is not subject to the eyes of the flesh. For neither when it enters our body, nor when it leaves the body, can it be detected by anyone; and it has so much power that, while it is held within the enclosure of its dwelling, it yet illuminates whatever it wishes at every moment. So we must not take this fleshly dwelling as the image of God, but the spiritual image of the heavenly man, which the Lord bestows from the loving fountain of his fullness on those who believe in him, renewed by a heavenly birth, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nothing, dearest brothers, is above all so necessary and fitting for a man as to know himself: for it is a kind of madness that one who cannot give an account of his own life should search out the reason of nature's secret: for the elements cannot be asserted more beautifully or truly by human words than they were made by God, or are seen. So, as for what concerns us, let us see what it means that God says: 'Let us make man in our image and likeness.' 'And God made,' it says, 'man in the image and likeness of God'; and in another place he says: 'I am who am; and I do not change.' Since this is so, how does man bear the image of God? Man, whose face, subject to every change, is altered at every moment by toil, age, sickness, joy, sorrow; now ugly with leanness, now with enormous fat; so uncertain that the same is not found in two people in the whole world. Since these things do not befall God, do we then not have the image of God? Far from it, brothers. We plainly have it, and indeed manifest, from the very fact that it is not known to those who bear it: for the image of the incomprehensible God must be invisible. In short, it is not subject to mortal eyes; for neither when it enters the body, nor when it leaves the body, can it be seen by anyone; and it has so much power that, while it is held within the enclosure of its dwelling, it yet illuminates whatever it wishes at every moment. So we must not take this fleshly clothing as the image of God, but the spiritual image of the heavenly man, which he bestows on us from the loving fountain of his fullness. Paul plainly set out this reasoning, saying: 'As we have borne the image of him who is of clay, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven': and those who have borne it holily, like the apostles and all the just, will bear not only the image but God himself too, as it is written: 'You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.'

Negligent cultivators of the sacred law are often entangled in great error when they either do not understand sayings according to their places, or do not inquire at all into the reasons of what is said. So, since in the present psalm the prophet says, 'I will sing to you of mercy and judgment, Lord,' how does the Lord say in the Gospel: 'He who believes in me is not judged; but he who does not believe has already been judged'? By saying this he exempts the faithful from judgment and does not admit the unfaithful to judgment. But if both parties are free of judgment, how will each be given a reward for his own deeds? For the just man will seem to labour for nothing unless the unjust receives according to the deeds he has done. So it must not be taken as the imprudent suppose. But the very propriety of the words explains with what weight and for what reason the Lord's saying was uttered: 'He who believes in me,' he says, 'is not judged.' Rightly: for what need is there to judge a believer? For judgment arises from doubtful matters; when the doubt is removed, an examination by judgment is not wanted. From which it follows that unbelievers need not be judged either, because they have already been condemned by their own unbelief; for who does not carry from this life with him either a crown or a punishment? This reasoning David expressed in the first psalm in these words: 'The ungodly,' he says, 'do not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the council of the just.' Step by step according to merits, as if with certain titles, in very few words he designated the judgment of the whole human race: for as much difference as there is between the ungodly and the sinner, so much is there between the sinner and the just. In short, he does not leave judgment to the ungodly, because they are already prejudged by their own impiety; nor did he think sinners, who are to be judged, worthy of the council of the just, who will not be judged.

Now we must know (since the just are destined for everlasting life and the ungodly for eternal punishment, and no further trial awaits them) who are the sinners for whom judgment is prepared: and from whom should we know it but from the Lord himself, who continues his saying: 'This is the judgment, that light has come into this world, and men loved darkness rather than light'? He surely designated ambiguous and slippery Christians, who are midway between the devout and the ungodly, holding neither side fully, while they do not stop holding both. They are not faithful, because they have something of unfaithfulness inserted in them. They are not unfaithful, because they have the image of faith, serving God by profession and the world by deeds. They want to know the law; they do not want to keep its precepts. They venerate the saving sign, and yet do not withdraw from the mysteries of demons. For fear of God holds many in the church, but worldly pleasure draws them to itself. They do not remain ungodly, because God's name is in honour with them. They are not devout, because they wound the Father who is to be revered with depraved conduct. They pray because they fear; they sin because they want to. Hence the guilt is not absolved where judgment is demanded on the comparison of love between two parties contrary to each other; for unless the ambiguity has been examined, it cannot rightly merit a sentence. And who are these whom ambiguity has reserved for judgment? Surely those, as the Apostle too says, who, having known God, did not honour him as Lord, nor give him thanks, but their thoughts were led away by vain persuasions, and their heart was covered with darkness, so that they loved darkness rather than light, the creature rather than the creator.

So there must be three judgments. One of the just, who not only, as has been said, will not be judged, but will judge this world, as the Apostle says: 'Do you not know that the saints will judge this world?' Another of the ungodly, who are not to be judged, because they have already been judged, but are to perish, as Scripture says: 'The way of the ungodly will perish.' The third of sinners, the secrets of whose crooked and doubtful life must necessarily be examined, as the Apostle sets out both: for 'those who have sinned without the law,' he says, 'will perish without the law. But those who have sinned in the law will be judged by the law.' Do you see, brothers, that there is a great difference between one condemned and one to be judged? This form of judgment even humanity itself, unjust though it is, keeps. For no householder judges his slave who offers him the honest gains of his fidelity, but honours him like a son. The other, whom he has caught grinding poisons, in adultery, in murder, in forgery, in sorcery, he at once hands over to the executioner, not to be heard but to be tortured with fitting punishments. The third too, whom he has noticed to be fraudulent, excusing his thefts with coloured accounts, he reserves for examination, so that, the losses weighed and the property saved, a sentence may rightly be pronounced on him according to how he stands as a debtor. So it will be that a crown is given to the just, indulgence to sinners either excused or amended, but eternal punishment to the ungodly. Through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed with the Holy Spirit for eternal ages of ages.

'Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: I have begotten and exalted sons, but they have despised me.' The opening of this book speaks out the great offence of the Jewish nation, and shows the anger of divine indignation, by which he exhorts other persons, so that the word of God may be heard rather by them: for it is no small crime that the divine word, always uttered among them, should now be seen to be pressed upon others. Hence the rejection of the Jews is the election of other persons; because when others are told that they ought to hear the word of God, Israel is thus found reprobate; and when the prophet cries, 'Hear, heaven and earth,' he signifies that they have scorned to hear.

'Hear,' he says, 'O heaven, and give ear, O earth.' Did the prophet call heaven and earth to witness as if complaining about something? Or, when he says, 'Hear, heaven and earth,' as if heaven or earth had never heard, when both heaven and earth obey God's command, since heaven does not refuse rains, nor earth crops? But because this prophecy was to be fulfilled in the last times, at the coming of the Lord and Saviour, who was not to be heard by the peoples of the Jews, because the apostles and men from the Gentiles were to hear him, therefore he says: 'Hear, heaven and earth.' That the heavens are the apostles he affirms by the clear testimony of truth, for he says thus: 'And I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers.' Here he is surely not speaking of these heavens, which he had always seen, but of the apostles, whom he longed to see. And again: 'His power covered the heavens'; because the Holy Spirit overshadowed and covered the apostles to do wonderful works. And again: 'The heavens,' he says, 'tell the glory of God.' And here he surely does not say that these heavens speak, which no one has heard speaking, but he means the apostles, by whose preaching the glory of the Lord has been announced through all the spaces of the earth. That men are to be understood as the earth the frequent assertion of the prophets has shown: 'Shout for joy,' he says, 'all the earth.' And elsewhere: 'Hear, earth,' he says, 'from my mouth'; by which word he undoubtedly includes the Gentile men, in whom there were still earthly works. This, then, is what he says, 'Hear, heaven and earth': that, while the Jews did not hear, Christ the Lord was to be heard by the apostles and the Gentiles.

'I have begotten and exalted sons,' he says. This is the Lord's voice, because already then through the prophet he was rebuking the unbelieving Jews and warning them of what was to come before it happened. For it is proper to God to know the past and to know the future. 'I have begotten and exalted sons,' he says. The Jews by their unbelief have earned infinite hatred before our Lord, because as great as the grace of love was, so great will be the vengeance for their offence: for it is certain that a son whom his father loved with great affection is punished more gravely after he has sinned; and as much tenderness as a loving father showed to a beloved son, so much vengeance, when wounded, he exacts, because when the beloved son has not returned the favour to his father, he receives, disinherited, a worthy sentence: for whose impiety does not return equal gratitude to a father's affection, how great his crime is cannot be told, not to have loved God the Father, when it is a sin not to have loved a man. Hence the Jews are unhappy and wretched, who rejected God the Father, by whom they were begotten, forgetful of so great an honour, ignorant of so great a dignity. For what is more blessed than that God should deign to regard men with a father's honour, and that such great sublimity should hold human mediocrity dear or beloved? 'I have begotten sons,' he says. How sweet that the Lord said this of men! How shameful to have wounded such a father! 'I have begotten and exalted sons.' Surely the Lord begot the sons of Israel, who chose Abraham, from whom they should be born. He begot them in Egypt, where, though few men went in, a countless multitude came out, and the Lord led them to the wilderness with a strong hand and an uplifted arm. Israel was exalted when for three days darkness and gloom surrounded all Egypt. Israel was exalted when, amid so many and so great torments of the Egyptians, he alone either feared or felt nothing. What of the fact that he led them on dry ground through the middle of the sea? What of manna from heaven daily in the wilderness, drink from the rock, sweet water made from bitter through wood, which we were to drink through the wood of the cross, the bitterness of Gentile life excluded? The sons of Israel were exalted when he came safely from Horeb to the Jordan. What of the daily conversations with God? 'But they despised me'; for they brought to the cross the one through whom they escaped Pharaoh; but again the daughter of Zion will be left.

As the song of most blessed Isaiah shows, God is angry with the Jewish people, and, lest perhaps it should not repent, he confutes it with public rebuke. To one with human feelings, to be traded in disgrace is worse than to be punished. In short, he calls them sons, so that disinheritance may be feared; exalted, so that their fall may be a terror; despisers, so that they may know they are bringing the penalty of punishment upon themselves. Flee this example bravely, brothers; and at the same time rejoice that you learn God's discipline from another's stripes, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a vehement agitation, brothers, when he complains of his injury who can very easily avenge himself. But because among the wise and honourable it is heavier to be put to shame by some mark of disgrace than to die, God confutes with public rebuke the Jewish people, corrupted by the overflowing heat of luxury: he calls heaven and earth as witnesses, to heighten the crime; he calls them sons, so that disinheritance may be feared; exalted, so that their fall may be feared; despisers of himself, to show them ungodly. Unhappy is the fault, brothers, in which an excuse of any kind finds no place. Detestable surely is the son whom a loving father, whom a father condemns unwillingly.

Human speech fails regarding the impiety of the Jewish people, which overcame God's patience by the impatience of its obstinate heart; for its crime is not light, when he complains of it who could also have punished it at once. But because among unbelievers in the future death is thought a shortcut of punishment, and what is not publicly shamed is held almost as not done, he decided to mark them with heaven and earth as witnesses, so that they might be subject to fitting judgment for an inexcusable deed. In short, the thing was fulfilled in the Lord's passion: heaven lost the day at midday, the earth its firmness through excessive trembling. From this one may judge what is reserved for them, in whose case nature bore the punishment of funeral mourning.

That the whole Jewish people has abandoned the protection of its salvation the text of the divine song shows. In it, venerable brothers, it is not severity that condemns it before all, but tenderness; for no one can deserve well of one whom a most patient and most merciful father has disinherited, and that convicted not by accusation but by proof. In short, he calls heaven and earth as witnesses of his injury: earth, on which all things are done; heaven, under which they are done. He calls them sons, to heighten the crime; exalted, to show them ungrateful. He puts the ox and the ass before them, so that, if they come to their senses, they may be tormented more heavily by the comparison than by the punishment.

That what the prophet asked for the old vine, which the Lord had planted in Egypt, has profited the new one in time, the very inscription of the title of the psalm read declares; for it runs thus: 'To the end, for those who will be changed.' For the Jewish people, which was first called the Lord's vine, flowered indeed, but, its flower unhappily shaken off, could bear no fruit. In short, instead of fruits it produced thorns, instead of grapes wild grapes. Abhorring its unhappiness, the Lord of the estate planted another for himself, that is, of our people, according to his will, into which all the prophetic fruit has flowed. Here, most blessed husbandmen, forgive me, your rustic, if my sluggishness has taken anything away from your skill in giving an account of the vine.

So, as you often recall excellently, the measure being kept, the shoot is cut to a slip, the slip is sent down into a trench, so that, quickened there, the generative moisture may be nourished, its substance always remaining with it: of necessity a supporting stake is joined to it, by whose protection it may lift itself up. But when it has grown into a full vine and reached the trellis, all its luxuriant locks are shorn with the pruning hook; the pure wood is brought up onto the cross-frames, it is bound with knots, lest it be separated by some force from the wood by which it is carried, or by whose prop or guidance it is drawn out further, invited, into rich fruit. Then, weeping solemnly, it gently bedews with its own shower, and announces with happy tears the streams of new wine it has conceived. At once, its eyes opened, radiant leaves come forth, under which, commending themselves, the following fruits smile, which the heat of the sun, rains and winds bring on by exercising them and lead to maturity. But when the time of vintage has come, its beauty scattered, the grape is pulled off everywhere, and, put into the winepress, is trodden by the workers' feet, pressed by the press, and vehemently squeezed by two boards, until all its sweetness is wrung out to the marrow. And so the precious stream is both drunk by its treaders and brought into the householder's wine cellars, to become better by ageing.

As far as our mediocrity can conjecture spiritually, the shoot computed to measure is understood as the fit candidate, examined in the lawful number by examination. By the trench we must take the sacred font, which by a true sacrament receives men dead and, breathed into by heavenly water, soon makes them alive. The supporting stake, by which it is stretched or carried, is the sign of the Lord's cross, without which the Christian can by no means live and lay hold of immortality. In that it is brought up onto the cross-frames, the height of the heavenly way and life is shown. It is bound with ties when, renouncing the world, having made a promise, he is spiritually bound by the questions of the sacrament. The luxuriant locks are shorn with the hook, that is, absolutely all sins are cut away by baptism and by the power of the Holy Spirit. The vine happily weeps, its wood purged; from the washed man more happily flow the divine streams of heavenly doctrine, his eyes burst open, that is, spiritually opened. The fruit follows, commending itself, after the leaves go before. Likewise the Christian, by obeying the divine admonitions that go before, in which is the fruit of eternal life, is both defended and nourished. He reaches the trellis when, having bestowed all his property on the poor, carrying his cross, all justice fulfilled, he follows Christ more unencumbered. By the force of storm, sun and rain it is driven to maturity; and the just man is led to the crown by frequent, great and various temptations. But when the time of vintage has come, that is, the day of persecution, the grapes are snatched everywhere, that is, violent hands are laid indiscriminately on all the saints. They are carried to the winepress, that is, they are led to the place of punishment. There they are trampled by the workers, that is, mocked with the greatest insult by the persecutors, they are slain. The juice of them is dried out by the last weight of the press and the two boards. Likewise on the day of judgment vengeance for the blood of the confessors is exacted by Christ according to the tablets of the law to the last farthing. The treaders drink of the same new wine; and persecutors, often believing in Christ, taste, and some even drink, the precious cup which a little before they had poured out by treading. The new wine is stored in the householder's cellar, to be made more precious by transfer; and the martyr is taken up into the hidden places of the Lord's dwelling, so that there, transferred from man into angel, he may glory in the blessedness of eternal life.

As the sound of the reading indicates, brothers, the Jewish people is indeed accused of impiety, but the Christian is likewise warned not to turn out such. In short, so that this one may fear more, that one is terrified; that one is beaten so that this one may profit. It is a short kind of happiness to learn from another's danger what you ought to avoid. Hence, brothers, in such a matter it is not talk that must be offered but care, which receive in a few words. Whoever wishes to escape the wrath of God, who threatens generally, must serve him blamelessly. The discussion of the vine mentioned, dearest brothers, has boundaries spread far and wide, which the weight of the pressing sacraments does not allow us to traverse in fitting speech. Yet, lest the solemnity cease altogether, taste his speech devoutly in a few words. The first vine of God was indeed the synagogue, cheap with the woody locks of straying shoots; and when it spread itself everywhere wantonly with its foliage through pleasure-loving and profane places, it produced thorns instead of fruits, wild grapes instead of grapes. Moved by the indignity of this, the Lord, leaving it, planted another for himself according to his will, that is, Mother Church, which, cultivating it with priestly duties and making it fruitful with loving watering, hung on the happy wood, he taught to bear a most abundant vintage. Hence it is that today new vines from your number, brought to the trellis, seething with the sweet stream of gushing new wine, have filled the Lord's wine cellar with common joy. That this may happen to you too, as your faith grows, God the almighty Father will grant through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.

Christ entered the world secretly, so that the devil should not seem wise to himself. He who had deceived man by a plan is conquered by a plan, so that, as man in paradise had not recognised the devil, so the devil in the world should not easily recognise Christ.

Rejoice, brothers, in Christ, and, flying together with all desire, receive the heavenly gifts. Already the saving warmth of the everlasting font invites you. Already our mother adopts so as to give birth: but not by the law by which your mothers bore you, who, themselves groaning with the pain of childbirth, brought you into this world weeping, dirty, bound in dirty swaddling clothes, surrendered to it; but she will nourish you, happy and rejoicing, heavenly, free, absolved of all sins, not in stinking cradles, but within the sweetly fragrant rails of the sacred altar: through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, now, quicker than speech, brothers, enter the heavenly gates; and, plunging into the generative bed of the eternal flood, do not think that any grace works here according to persons. You are born by your own judgment, knowing that whoever has believed more will make himself nobler. So constantly and faithfully cast off this old man of yours with his stinking rags, all of you new, all of you clothed in white, all of you soon to come forth rich with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Come, why do you stand still, brothers, you whom the generative wave conceived through faith and now brings to birth through the sacraments? Hasten as quickly as possible to what you have desired. See, the solemn hymn is already being sung: see, the voice of infants and their sweet crying is heard: see, a most brilliant crowd comes forth from one womb of her who gives birth. A new thing, that each should be born by spiritual right. Run on to the mother, who does not labour even if she cannot count those she bears. Enter, then, enter, happy ones, all at once soon to be sucklings.

Why do you stand, differing in race, age, sex and condition, soon to be one? Fly together to the sweet womb of the virgin mother, the font; and there make yourselves noble by your own faith, knowing that as much as each has believed, so much blessedness he will have. O admirable and truly divine, most holy condescension! In which she who gives birth does not groan; he who is reborn does not know how to cry. This is renewal, this resurrection, this eternal life, this is the mother of all, who makes us, united and gathered from every race and nation, afterwards into one body.

Rejoice, brothers, whom your own faith brings to birth, who, fleeing the snares of this world, guilt, wounds and death, have implored the help of the Father's majesty; fly together to the flood of the holy font, with all speed not of feet but of mind. Plunge in constantly, your state of salvation kept safe, to live by the happy death of your old man.

Hasten, hasten, brothers, to be well washed. The living water, tempered with the Holy Spirit and most sweet fire, already invites you with a gentle murmur. Already the bath attendant, girded, waits, ready to provide what is needed for anointing and for drying, and also a golden denarius stamped with the union of a threefold coin. So rejoice. You will indeed be plunged naked into the font, but you will rise from it clothed in a heavenly garment, soon clothed in white; and whoever does not defile it will possess the heavenly kingdom: through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Come, brothers, whom the longed-for heat of blessed thirst inflames, whom the sweet murmur of the nectar-like stream invites, fly together without hesitation to the milky water of the generative font, and drink bravely while you may; placed under the wave of the overflowing river, with all your force and all your devotion fill your vessels, so that you may always have enough water, knowing this before all things, that it is permitted neither to pour it out nor to draw it again.

Come, brothers, whom the longed-for heat of blessed thirst inflames, fly with the desire and speed of a deer to the milky water of the generative font. Drink bravely, so that you may always have enough water, knowing this above all, that it is permitted neither to pour it out nor to draw it again.

After the most devout and completed chaste fasts of sacred expiation, after the sweet vigils of the most brilliant night with its own sun, after souls sprouting into the hope of immortality from the bath of life of the milky font, from which you who were different in age, different in nation, have suddenly emerged as brothers, suddenly as only-begotten infants, I urge you to celebrate the feast of so great a birth with a joyful banquet: but not that one in which, with various dishes competing for the top with the enticement of the cooks' flavours, the overwhelmed breast is often oppressed with raw and sour vomiting; in which the worldly sweetness of your new wine is spoiled by the stench of yesterday's wine breathed out: but with a heavenly luncheon, honourable, pure, healthy and everlasting; which, so that you may always be full and happy, receive hungrily. The householder bestows on you from his own table, from his own stores, bread and precious wine. The three like-minded boys bring in the vegetables first, on which, so that the taste may be refined, they sprinkle the salt of wisdom; Christ pours in the oil; Moses has hastily provided the firstborn and ripe lamb, Abraham faithfully a fat and seasoned calf. Isaac innocently carries the oil and the wood. Jacob patiently presents various flocks. Joseph, moved beforehand, gives out the grain supply to all by measure. Indeed, if anyone wants anything, Noah, the keeper of the ark, who stored it away, will not refuse him anything. Peter the fisherman puts out plenty of fresh sea fish with a wonderful sardine. Tobias the traveller carefully prepares the entrails of the river fish and gives them. John, the camel-hair wearer, running ahead devotedly, has brought from his own stock locusts too. Paul, the host, warns that one should not reproach another who eats. David, the royal shepherd, supplies at every moment silver milk and cheese. Zacchaeus without delay pays out fourfold gifts to take home: our God and Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gives sweet things, as the one who before us fed at this luncheon says: 'How sweet are your words to my throat, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!' These things, brothers, if anyone gladly believes, he will find still more abundant food; and if he is diligent in it, he will always satisfy both himself and others with all good things: through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Rightly does most holy David say: 'Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered': because, brothers, he cannot be blessed who remains in his first birth, whom the kindled torch of seething offences burns at every moment; who carries the filth of his prison with him; who feels the executioner before he sees him; who dreads the judge's name; who, whenever a whisper falls, thinks that he is sought, that he is found; who has no progress of security, even if he happens to lack an accuser, with his conscience as witness; since he cannot lack himself, because conscience, more violent than any torturer, never abandons its sinner. In this guilt, brothers, you have been until now: but you have been bravely examined: but, to receive pardon, you have kept good vigil for yourselves, you have been heard excellently. A new kind of judgment, in which the accused, if he excuses his crime, is condemned; is acquitted, if he confesses. O great power, great skill, great tenderness of our judge! By whom sinners of every kind hasten to be punished, so that they may live blessedly; for the loving sword descends into the inner parts of the sinner, and with one and the same blow, the material of the body remaining unharmed, it kills the old man, creates a new one, and buries it in the element of the sacred flood. And whereas the nature of all waters is such that, when they have received men alive into the deep, they vomit them out dead, our water receives the dead and vomits them out alive, made true men from animal men, to pass from men into angels, if the advance of their age does not change their infancy.

Let us rejoice, brothers, in Christ, and give thanks with hymns, harps, drums and songs to the perpetual triumphant one, who, making his promises perpetual by a loving decree (as they say), has sent truly golden keys: and not those which by a malign kindness take in crimes, which spare the body but cannot free the soul; which, passing over sins by pretending not to see them, do not take them away but shut them in; which release the accused just as they found him; which, in a like case, can profit nothing to the giver himself. But ours absolve in a heap whatever they find, and do not allow anything to be left over: but they open all the inner places of the breasts, diligently drive out all crimes, and diligently close them again, lest anything, even trivial, of what is shut out should return there. Wonderful reasoning, wonderful blessedness! The accused kept safe, the guilt in the accused is punished, and, his state whole, that dies in the man for which the man was going to die. Hence it is that our confession does not need torments; that without the torturer's sweat the accused of his own accord confesses his crimes, so as to become innocent. Precious is the indulgence, brothers, which gives both pardon and healing. For he who spares a poisoner, a murderer, an adulterer, one guilty of incest, a sacrilegious man, unless he has cured his mind, I do not see what he has given him. O deep providence of our liberator! O singular excellence! O sweet sentence! O necessary condemnation! Man is slain so that he may live: the striker and the striker's sword are not seen: the wound of the one struck does not gape, the blood does not flow, the colour does not fade. He is himself, and yet he is not himself. The dwelling indeed seems old, but the inhabitant is new, showing the unbelievers the nobility of his birth by the change of conduct and various virtues. Keep its decree, your infancy remaining always in itself through the whole course of your life: and beware bravely that you never recall the memory of your former first man.

Rejoice, brothers, in Christ, and, having received pardon, guard the royal benefit diligently, bravely and faithfully; for your whole contract has been taken away; rejoice securely: you now owe nothing to the world. You were until now the image of guilt, but you have been bravely examined: and, to receive pardon, you have kept good vigil for yourselves: you have been heard excellently. It is a new kind of judgment, in which the accused, if he excuses his crime, is condemned; is acquitted, if he confesses. Great reasoning, great power, great tenderness of our judge, by whom sinners of every kind hasten to be punished, so that they may live blessedly. Wonderful reasoning: truly a wonderful mystery. The accused kept safe, the guilt in the accused is punished, and, his state whole, that dies in the man for which the man was going to die. Hence it is that our confession does not need torments, that without the sweat of a cruel torturer the accused of his own accord confesses his crimes, so as to become innocent. It is a precious thing, brothers, which gives both honour and reward. O deep providence of our liberator! O singular excellence! O sweet sentence! O necessary condemnation! In himself man is slain so that he may live: the striker is not seen, the striker's sword is not seen, the wound of the one struck does not gape, the blood of the one expiring does not flow, the body does not twitch, the colour does not fade. He is himself, yet he is not himself. The dwelling indeed seems old: but a new inhabitant exults in the change of conduct, to prove to the unbelievers the nobility of his birth by various virtues.

Hail today, brothers born in Christ, and, having received pardon, guard the royal benefit diligently, bravely and faithfully; for your whole contract has been taken away: rejoice securely; you now owe nothing to the world. See, there is no weight, no clank of worldly chains on your necks. Your hands are hindered by no fetters, your feet loaded with no shackles. No terror drives you, no filth darkens you. You who feared your accomplice do not fear your conscience: for your old man has been happily condemned so that he might be acquitted: buried in the wave of the sacred flood, so that, given life in the nest of the tomb, he might taste the rights of resurrection. O great providence of our God! O pure love of a good mother! Receiving those of different race, sex, age and condition, she kills them like a stepmother by hatred of their crimes; she keeps them lovingly like a mother; and she does not give life to those she has killed before she extinguishes all the poison of oldness. Lest she bear anything adulterous, and lest she seem to love anyone more or less, she grants to all one birth, one milk, one stipend, one dignity of the Holy Spirit. How beautiful it is, brothers, and how saving, to admire one whom a little before you held in ridicule; to wish to imitate the virtue of one whose corruption you cursed; to be astonished at one whom you always shuddered at as greedy, pouring out all his goods everywhere on the poor and needy; finally, to rejoice that one whom you knew as a shrine of idolatry is a temple of God. So he is always blessed who remembers that he has been reborn; more blessed he who does not remember what he was before he was reborn; most blessed he who has not changed his infancy with the advance of time.

Heavenly nations, rejoice, new pledges in Christ, and guard with perpetual diligence the whiteness of your most flourishing spiritual birth today, lest you stain it in any way; for it does not know how to repeat what it grants. See, boys, adolescents, young men, old men of both sexes, who were guilty and also unclean by your worldly birth, now on the contrary free of all guilt, you are clean infants: and, what is admirable and pleasing, suddenly in one moment made of equal age though of different ages. But I know your curiosity well from the habit of your old life; which indeed will no longer be allowed you. Perhaps you may ask of us too under what nativity, under what sign your one mother bore you, so different, so many, so unlike, in one birth. As with little ones I will humour you, and lay open with all brevity the secrets of the sacred horoscope.

So, brothers, your nativity is this. First, not a Ram but the Lamb received you, who rejects no one who believes in him; who clothed your nakedness with the snowy whiteness of his fleece; who indulgently poured his blessed milk into your lips gaping with crying. Then not a Bull, swollen in neck, fierce in brow, threatening in horn, but a Calf, excellent, sweet, gentle and mild, warns you that, seeking no omens in any work, you should go under his yoke without malice, and, by taming the earth of your flesh, make it fruitful and bring a happy harvest of divine seeds into the heavenly barns. And the Twins that follow warn, that is, the two Testaments singing salvation, that above all you should flee idolatry, unchastity and avarice, which is an incurable Cancer. Our Lion, as Genesis testifies, is the lion's whelp, whose loving sacraments we celebrate, who lay down and slept so as to conquer death; awoke so as to confer on us the gift of immortality of his blessed resurrection. Fittingly the Virgin follows him, foretelling the Scales, so that we might know that through the Son of God, who came forth incarnate from a virgin, equity and justice were brought to the earth: whoever constantly holds and faithfully administers it will tread, I will not say on the Scorpion, but, as the Lord says in the Gospel, on all serpents whatever with unharmed foot. Nor will he ever fear the devil himself, who is truly the fiercest Archer, armed with various and fiery arrows, piercing at every moment the hearts of the whole human race; for which reason the apostle Paul says thus: 'Put on the armour of God, so that you may stand against the wickedness of the devil, taking the shield of faith, by which you will be able to extinguish all the arrows of the evil one, which are full of fire.' For he sometimes sends against the unhappy the Goat, deformed in face, and through his horn, boiling out through livid lips with foaming veins, with the quivering ruin of his captive, he rages pitiably through all the limbs. Some he makes mad, some furious, some murderers, some adulterers, some sacrilegious, some blind with avarice. It is long to go through each. He has various and countless arts of harming: but all these our Water-bearer, flowing with his saving river, has been accustomed to wipe out without great effort; whom necessarily two Fishes follow in one sign, that is, two peoples from the Jews and the Gentiles, living by the water of baptism, sealed with one sign into one people of Christ.

Let us rejoice, brothers, in Christ, and, enriched by the return of so great a yield, give praise and thanks to God the almighty Father, who has changed tares, darnel, burrs and thistles into joyful wheat, which, purged by careful cultivation, and happily broken by the loving weight of the millstone, sifted in order, all the bran thrown away, has shone with wonderful splendour into white flour; which is adulterated by no leaven, sprinkled and kneaded diligently. Salt has been put into it; it has been smoothed with oil of anointing, tempered with fitting services, and made into unleavened loaves. These, which you see, smelling sweetly from excellent baking, have been baked not in an oven but in a font; not by human but by divine fire: no breeze has spoiled them: no bitter smoke has tainted them: no cold has crushed them: (what is more) they have been raised without leaven. Surely they are not burnt-bottomed loaves, not stale, not scorched, not raw, not mouldy. Milky is their colour, milky their taste.

But perhaps, because some seem smaller in form, if anyone thinks otherwise of the baker, it makes no difference to me, brothers: because, though I am poor, I protect my reputation and I know my faith. Certainly, if they know anything, let the workers who are with me say it. I rejoice in gain, but without awareness of theft, I confess plainly. In short, you too keep the old weight: you have the scale: make a test as you like: weigh each one: you will find none has less. They are all three-pounders, stamped with one pound of the sacred coin, who serve the table.

Heir of the ages, running forward and back with swift course, turned in itself by a solemn motion, bringing forth for itself a beginning from its end, endless birthdays from its setting, the everlasting day has dawned: on which, the sadness of rolled-up winter shaken off, with the new west wind caressing, various flowers spread out in one birth, in kind, colour and scent alike, the sweet meadows breathe as they bud everywhere. A new but rich summer exults, happily beating the eared palm into various heaps of grain; which a must-filled autumn will fittingly follow, so that the pleasure of wine might necessarily be joined to the grace of bread. Who does not recognise that these things are fitted to the heavenly mysteries? For sluggish, filthy and sad winter belongs to those who, serving idolatry, shackled by worldly pleasures, given to lust and the gullet, long neglected, that is, are destined by God to eternal death, because they loved the work of darkness. By spring we must understand the sacred font, from whose rich bed, not the west wind but the Holy Spirit begetting, breathing the divine scent by blessed faith, with diverse gifts but one birth, the most brilliant flowers of the church, our sweet infants, are poured out. Summer is the faithful people, angelic and clean, which, keeping its pledge openly and bravely, cleared of the chaff of sins, desiring to bring precious wheat into the divine barns, though it is moist with its own font, yet always burns with the heat of just activity. Autumn is the place of martyrdom, in which not the vine's but the digger's blood is poured out, so that a blessed life may be gained as the vintage of a precious death. But the day belongs to the sacrament of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is all in all; who is truly eternal, a day without night; whom twelve hours serve in the apostles, twelve months in the prophets; whom the four saving seasons of the Gospels proclaim; to whom answer not yearly but daily fruits, the believing peoples singing a hymn to God, who are propagated through the ages by the whole seed of immortality. Walking in the light of this day, let us exult in faith, delight in good conduct, so that we may deserve to obtain everlasting life; through the Lord Jesus Christ.

In a stable course, crowned with manifold grace, in the solemn track of the seasons, the saving day has come. The same its own successor and its own predecessor, always new in long-lived age, parent of the year and offspring of the year, it goes before and follows times and endless ages. It bears for itself a beginning from its end; and yet it does not depart from its generative cradle. Surely it bears the image of the Lord's sacrament; for by its setting it celebrates the passion, and by its reviving rising the resurrection, through which it promises us the gift of future blessedness: it will grant this also to our candidates, whom a happy setting now invites, so that, plunged in the milky depth of the sacred ocean, rising from there new with the new day, they may come with us to the glory of immortality.

A stable runner, crowned with manifold grace, retracing its steps with swift soles through the windings of the seasons by its solemn office, the saving day has come. The same its own successor and its own predecessor, always new in long-lived age, parent of the year and offspring of the year, it goes before the times that follow and sows endless ages. It bears for itself a beginning from its end; it will grant this today also to our candidates, whom a happy setting already now invites, so that, plunged in the milky depth of the sacred ocean, rising from there new with the new day, radiant with its light, they may with us, keeping their course along the airy path of immortality, come to the time of the promise, where one rises for ever.

Living by its own death, invigorated by the nest of the tomb, traversing the countless turning-posts of the seasons with perennial chariot in one and the same orbit, the great day has come: unfolding months into seasons, seasons into years, years into ages. Without pause it grows into old age; and yet it does not depart from its generative cradle. Surely it bears the image of the Lord's sacrament; for by its setting it celebrates the passion, and by its reviving rising the resurrection, through which it promises us too the resurrection of future blessedness.

Charioteer of the everlasting chariot, unrolling its tracks round the smooth turning-post with a folding solemn circuit, the saving day has come. The same its own successor and its own predecessor: always new in long-lived age: parent of the year and offspring of the year: it goes before the times that follow; and to sow the ages to be gathered, it bears for itself a beginning from its end. This is the day on which likewise, yet once only, out of love for his man, God his craftsman, our Lord, set and rose again, never indeed to set again. This, I say, is the day on which the deadly darkness was broken: on which death was subdued: on which the underworld was compelled to give back alive the men it had received dead. That we may celebrate it always and everywhere with our brothers, increased in faith, number and love, God the almighty Father will grant.

Not in an idle course, continuing the tasks of the world's work through reciprocal windings, always generative, new by its setting, rolled back from itself into itself along its own tracks, the saving day has come; generous with every kind of gift for all the offices of the Lord's sacrament. For it gives the reward to the devout priests, increase of promotion to the ministers who follow, the fruit of immortality to the faithful, care to the penitents, the way of light to the catechumens, to the candidates the remission of all sins. And so, gathering all into the one grace of Christ's body, it leads them to the heavenly kingdom, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever.

Leading the swift course of the everlasting year around into the increase of a twelvefold change, in one and the same orbit, not itself and yet itself, the great day has come, always new by its own setting. What passes, it follows: what is to come, it goes before. In all things it is new; and yet in all things it is old. It changes at every point, not in nature but in number. It becomes the son of the hours, it who is father of all the ages. This is the day, brothers, on which the whole world was redeemed by our Lord; on which the new people, that is, our own, was given life by heavenly seed. This, I say, is the day that shows us the example of resurrection: in whose condition we are indeed more blessed: because it sets so that it may always live; but the believer, rising after the setting of his second birth, is never overtaken by the horror of darkness.

Bent into a beautiful circle, the sacred day is carried in the four-horse chariot of the seasons for the tasks of the world's work, rich in the twelve changes of the months on its perpetual chariot, content with no station, because its course is immortality. Whether it runs or runs back is doubtful: what of it is past remains, so that it may return. A wonderful reasoning indeed! By wearing away the different measure of countless ages it renews their spaces; and yet its orbit is always one: it warns us, brothers, to celebrate with one mind and in concord the saving mysteries of the Lord's passion and resurrection; through our Lord and preserver Jesus Christ.

The magnificent day, dearest brothers, father of the ages, is here, strong with the offspring of every kind of fruit, paying out from its rich bosom the gifts of the four seasons to whom it will. In short, for our candidates the winter of sins ends today: they will rejoice in oil prepared. Today the smiling spring too will render them into various flowers with various gifts, when, poured over with the healthy wave, rejoicing in the harvest of a clear summer, they begin to eat the new bread: nor will the autumn must delay them, filled and inebriated with which they will happily glow with the warmth of the Holy Spirit: that they may never grow cold God the almighty Father will grant to all of us.

As the divine reading testifies, in Egypt Israel, the people of God, was most bitterly oppressed by Pharaoh and his people with the great yoke of captivity. God commands this people to set out, with Moses, that is, and Aaron as leaders, a column of cloud showing the way by day, the same of fire by night. The sea is split; and to the right and left the astonished wave is made solid in steep banks. God's people sails with their feet. Wonderful thing! Its way, with the barbarians pressing hard, neither horseman nor ship can follow. Miriam with the women shakes the drum; a hymn is sung; God's people is freed; and, the waves loosed, the way is wiped out with the persecutor. As far as can be understood spiritually, Egypt is this world. Pharaoh with his people is the devil and every spirit of iniquity. Israel is the Christian people, which is commanded to set out, so as to strive towards the things to come. Moses and Aaron, by what they were, the priesthood, and by their number, showed the sacrament of the two Testaments. The column showing the way is Christ the Lord. That it bears a double image of cloud and fire designates two judgments, one of water, which has been done, the other of fire, which is to come. By the sea we must take the sacred font, in which, by the waters by which God's servants are freed, those who do not flee but carry their sins are wiped out. Miriam, who shakes the drum with the women, was a type of the church, which, singing a hymn with all the churches she has borne, and shaking the true drum of the breast, leads the Christian people not into the desert but to heaven.

He who receives the sacred law spiritually, brothers, is the one who is suckled by its fruit. For the Jews, when they understand carnally, seek in their flocks of cattle a lamb made of a twofold nature, which cannot be found, and so they have lost the true Lamb, Christ, whom they had found: for they did not understand that by the kids was designated human flesh burdened with its sins, by the sheep the spirit of majesty; and both, joined together in Christ, produced the lawful lamb. This is the lamb, brothers, of whom the Law says: 'It is the Lord's Passover.' The apostle Paul too: 'Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.' And why he deigned to be sacrificed John the Baptist proclaimed beforehand in these words: 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.' So he is called firstborn, because he alone is aware of the Father's antiquity. He is ripe, because after him there is no other. He is everlasting, because he was killed and was found alive. He is spotless from sin, because he alone is clean. He is saving, because through him we conquer death. He is male, because he is the power of God. He, I say, is the perfect lamb, because in him that great priest, enclosed in his own victim by a loving mystery, has today rendered God the man whom he sacrificed.

Time does not allow, brothers, rendering the truth to the image. But, Jew, why do you congratulate yourself on the monuments of your crime? You served long in Egypt, not by the lot of a stranger, but by desert. You were snatched from there: you did not escape by your own strength. The column of cloud led you by day, to show you blind; the column of fire by night, to warn you that you would burn. The angel going before moved your camp forward, so that you might be proved ungrateful even to God present. You walked through the sea on foot, so that you might suffer shipwreck on land. For this indeed you drank water from the rock in the desert, tasted manna from heaven, so that, when afterwards you had fallen into want, you might be tormented more sharply by the memory of past goods.

The narrative of sacred history, dearest brothers, has been read through to us thus, wonderful. When the people of Israel, weighed down by the enormous yoke of captivity, was being killed with hard conditions in Egypt by king Pharaoh, by God's mercy, with Moses as leader, it was commanded to set out. Not the disc of the sun by day, but a column of cloud; not the white moon, but a column of fire by night opened its unknown way: and when it came between two elements, there it dreaded the outcome of present death. For on one side it was pressed by the hostile swords of the pursuing Egyptians; on the other it was pressed, shut in by the great barrier of the sea. For there were no ships there, no means of crossing: when suddenly by divine providence the sea is split: the waters on the right and left, reined in by icy astonishment, are drawn up into glassy walls, waiting for the passage of God's people, so as to be a sea for the pursuers. Ungrateful Israel is led into the way, in which it could fear neither swords nor waves. Wonderful thing! In the middle of the deep it exults dusty, it which saw around it its triumph happily destroying by shipwreck. These things, brothers, the Jew proclaims: and yet, mad, he does not still believe in God, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

Time does not allow rendering the truth to the image. But, Jew, why do you congratulate yourself on what designates your crime? You served long in Egypt, not by necessity but by desert. You were snatched from there: you did not escape by your own strength. The column of cloud led you by day, to show you blind; the column of fire by night, to signify that you would burn. The angel goes before your camp, so that you may nowhere excuse your crime. You walk through the sea; the wave, fleeing back on itself to right and left, testifies that your feet are swift to shed blood. In short, you are received by the desert, where you now know that you have arrived. There indeed you drank water from the rock and tasted manna from heaven for this purpose, that you might know, wretched man, what you were going to lose.

The Jews are known to be unhappy from the very thing by which they think themselves blessed: for I think it better for a wretched man to remain in his state than for a blessed one to be rolled down into the last miseries. For they proclaim that their fathers destroyed the Egyptian people by fleeing; that God went before their ancestors and preceded their way; not understanding that from then on he had removed them from his face and cast them behind his back with those who were to come after. They proclaim that the Red Sea too was split down the middle into twin banks, and, with walls drawn up to right and left, packed into a battle line, the liquid of the waves preserved, the nature of the deep, dried and straining against itself, hung astonished; that an earthly way shone between the waves, which surely announced not the merit of a heavenly people but the ruin of an earthly one, to be scattered through the whole world. Therefore he led them from there into the desert, and providing milk with honey warned them that the wounds of a detestable mind needed curing: for he bedewed the sick and languid with the tenderness of manna; for they were not fit or worthy to enjoy the perpetual solidity of heavenly bread. The rock gushed into a spring for them, so that they might drink, as they deserved, afterwards muddy water from broken cisterns, as the Lord says: 'They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water.' Finally, what do these unhappy people hope from the image, whose truth they have not deserved to know, our Lord Jesus Christ?

I do not see how the Pharisee can celebrate a lawful Passover: whose eminent and famous temple, levelled to the ground by a pitiable devastation, lies buried in its own dust. The priestly chair of pestilence has been rightly destroyed by the sacrilege of its worshippers. The emptied horn no longer breathes ointments. The prophets testify that its feast days have been turned into mourning and its songs into lamentation. We have learned that bulls, rams, goats and lambs were often rejected by the Lord. What more? He cannot celebrate any mystery, brothers, whose sacrifice you see has been condemned by divine sentence; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed with the Father and the Holy Spirit for all ages of ages.

The Jew claims that he keeps a lawful Passover; to whom nothing has remained of the old sacrament but a tale woven with empty sighs. In short, that royal temple lies levelled to the ground. Its altars, overturned by hand with their sacrifices, scattered into dust, have vanished. The priestly chair of pestilence has been destroyed, as its name deserves. The saving lamb, which is designated from sheep and from goats, cannot be found among the flocks. His feast days and songs, according to God's word, have turned into lamentation and mourning. That proud city is in servitude. Indeed he kills countless flocks of sheep, which he eats with bitterness. Who does not understand, brothers, that this is not a Passover but the stinking banquet of a bloody robber?

The Pharisees claim that they keep a lawful Passover: who, with what was thought the supreme temple, have lost the supreme priesthood; they have been deprived of the horn of royal ointment. Circumcision, the testimony of an impure mind, inflicted as a marked wound, threatens that punishment is now hanging over them. Every kind of beast with its sacrifice is rejected. Their fasts, feast days and every solemnity are an abomination before God. Since this is so, by whom, how, from where is the Passover celebrated? Add that by their own fault they lost the lawful lamb whom they had found, whom Scripture designated from sheep and goats: from goats surely, because of the clothing of sinful flesh; from sheep, because of the spirit of majesty. He is called firstborn, because besides the Father there is no one first before him. Ripe, because he is eternal. Perfect, because he is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Spotless, because he alone has no sin. Saving, because he changed death into life: who was killed for us and lives; buried and rose again; was thought a man and was found God, glorious for ever and ever.

If the Jews glory in the recollection of an emptied image, how much more the Christian, in whom there is not a figure but the truth? Recognise it and prove it alike from the things themselves. The Jews proclaim that their ancestors, weighed down by the heavy yoke of servitude to Pharaoh and his army, were freed from Egypt. Not only our ancestors, but all the Christian offspring, is always, at every moment, freed from the rage of the devil and the violent crowd of idols, from the true Egypt, that is, from this world. Moses gave them leadership: our leader is Christ the Lord. A column of cloud and fire showed them the way: to us the most brilliant oracles of the Old and New Testament have revealed the way and the true Christ the Lord, who says: 'I am the way and the truth.' Their fugitive people crossed the Red Sea dry-shod, with the astonished rocks of the waves to right and left: but our sea happily shipwrecks those whom it receives willingly: and, killing all sins, it submerges them in the generative wave, so that, made heavenly, they do not know how to desire the earth. In short, they after the sea came to the desert: we after baptism come to paradise. Manna was rained on them in their hunger: but we cannot hunger for ever, who carry with us the supply of heavenly bread. For them in their thirst the rock flowed into drink: whoever drinks at Christ's fountain does not know thirst for ever. To them in the desert the sweetness of milk and honey was shown: but to us, what is more, the blessedness of eternal life, sweeter than honey and whiter than milk, will be given in the kingdom of God.

Why does the empty Pharisee swell, whom the past shadow of a moment delights? He exults that he grew in Egypt: but he shrank on his native soil. That he was freed from the bonds of captivity: but he is still bound by the ways of barbarian fury. God gave him leadership: the same afterwards cast him from his face. He obtained a kingdom, so that after royal dignity he might serve the Roman Empire with greater disgrace. Do you want to know how great his holiness is? Him whom the sea bore united, the earth cannot carry scattered.

How long, Jew, of brutish heart, do you not yet scatter the darkness, and not even by proof recognise the oracles of the sacred law already fulfilled in Christ? Yet, according to your understanding, if you want to celebrate a lawful Passover, you must look for a lamb, as was commanded, from lambs and goats, joined of discordant nature, which your ancestors themselves did not find in their flocks of cattle. And would that you might find it: for you are worthy of such a sacrifice, you who think your salvation lies in the entrails of an uncertain beast. Indeed, that you kill many everywhere comes from your gluttony. That it is in various places, from your vanity. That you eat it with bitterness, from your unhappiness. I say nothing of the fact that it is a commemoration of an ungrateful man, not a remedy, a sacrifice which he who commanded it himself rejects being done. I say only this. Fulfil the law at least in the rest, as it is written: 'Gird your loins. Put shoes on your feet. Take a staff in your hand.' Set out into the desert, if you want to imitate your ancestors.

Learn in a few words, Christian, that the Jews cannot celebrate a lawful Passover. Since the temple of Solomon, overthrown by enemy devastation, lies buried with its ruin: where do they sacrifice? They no longer have priests to sacrifice for their salvation. The Lord abhors bulls, goats, rams and lambs; from what do they sacrifice? They have forsaken God and overturned his altars: to whom do they sacrifice? Indeed they keep only this as their own, that, to increase their vile lust more and more, they baptize themselves at every moment with viler washings, always ungrateful to God.

Learn in a few words that the Jews not only cannot celebrate a lawful Passover but keep nothing at all of divine religion. The temple of Solomon, in which they trusted, has fallen. They themselves overturned God's altars. The law and the prophets were until John. Mourning is proclaimed to their priests. The sacrifice is taken away. The ointment ceases. Circumcision is made void. The sabbath is censured. New moons and feast days are held in hatred. The Romans possess their kingdom. Nothing, I think, has remained to them as their own, except that, neglecting the saving Lamb, ungrateful, bitter men eat cheap lambs with bitterness.

Learn, you who are skilled in the law, with God himself speaking, that the Jews cannot celebrate a lawful Passover: by him the synagogue is called a den of robbers; the priestly chair, pestilence; the sacrifice, the slaughter of a dog; the fasts, hatred; the people, a brood of vipers. After this what they can presume I cannot judge, men who place their salvation in the death of cattle: since God, after they had come out of Egypt, where they held an imaginary Passover, says: 'I am full of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of lambs: for who has required these things from your hands?' Surely, brothers, he without hesitation took away the Passover from them who rejected that by which the Passover is carried out by them. But they worship the image. Not even that, for he worships the image falsely who does not love its truth. Indeed they do only this fittingly, though innocents: they kill lambs everywhere like ravening wolves.

Wake up, Christian, and, shaking off all the torpor of worldly sleep, learn virtue from the boys with the ears of your heart open. But see that you do not think false that the fire gave way to them. Reason testifies to the truth. He who now baptizes those who believe in him with the Holy Spirit and fire was present then too with the number of his Trinity. In short, recognise that the thing was done in a sacrament. Thrown into the furnace, as soon as they were submerged in the flames, at once the burning is tempered by an invisible dew: death, fleeing, changes its duty: the burners are burned: the flame caresses the burned as they sing a hymn: God is blessed by all creation. In the three exults one mind, one power, one triumph. Life is bettered by punishment. The king would not have envied the boys if he had not ordered them to burn.

It is in a way part of martyrdom, dearest brothers, that the martyrs did not shudder at the punishment: for as much as the mournful contemplation of manifold cruelty draws back from the crown, so much a noble and perfect faith, whatever the torture may be, folds it into its vows. In short, the three boys in that sacred contest set God before their eyes, not the flames; the future reward, not the penalty. And so, triumphing amid the foul balls of surging fire, they taught the barbarian king, all his threats, and the punishment itself, that fires are not stronger than holy men, through the Lord Jesus, who is blessed for ever and ever.

Whoever believes undaunted in the martyrdom of the three boys can himself also obtain martyrdom. For so great was the force of the contest that even the fire itself shuddered at it: for when the barbarian king, with excessive cruelty, took counsel against the three boys, the fire of the furnace was armed with sevenfold fuel beyond its custom. I believe that by divine providence the spiritual number too fits the sacrament of the Trinity. Indeed, nor was the grace of baptism lacking to them in the bedewed furnace. O admirable burning! O spectacle truly worthy of God! Those who hear fear; those who lit it burn; those who were burned come out of the furnace sanctified and unharmed, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

A huge punishment is sometimes followed by a huger glory, especially in divine things: in which the happy, with persistent devotion, guard their religion rather than their safety. So when I hear that the three boys were burned, at first I shudder violently; then I would wish to become their partner, when I learn that amid the flames, bedewed, they sang a hymn to God securely: for so great is the power and so great the strength of faith that it compels even the elements themselves to serve its worshippers against their own nature. Hence, brothers, let not the contemplation of a most atrocious thing frighten you: for no punishment is now to be feared, when the surviving life of the burned mocks the fires.

Sacred history, dearest brothers, has revealed to us a wonderful contest, delightful to God, of fire and faith. For two discordant things came together into one concord by devotion to the Lord: for in the three boys faith did not fear to be punished: when they were thrown into the furnace, the seething fire gave way, as it perceived that they were of one power. In short, the burning burned the burners, not the burned. O admirable reasoning! O inestimable glory of God! By the sacrament of the Trinity the nature of so powerful an element was subdued. Those who were thought to be extinguished by the fire shine out more blessed for being burned.

Receive with believing heart a wonderful thing, Christian, famous for every example of virtues. Three truly Hebrew boys, greater than old men in constancy, stronger than young men in courage, equal to one another, fortified by the sacrament of the Trinity, solid in the one faith of unity, equal in equality, glorious in the victory of suffering. These the barbarian king ordered to be burned, because they scorned to worship his statue. When they were thrown into the furnace of burning fire, the fire received them devoutly and eagerly. The caressing flames lick them, bedewed. Wonderful thing! Shade is within, fire without: within a hymn is sung, without wailing is heard. O great power of God! The burners were burned up by the fire: and those who were burned, surviving their burning, come out of the furnace in triumph, by the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Rejoice, Christian, and fear God bravely, if you wish not to fear the fires of the devil. See, the boys fortified by the sacrament, three in number but one in virtue, are not harmed by the panting flames and the roaring furnace. Burned, they sing a hymn; they confound the barbarian king by the tenacity of their faith. They are avenged on their burners. They see God. Death has passed into life, fear into glory. So who would not wish to burn?

Three venerable Hebrews, fortified by the sacrament of the number, tender in age but robust in solidity of faith, glorious with punishment in their support, out of love for divine religion scorned to worship the king's image, since they scorned the king himself: and he, puffed up with anger, ordered the furnace to be heated seven times more than usual; and lest anything seem lacking to the savagery of the raging king, the fire is roused, armed with pitch and tow: even heaven itself grows red with alien fires from the seething balls. Into it the innocent are hurled: and there they find him for whose sake they are hurled. In short, they are received not by flame but by dew; by God's condescension, not by punishment. O happy punishment, which immortality and the crown follow, safety prevailing!

My sermon to you today, dearest brothers, is not about human deeds or merits: Daniel is not brought in, fearless amid the raging jaws of roaring lions, filled with a heavenly meal; nor Jonah, amid seething storms and the mad waves of the anxious sea, safer in the fish's belly than in the ship's hold; nor the three boys, avenged on their burners by the fire in which they were thought to burn: but about our Lord, whom (oh, the wickedness!) strangers venerate and (if it may be said) his own tear apart. Indeed, armed with none of the arguments which those gladly use who put together falsehoods against the truth, but with heavenly testimonies, unassailable, manifest and pure, so that the learned may approve, the less instructed may confirm themselves, the untaught may learn, and those who strive to blaspheme may, if it can happen, even late come to their senses for the good of their salvation.