Sermon 273
On the Feast Day of the Martyrs Fructuosus the Bishop and the Deacons Augurius and Eulogius

1. The Lord Jesus not only instructed his martyrs by precept but also strengthened them by example. For so that those who were to suffer might have something to follow, he himself suffered first on their behalf: he showed the way and made the road. Death belongs either to the soul or to the body. But the soul both cannot die and can die: it cannot die, because its capacity for awareness never perishes; and yet it can die, if it loses God. For just as the soul is itself the life of its own body, so God is the life of the soul itself. Therefore, just as the body dies when the soul, which is its life, leaves it, so the soul dies when God leaves it. But so that God may not leave the soul, let it always remain in faith, so that it does not fear to die for God; and then it does not die, abandoned by God. It remains, then, that the death which is feared is to be feared for the body. But even on that score the Lord Christ made his martyrs secure. For how could they be uncertain about the wholeness of their limbs, when they had received assurance about the number of their hairs? The very hairs of your head, he says, are numbered (Matt 10:30). And in another place he says still more plainly: For I tell you that not a hair of your head will perish (Luke 21:18). The Truth speaks—and does weakness tremble?

2. Blessed are the saints, in whose memorials we celebrate the day of their suffering: they received, in exchange for a temporal welfare, an eternal crown and immortality without end; to us they left, in these solemnities, an exhortation. When we hear how the martyrs suffered, we rejoice and glorify God in them; nor do we grieve that they died. For if they had not died for Christ, would they be alive even today? Why should their confession not accomplish what sickness was going to accomplish anyway? You heard the questions of the persecutors, you heard the answers of those who confessed, when the saints' passion was read. Among the rest, what was that saying of the blessed bishop Fructuosus? When someone said to him, asking that he keep him in mind and pray for him, he answered: I must pray for the catholic Church, spread abroad from the east to the west. For who prays for individuals? Yet no individual is passed over by one who prays for all. No member is overlooked by him whose prayer is poured out for the whole body. What, then, do you think he was advising the man who asked him to pray for him? What do you suppose? Surely you understand. You are reminded by us. The man was asking him to pray for him. And I, he says, pray for the catholic Church, spread abroad from the east to the west. If you want me to pray for you, do not depart from her for whom I pray.

3. And what too of that saying of the holy deacon who suffered and was crowned with his bishop? The judge said to him: Do you also worship Fructuosus? And he replied: I do not worship Fructuosus, but I worship God, whom Fructuosus also worships. By this he warned us to honor the martyrs and, together with the martyrs, to worship God. For we ought not to be such as we grieve to see the pagans are. They indeed worship dead men. For all those whose names you hear, to whom temples were built, were men; and in human affairs most of them, indeed almost all, held royal power. You hear of Jupiter, you hear of Hercules, you hear of Neptune, you hear of Pluto, Mercury, Liber, and the rest: they were men. This is declared not only in the fables of the poets but also in the history of the nations. Those who have read know it; those who have not read should believe those who have. Those men, then, by certain temporal benefits won human affairs over to themselves, and they came to be worshiped by empty men chasing after empty things, so that they were called gods and held to be gods; so that temples were built to them as gods, supplication was made to them as gods, altars were raised to them as gods, priests were ordained to them as gods, and victims were sacrificed to them as gods.

4. But the true God alone ought to have a temple, and sacrifice ought to be offered to the true God alone. These things, then, which are owed rightly and wholly to the one true God, the wretched and deceived were rendering to many false gods. From this a perverse error besieged human wretchedness; from this the devil lay brooding over the prostrate minds of all. But when the grace of the Savior and the mercy of God at last looked upon the unworthy, there was fulfilled what was foretold by the prophet in the Song of Songs: Arise, O north wind; and come, O south wind; and blow through my garden, and the spices shall flow forth (Song 4:16). It is as if it were said: Arise, O north wind. For the northern region of the world is cold. Under the devil, as under the north wind, souls grew cold, and, having lost the warmth of love, they froze. But what is said to him? Arise, O north wind. It is enough that you have brooded, enough that you have possessed, enough that you have lain over the prostrate: Arise. Come, O south wind, the wind from the region of light and warmth: and blow through my garden, and the spices shall flow forth. These spices were read of just a little while ago.

5. What are these spices? Of them the Lord's own bride says: We will run after the fragrance of your ointments (Song 1:3). Mindful of that fragrance, the apostle Paul says: We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place, both among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. A great mystery: We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place, both among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some indeed a fragrance of life unto life, to others a fragrance of death unto death. And who is sufficient to understand these things? (2 Cor 2:15-16) How does a good fragrance quicken some and kill others? A good fragrance, not a bad one. For he does not say: A good fragrance quickens the good, and a bad fragrance kills the bad. He does not say: To some we are a good fragrance unto life, to others a bad fragrance unto death. He does not say this; but: We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place. Woe to the wretched whom a good fragrance kills. If, then, you are a good fragrance, O Paul, why does this fragrance kill some and quicken others? That it quickens some, I hear, I understand; that it kills others, I grasp with difficulty—especially because you said: And who is sufficient for these things? It is no wonder that we are not sufficient. May he make us sufficient, whose fragrance it was of which we speak. For the Apostle answers me at once: Understand: We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place, both among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. We are nonetheless a good fragrance, to some a fragrance of life unto life, to others a fragrance of death unto death. This fragrance quickens those who love, it kills those who envy. For if there were no splendor of the saints, the envy of the wicked would not arise. The fragrance of the saints began to suffer persecution: but, like flasks of ointment, the more they were broken, the more widely the fragrance was spread abroad.

6. Blessed are those whose passion has been recited. Blessed is holy Agnes, whose day of suffering is today. A virgin who was what she was called. In Latin Agnes means "lamb"; in Greek, "chaste." She was what she was called: deservedly was she crowned. What then, my brothers, what shall I say to you about those men whom the pagans worshiped as gods, to whom they rendered temples, priesthoods, altars, and sacrifices? What shall I say to you? That they are not to be compared with our martyrs? Even this very thing is an insult, that I so much as say it. To whatever feeble believers there may be, of whatever sort, even though they are still carnal and to be nourished with milk and not solid food, God forbid that those sacrilegious men be compared with them. Against one little faithful Christian old woman, what is Juno worth? Against one weak old Christian man trembling in all his limbs, what is Hercules worth? Hercules conquered Cacus, Hercules conquered the lion, Hercules conquered the dog Cerberus: Fructuosus conquered the whole world. Compare man with man. Agnes, a girl of thirteen, conquered the devil. That girl conquered him who, through Hercules, deceived many.

7. And yet, dearly beloved, we do not regard our martyrs, with whom those men are in no respect to be compared, as gods, nor do we worship them as gods. We do not render them temples, nor altars, nor sacrifices. Priests do not make offerings to them—God forbid. They are offered to God. Indeed, these things are offered to God, by whom all things are bestowed on us. Even when we make an offering at the memorials of the holy martyrs, do we not offer to God? The holy martyrs have an honorable place. Take note: in the recitation at the altar of Christ they are recited in a better place; yet they are not adored in Christ's stead. When have you heard it said at the memorial of Saint Theogenes, by me, or by any brother and colleague of mine, or by any presbyter: I offer to you, Saint Theogenes? Or: I offer to you, Peter? Or: I offer to you, Paul? You have never heard it. It is not done: it is not permitted. And if it be said to you, Do you then worship Peter? answer what Eulogius answered about Fructuosus: I do not worship Peter, but I worship God, whom Peter also worships. Then Peter loves you. For if you wish to regard Peter as God, you strike against the rock, and take care lest you break your foot by striking against the rock.

8. That you may know that what I say is true, listen—I admonish you. In the Acts of the Apostles, when the apostle Paul had worked a great miracle in Lycaonia, the citizens of that region or province thought that gods had come down to men, and they believed Barnabas to be Jupiter and Paul to be Mercury, because he was the readier in speech. Believing this, they brought garlands and victims and wished to offer sacrifice to them. They at once, not mocking but horrified, immediately tore their garments and said to them: Brothers, what are you doing? We also are mortal men like you: but we proclaim to you the true God. Turn away from these empty things (See Acts 14:14-15). You see how the saints shuddered at being worshiped as gods. Likewise the blessed evangelist John, who wrote the Apocalypse, when he was astonished at the marvelous things shown to him, in terror fell at a certain place at the feet of the angel by whom all things were being shown to him. And the angel, to whom no man is to be compared, said to him: Rise, what are you doing? Adore God. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brothers (See Rev 19:10). The martyrs hate your wine jars, the martyrs hate your frying pans, the martyrs hate your drunken revels. I say this without offense to those who are not such: let those take it to themselves who do such things. The martyrs hate these things, they do not love those who do them. But much more do they hate it if they are worshiped.

9. Therefore, dearly beloved, exult on the days of the holy martyrs: pray that you may follow the footsteps of the martyrs. For it is not that you are men and they were not men; it is not that you were born and they were born elsewhere; it is not that they bore flesh of a different kind than the flesh you bear. We are all from Adam, and we all strive to be in Christ. Our Lord himself, the very head of the Church, the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of the Father through whom all things were made, had flesh of no other kind than ours. Therefore he willed to take up manhood from a virgin, to be born in flesh from one of the human race. For if he had made himself a body from some other source, who would believe that he bore the flesh that we also bear? Yet he bore flesh in the likeness of sinful flesh, while we bear sinful flesh. For he was born not from the seed of a man, nor from the desire of male and female: but from what? From the message of the Father. And yet, though he was wondrously born, he deigned to be born mortal, and to die for us, and to redeem us by his blood, insofar as he is man. See what I am saying, brothers: Christ himself, though he is God, though he is with the Father one God, though he is the Word of the Father, the only-begotten, equal to the Father and coeternal—yet insofar as he deigned to be man, he chose rather to be called priest than to demand a priest for himself; he chose rather to be a sacrifice than to require one; insofar as he is man. For insofar as he is God, all that is owed to the Father is owed also to the only-begotten Son. Therefore, dearly beloved, venerate the martyrs, praise them, love them, proclaim them, honor them: worship the God of the martyrs. Turning to the Lord, and so on.

Sermon 274
On the Feast Day of the Martyr Vincent

1. We have watched a great spectacle with the eyes of faith: the holy martyr Vincent conquering everywhere. He conquered in words, he conquered in punishments; he conquered in confession, he conquered in tribulation; he conquered when burned by fire, he conquered when sunk beneath the waves: at the last he conquered when tortured, he conquered when dead. When his flesh, in which was the trophy of Christ the conqueror, was thrown from the little boat into the sea, it silently said: We are cast down, but we do not perish (2 Cor 4:9). Who granted this endurance to his soldier, except the one who first shed his blood for him? To whom it is said in the Psalm: For you are my endurance, O Lord; O Lord, my hope from my youth (Ps 71:5 (70:5)). A great contest brings about a great glory; not human or temporal glory, but divine and everlasting. Faith fights; and when faith fights, no one overcomes the flesh. For even though it is mangled, even though it is torn apart, when does one perish who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ? A powerful man cannot lose what he has bought with his gold—and shall Christ lose what he has bought with his blood? But let all this be referred not to the glory of man but to the glory of God. From him truly comes endurance—true endurance, holy endurance, religious endurance, upright endurance; Christian endurance is the gift of God. For many robbers too are tortured most patiently; and, not yielding and overcoming their torturer, they are afterward punished with eternal fire. The cause distinguishes the martyr from mere endurance—indeed, from the obstinacy of the wicked. The punishment is alike, but the cause is unlike. With the voice of the martyrs we have sung (for Vincent had said these words in his prayers): Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from a nation that is not holy (Ps 43:1 (42:1)). His cause was set apart: because he contended for the truth, for justice, for God, for Christ, for the faith, for the unity of the Church, for undivided love. Who granted him this endurance? Who? Let the Psalm tell us. For there it is read, there it is sung: Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from him is my endurance (Ps 62:1,5 (61:1,5)). Whoever thinks that Saint Vincent could do these things by his own strength is very much mistaken. For whoever presumes that he can do this by his own strength, even if he seems to conquer by endurance, is conquered by pride. To conquer well is to conquer all the engines of the enemy. While he plies his enticements, he is conquered by self-restraint; he inflicts punishments and torments, he is conquered by endurance; he suggests errors, he is conquered by wisdom. At the last, when all these have been conquered, he suggests to the soul: Well done, well done! How much you have been able to do! How much you have contended! Who is to be compared with you? How well you have conquered! Let the holy soul answer him: Let them be confounded and put to shame, who say to me, Well done, well done! (Ps 40:15 (39:16)) When, then, does the soul conquer, except when it says: In the Lord shall my soul be praised; let the meek hear, and be glad (Ps 34:2 (33:3))? For the meek know what I say, because in them the Word dwells, in them the example dwells. For one who is not meek does not know the savor of what is said: In the Lord shall my soul be praised. For everyone who is not meek, but proud, harsh, puffed up, wishes to be praised in himself, not in the Lord. But one who says: In the Lord shall my soul be praised, does not say: Let the nations hear, and be glad; let men hear, and be glad: but: Let the meek hear, and be glad. Let those hear to whom it has savor. For Christ was meek: Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter (Isa 53:7). Meek for this reason, because like a sheep he was led to the slaughter. Let the meek hear, and be glad. For they have a savor for what is said: Taste, and see how sweet the Lord is: blessed is the man who hopes in him (Ps 34:8 (33:9)). We have heard a long reading, and the day is short: with a long sermon we too ought not to detain your patience. We know that you have listened patiently, and that by long standing and listening you have suffered along with the martyr, as it were. May he who hears you love you and crown you.

Sermon 275
On the Feast Day of the Martyr Vincent

1. Our mind has taken in a great and most wonderful spectacle: and we have drawn in with our inner eyes a pleasure not utterly empty and ruinous, such as is usual in the theaters of trifles of every kind, but plainly most useful and most fruitful, when the glorious passion of blessed Vincent was read. It was something to see the unconquered soul of the martyr striving in fiercest conflict against the snares of the ancient enemy, against the savagery of the impious judge, against the pains of mortal flesh, and overcoming all things by the help of the Lord. So indeed it was, dearly beloved, so it was through and through: let us in the Lord praise this soul, that the meek may hear, and be glad (Ps 34:2 (33:3)). What words he heard, what answers he gave, what torments he overcame, the reading just gone through has declared, and has set before us, as it were in our sight, the things that were done. So great was the pain in his limbs, so great the security in his words, as though it were one man being tortured and another speaking. And truly it was another: for the Lord foretold this, and promised it to his martyrs, saying: It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:20). In the Lord, then, let this soul be praised. For what is man, that you are mindful of him? (Ps 8:4 (8:5)) Or what strength has the dust, except by the help of him who made us from the dust? That he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31). For if the diabolical and seducing spirit often fills either his lying soothsayers or his false martyrs, so that they either inflict bodily torments on themselves or despise those inflicted on them: what great thing is it for the Lord our God, to confirm the preaching of his name, to hand over indeed the flesh of his very preachers into the hands of their persecutors, but to take up their minds into the citadel of freedom; so that even while the flesh suffers wrong, the mind asserts the truth? Namely, so that he makes them conquerors not by mere endurance but by justice: since it is the cause, not the punishment, that distinguishes martyrs. For many have endured pains through obstinacy, not constancy; through vice, not virtue; through a depraved error, not right reason; with the devil possessing them, not persecuting them. But in our conquering Vincent, it was indeed he who conquered who possessed him: but the one who possessed him had cast out the prince of this world (See John 12:31), so that even fighting from without, he might be overcome, who had already been overcome lest he should rule within. For he who was cast out, never ceasing, like a roaring lion goes about seeking whom he may devour (See 1 Pet 5:8). But the one who reigns in us, having shut the other out, fights him for us.

2. In the end the devil was more tormented by the unconquered Vincent than Vincent was by the persecuting devil. For the more truculent and exquisite those torments were, the more the tortured man triumphed over the torturer; and from that flesh, as from earth watered with his own blood—the very thing over which the enemy grieved the more—a palm was growing. But because the enemy rages in hiding, and in hiding is afflicted when conquered, it appeared openly in the governor, a man, what the devil was suffering in secret; and that invisible adversary was betrayed through the cracks of his little vessel, which he had filled, as it burst. For the voices of this man, his eyes, his face, and the turbulent movement of his whole body indicated how much heavier the torments were that he felt within than those which he was inflicting on the martyr without. If we consider the agitation of the one torturing and the tranquillity of the one suffering the torments, it is most easy to see who was beneath the punishments and who was above them. What joys will there be in the strength of those who reign, when so great are those of the ones dying for the truth? What will the fountain of life be, with the incorruption of the body, when its dew is so sweet amid torments? And what will the eternal flame do to the impious, when the madness of an angry heart so devastates them? What will they suffer when they are judged, who even while they judge are tormented? What power will the future judgments of the saints have, when in this life the judge's tribunal has tortured the martyr's rack?

3. Now the Lord gives a great testimony to his witnesses, since he who governed the hearts of those contending does not abandon even the bodies of the dead; as he showed by a most splendid miracle concerning the body of this same blessed Vincent: so that what the enemy had wished, striven, and contrived should not appear at all, was, by so present a nod of the divine will, betrayed and shown forth to be buried more reverently and venerated, so that in him a splendid memory of victorious piety and of vanquished impiety might endure. Truly precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Ps 116:15 (115:15)): when not even the earth of the flesh is despised, though life has left it; and when, the invisible soul departing from its visible house, the dwelling of the servant is guarded by the Lord's care, and is honored to the Lord's glory by faithful fellow servants. For what does God do, in working marvelous works concerning the bodies of the dead saints, except bear witness that what dies does not perish to him; and so that from this it may be understood in what honor he holds with himself the souls of the slain, when their lifeless flesh is adorned with so great an effect of divinity? For just as the Apostle, speaking of the members of the Church, used a likeness from the members of our body, since upon those parts of ours that are less honorable we bestow more abundant honor (See 1 Cor 12:23): so the providence of the Creator, by granting to the corpses of the martyrs such splendid testimonies of miracles, bestows more abundant honor upon the bloodless remains of men, and there, where what remains seems already unsightly with life having departed, there the giver of life appears more evidently present.

Sermon 276
On the Feast of the Martyr Vincent

1. In the passion that was recited to us today, my brothers, there is clearly shown a ferocious judge, a bloody torturer, an unconquered martyr. In his body, furrowed with various punishments, the torments had already failed, and yet the limbs still held out. So much impiety, convicted by so many miracles, persisted; so much weakness, harried by so many sufferings, did not yield; let the divinity that was at work, then, be acknowledged. For how could corruptible dust hold out against such monstrous torments, unless Christ dwelt in it? For in all these things he is to be acknowledged, he is to be glorified, he is to be praised, who both in the first calling gave faith, and in the last passion gave strength. Do you wish to know that both were given as a gift? Hear the apostle Paul: To you, he says, it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him (Phil 1:29). Both of these the levite Vincent had received—he had received them and possessed them. For if he had not received them, what would he have? He had confidence in speech, he had endurance in suffering. Let no one, then, presume upon his own heart when he utters speech; let no one trust in his own strength when he undergoes temptation: because both that we may speak good things prudently, our wisdom is from him; and that we may bear evil things bravely, our endurance is from him. Recall the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel admonishing his disciples; recall the King of martyrs equipping his cohorts with spiritual arms, pointing out the battles, supplying the aids, promising the rewards; who, when he had said to his disciples: In this world you will have affliction, at once added, that the terrified heart might be consoled, saying: But take heart, I have overcome the world (John 16:33). Why then do we wonder, dearly beloved, if Vincent conquered in him by whom the world was conquered? In this world, he says, you will have affliction; so that, if it presses, it may not overwhelm; if it assaults, it may not defeat.

2. The world brings forth a double battle line against the soldiers of Christ. Take note, brothers. A double battle line, I said, the world brings forth against the soldiers of Christ. For it flatters, in order to deceive; it terrifies, in order to break. Let our own pleasure not hold us, let another's cruelty not terrify us; and the world is conquered. To both approaches Christ comes to meet, and the Christian is not conquered. If in this passion human endurance is considered, it begins to be incredible; if the divine power is recognized, it ceases to be wonderful. So great a cruelty was raging in the martyr's body, and so great a tranquillity was brought forth in his voice; so great a harshness of punishments was raging in his limbs, and so great a security was sounding in his words, that in a wondrous way it might be thought, while Vincent was suffering, that some other Vincent was being tortured, or at least that another was speaking. And truly, dearly beloved brothers, so it was: it was utterly so; another was speaking. For Christ promised this also to his witnesses in the Gospel, whom he was preparing for contests of this kind. For he says thus: Do not plan beforehand how or what you are to speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:19-20). So the flesh was suffering, and the Spirit was speaking. And as the Spirit spoke, not only was impiety convicted, but weakness too was strengthened.

3. So many torments made the martyr more illustrious to us. For, pierced by a manifold variety of wounds, he did not abandon the fight, but renewed it more fiercely. You might think that the flame hardened him rather than burned him; and that, like a potter's furnace receiving soft clay, it made him into a hard vessel of pottery. Our martyr could say to Dacian: My flesh no longer cares for your fires, because: My strength is dried up like a potsherd (Ps 22:15 (21:16)). And since it is truly written: The potter's furnace tests the vessels, and the testing of tribulation tests righteous men (Sir 27:5); Vincent was tested and refined by that fire: but Dacian truly burned and crackled. For if he was not burning, why was he smoking? For what were the words of the angry man but the smoke of one burning? So, while our martyr had refreshment in his heart, the other was bringing the flames to bear from without; but he himself, kindled by the torches of his fury, was burning within like an oven, and was consuming his indweller, the devil. For through Dacian's furious voices, through his fierce eyes and threatening looks and the movements of his whole body, that inner indweller of his was shown; and through these visible signs he was betrayed, as through the bursting cracks of his little vessel, which he had filled. The torments did not torment our martyr as much as madness was devastating that man.

4. But now, brothers, all those things have passed away—both the wrath of Dacian and the punishment of Vincent. Yet the punishment of Dacian and the crown of Vincent remain. Then, leaving aside for the moment the bounds of future recompense, let us show the glory of the martyrs even in this world. What region today, what province across the sea, as far as either the Roman empire or the Christian name extends, does not rejoice to celebrate the birthday of Vincent? But who today would have heard even the name of Dacian, had he not read the passion of Vincent? And that the Lord preserved the martyr's body with such great care—what else did it show, except that he governed him living, whom he did not abandon lifeless? Living, then, Vincent conquered Dacian; he conquered him also dead. Living, he trampled the torments; dead, he swam across the seas. But the one who guided the dead corpse amid the waves was the same who, amid the iron claws, gave up his unconquered soul to God. The torturer's flame did not bend his heart, the water of the sea did not sink his body. But in all these things there is nothing else than that precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Ps 116:15 (115:15)). To which glory may the Lord bring us under his protection, to whom is honor and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Sermon 277
On the Feast of the Martyr Vincent
(in Which There Is Discussion of the Spiritual Body After the Resurrection, and Whether God Can Be Seen with the Eyes of Such a Body).
[Preached in the Restored Basilica]

1. 1. We have awaited the martyr contending with the eyes of faith, and we have loved the whole man, beautiful invisibly. For of what beauty he had a spirit, whose very corpse was unconquered! He confessed the Lord while living: he overcame the enemy even when dead. What do we think, brothers, that the providence and counsel of the almighty Creator, when it bestowed this honor even on his dead body, granted something to the martyr? For what? If he had not been buried, was the Creator ignorant of the source from which he would raise him up? To the martyr both the crown was preserved in victory and eternal life in the resurrection. But concerning his body, the memory of consolation was bestowed on the Church. So in many cases God, by a certain condescension, bestows from his servants upon his servants, granting what profits more the one to whom it is given than the one concerning whom it is given. So God fed holy Elijah by a bird: yet the mercy and omnipotence of God had not failed, that it might always feed him so. Yet he is sent to be fed to a widow (See 1 Kgs 17:6-9): not because there was no way for the servant of God to be nourished, but so that the faithful widow might merit a blessing. He bestowed, then, the bodies of the saints on his churches for memorials of prayers, not for the glories of the martyrs. For they have their glory whole and entire with their Creator. Nor do they fear anything for their body, since there is nothing for them to fear. Rather, if they spare the body, they harm the body. But if through faith they do not spare the body, they benefit the body.

2. 2. Behold, attend to this, and question your faith. If Saint Vincent, out of dread of the torments, had denied Christ, he would have seemed to spare his body: yet by a certain mortal condition he would have been freed from his body. What would he do in the resurrection, when he was cast headlong into eternal fire? Denying Christ, he is denied by Christ. Whoever denies me, he says, before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven (Matt 10:33). Behold, he might deny, those torturers might rest, and with the soul wounded the body would be sound; nay, with the soul slain, the body would live: what would the brief life of the body profit one who is dead forever? The day the Lord recalls would come, when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice, and will come forth (See John 5:28-29): but with a great difference. All will come forth, but not all will come forth to the same thing. All will rise, but not all will be changed. For those who have done good, he says, to the resurrection of life; but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:29). When he says: All who are in the tombs, he manifestly declares the resurrection of bodies. But when you hear "judgment," do not flatter yourself as if it were a temporal judgment; "judgment" is put here for eternal punishment. According to this it is said: But he who does not believe is already judged (John 3:18). This difference, then, will separate the just from the unjust, the faithful from the unbelievers, the confessors from the deniers, the lovers of perishing life from the lovers of eternal life; that distinction will separate them. And the just will go into eternal life, but the impious into eternal fire (See Matt 25:46). There they will be tormented with the body, who spared the body. For by fearing the torments of the body, they spared the body; and by sparing the body, they denied Christ; and by denying Christ, they deferred eternal punishments even for the body. If they deferred them, did they take them away?

3. 3. Therefore the martyrs of Christ prudently did not despise their bodies. That is a perverse and worldly philosophy, of those who do not believe in the resurrection of bodies. For they seem to themselves to be, as it were, great despisers of the body, because they suppose that they hold these very bodies as prisons, into which they think the souls have been thrust down, for what they sinned elsewhere beforehand. But our God made both body and spirit; and he is the creator of both, and the re-creator of both; the establisher of both, and also the restorer of both. The martyrs, then, did not despise the flesh as an enemy, nor persecute it. For no one ever hated his own flesh (Eph 5:29). Rather they took thought for it, when they seemed to neglect it: when, faithfully persisting in it, they endured temporal torments, they were also obtaining eternal glory for the flesh itself.

4. 4. But what will be the glory of this flesh in the resurrection—who can set it forth in words? No one of us has yet experienced it by possessing it. Now we bear burdensome flesh; because it is needy, because it is weak, because it is mortal, because it is corruptible. For the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15). But do not fear this in the resurrection. This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53). What is now a burden will be an honor; what is now a load will then be a relief. For it will have no weight, such that you feel you have a body. See, dearly beloved: when our body is sound—even this fragile and mortal body—when it is regulated by the balance of its parts, when nothing in it quarrels against another; when heat does not overcome and oppress cold, when the warmth is not extinguished by an abundance of cold and, while it struggles, does not afflict; when dryness does not soak up moisture, nor moisture flood and oppress; but all the things of which it is composed are held in balance by a harmonious joining among themselves, this is what is called health. And health of the body is, to put it briefly, the concord of the things of which it is composed. This health, then—that is, the concord of the members and the humors—in a corruptible thing, in a needy and weak thing, in a thing that can still hunger and thirst, grow weary from standing, be refreshed by sitting, again grow weary from sitting, fail from hunger, be refreshed by eating; that cannot relieve past failings except by beginning others: for whatever else you take for refreshment when weary is the beginning of another weariness, since in the very thing you have taken to relieve yourself, if you persist, you will be wearied by that too: in this weak and corruptible body, then, what is health itself, of whatever kind? For this, which in mortal and corruptible flesh is called health, is in no way to be compared with the health of the angels, equality with whom is promised to us in the resurrection (See Luke 20:36).

5. 4. Yet this health, such as it is, as I said, has something of delight—what a desirable good it is to all? How great a thing the poor man has, when he has this alone; how great a thing the rich man does not have, when this alone he does not have? Why does he boast of his wealth? The fever does not dread a silver bed: it does not fear the pomp of the rich man, it does not fear the darts of the warrior.

5. 5. What then is this very health, which the martyrs rightly despised, because in the same flesh they hoped for another? Yet because we have not yet experienced that one, let us somehow form a conjecture of it from this one which we know. What is health? If you say to me, What is it to see? as far as the body is concerned, I will answer you perhaps: to perceive shapes and colors. If you say to me, What is it to hear? I will answer: to perceive sounds. If you say, What is it to smell? I will answer: to perceive odors. What is it to touch? To perceive things hard or soft, hot or cold, rough and smooth, heavy or light. What is health? To perceive nothing. But even these very senses in us are cheapened by comparison with others. You see keenly: an eagle perhaps sees more keenly than you. You hear keenly: there are little creatures that hear more keenly. You smell keenly: you do not surpass a keen-scented dog. You judge flavors keenly by tasting: there are animals that distinguish untried herbs, and do not touch what is harmful. For you, however keenly you distinguish your food, unwittingly rush into poison. You perceive keenly by touch: how many birds sense the coming summer, and change their places; sense the winter threatening, and migrate to warmer places? What you sense when it comes, they sense before it comes. And this very thing which I have praised in health—the stone senses nothing, the tree senses nothing, the corpse senses nothing.

6. 6. For did that governor Dacian sense nothing in his heart, when he raged against a corpse that sensed nothing? For what was he now doing to one who sensed nothing, who could be overcome even by one who sensed? Yet he did whatever he could, he did it in anger. But the one who now suffered nothing openly was being crowned in secret. For he held to the saying of his Lord: who, when he wished to make us secure about those who kill the body: Do not, he says, fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do (Luke 12:4). How is it that afterward they have nothing more they can do, when that madman did so much to Vincent's body? But what did he do to Vincent, who did nothing even to him while he could feel? Therefore, not to feel nothing as the stone feels nothing, as the tree feels nothing, as the corpse feels nothing; but to live in the body and to feel nothing of its burden, this is to be sound. And yet, however sound a man may be in this life, he feels even the weight of a sound body. Even a sound body that is corrupted—that is, corruptible—weighs down the soul. It weighs down the soul, that is, it does not obey the soul at the beck of its every wish. It obeys in many things: it moves the hands to work, the feet to walk, the tongue to speak, the eyes to see; it directs the hearing to perceive sounds: in all these things the body complies. The desire to change place feels a burden, feels a weight: the body is not moved with such ease to arrive where it desires. Someone established in a body desires to see a friend established in a body; he knows him to be far off, many stages lie between; in mind he has already gone ahead, but when he arrives in body, then he feels what a burden he carries. The weight of the flesh could not obey the will with the speed he had presumed: it could not be carried off with the speed he wished, with which the mind carries it. It is slow and burdensome.

7. 7. Do we suppose that the body itself has anything by which the swiftness of the body may be proved? Shall we name the feet? What is slower? They are the very things that arrive, and they scarcely follow our desires, and only with effortful toil do they arrive. But make someone as swift as certain animals are, with whom our swiftness is not to be compared; make someone as swift as the birds are: he does not arrive with the stroke with which he wished. The birds fly a long while in migrating, and sometimes, wearied, they settle on the masts of ships. So, even if we could fly like birds, we would still be slow in comparison with the desire to arrive. But when the body will be spiritual, of which it is said: The body is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44); how great will be the ease there, how great the swiftness, how great the obedience to the one who wills? In nothing weight, in nothing need, in nothing weariness, in nothing resistance and reluctance from any other quarter.

8. 8. What was that body like, which the Lord passed through closed barriers? Attend, I beg, whether I may, with the Lord's help, by whatever words, either satisfy your expectation or not fall far short of it. An occasion has arisen for us to discuss something about the spiritual body from the passion of the martyr, in whom we thus saw and marveled that the body was despised amid torments. For we said that, by not sparing the body, he was taking thought for that same body: lest perhaps, by fleeing temporal punishments and by denying Christ, he should consign that same body to everlasting punishments and most atrocious torments. Wishing therefore from this to exhort you, and myself, to despise present things and hope for future ones: For in this dwelling we groan, being burdened (2 Cor 5:4), and yet we do not wish to die, and we dread to be stripped of our burden; for we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed over, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life (See 2 Cor 5:4): on this occasion, then, I have undertaken to say something to you about the spiritual body, and I thought I should first commend this very health of this fragile and corruptible body, so that from it we might discover something great. We discover in health itself that we feel nothing. For indeed we have many things within, in our inward parts; who of us would know them except by seeing them in mangled bodies? Our inward parts, our inner organs, which are called the intestines—how do we know of them? And then it is well, when we do not feel them. For when we do not feel them, then we are sound. You say to someone, Watch your stomach. He answers you, What is a stomach? Happy ignorance: he does not know where he has what he always has sound. If he did not have it sound, he would feel it: if he felt it, he would not know it for his own good.

9. 9. But although, with the body's health praised, we have come to the swiftness of motion, we find ourselves somehow leaden. How great is the swiftness of the heavenly bodies? Do you wish to know how great it is? You gaze at the sun, and it seems to you as though it does not move, and yet it moves. Perhaps you say: It moves, but more slowly. Do you wish to know with how great a swiftness it moves? Do you wish to gather by reason what you do not perceive by sight? If anyone were to run by post-horses on a straight road from the east to the west on this earth, in how many days would he arrive? By whatever swiftness of horses he were carried, how many stages would he make? The span of the journey from the beginning of the east to the end of the west, the sun, which seems to you to stand still, completes in one day, and in one night returns to the rising. I will not say—because it is obscure, and difficult to persuade, and perhaps uncertain—how much vaster the heavenly spaces are than the earthly. When, then, we see so great a swiftness of the heavenly bodies, which seem to us, when we attend to them, not to move; to what swiftness can we compare the angelic body? They have been present, too, and when they wished, they offered themselves to be seen and touched. Abraham washed the feet of angels (See Gen 18:4). He not only washed those bodies, but even handled them. They appeared as they wished, when they wished, to whom they wished. They feel no difficulty, no slowness at all. But we do not see them running, we do not see them migrating from place to place, that we might know them departing from the eyes of men: when they wished, they arrived. There is no source, then, from which we may furnish even from these a most evident example of this swiftness. Let us pass over things unknown, and let us not dare to presume anything rashly about things we have not experienced.

10. 10. In this very body which we bear, I find something whose ineffable swiftness I may marvel at. What is this? The ray of our eye, by which we touch whatever we behold. For what you see, you touch with the ray of your eye. If you wish to see farther, and some body is interposed, the ray strikes against the body set before it, and is not allowed to pass through to what you desire to see; and you say to the obstacle, Get out, you stand in my way. You wish to see a column, a man stands in the middle, he hinders your gaze. Your ray has been sent out, but it reaches as far as the man, it is not permitted to reach as far as the column: it runs into something else, it is not allowed through. Behold, the one who stood in your way has departed from the middle, your gaze reaches where it wished. Now examine, and if you can, find and answer, whether this gaze, this ray of your eye, reaches more quickly to what is near, more slowly to what is far. You saw a man set nearby, you saw him with such a delay, you stretched the ray of your eye toward him with such a delay, you reached him with the ray of your eye with such a delay, as the delay with which you reach that column too which you wished to see, and could not because the man was interposed: not the man more quickly, and the column more slowly; and behold, the man was nearby, and the column farther off. If you wished to walk, you would arrive at the man more quickly than at the column: but because you wished to see, you arrived at the man just as quickly as at the column. This is nothing about the column and the man. Cast your eyes farther still: you see a wall far off. Send them farther: you reach the sun. How great is the distance between you and the sun? Who could measure those intervals? Who, by any sharpness of thought, could estimate how far the sun is from you? And yet, as soon as you have opened your eye, behold, you are here, your ray is there. As soon as you wished to see, you arrived by seeing. You did not seek out engines to rely on, nor ladders to climb, nor ropes to lift yourself, nor wings to fly. To have opened the eye is to have arrived.

11. 11. What then is this swiftness? How great is it? What does it mean? It belongs to our body, it is sent forth from our flesh. We have rays, and we do not marvel. We use them by seeing; we are astonished by considering them. You find nothing with which you may compare this swiftness, as far as bodily swiftness is concerned. Rightly did the apostle Paul compare to this swiftness the ease of the resurrection, saying: In the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor 15:52). The twinkling of an eye is not in the closing and opening of the eyelids: for this is done more slowly than it is seen. You raise the eyelid more slowly than you direct the ray. Your ray reaches heaven more quickly than the raised eyelid reaches the brow. You see what the twinkling of an eye is: you see what ease the Apostle has given to the resurrection of bodies. How slowly were these things created and formed? Let us recall the delays of conception, and in the very wombs of mothers the seeds of little ones coalescing; the limbs formed through a course of time, on fixed days, over many months, until what was created and formed within is brought forth into the light. Then with what delay it grows, with what delay boyhood gives way to adolescence, adolescence to youth, youth to old age, and old age to death for all. There comes also another delay: a fresh corpse is seen whole, then dissolves into rottenness; and for that very dissolution times are needed, until it melts away into decay, and dries into ashes: and from the very beginnings of the womb to the final ashes of the tomb, how great a delay lies between? How many days? What spans of time? It comes to rising again: in the twinkling of an eye it is restored.

12. 12. Attend then, brothers, and compare the things that are to be compared with the things with which they are to be compared. This flesh is moved more quickly in walking than it was formed, than it was nourished, than it grew, than it reached the bearing of youth and attained its full age and stature: it is moved more quickly in walking than this happens in it. And further, the resurrection will happen in the twinkling of an eye: how great will be the swiftness of moving, if so great could be the swiftness of rising? Bodies have been mangled by raging men: though the limbs of the dead be scattered through the whole world, though their ashes be dispersed through the whole earth; from the whole so vast bosom, all that has been scattered is restored in the twinkling of an eye. We marvel at the excessive—and, were we not to experience it, incredible—swiftness of our rays, which are poured forth from the eyes: more marvelous is the spiritual ease in the body that is to be. In the twinkling of an eye indeed it will rise: but our Lord, what the ray of our eye cannot do, passed his body even through closed barriers. After the resurrection, when his disciples were gathered in one place, he suddenly appeared, the doors being shut (See John 20:19). Where we cannot see, he was able even to enter. Let no one say, This indeed the Lord's body could do; will mine then also be able to? And here receive full assurance from the Spirit, who was speaking through the Apostle. For it is said of the Lord himself: Who will refashion the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of his glory (Phil 3:21).

13. 13. Concerning such a body, then, concerning so great an ease, so great a swiftness, so great a soundness of this body, let human frailty dare to define nothing rashly and presumptuously. What we will be, we will know when we have come to be it. Before we are it, let us not be rash, lest we not be it. Human curiosity sometimes asks and says to itself: Do you suppose that through that spiritual body we will see God? It can indeed be answered at once: God is not seen in a place, God is not seen part by part, God is not seen as diffused through spaces and separated by intervals. Although he fills heaven and earth, he is not therefore half in heaven, half on earth. For this air, if it fills heaven and earth, the part of it that is in heaven is not on earth. And whatever the water fills, it fills indeed the space by which it is contained; but half of it is in half the space, half in the other half, the whole in the whole. God is not anything like this. Do not doubt this at all, that God is not a body. To be diffused through spaces, to be contained by places, to have halves, thirds, quarters, wholes—this is proper to bodies. God is nothing such; because everywhere God is whole: not half elsewhere, and elsewhere established with the other half; but everywhere whole. He fills heaven and earth: but he is whole in heaven, whole on earth. In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). So that you may hear this same thing even of the Son himself, because the Son too with the Father is one God: not equal in mass, but in divinity. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: this was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing (John 1:1-3). And a little later: And the light shines in the darkness (John 1:5). This only-begotten one, remaining whole with the Father, shines whole in the darkness, whole in heaven, whole on earth, whole in the Virgin, whole in the infant; not at alternating times, as if by migrating from place to place. For you too are whole in your house, and whole in church: but when in church, not in your house; when in your house, not in church. Not so, then, is he whole in heaven, whole on earth, whole in the Virgin, whole in the infant (to mention nothing else), as if by migrating from heaven to earth, from earth to the Virgin, from the Virgin to the infant, but everywhere whole at once. For he is not poured out like water, nor, like earth, separated and transferred by effort. When he is whole on earth, he does not abandon heaven: but even when he fills heaven, he does not withdraw from earth. For he reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly (Wis 8:1).

14. 14. If, then, a substance that is not seen in a place could be seen by the bodily eyes even then, when the body will be spiritual; if they could see it by some hidden power, by some power untried and wholly unknown, and grasped by no estimation—if they could, let them. For we see with our eyes, we do not envy our own eyes. Only let us not try to bring God to a place, let us not try to enclose God in a place, let us not try to diffuse God through the spaces of places as though by some mass; let us not dare this, let us not think it. Let the substance of the divinity remain in its own proper dignity. Let us at least, as far as we can, be changed for the better, and not change God for the worse. Especially because we find nothing defined about this in Scripture, or have not yet found it. For neither do I dare to presume that there is not in it something that could be found. Either it is not there, or it is hidden, or it is hidden from me. If anything can be found by anyone on either side of the question, I gladly accept it, and unless I have given thanks for being instructed, I will be ungrateful—not to the man who speaks, but to him who teaches through the man. But God forbid that the giver of grace should permit me to be ungrateful. This only I say, that the eyes which through intervals of places see what they see—that is, that there is a space between the one seeing and that which is seen; for otherwise these eyes do not see; for if you remove something very far off from them, they do not see it, because the rays do not reach things set far away; but if you bring something closer to them, unless there be some interval between the eyes of the one seeing and the body that is seen, it cannot be seen at all; for if, by bringing it closer, you touch the very eyes by which something is seen, the vision is lost when the space is lost: this, then, I say, that such eyes, which see whatever they see only through intervals and spaces of places, can neither see God now, nor will they be able to then, because he is not in a place. Either, then, it will be something else that they can see, which cannot be seen in a place: or, if there remains in them the inability to see except in a place, they will not see him who is not in a place.

15. 15. But until this is more diligently inquired into concerning the spiritual body—something to be either understood or rightly believed—let us hold that the body will rise again, let us hold that the form of our body will be this future one, which Christ either displayed or in secret promised. Let us hold that the body will be spiritual, not animal, as it now is. For it is evidently expressed, and cannot be contradicted: The body is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44). Let us hold that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in their proper nature, in their proper substance, are equally and alike invisible, since equally and alike we believe them immortal, equally and alike we believe them incorruptible. And in one place the Apostle put all these things together: To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, incorruptible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen (See 1 Tim 1:17). God alone, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, immortal, invisible, incorruptible: not invisible now, and visible afterward; because not incorruptible now, and corruptible afterward. As immortal always, as incorruptible always, so also invisible always. If invisibility is changed, it is to be feared that immortality is changed. I think it is for this reason that the Apostle himself put "invisible" in the middle, between "immortal" and "incorruptible." About which there could be doubt, he fortified it on both sides, lest it could be overturned.

16. 15. Let us hold this unwavering confession. To stumble in regard to a creature and to stumble in regard to the Creator are not the same. Let us by all means inquire by discussion into the qualities of creatures, and if we are deceived in something, let us walk in that to which we have come. For if we think otherwise in anything, this too God will reveal to us (See Phil 3:15-16). On which point we discoursed at greater length yesterday. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). Let us press on by every means to cleanse our hearts, let us be vigilant with every effort; let us obtain by every prayer, as much as we can, that we may cleanse our heart. And if we are thinking about the things that are outside: Cleanse, he says, what is within, and what is without will be clean (See Matt 23:26).

16. 16. Perhaps to someone the testimony about the flesh may seem as clear as that about the heart: because it is written: All flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:6; Isa 40:5). We have most evident testimony about the heart. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. We have it also about the flesh: All flesh shall see the salvation of God. Now who would doubt that the vision of God is promised to the flesh, were it not that it gives one pause, what is the salvation of God? Indeed, because it does not give one pause—for we are not in doubt—the salvation of God is Christ the Lord. Therefore, if our Lord Jesus Christ were seen in his divinity alone, no one would doubt that the flesh would see the substance of God; because: All flesh shall see the salvation of God. But because our Lord Jesus Christ can be seen with the eyes of the heart, pure, perfect, full of God, as far as concerns his divinity; yet he was also seen in the body, according to what is written: After this he was seen on earth, and conversed with men (Bar 3:38): how do I know in what sense it was said: All flesh shall see the salvation of God? That it will see Christ, has been said: let no one doubt.

17. 16. But whether it will see the Lord Christ in the body, or as in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1)—this is what is in doubt, this is what is asked. Do not press me with one testimony; I confess it at once: All flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:6). They say that this means, All flesh shall see the Christ of God. But Christ was also seen in the flesh—not indeed in mortal flesh, if that spiritual change is still to be called flesh; because he himself too, after the resurrection, said thus to those who saw and touched him: Handle, and see, that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have (Luke 24:39). He will be seen in that way too: not only has he been seen, but he will also be seen. And perhaps then will be more perfectly fulfilled what was said, all flesh. For now the flesh has seen him, but not all flesh: but then, when he comes in judgment with his angels to judge the living and the dead, when all who are in the tombs hear his voice and have come forth, some to the resurrection of life, others to the resurrection of judgment (See John 5:28-29), they will see that very form which he deigned to take up for us, not only the just but also the wicked, some on the right, others on the left; because even those who killed him will see him whom they pierced (John 19:37; Zech 12:10). All flesh, then, shall see the salvation of God. Body through body: because in a true body he will come to judge. But to those set on the right and sent into the kingdom of heaven, he will show himself in the way in which he was already seen in the body: and yet he was saying: He who loves me will be loved by my Father; and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him (John 14:21). This the impious Jew will not see. For the impious one shall be taken away, that he may not see the glory of God (Isa 26:10).

18. 17. The just Simeon saw him both with his heart, because he recognized the infant; and he saw him with his eyes, because he carried the infant. Seeing him in both ways, acknowledging the Son of God, and embracing the one begotten of the Virgin: Now you let your servant depart, O Lord, in peace, because my eyes have seen your salvation (Luke 2:29-30). See what he said. For he was held until he should see with his eyes too the one whom he discerned by faith. He received the little body, he embraced the body; by seeing the body, that is, by discerning the Lord in the flesh, he said: My eyes have seen your salvation. How do you know that all flesh does not see the salvation of God in this way? And lest we despair that he will come to judgment in that form which he took up for us, not in that in which he always remained equal to the Father, let us hear from this point too the voice of the angels. Before the eyes of his disciples, as he was being carried up into heaven, and they were attending, and were following with their gaze the one whom they desired in heart, they heard from the angels: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you, will so come as you have seen him going into heaven (Acts 1:11). So, then, so will he come, as he departed into heaven. He will come visibly to judgment; because he departed visibly into heaven. For if he departed visibly and will come invisibly, how will he so come? But if he will so come, then he will come visibly; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:6).

19. 18. I have not said this (remember, as far as you can, that we learn in order to discover, until we have discovered, the things we do not yet know; but what we know, we have no need to learn, but rather, with the Lord's help, to teach): I have not said this, then, because I have denied that the flesh will see; but because clearer testimonies are to be sought, if perhaps they can be found. For this one that has been brought forward, you see what sort it is. For it tells more in our favor, or rather in favor of the truth itself, or in favor of those who contend as if for certain that the flesh will in no way at all see God, not even in the resurrection of the dead. We do not contend about this, but by repeating it we remind the sharp and impress it upon the slow. Although we may be tedious to many, we say it nonetheless. God is not seen in a place, because he is not a body; because he is everywhere whole, because he is not less in a part and greater in a part. Let us hold this most firmly. But if that flesh receives so great a change that through it can be seen what is not seen in a place, let it be so by all means. But it must be inquired from what source this is taught. And if it is not yet taught, let it not yet be denied; but at least let it be held in doubt. Yet in such a way that it not be doubted that the flesh will rise again, that the spiritual body will come to be from the animal body, that this corruptible and this mortal will put on immortality and incorruption: that in that to which we have come, we may walk (See Phil 3:16). Certainly, if by inquiring too much we somewhere go astray, let us at least go astray in regard to the creature, not in regard to the Creator. Let each one strive, as much as he can, to turn his body into spirit, provided only that he does not turn God into a body.

Sermon 277/A
On the Birthday of Saint Vincent

1. Christ solemnly bids us to celebrate the most valiant and most glorious passion of the holy martyr Vincent, and not to proclaim it sluggishly. We have seen with the mind, and beheld in thought, how much he endured, what he heard, what he answered, and in a certain way a marvelous spectacle has been set before our eyes: an unjust judge, a bloody torturer, an unconquered martyr, a contest of cruelty and piety; and on this side madness, on that side victory. As the reading sounded in our ears, love blazed up in our hearts: we would wish, if it could be done, to embrace and kiss those torn limbs, which we marveled could endure such great punishments, and with an inexpressible affection we did not wish them to be tortured. For who would wish to see a raging executioner, and a man raging against a human body with his humanity lost? Whom would it please to behold limbs wrenched apart by the contrivance of the torment? Who would not be set against, who would not shudder at, the figure of nature seized by the art of cruelty, bones stretched apart, laid bare by furrowing? And yet all these things, even the horrible ones, the justice of the martyr made beautiful; and that wondrous fortitude itself, for the faith, for piety, for the hope of the age to come, for the love of Christ, suffused the foul and deadly face of the torments and wounds with the beauty of glory. In short, in that very one spectacle we divided our zeal from the persecutor. Him the martyr's punishment delighted, us his cause; him what he was suffering, us why he was suffering; him the torture, us the virtue; him the wounds, us the crown; him that he was held so very long in pains, us that he was in no way broken by the pains; him that he was tormented in the flesh, us that he remained in the faith. And so, where his savagery fed him, there the martyr's truth tortured him; but we scarcely bore the horrible things at his command, yet we conquered as Vincent grew faint.

2. Yet our wrestler himself was not the victor in himself or by his very self, but in him and through him who, exalted above all, supplies help, who, having suffered before all, left an example. He exhorts to the battle, who calls to the reward; and he so watches the one contending that he aids the one laboring. To his athlete he so prescribes what he is to do, and sets before him what he is to receive, that he even comes to his aid lest he fail. Let him pray simply, then, who wishes simply to contend, to overcome swiftly, to reign happily. We heard the fellow servant speaking, and convicting the persecutor's tongue with steadfast and truthful answers; but first we heard the Lord saying: For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:20). And through this he overcame his adversaries, because he praised his words in the Lord. He knew how to say: In God I will praise the word, in the Lord I will praise the speech; in God I will hope, I will not fear what man may do to me (Ps 56:10-11 (55:11-12)). We saw the martyr most patiently bearing monstrous torments: but his soul was subject to God, for from him was his endurance. And lest human frailty, failing through impatience, should deny Christ, and come to the joy of the enemy, he knew to whom he was saying: My God, rescue me from the hand of the sinner, from the hand of the transgressor of the law and the unjust man; for you are my endurance (Ps 71:4-5 (70:4-5)). For he who sang these things signified thus how a Christian ought to ask to be rescued from the power of his enemies—not, indeed, by suffering nothing, but by enduring most patiently the things that he suffers. Rescue me from the hand of the sinner, from the hand of the transgressor of the law and the unjust man. But if you ask how he wishes to be rescued, attend to what follows: for you are my endurance. There is the glorious passion, where this devout confession is: that he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31). Let no one, therefore, presume upon his own heart when he has completed his speech: let no one presume upon his own strength when he undergoes temptation; because, that we may speak good things, our wisdom is from him: that we may bear evil things, our endurance is from him. It is ours, then, to will, but, being called, we are required to will; it is ours to ask, but we do not know what to ask; it is ours to receive, but what shall we receive, if we do not have it? it is ours to have, but what do we have, if we do not receive? Therefore let him who glories glory in the Lord. Worthy, then, was the martyr Vincent to be crowned by the Lord, in whom he chose to glory both through wisdom and through endurance; worthy of solemn celebration, worthy of eternal happiness, for the obtaining of which whatever the most threatening judge could terrify with, whatever the bloody executioner inflicted, was light. For what he endured is past and gone; what he received will not pass away. For though his limbs were so torn, his inward parts so tortured, the torments so frequently and so cruelly repeated—so, so, just as these things were done, and even if much heavier things were done, the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that will be revealed in us (Rom 8:18).

Sermon 278
(on the Calling of the Apostle Paul, and a Commendation of the Lord's Prayer)
[For the Solemnity of the Conversion of Saint Paul]

1. 1. Today the reading from the Acts of the Apostles was proclaimed, in which the apostle Paul, from a persecutor of Christians, was made a herald of Christ. Today, in those regions, even the very places bear witness to what was then done: and now it is read, and believed. The usefulness of this deed is what the Apostle himself recalls in his Letters. For he says that pardon for all his sins was given him for this reason—and for that fury and madness with which he was dragging Christians to death, who was a minister of the fury of the Jews, whether in the stoning of the holy martyr Stephen, or in handing over and bringing the rest to punishment—so that no one might despair of himself, who has been entangled in great sins and ensnared in great crimes, as though he were not going to receive pardon, if he turns to him who, hanging on the cross, prayed for his persecutors, saying: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). From a persecutor he was made a preacher and teacher of the Gentiles. I was first, he says, a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent man: but for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show all his long-suffering, for the instruction of those who are to believe in him unto eternal life (1 Tim 1:13,16). For by the grace of God we are made whole from our sins, in which we lie sick. His, his is the medicine that heals the soul. For it could wound itself, but could not heal itself.

1. 2. For even in the body itself a man has it in his power to fall sick, but does not likewise have it in his power to recover. For if he exceeds due measure, and lives intemperately, and does the things that are harmful to health and that assail soundness, in a single day, if he wishes, he falls into diseases; but, having fallen, he does not recover. For to fall sick, he applies himself to intemperance: but to recover, he applies a physician for his health. For he cannot, as we have said, have it in his power to receive health back, in the way he has it in his power to lose it.

4. But I have said to you—and you ought above all to remember it—lest perhaps, on account of this fight, without which a man cannot be (rather, the one who lives justly is the one who is in it; for the one who does not live justly does not even fight, but is dragged); lest, then, on account of this you suppose that there are, as it were, two natures from diverse principles, as the Manichees rave, as though the flesh were not from God. That is false; both are from God. But human nature deserved this within itself, from sin. So it is a sickness; it is healed, and it is no more. The discord that now exists in spirit and flesh labors for the sake of concord; the spirit labors for this, that the flesh may agree with it. Just as if in one house husband and wife have a quarrel between them; the husband must labor at this, to tame the wife. Let the wife, once tamed, be subjected to the husband; with the wife subjected to the husband, let there be peace in the house.

5. But when he had said: The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2), he set before us these very laws to be understood. Gaze on them, and distinguish them; this distinction is quite necessary for you. The law, he says, of the spirit of life—behold one law: has freed you from the law of sin and death—behold another law. And there follows: For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weakened through the flesh (Rom 8:3)—behold a third law. Or perhaps this is one of the two? Let us inquire and, with the Lord's help, let us see. What did he say about that good law? The law of the spirit of life has freed you from the law of sin and death. He did not say that this law was powerless to accomplish anything: the law of the spirit of life, he says, has freed you from the law of sin and death. That good law has freed you from this bad law. For what is the bad law? I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members (Rom 7:23). Why is this too called a law? With perfect rightness. For it was done quite lawfully that the flesh of the man who refused to obey his Lord should not serve him. Above you is your Lord, below you is your flesh. Serve the better, that the inferior may serve you. You despised the superior, you are tormented by the inferior. This, then, is the law of sin; it is also the law of death. For through sin comes death. On the day you eat, you shall die the death (Gen 2:17). This law of sin, then, drags the spirit, and strives to subjugate it. But I delight in the law of God according to the inner man (Rom 7:22). And through this comes that fight, and in the very contest it is said: With my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. The law of the spirit of life has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 7:25; 8:2). For how did this very law of the spirit of life free you? First of all, it gave the forgiveness of sins. For this is the law of which it is said to God in the Psalm: And in your law have mercy on me (See Ps 119:29 (118:29)). The law of mercy, the law of faith, not of works. What, then, is the law of works? You have already heard the good law of faith: The law of the spirit of life has freed you from the law of sin and death. You have heard the other law too, of sin and death. For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weakened through the flesh. This law, then, which is named in the third place, somehow does not fulfill something; but that law of the spirit of life fulfilled it, because it freed you from the law of sin and death. And so this law, which is named in the third place, the very Law that was given to the people through Moses on Mount Sinai, is called the law of works. It knows how to threaten, not to help; how to command, not to assist. It is the one that said: You shall not covet. Hence the Apostle says: I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet. And what did it profit me that the law said: You shall not covet? Sin, seizing the occasion, deceived me through the commandment, and through it killed me (See Rom 7:7,11). I was forbidden to covet, and I did not fulfill the command, but was conquered. Before the law I was a sinner; once the law was received, I became a transgressor. For sin, seizing the occasion, deceived me through the commandment, and through it killed me.

6. And so, he says, the law indeed is holy. This law too, then, is good (because the Manichees censure this as well, just as they do the flesh). Of it the Apostle says: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did then what is good become death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good (Rom 7:12-13). These are the Apostle's words; look and attend. And so the law indeed is holy. What is so holy as: You shall not covet? The transgression of the law would not be evil, were the law itself not good. For if it were not good, it would not be evil to transgress an evil thing. But because it is evil to transgress it, therefore it is good. What is so good as: You shall not covet? The law, then, is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. How he satisfies us, how he impresses it on us! He cries out, as it were, against the slanderers. What do you say, Manichee? Is the Law that was given through Moses evil? It is evil, they say. O monstrosities! O effrontery! You have said once: It is evil; hear the Apostle saying: The law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Will you ever be silent? Did then what is good, he says, become death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good. Here too: through what is good; he so accuses the guilty party that he does not withdraw from praising the law. Through what is good, he says, it worked death in me. Through what good? The commandment. Through what good? The law. How did it work death? That sin might appear; that the one transgressing through the commandment might become a sinner beyond measure (See Rom 7:13). Therefore: beyond measure. When he was sinning without the commandment, it was less; when he sins through the commandment, he exceeds measure. For when someone is not forbidden, he thinks he is doing well. Once forbidden, he begins to be unwilling to do it; he is conquered, dragged, subjugated; it now remains for him to call upon grace, because he could not keep the law.

7. And through this, that law of which it was said: For the law of the spirit of life has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2), is the law of faith, the law of the Spirit, the law of grace, the law of mercy. But that law of sin and death is not the law of God, but of sin and death. But that other law of which the Apostle says: The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good (Rom 7:12), is the law of God, but of works, the law of works; the law of works, which commands and does not help; the law which shows you sin, but does not take it away. By one law sin is shown to you, by another it is taken away. There are two Testaments, the Old and the New. Hear the Apostle saying: Tell me, you who wish to be under the law, have you not read the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But he who was of the slave woman was born according to the flesh; while he who was of the free woman, through the promise; which things are an allegory. For these are two Testaments, one indeed from Mount Sinai, bearing children unto slavery, which is Hagar (Gal 4:21-24), the slave of Sarah, who was given to Abraham, and bore Ishmael the slave. There is, then, the Old Testament pertaining to Hagar, bearing children unto slavery. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother (Gal 4:26). Therefore the children of grace are children of the free woman; the children of the letter are children of the slave. Seek the children of the slave: The letter kills. Seek the children of the free woman: but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2), from which the law of the letter could not free you. For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weakened through the flesh (Rom 8:3). For your flesh rebelled, your flesh subjugated you; it heard the law, and rather inflamed your covetousness. The law of the letter, then, was weakened through the flesh; and through this it was impossible for the law of the letter to free you from the law of sin and death.

8. God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3); not in sinful flesh. In flesh indeed, but not in sinful flesh. The rest of the flesh of all men, then, is sinful flesh; his alone is not sinful flesh; because not concupiscence, but grace conceived him as his mother; yet he had the likeness of sinful flesh; whence he could also be nourished, and hunger, and thirst, and sleep, and grow weary, and die. In the likeness of sinful flesh God sent his Son.

9. And from sin he condemned sin in the flesh. From what sin? What sin? From sin he condemned sin in the flesh; that the justice of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now let that justice of the law be fulfilled in us; now let that justice which is commanded be fulfilled in us through the Spirit who helps; that is, let the law of the letter be fulfilled in us through the spirit of life: we who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit (Rom 8:3-4). From what sin, then, did the Lord condemn sin—what sin? I see, I see indeed what sin he condemned, I see plainly: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). What sin? Every sin, all our sin he condemned. But from what sin? He himself had no sin; of him it was said: Who committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth (1 Pet 2:22). None at all, neither by contracting nor by adding; he had no sin, neither of origin nor of his own iniquity. The virgin demonstrates his origin; and his holy manner of life shows well enough that he did nothing for which he was worthy of death. Therefore he says: Behold, the prince of this world comes (meaning the devil), and in me he will find nothing. The prince of death will find no reason to kill me. And why then do you die? But that all may know that I do the will of my Father, let us go from here (John 14:30-31). And he went on to the passion of death, a voluntary death, not of necessity but of choice. I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down, and take it up again (John 10:18). If you marvel at the power, understand the majesty. He speaks as God, Christ speaks.

10. From what sin, then, did he condemn sin? Some have understood it, and arrived at a sense that is not unworthy. Yet what the Apostle meant, as it seems to me, they were by no means able to track down. Still, they said something not bad; I tell you this first, and then what seems to me, and what divine Scripture itself shows to be most true. When they were troubled: From what sin did he condemn sin? Did he have sin? this they said: From sin he condemned sin, from a sin not his own; yet from sin he condemned sin. If, then, not from his own, from whose? From the sin of Judas, from the sin of the Jews. For from what source did he shed his blood for the remission of sins? Because he was crucified by the Jews. By whose betrayal? By Judas's. When the Jews killed him, Judas had betrayed him. Did they do well, or did they sin? They sinned. Behold from what sin he condemned sin. It is well said, and truly said, that from the sin of the Jews too Christ condemned all sin, because, with them persecuting him, he shed the blood by which he blotted out all sin. Yet in another place see what the Apostle says: For Christ, he says, we serve as ambassadors, as though God were exhorting through us; we beseech you for Christ—that is, as though Christ besought you, on his behalf we beseech you—to be reconciled to God. And there follows: Him who knew no sin. God, to whom we beseech you to be reconciled, him who knew no sin—that is, Christ God, that Christ who knew no sin—he made to be sin for us, that we might become the justice of God in him (2 Cor 5:20-21). Can the sin of Judas, the sin of the Jews, the sin of any other man, be understood here, when you hear: Him who knew no sin, he made to be sin for us? Who? Whom? God made Christ, God made Christ to be sin for us. He did not say: He made one sinning for us; but, he made him to be sin. If it is wicked to say that Christ sinned, who could bear that Christ is sin? And yet we cannot contradict the Apostle. We cannot say to him: What is this you are saying? For if we say this to the Apostle, we say it to Christ himself. For he says in another place: Or do you wish to receive proof of him who speaks in me, Christ? (2 Cor 13:3)

11. What then is it? Let your Charity attend to a great and deep mystery. Happy will you be, if you love the understanding, and arrive at what you love. Truly, truly Christ our Lord, Jesus our Savior, our Redeemer was made sin, that we might be the justice of God in him. How? Hear the law. Those who know it know what I say; and those who do not know it, let them read, or hear. In the law even the sacrifices that were offered for sins were called sins. You have it: when a victim was brought for sin, the law says: Let the priests place their hands upon the sin (See Lev 4:4); that is, upon the victim for sin. And what is Christ other than a sacrifice for sin? As Christ also, he says, loved you, and handed himself over for you, an offering and a victim to God for an odor of sweetness (Eph 5:2). Behold from what sin he condemned sin; from the sacrifice that he was made for sins, from there he condemned sin. This is the law of the spirit of life, which has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). For that other law, the law of the letter, the commanding law, is indeed good; the commandment holy and just and good (Rom 7:12); but it was weakened through the flesh (Rom 8:3); and what it commanded could not be fulfilled in us. Therefore one law, as I had begun to say, shows you sin, another takes it away; let the law of the letter show sin, let the law of grace take sin away.

1. 1. We have heard, and we have answered in harmony, and with one accordant voice we have sung to our God: Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law (Ps 94:12 (93:12)). If you give silence, you will hear. Wisdom finds no place where there is no patience. We speak, but God instructs; we speak, but God teaches. For he is not called blessed whom man teaches, but whom you instruct, O Lord. We can plant and water: but it is God's to give the increase (See 1 Cor 3:6-7). He who plants and he who waters works from without: he who gives the increase aids from within. What reading from the holy Apostle's Letter has been set before us to speak on—how difficult, how full of hidden recesses, how dangerous (if it is not understood, or is badly understood)—I think, brothers, indeed I know, since it was recited with us, that you heard; and you were tossed about, if you paid attention; or if some of you also understood, you saw without doubt how arduous it is. This reading, then, and that whole troublesome and obscure—but for those who understand it, salutary—passage of the Apostle's Letter, we have undertaken to expound by discussing, with the help of God's mercy. I know that we are debtors to your Charity, and I sense that you are exactors. Just as we pray that you may grasp these things, so do you also pray, that we may be able to explain them to you. For if our prayer is in harmony, God will both make you fit hearers, and us most faithful payers of this debt.

2. 2. For when we were in the flesh, says the Apostle, the passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members, to bear fruit unto death (Rom 7:5). Here it seems (and this is the first and great danger for those who do not understand) that the Apostle reprehends and blames the law of God. Someone says: Far be this from the mind of any Christian whatever; who, even out of his mind, would dare to suspect this of the Apostle? And yet, my brothers, these words, badly understood, have furnished tinder to the fury of the Manichees in their madness. For the Manichees say that the law given through Moses was not given by God, and they contend that it is contrary to the Gospel. And when one deals with them, they try to convict us by these testimonies of the apostle Paul which they do not understand—what shall I say, by Catholics who do not understand, or rather who are negligent? For it is no great matter, if anyone is willing to be diligent, after hearing the slanders from a heretic, at least to consider in the codex the context of the reading. And if he does this, he will soon find there the means by which to refute the talkative adversary, by which to lay low the enemies and rebels against the law. For even if he is slow to understand the words of the Apostle, the praise of God's law is manifestly expressed there.

2. 3. For first see and attend. For when we were in the flesh, he says, the passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work. Here now the Manichee rears his neck, lifts his horns, attacks you, makes his charge: Behold, he says, the passions of sins, which are through the law. How is the law good, through which there are in us the passions of sins, and they work in our members, to bear fruit unto death? Read, advance a little, hear it all patiently, even if not intelligently. For this which he says: The passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members, it is a great thing to understand; but first be with me a praiser of the law, and then you will deserve to become an understander. You have a closed heart, and you accuse the key? Behold, let us for the moment set aside what we do not understand, let us come to the praise of the law which is open. The passions, he says, of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members, to bear fruit unto death. Now therefore we have been freed from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter (Rom 7:5-6). He still seems to charge the law, to blame it, to disapprove it, to detest it; but only to those who do not understand. For when he says: When we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members, to bear fruit unto death. Now therefore we have been freed from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter, he certainly seems to accuse and blame the law. He saw this himself, he saw it, he sensed that he was not understood, and that the thoughts of men were stirred up against the obscurity of his words; he sensed what you might say, he sensed what objection you might raise; and he wished to say this first, so that you would not find anything to say.

3. 4. What then shall we say? he says. This follows: What then shall we say? Is the law sin? God forbid! (Rom 7:7) With one word he absolved the law, he condemned the accuser of the law. You were producing the authority of the Apostle against me, O Manichee, and saying to me, when you reprehended the law: Behold, hear the Apostle, read the Apostle: The passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members, to bear fruit unto death. Now therefore we have been freed from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter (Rom 7:5-6). You were boasting, you were shouting, you were saying: Hear, read, see; you had said these things, and now with your back turned you wished to go. Wait, I have heard you, now hear me; rather, neither I you, nor you me; but let us both together hear the Apostle, who frees himself, and binds you. What then shall we say? he says. Is the law sin? This you were saying: The law is sin, this indeed you were saying. Behold, you have heard what you were saying, hear what you should say. You were saying that the law of God is sin, when, blind and improvident, you were reprehending it. You erred: Paul saw your error. What you were saying, he himself said. What then shall we say? Is the law sin? What you were saying, do we say it? Is the law sin? God forbid! If you were following the authority of the Apostle, weigh the word, and take counsel from it. Hear: Is the law sin? God forbid! Hear: God forbid! If you follow the Apostle, if you esteem his authority highly, hear: God forbid! and let what you were thinking be far from you. What then shall we say? What shall we say? Because I said: The passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members, to bear fruit unto death; because I said: We have been freed from the law of death, in which we were held; because I said: Let us serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter: Is the law sin? God forbid! Why then, Apostle, did you say all those things?

4. 5. God forbid that the law be sin: But sin, he says, I did not know, except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet (Rom 7:7). Now then I ask you, Manichee, now I ask you, answer me. Is the law evil which says: You shall not covet? Not even some lustful and worthless man would answer me this. For even scandalous men themselves, when they are reprehended, blush; and when they are among the chaste, they do not dare to be wanton. If, then, you say that the law is evil which says: You shall not covet, you wish to covet with impunity; you accuse the law, because it strikes at lust. My brothers, if we did not hear the Apostle saying: Is the law sin? God forbid! but only recalling the words of the law, where it was said: You shall not covet; even with him not praising the law, we ought nonetheless to praise it; to praise it, and to accuse ourselves. Behold the law, behold from above the divine trumpet cries to man: You shall not covet. You shall not covet, reprehend it if you can; do it, if you cannot reprehend it. You have heard: You shall not covet, you do not dare reprehend it. Because it is good which it said: You shall not covet; it is evil to covet. The law blames the evil, the law forbids you from your evil. Therefore the law blames the evil of coveting, the law forbids you from your evil. Therefore do what the law commands, do not do what the law forbids, do not covet.

5. 6. But what does the Apostle say? I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet. For I was going after my covetousness, and I was running where it dragged me, and I judged its enticements, soft and pleasant from carnal sweetness, to be great happiness. For the sinner is praised, says the law, in the desires of his soul; and he who does wickedly is blessed (See Ps 10:3 (9:24)). You find a man pursuing his carnal covetings, and giving himself wholly as their slave, hunting after pleasures on every side, fornicating, getting drunk; I say no more; fornicating, I say, getting drunk. I have said the things that are committed lawfully, but not by God's laws. For who was ever led to a judge because he entered a harlot's brothel? Who was ever accused in the public courts because he flowed away, wanton and unclean, among his lyre-girls? Who, having a wife, ever found a charge laid against him because he debauched his own slave girl? But in the forum, not in heaven; in the law of the world, not in the law of the Creator of the world. The lustful, unclean, and wanton man is called happy to abound in pleasures, to enjoy delights. And now if he even gorges himself with wine, if he drinks measures without measure; it is too little that he finds no charge—he even receives the name of a brave man; the more worthless, the more unconquered under the cup. When these things are praised, and it is said: He is happy, he is great, it is well with him; and not only is this not thought to be sin, but it is even thought to be either a gift of God, or at least a sweet, pleasant, and lawful good: the law of God comes forward, and says: You shall not covet. That man, who thought it a great good, and reckoned it great happiness, not to deny his covetousness the things it could have, to follow where it dragged; hears: You shall not covet; and recognizes that it is sin. God spoke, man heard. He believed God, he saw his sin; what he thought good, he recognized to be evil; he wished to bridle his covetousness, not to go after it, he restrained himself, he made the attempt, he was conquered. He who before was ignorant of his evils, became learned, and was worse conquered; he began to be not only a sinner, but also a transgressor. For he was a sinner even before; but before he heard the law, he did not know he was a sinner. He heard the law, he saw sin; he attempted to conquer, he was overcome and laid low; he became a transgressor of the law too, who before was an ignorant sinner. This is what the Apostle says: Is the law sin? God forbid! But sin I did not know, except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet.

5. 7. But sin, seizing the occasion, worked in me through the commandment every covetousness (Rom 7:8). The covetousness was less, when before the law you sinned securely, but now, with the barriers of the law set against you, the river of covetousness was, as it were, dammed a little, not dried up; but with the force that was leading you growing, with no barriers, it overwhelmed you, the barriers being broken. Your covetousness was less, when it stirred your lust; but it is "every" covetousness when it transgresses the law as well. Do you wish to know how great it is? See what it broke through: You shall not covet. Not a man said it, God said it, the Creator said it, the eternal Judge said it, not just anyone said it. Do, then, what he said. You do not? Watch out for the one who judges, who said it. But what can you do, O man? You did not conquer, for this reason, that you presumed upon yourself.

6. 8. Attend then now to the earlier words, which seemed obscure: For when we were in the flesh. Attend to the words we called earlier, where the reading began which seemed obscure: For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins which are through the law (Rom 7:5). How are they through the law? Because we were in the flesh. What is it: Because we were in the flesh? We were presuming upon the flesh. For surely the Apostle who was speaking had not already departed from this flesh, nor was he speaking to those who had already departed from this flesh by death? Not at all; but according to the measure of this life, both the one speaking and those to whom he spoke were in the flesh. What then is it: When we were in the flesh; except: When we presumed upon the flesh, that is, when we considered only ourselves? For it was said to man, and said of men: All flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:6; Isa 40:5). What is: All flesh shall see, except: Every man shall see? And what is: The Word was made flesh (John 1:14), except: The Word was made man? For it was not that the Word and flesh were there, and a soul was not there; but by the name of flesh, man was signified, in that which is read: The Word was made flesh. Therefore when we were in the flesh—that is, when we were engaged in the covetings of the flesh, and there placed our whole hope, as if in ourselves—the passions of sins, which are through the law, were increased through the law. For by forbidding they made the transgressor of the law; because he who became a transgressor did not have God as a helper. They were at work, then, in our members, to bear fruit—to whom, except to death? If the sinner was to be condemned, what hope has the transgressor?

7. 9. Therefore, O man, your covetousness conquered you; it conquered you, because it found you in a bad place; it found you in the flesh, therefore it conquered you. Migrate from there: why are you terrified? I did not tell you to die. Do not be terrified, because I said: Migrate from the flesh. I did not tell you to die; rather—I dare to say it—I did tell you to die. If you have died with Christ, seek the things that are above. Living in the flesh, do not be in the flesh. All flesh is grass, but the Word of the Lord remains forever (Isa 40:6,8). Let the Lord become your refuge. Covetousness presses on, it urges you, it has received great strength against you, by the prohibition of the law it has been made greater, you suffer a greater enemy: let the Lord be your refuge, a tower of strength from the face of the enemy (See Ps 61:3 (60:4)). Do not, then, be in the flesh, be in the spirit. What is: Be in the spirit? Place your hope in God. For if you place your hope in the very spirit by which you are a man, your spirit slides back again into the flesh, because you have not given it to the one on whom it may hang. It does not contain itself, if it is not contained. Do not remain in yourself, transcend even yourself: place yourself in him who made you. For if you have hope in yourself, once the law is received you will be a transgressor. The enemy finds you stripped of refuge, he invades you; see that he does not perhaps seize you, like a lion, and there be no one to deliver (See Ps 7:2 (7:3)). Attend to the words of the Apostle praising the law, accusing himself, making himself guilty under the law, and perhaps transfiguring your person into himself, and saying to you: Sin I did not know, except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet. But sin, seizing the occasion, worked in me through the commandment every covetousness. For without the law sin was dead. What is: was dead? It lies hidden, it does not appear at all, it is unknown as though buried. But when the commandment came, sin revived (Rom 7:7-9). What is: revived? It began to appear, it began to be felt, it began to rebel against me.

8. 10. But I died. What is: I died? I became a transgressor, and the commandment which was unto life was found to be unto death for me (Rom 7:10). See that the law is praised, the commandment which was unto life. For what sort of life is it, not to covet? O sweet life! Sweet indeed is the pleasure of covetousness: it is true, and men would not pursue it, were it not sweet. The theater, the spectacle, the wanton harlot, the most shameful little song, these are sweet things of covetousness; sweet plainly, pleasant, delightful: but: The unjust have told me of delights, but not as your law, O Lord (Ps 119:85 (118:85)). They are pleasant, they are sweet, they are delightful; but hear better things: The unjust have told me of delights, but not as your law, O Lord. Happy the soul which is delighted by delights of this kind, where it is stained by no foulness, and is cleansed by the serenity of truth. But let the one whom the law of God delights—and so delights as to surpass all the delights of wantonness—not arrogate this delight to himself: The Lord will give sweetness (See Ps 85:12 (84:13)). What shall I say? Lord, give me that sweetness, or that one? You are sweet, O Lord, and in your sweetness teach me your statutes (See Ps 119:68 (118:68)). In your sweetness teach me, and you teach me. Then I learn to do, if you teach me in your sweetness. But as long as iniquity flatters and is sweet, truth is bitter. In your sweetness teach me: so that truth may be sweet, by your sweetness iniquity may be despised. Far better and sweeter is truth, but to the healthy bread is sweet. What is better and more excellent than the heavenly bread? But only if iniquity does not set the teeth on edge. For Scripture says: As a sour grape is harmful to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes, so is iniquity to those who use it (See Prov 10:26). What does it profit that you praise the bread, if you live badly? What you praise you do not eat. When, then, you hear the word, when you hear the word of justice and truth, and you praise it; it is far more praiseworthy if you do it. Do, then, what you praise. Or will you say: I wish to, but I am not able? Why are you not able? Because there is no health. Whence have you lost your health, except that by sinning you offended the Creator? Therefore, that you may eat his bread, which you praise, with sweetness—that is, with health—say to him: I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you (Ps 41:4 (40:5)). Therefore, he says: The commandment which was unto life was found to be unto death for me. For he was before unknown to himself a sinner, he became a manifest transgressor. Behold, that was found to be unto death for him, which was unto life.

9. 11. But sin, he says, seizing the occasion, deceived me through the commandment, and through it killed me (Rom 7:11). So it was done first in paradise: It deceived me, he says, seizing the occasion through the commandment. See the serpent whispering to that woman. He asked her what God had said: she answered: God said to us: Of every tree which is in paradise, you shall eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. If you eat of it, you shall die the death. This is God's commandment. Against it the serpent: You shall not, he says, die the death. For God knew that on the day you eat, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods (See Gen 3:1-5). Seizing the occasion, then, sin deceived me through the commandment, and through it killed me. With the sword you carried, the enemy killed you; with your own arms he conquered you, with your own arms he destroyed you. Receive the commandment: know that it is arms, not those by which he may kill you, but those by which the enemy may be killed by you. But do not presume upon your own strength. See little David against Goliath, see the little one against the huge one; but presuming in the name of the Lord. You come to me, he says, with shield and lance; I in the name of the Lord almighty (See 1 Sam 17:45). So, so; not otherwise: in no way otherwise is the enemy laid low. He who presumes upon his own strength is laid low before he even fights.

10. 12. See, however, dearly beloved, see again and again that the apostle Paul, against the fury of the Manichees, is a most open praiser of the divine law; see what he adds: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Can it be praised more richly? A little before, by that word which he said: God forbid! he had defended it from the charge, he had not praised it. It is one thing to defend from a charge laid, another to proclaim with due heralding. The charge was laid: What then shall we say? Is the law sin? The defense: God forbid! With one word the truth is defended; because great is the authority of the Apostle defending it. Why should he defend it at length? It is enough. God forbid! Or do you wish, he says, to receive proof of him who speaks in me, Christ? (2 Cor 13:3) But now: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good (Rom 7:12).

10. 13. Did then what is good become death to me? God forbid! Because death is not good. But sin, that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good (Rom 7:13). The law is not death, but sin is death. But he had already said: Without the law sin was dead (Rom 7:8). Where I had reminded you that it says was dead, it lies hidden, it does not appear. Now see how truly it was thus said: Sin, he says, that it might appear as sin. He did not say: That it might be; because it was, even when it did not appear. Sin, that it might appear as sin. What is: That sin might appear? Because I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet (Rom 7:7). He did not say: I did not have covetousness; but: I did not know covetousness. So here too he does not say: That sin might be; but: That sin might appear, it worked death in me through what is good. What death? That the one transgressing through the commandment might become a sinner—or sin—beyond measure (Rom 7:13). Attend: a sinner beyond measure. Why beyond measure? Because now there is transgression too. For where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15).

11. 14. See then, brothers, see that the human race has flowed from the first death of that first man. For: Sin, from the first man, entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed over into all men (Rom 5:12). It passed over, attend to the word you have heard; consider, see what is it passed over. It passed over: hence even the little child is guilty; he has not yet committed sin, but he has contracted it. For that sin did not remain in its source, but: it passed over; not into this one or that one, but: it passed over into all men. The first sinner, the first transgressor, begot sinners liable to death. The Savior came from the Virgin to heal them. Because he came to you not by the way you came; for he was not from the concupiscence of male and female, not from that bond of concupiscence. The Holy Spirit, he says, will come upon you. This was said to the Virgin, said to one fervent with faith, not boiling with the concupiscence of the flesh: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Luke 1:35). Who could have such an overshadowing, while she was boiling with the ardor of lust? Because, then, he came to you not by the way you came, he frees you. Where did he find you? Sold under sin, lying in the death of the first man, contracting the sin of the first man, having guilt before you could have choice. Behold where he found you, when he found you a little child. But you have passed beyond the age of the little child: behold, you have grown, you have added many things to the first sin; you received the law, you stood forth a transgressor. But do not be anxious: Where sin abounded, grace superabounded (Rom 5:20). Turning to the Lord, and so on.

1. 1. Yesterday's reading from the Letter of the holy apostle Paul you heard, you who were present at the sermon; that reading is followed by the one recited today. That difficult and dangerous passage is still in hand, which we have undertaken to expound and unravel for you, with the help of our Lord, as far as you assist me with devout affection toward him, according to the strength he deigns to give. Let your Charity grant me patience, so that, if on account of the obscurity of the matters I have a difficult discussion, I may at least have an easy voice. For if both should be difficult, much labor is spent: and would that it be not spent in vain. But that our labor may profit, let your hearing be patient. That the Apostle does not blame the Law, we satisfied our hearers yesterday, as I reckon. For there he says: What then shall we say? Is the law sin? God forbid! But sin I did not know, except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness, had not the law said: You shall not covet. But sin, seizing the occasion, worked in me through the commandment every covetousness. For without the law sin was dead (Rom 7:7-8); that is, it lies hidden, it does not appear. But I once lived without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived. But I died, and the commandment which was unto life was found (for what is so pertinent to life as: You shall not covet?) to be unto death for me. For sin, seizing the occasion, deceived me through the commandment, and through it killed me (Rom 7:9-11); it terrified covetousness, it did not extinguish it; it terrified, it did not crush; it made fear of punishment, not love of justice. And so, he says, the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did then what is good become death to me? God forbid! (Rom 7:12-13) For the law is not death, but sin is death. What then from the occasion of the commandment? But sin, that it might appear as sin (for it lay hidden when it was called dead): it worked death in me through what is good; that, with transgression added, the one transgressing through the commandment might become a sinner—or sin—beyond measure; because transgression would not be added to sin, were there no commandment. For in another place the same Apostle says openly: For where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15). What then? Why do we doubt that the law was given for this, that man might find himself? For when God did not forbid evil, man lay hidden from himself; he did not find his strength to be feeble, except when he received the law of prohibition. He found himself, then; he found himself among evils. Where does he flee from himself? For wherever he flees from himself, he follows himself. And what does the knowledge of himself, once found, profit him, whom his conscience wounds?

2. 2. He speaks, then, in this reading too, which was recited today, the one who found himself. We know, he says, that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do, I do not know. For I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:14-15). It is asked in this place with great diligence who is to be understood—whether the Apostle himself who was speaking, or whether he transfigured into himself some other person whom he might touch in himself, as he said in a certain place: But all these things I have transfigured into myself and Apollos for your sake, that in us you may learn (1 Cor 4:6). If, then, the Apostle is speaking (which no one doubts), and when he says: I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do, he speaks not of another but of himself; what are we to understand, my brothers? Did the apostle Paul, for example, not wish to commit adultery, and yet committed adultery? Did he not wish to be greedy, and yet was greedy? But who of us would dare to clothe himself in such blasphemy as to think this of the Apostle? Perhaps, then, it is someone else; perhaps it is you, or you, or that man, or I. If, then, it is one of us, let us hear him as it were about himself, and let us correct ourselves without being angry. But if it is he himself—for perhaps it is he himself—let us not so understand what he said: I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do, as though he wished to be chaste, and was an adulterer; or wished to be merciful, and was cruel; or wished to be devout, and was impious. Let us not take it for this: For I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do.

3. 3. But for what? I wish not to covet, and I covet. What did the law say? You shall not covet (Rom 7:7). The man heard the law, he recognized the vice: he declared war, he found captivity. But perhaps some man, not the Apostle. What then do we say, my brothers? Did the Apostle not have in his flesh any covetousness which he would not wish to have, but to which, nevertheless, though it existed, tickled, suggested, solicited, seethed, and tempted, he did not consent? I say to your Charity, if we believe that the Apostle had no infirmity of covetousness at all against which he struggled, we believe a great deal of him; and would that it were so. For we ought not to envy the Apostles, but to imitate the Apostles. Yet, dearly beloved, I hear the Apostle himself confessing that he had not yet arrived at so great a perfection of justice as we believe to be in the angels; equality with which angels we hope for, if we arrive at what we wish. For what else does the Lord promise us in the resurrection, where he says: In the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry nor take wives; for they will not begin to die, but will be equal to the angels of God? (See Luke 20:35-36; Matt 22:30)

3. 4. Someone says, then: And how do you know that the apostle Paul did not yet have the justice and perfection of an angel? I do no wrong to the Apostle, I believe no one but the Apostle, I seek no other witness; I do not heed one who suspects, I do not care for one who praises overmuch. Tell me, holy Apostle, about yourself, where no one doubts that you speak of yourself. For where you said: I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:15), there are those who say that you transfigured into yourself some unknown person, laboring, failing, conquered, captive. You tell me about yourself, where no one doubts that you speak of yourself. Brothers, says the Apostle, I do not reckon myself to have laid hold. And what do you do? But one thing, forgetting what is behind, stretched out toward what is ahead, according to the intention, he says—not according to perfection; according to the intention I follow toward the prize of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus. Above he had already said: Not that I have already received, or am already perfect (Phil 3:13-14,12). Still it is contradicted, and it is said: The Apostle said these things because he had not yet arrived at immortality; not because he had not yet arrived at the perfection of justice. So then he was already as just as the angels are, but not yet immortal as the angels are. So, they say, so it is exactly. Just now you said: He was as just as the angels are, but not yet immortal as the angels are. So he already held the perfection of justice, but, following the heavenly prize, was seeking immortality.

4. 5. Tell us, holy Apostle, some other plainer passage, not where you seek immortality, but where you confess infirmity. And here already it is whispered, already it is contradicted. I seem to myself to hear the thoughts of some, and here it is said to me: It is true, I know what you are going to say: he confesses infirmity, but of the flesh, not of the mind; he confesses infirmity, but of the body, not of the soul; but in the soul there is perfect justice, not in the body. For who indeed does not know that the Apostle was frail in body, was mortal in body, as he says: We have this treasure in earthen vessels? (2 Cor 4:7) What then have you to do with the earthen vessel? Say something about the treasure. If he had something lacking, if there was something that could be added to him for the gold of justice, let us find it. Let us hear him himself, lest we be reckoned injurious. And lest by the greatness of my revelations, the Apostle says: in the greatness of my revelations, lest I be exalted (See 2 Cor 12:7). Surely here you recognize the Apostle as having a greatness of revelations, and fearing the precipice of being lifted up. So that you may know that even the Apostle himself, who wished to make others whole, was still being healed; so that you may know that he too was still being healed; if you esteem his honor highly, hear what medicine the physician applied to him for his swelling; hear not me, hear him. Hear him confessing, that you may perceive him teaching. Hear: And lest by the greatness of my revelations I be exalted. Behold, can I now say to the apostle Paul: Lest you be exalted, holy Apostle? Must it still be guarded against in you, lest you be exalted? Must it still be feared in you, lest you be exalted? Must medicine still be sought in you for this infirmity, lest you be exalted?

5. 6. What do you say to me? he says. You too, hear what I am; and do not be high-minded, but fear. Hear how the small lamb enters where the ram is thus endangered. Lest by the greatness, he says, of my revelations I be exalted, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me (2 Cor 12:7). What sort of swelling did he fear, who received so biting a poultice? Now then say that there was as much justice in him as there is in the holy angels. Or does perhaps even a holy angel in heaven, lest he be exalted, receive a thorn, an angel of Satan, to be buffeted by him? Far be it to suspect this of the holy angels. We are men; let us recognize the holy Apostles as men; chosen vessels, but still frail; still sojourning in this flesh, not yet triumphing in the heavenly fatherland. Therefore, since he asked the Lord three times that this thorn be taken from him; and was not heard according to his will, because he was heard for his health (See 2 Cor 12:8-9); perhaps it is not unfitting that he himself speaks, where he says: But we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal (Rom 7:14).

5. 7. Is the Apostle, then, carnal—he who said to others: You who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness—does he address others as spiritual, and is he himself carnal? But what did he say even to those spiritual ones, because they were not yet in heavenly and angelic perfection, were not yet in the security of that fatherland, but were engaged in the anxiety of this sojourn? What did he say to them? Certainly he called them spiritual: You, he says, who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted (Gal 6:1). Behold, the one whom he already called spiritual, for him he feared the frailty of temptation, whereby the spiritual one could be tempted, even if not from the mind, certainly from the flesh. For he is spiritual, because he lives according to the spirit; but still in part carnal from the mortal part: the same man spiritual, the same carnal. Behold the spiritual one: With my mind I serve the law of God. Behold the carnal one: But with my flesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25). The same man, then, both spiritual and carnal? The same plainly; as long as he lives here, he is so.

6. 8. Do not marvel, whoever you are, whoever yields to and consents to carnal covetings, who either think them good for the filling up of the satiety of lust, or at least now see them to be so evil that you nevertheless, by yielding to them, consent, and follow where they lead, and perpetrate the evils they suggest; you are wholly carnal. You, you, whoever you are of such a kind, are wholly carnal. But if you indeed covet what the law forbids when it says: You shall not covet (Rom 7:7); yet you keep something else that the law likewise commands: Do not go after your covetings (See Sir 18:30); you are spiritual in mind, carnal in flesh. For it is one thing not to covet; another not to go after one's covetings. Not to covet belongs altogether to the perfect; not to go after one's covetings belongs to the one fighting, wrestling, laboring. Where the fight is hot, why is victory despaired of? When will there be victory? When death will be swallowed up in victory. For then there will be the voice of one triumphing, not the sweat of one fighting. What is that future voice of one triumphing, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality? You see the victor, hear him exulting, await him triumphing. Then the saying that is written will come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your striving? Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor 15:54-55) Where is it? Behold, it was, and is not. Where, O death, is your striving? Behold the striving of death: I do not do what I will. Behold the striving of death: We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal (Rom 7:15,14). If, then, the Apostle speaks of himself; if I say it, I do not affirm it; if the Apostle says: We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal; for in mind spiritual, in body carnal: when wholly spiritual? When the body is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44). Now then, when the striving of death is hot, I do not do what I will: in part spiritual, in part carnal; in the better part spiritual, in the inferior part carnal. I still contend, I have not yet conquered; it is a great thing for me not to be conquered. I do not do what I will; what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:15). What do you do? I covet. Even if I do not consent to covetousness, even if I do not go after my covetings; yet I still covet: and certainly even in that part it is I.

7. 9. For it is not that I am in the mind, and another in the flesh. But what? Therefore it is I myself: because I am in the mind, I am in the flesh. For there are not two contrary natures, but from each one man; because there is one God, by whom man was made. Therefore it is I myself, I my very self, with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25). With the mind I do not consent to the law of sin: but nevertheless I would not wish there to be in my members any law of sin. Because, then, I would not wish it, and yet it is there; I do not do what I will: because I covet, and do not wish to, I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do. What do I hate? To covet. I hate to covet, and yet I do it with the flesh, not with the mind: What I hate, that I do.

7. 10. But if I do what I do not will; I consent to the law, that it is good (Rom 7:16). What is this: If I do what I do not will; I consent to the law, that it is good? You would consent to the law if you did what it willed: you do what the law hates—how do you consent to the law? Plainly: If I do what I do not will; I consent to the law, that it is good. How? Because the law commands: You shall not covet (Rom 7:7). What do I will? Not to covet? By willing what the law wills, I consent to the law, that it is good. If the law said: You shall not covet, and I wished to covet; I would not consent to the law, and I would stand altogether at variance from it by the perversity of my will. For with the law saying: You shall not covet, if I wished to covet; I do not consent to the law of God. But now? What do you say, O law? You shall not covet. And I do not wish to covet, and I do not wish to; what you do not will, I do not will; therefore I consent, because what you do not will, I do not will. My infirmity does not fulfill the law; but my will praises the law. Therefore if I do what I do not will; for this reason I consent to the law, because I do not will what it does not will, not because I do what I do not will. For the very doing is to covet, not to consent to covetousness: lest someone now seek in the Apostle an example for sinning, and give a bad example. I do not do what I will. For what does the law say? You shall not covet. And I do not wish to covet, and yet I covet; although I do not give assent to my covetousness, although I do not go after it. For I resist, I turn away my mind, I refuse arms, I hold back my members; and yet there is done in me what I do not will. What the law does not will, I do not will, with the law; what it does not will, I do not will: therefore I consent to the law.

8. 11. But because I am in the flesh, I am in the mind; but I am more in the mind than in the flesh. For because I am in the mind, I am in the one ruling; for the mind rules, the flesh is ruled; and I am more in that by which I rule than in that in which I am ruled. Because, then, I am more in the mind: But now it is no longer I who do it. But now, what is it? But now, already redeemed, I who was before sold under sin, now that I have received the grace of the Savior, that with my mind I delight in the law of God, it is not I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that there does not dwell in me (Rom 7:17-18). Again, then: in me; hear what follows: that is, in my flesh, anything good. For to will is present with me. I know. What do you know? That there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, anything good. A little before you had said: What I do, I do not know (Rom 7:15). If you do not know, how do you know? Now you say: I do not know; now you say: I know; how I am to understand it, I do not know. Or is this what I understand? For where he says: What I do, I do not know; he said: I do not know, I do not approve, I do not accept, it does not please me, I do not consent, I do not praise. For neither will Christ be ignorant of those to whom he will say: I do not know you (Matt 25:12). Plainly I understand this too: For what I do, I do not know; because what I do not do, I do not know. For it is not I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. Therefore I do not know it: because it is not I who do it, as it was said of the Lord: Him who knew no sin (2 Cor 5:21). What is: knew no sin? Did he then not know what he reproved? not know what he punished? If, then, he did not know what he punished, he punished unjustly. But because he punished justly, he knew what he punished. And yet he knew no sin, because he had committed no sin. For what I do, I do not know: for I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not will; I consent to the law, that it is good (Rom 7:15-16). But now, grace having now been received, it is not I who do it; the mind is free, the flesh is captive. It is not I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, anything good (Rom 7:17-18).

9. 12. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good is not present (Rom 7:18). To will is present, to accomplish is not present. He did not say: to do; but: to accomplish. For you do not do nothing. Covetousness rebels, and you do not consent; another's wife delights you, and you do not assent, you turn away your mind, you enter into the inner chamber of the mind. You see covetousness clamoring without, you pronounce sentence against it, cleansing your conscience. I do not wish it, you say, I do not do it. Suppose it delights me, I do not do it, I have one in whom to delight. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man (Rom 7:22). Why do you make an uproar from your flesh? Why do you tumultuously suggest foolish, temporal, fleeting, vain, harmful delights, and tell them to me as if chattering? The unjust have told me of delights. Hence is this covetousness too. It tells me of delights, but not as your law, O Lord (Ps 119:85 (118:85)). For I delight in the law of God: not from myself, but from the grace of God. You, covetousness, make an uproar in the flesh, you do not subject the mind to yourself. In God I will hope; I will not fear what the flesh may do to me (See Ps 56:4 (55:5)). It is against me—that is, with my mind not consenting—that the flesh makes its uproar. In God, he says, I will hope; I will not fear what the flesh may do to me. As neither another's, so neither my own. He, then, who does these things in himself, does he do nothing? He does much: it is a great thing he does, but yet he does not accomplish. For what is it: to accomplish? Where, O death, is your striving? (1 Cor 15:55) Therefore, to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good is not.

9. 13. For I do not do the good that I will; but the evil that I do not will, that I do. And he repeats: But if I do what I myself do not will, that is, I covet; it is now no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. I find then a law for myself, willing to do good (Rom 7:19-21). I find the law good; the law is good, the law is something good. How do I prove it? Because I wish to fulfill it. I find then a law for myself, willing to do good; since evil is present with me (Rom 7:21). This too: with me. For it is not that the flesh is not mine, or that the flesh is of another substance, or that the flesh is from another principle, or that the soul is from God, and the flesh from the race of darkness. God forbid! Sickness fights against health. The half-dead man lies on the road, he is still being cared for, all his sicknesses are being healed (See Luke 10:30; Ps 103:3 (102:3)). I do not do what I will; but what I hate, that I do. But if I myself do what I do not will; I find then a law for myself willing to do good, since evil is present with me. What evil?

10. 14. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man. I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members (Rom 7:22-23); captive, but from the flesh; captive, but in part. For the mind fights, and delights in the law of God. For so ought we to understand it, if the Apostle is speaking of himself. If, then, the mind does not consent to sin tickling, suggesting, flattering; if the mind does not consent, since it has within itself its other delights, in no part to be compared with the delights of the flesh: if, then, it does not consent, and there is in me something dead and something alive, death still strives, but the living mind does not consent. Is not that death itself in you? Does not that which is dead pertain to you? Still there is striving for you. What further then is to be hoped from this?

10. 15. Wretched man that I am: even if not in mind, yet in flesh a wretched man. For it is not that man is in the mind, and in the flesh not man. For who ever hated his own flesh? (Eph 5:29) Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24) What is this, brothers? It is as though he wishes to be without a body. Why do you hasten? If your intention is only there, to be without a body; death will come at some time, and the last day, drawing near, will without doubt free you from this body of death. Why do you groan as over some great matter? Why do you say: Who will free me? You speak as mortal, you speak as one about to die. The separation of mind from flesh will come at some time: on account of the brevity of life, it is never far off; on account of daily mishaps, you do not know when it will be. Therefore, whether you hasten or delay, all human life is short: why do you groan as over some great matter, and say: Who will free me from the body of this death?

11. 16. And he adds: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25). For the pagans, who do not have the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, will they not die? Will they not at some time, on the last day, be released from the flesh? Will they not on that day be freed from this body of death? You—what is it that you wish to attribute, as some great thing, to the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, that you will be freed from this body of death? The Apostle answers you, if we have grasped his meaning—rather, since with the Lord's help we have without doubt grasped it; the Apostle answers you, and says: I know what I am saying. You say the pagans are freed from this body of death, because the last day of this life will come, and they will be released for a time from this body of death. The day will also come, when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice; and those who have done good will come forth, to the resurrection of life (John 5:28-29); behold, freed from this body of death. Those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment: behold, they have returned to this body of death. The body of this death returns to the impious, nor will he ever be released from it. Then there will not be eternal life, but eternal death, because eternal punishment.

12. 17. But you, O Christian, pray as much as you can, cry out and say: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? It is answered you: You are made secure—not concerning yourself, but concerning your Lord; you are made secure concerning your pledge. Hope with Christ for the kingdom of Christ, you already hold the pledge, the blood of Christ. Say, say: Who will free me from the body of this death? that it may be answered you: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25). For you will not be freed from this body of death in such a way that you do not have this body. You will have it, but no longer of this death. It will be the same, and it will not be the same. It will be the same, because it will be the same flesh; it will not be the same, because it will not be mortal. So, so you will be freed from the body of this death, that this mortal will put on immortality, and this corruptible will put on incorruption (See 1 Cor 15:53). By whom? Through whom? The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Because through one man came death, and through one man the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die; hence is it that you groan. In Adam all die: hence is it that you groan, hence is it that you strive with death, hence is the body of this death. But as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor 15:21-22). Made alive, having received an immortal body, where you may say: Where, O death, is your striving? (1 Cor 15:55) you will be freed from the body of this death; not, however, by your own power, but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Turning to the Lord, and so on.

1. When the apostle Paul was read, we heard what goes on in man; and each one, considering himself, found that the Apostle spoke the truth. For he said that he does not do what he wills, but what he hates, that he does. And he said: If I do what I do not will, I consent to the law, that it is good (Rom 7:16); because what I do not will, the law too does not will; what the law forbids me to do, this I do not wish to do: but what I do not will, this . . . there is in me something else that fights against my will. And he said: For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man: but I see another law fighting against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members (Rom 7:22-23). Behold what goes on in man. But see what he said in what follows: Unhappy man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25).

2. Let each man, then, attend to himself: because in his Letter Paul has set up a mirror, where every man may see himself. What the law commands delights our mind; and what the law forbids delights our flesh; and our mind and our flesh contend; the mind contends for the law, the flesh against the law; and one man walks with a quarrel that goes on within him. In one man there is a quarrel: the tongue is silent, and within there is tumult. I set it before you in a way you may better see. A man sees another's wife, and covets her. He attends to the law, which says: Do not commit fornication; and what does the man's mind say within? The law has spoken well, the law has said a great thing, it loves chastity; and the flesh is delighted by iniquity. A quarrel has been made in the man. Let two conquer one; let two—the law and the mind—conquer the gainsaying flesh. But see what the mind itself said: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members. Therefore the mind is conquered by the flesh. Let it call upon the help of the Savior, and it will escape the snare of the deceiver. For see what the Apostle said. What sort of man was the Apostle, how great and strong an athlete of God! Yet he would be led captive, if the Crucified did not come to his aid. Therefore, when he was endangered, what did he say? Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death, that I may not commit the iniquity which delights my flesh? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25).

3. Christ, then, watches you fighting. Your conscience is the theater, where two contend, the mind and the flesh. The mind consents to the law, the flesh gainsays the law; and it wishes to bridle the flesh. A great wrestling: but the one who watches you fighting can help you in your danger. For if you were having a wrestling match with some man, he would strike you, and you would strike him; and a man would watch you, to see which of you would win. Whichever was going to win would receive the prize. This a man could say to you: Whichever of you wins, will receive this. He was ready to crown the winner; but could he help the one laboring? But now the one who watches you is Christ; cry out to him, when you labor, that you may conquer; for your flesh too contends to its own harm, that it may win. For if you two men contend, and have a wrestling match, whichever of you won would be crowned. But in this wrestling, if the mind wins, it frees the soul and the flesh; if the flesh wins, both are sent into Gehenna. Therefore the flesh contends to its own harm, and wishes to win to its own harm. It is granted to the flesh to be conquered, lest it be punished in eternal fire.

4. The Psalm too which we sang agrees, as we said: Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice (Ps 130:1-2 (129:1-2)). This is the depth, where the flesh contends against the mind. For if the mind wins, both are lifted up by it on high; the conquered flesh too is lifted up there, because it is conquered to its own good. As in a house, when a bad wife contends with a good husband, she wins to her own harm, and is conquered to her own good. For if the bad wife wins, the house becomes perverse, when the bearded one serves a bad woman. But if the bad wife is conquered, she begins to serve a good husband; the woman herself becomes good, because she serves a good husband. So it is too with our flesh, like a bad wife conquered, because it is conquered to its own good. That he may be called on for help, who joins the two and crowns both, therefore out of this depth we cry to our Lord, as we said in the Psalm. For if we conquer, and do not consent to the bad desires of our flesh, afterward the flesh will rise again; and there you do not find the bad desires with which you contend. For now you find bad desires against which to fight: and it is said to you: Conquer, and you are crowned. And what is it for you now to conquer? Not to consent to bad desires. For can you not have those bad desires? But to conquer is . . . not to consent. But when we have received back the flesh on the day of resurrection, that very flesh is changed, becomes immortal; and now you do not find desire with which to wrestle . . . in which you may be crowned. And now, when you are on high with your flesh, do you cry out from the depth, where you were quarreling against your flesh?

5. And that woman who cried out after the Lord, the Canaanite—how she cried out! Her daughter was suffering from a demon: since the flesh does not consent to the mind, she was possessed by the devil. If she cried out so much for her daughter, how much ought we to cry out for our flesh and our soul? For you see what she obtained by crying out. For at first she was disregarded; for she was a Canaanite, of an evil race, where idols were worshiped. But the Lord Jesus Christ was walking in Judea, whence were the patriarchs, whence was the Virgin Mary, who bore Christ; and that nation alone worshiped the true God, did not worship idols. So when some Canaanite woman or other interrupted him, he was unwilling to hear her. He disregarded her because he knew what he was reserving; not that he himself denied the benefit, but that she, by persevering, might obtain it. So his disciples said to him: Lord, now send her away, give her an answer: you see that she cries out after us, and makes herself a weariness to us. And he said to his disciples: I was not sent except to the sheep that have perished of the house of Israel (Matt 15:23-24). I was sent to the Jewish nation, where I might seek the sheep that had perished. There were other sheep among the other nations, but Christ had not come to them; because they did not believe at the presence of Christ, but believed the Gospel of Christ. Therefore he said: I was not sent except to the sheep; therefore in his presence he chose Apostles. And of those sheep was Nathanael, of whom he said: Behold an Israelite, in whom there is no guile (John 1:47). Of those sheep was that great crowd, which carried branches before the Lord's donkey and said: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord (Matt 21:9). Those sheep had perished of the house of Israel, and they recognized the shepherd present, and believed in Christ present. Therefore, when she was in distress, she was put off along with the gentile sheep. When she had heard this, which the Lord said to his disciples, she persevered in crying out, and did not desist. And the Lord to her: It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to throw it to the dogs. He made her a dog: why? Because she was of the Gentiles, who worshiped idols: for dogs lick stones. It is not good to take the bread of the children, and give it to the dogs. And she did not say: Lord, do not make me a dog, for I am not a dog; but rather she said: You speak truly, Lord, I am a dog. Whence she acknowledged the reproach, thence she merited the benefit; for where iniquity was put to distress, there humility was crowned. Yes, Lord, you speak truly: But the dogs too eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters. And then the Lord: O woman, great is your faith; be it done to you as you wish (Matt 15:26-28). Just now a dog, now a woman, changed by barking. She had desired the crumbs falling from the table: suddenly she found herself reclining at the table. For when he says to her: Great is your faith, he now counted her among those whose bread he was unwilling to throw to the dogs.

6. What do all these things teach us, except that, when what we ask of God is good, we should persevere in praying, until we receive it through the desire of one who sighs for it? For God puts off those who ask, in order to exercise those who desire. But we ought to ask for eternal life with great groanings—here a good life, and afterward eternal life; because you ought to ask even for a good life from God, that he may help your will. If he does not help, you remain conquered; you will begin to be led captive, if there does not come to your aid what was said: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25). Two things, then, let us ask for in security: in this world a good life, in the world to come eternal life. As for other things, we do not know whether they are useful to us. A man asks of God that he may marry a wife; how does he know whether he marries to his own good? A man asks of God that he may acquire riches; how does he know whether, when a poor man slept secure, a rich man dreams of robbers? He does not know, then, what is useful to him out of all the things this world has. But let him ask in security for a good life, and eternal life; here, that he may merit God; there, that he may be crowned by God. But what is the good life? To love God with the whole heart, with the whole soul, with the whole mind, and to love one's brother as oneself. Let us, then, love our God, let us love one another in his unity, let us have peace in him, and love among ourselves; so that, when our Lord Christ himself comes . . . we may be able: Lord, with your help we have done what you commanded; with you favorable, may we receive what you promised.

1. 1. Yesterday's reading from the holy Apostle was ended at the point where it was said: Therefore it is I myself who with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25). In which conclusion the Apostle demonstrated that he had said what he said above—It is now no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:17)—for this reason: because he was not working it with the mind by consenting, but with the flesh by coveting. For by the name of sin he calls that from which all sins arise, that is, carnal covetousness. For whatever there are of sins in words, in deeds, in thoughts, they arise only from evil desire, they arise only from unlawful delight. If, then, we resist this unlawful delight, if we do not consent to it, if we do not supply our members as weapons; sin does not reign in our mortal body. For sin loses its reign before it perishes, and so perishes. In this life, then, as far as the saints are concerned, it loses its reign; in the other life it perishes. For here it loses its reign, when we do not go after our covetings; but there it perishes, when it will be said: Where, O death, is your striving? (1 Cor 15:55)

2. 2. Therefore, when the Apostle had said: With my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin—not by giving his members to the iniquities to be committed, but only by coveting, yet not giving his hand to the unlawful covetousness—therefore, when he had said: With my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin, he added and said: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). For those who are in the flesh there is condemnation: for those who are in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation. Lest you think this would come to be afterward, he therefore added: now. Await that for later: that there should not even be covetousness in you against which to contend, with which to struggle, to which not to consent, which to bridle and tame; await it for later, because that too will be no more. For if what struggles with us from the mortal body will exist afterward too, Where, O death, is your striving? will be false. Let us know, then, what will be afterward. For then will come to pass what is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your striving? Where, O death, is your sting? For the sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law (1 Cor 15:54-56). Because by the prohibition desire was increased, not extinguished. The law gave power to sin, only by commanding through the letter, not by helping through the spirit. So then this will not be; but what now? You ask what is now? What he also said a little before: But now it is no longer I who do it (Rom 7:17); there too now. What is: it is not I who do it? I do not consent, I do not assent, I do not decide, it always displeases me: I hold back my members. And this is a great thing: since covetousness is from the flesh, and the members of the body pertain to the flesh, when sin—that is, the covetousness of the flesh—does not reign, the mind has more right to hold back the members of the flesh, lest they be given as weapons of iniquity, than the very covetousness of the flesh has to move the members of the flesh. And so the covetousness is of the flesh, and the members are of the flesh; yet the mind, because it has dominion—provided that it be helped from above, lest, when we attribute too much to it against the grace of God, we make it not a king but a tyrant—so much, then, does the mind avail, so does it rule when it is ruled, that of the members of the flesh itself, against the covetousness of that same flesh, it can do what the Apostle says: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires; nor present your members as weapons of iniquity to sin (Rom 6:12-13).

3. 3. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). Let them not be anxious, if they are tickled by unlawful covetings; let them not be anxious that there still seems to be a law in the members fighting against the law of the mind. For there is no condemnation. But for whom? For whom, even now? For those who are in Christ Jesus. And where is that statement, of which he spoke a little before: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members? (Rom 7:23) But he said me from the flesh, not from the mind. Where then is that law, if there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. For the law—not that on Mount Sinai through the letter; for the law—not that in the oldness of the letter; but: The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). For that you might delight in the law of God according to the inner man, whence would you have it, unless the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed you from the law of sin and death? Therefore, O human mind, do not attribute it to yourself, do not be too proud; rather, do not be proud at all, O human mind, that you do not consent to the desires of the flesh, that the law of sin does not cast you down from your citadel: The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death. That law did not free you, of which it was said above: That we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter (Rom 7:6). Why did that law not free you? Was it not itself also written by the finger of God? Is not the finger of God understood to be the Holy Spirit? Read the Gospel, and see that where one evangelist says, with the Lord speaking: If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God (Matt 12:28); another says: If I cast out demons by the finger of God (Luke 11:20). If, then, that law too was written by the finger of God—that is, by the Spirit of God; by which Spirit the magicians of Pharaoh, being overcome, said: This is the finger of God (Exod 8:19); if, then, it too—rather, since it too was written by the Spirit of God, that is, by the finger of God—why is it not said of it: For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus?

4. 4. The law of death is not that one, the law of sin and death is not that law which was given on Mount Sinai. The law of sin and death is that of which, groaning, he says: I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind (Rom 7:23). But that law, it is the one that was called: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. And he added: Did then what is good become death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good; that the one transgressing through the commandment might become a sinner—or sin—beyond measure (Rom 7:12-13). What is: beyond measure? That transgression be added. That law, then, was given that infirmity might be found. It is too little that it was not only found but even increased, and that thus a physician might be sought. For if the disease were slight, it would be despised; if the disease were despised, the physician would not be sought; if the physician were not sought, the disease would not be ended. Therefore where sin abounded, grace superabounded (Rom 5:20); which blotted out all the sins it found, and supplied help to our will as it strove not to sin; so that our will itself might be praised not in itself, but in God. For in God we will be praised all the day long (Ps 44:8 (43:9)): and, In the Lord shall my soul be praised; let the meek hear, and be glad (Ps 34:2 (33:3)). Let the meek hear: for the proud and quarrelsome do not hear. Why then is it not itself the law written by the finger of God, which gives this help of grace, of which we speak? Why? Because it was written on tablets of stone, not on the fleshly tablets of the heart (See 2 Cor 3:3).

5. 5. Finally, my brothers, in a great mystery see the harmony, see the difference; the harmony of the law, the difference of the people. The Passover is celebrated in the old people, as you know, by the slaying of the lamb with unleavened bread; where the slaying of the sheep signifies Christ, and the unleavened bread the new life, that is, without the oldness of leaven. Whence the Apostle says to us: Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened; for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7). The Passover, then, was celebrated in that old people, celebrated not yet in the shining light, but in the signifying shadow; and fifty days after the celebration of the Passover, as one who wishes will find by counting, the law is given on Mount Sinai, written by the finger of God. The true Passover comes, Christ is sacrificed; he makes a passing-over from death to life. For in Hebrew "Passover" is interpreted "passing-over"; which the Evangelist expressed, saying: But when the hour came that Jesus should pass over from this world to the Father (John 13:1). The Passover, then, is celebrated, the Lord rises, he makes a passing-over from death to life, which is Passover; and fifty days are numbered, and the Holy Spirit comes, the finger of God.

6. 6. But see how it was there, and how it is here. There the people stood far off, there was fear, there was no love. For they feared to such a degree that they said to Moses: You speak to us, and let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die (Exod 20:19). God came down, then, as it is written, on Sinai in fire; but terrifying the people standing far off, and writing with his finger on stone (See Exod 19:18; 31:18), not on the heart. But here, when the Holy Spirit came, the faithful were gathered together in one place; nor did he terrify them on a mountain, but he entered into a house. From heaven indeed there suddenly came a sound, as of a violent wind being borne along; it sounded, but no one was terrified. You have heard the sound; see also the fire; for on the mountain too there were both, both fire and sound; but there also smoke, while here a serene fire. There appeared to them, says the Scripture, divided tongues, as of fire. Was it terrifying from afar? God forbid! For it sat upon each one of them, and they began to speak in tongues, as the Spirit gave them to utter (Acts 2:2-4). Hear the tongue speaking, and understand the Spirit writing, not on stone, but on the heart. The law, then, of the spirit of life, written on the heart, not on stone; in Christ Jesus, in whom the truest Passover was celebrated: has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). For that you may know that this very thing is the most evident difference between the Old and the New Testament; whence the Apostle also says: Not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart (2 Cor 3:3). The Lord says through the Prophet: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will complete over the house of Jacob a new testament, not according to the testament which I established with their fathers, on the day when I took their hand, and led them out of the land of Egypt. Then, evidently showing the difference itself: Giving, he says, my laws in their hearts; in their hearts, he says, I will inscribe them (Jer 31:31-33). If, then, the law of God be written in your heart, so that it does not terrify from without, but soothes within; then the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2).

7. 7. For what was impossible for the law. For this follows in the reading of the Apostle: What was impossible for the law. And lest the law itself be blamed, what did he add? In that it was weakened through the flesh. For the law commanded, and did not fulfill; because the flesh, where there was no grace, resisted most invincibly. And the law was weakened through the flesh, because the law is spiritual; but I am carnal (Rom 8:3; 7:14). How then could the law assist me, commanding through the letter, and not giving grace? It was weakened through the flesh. What did God do, when this was impossible for the law, and it was weakened through the flesh? God sent his Son. Through what was the law weakened, and on account of what was this impossible for the law? It was weakened through the flesh. What then did God do? Against the flesh he sent flesh; rather, even for the flesh he sent flesh. For he killed the sin of the flesh, and freed the substance of the flesh. God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3). In true flesh indeed, but not in sinful flesh. But what is: in the likeness of sinful flesh? That is, that it might be flesh, true flesh. And whence the likeness of sinful flesh? Because from sin comes death: death is certainly in all sinful flesh; of which the Apostle says: That the body of sin might be done away with (Rom 6:6). Because, then, death is in all sinful flesh: but both are there, both death and sin in the rest of the flesh. In sinful flesh there is both death and sin; in the likeness of sinful flesh there was death, and there was not sin. For if it were sinful flesh, and were paying the penalty of death by the desert of sin, the Lord himself would not say: Behold, the prince of the world comes, and in me he will find nothing (John 14:30). Why then did he kill me? Because what I did not seize, then I was paying back (Ps 69:4 (68:5)). Plainly, what he did about the tribute, this he did about death. The tribute, the didrachma, was being exacted: Why, it was said, do you and your disciples not pay the tribute? He called Peter to him, and said to him: The kings of the world, from whom do they exact tribute? from their own sons, or from strangers? The answer was: From strangers. Therefore, he says, the sons are free. Yet lest we scandalize them, go to the sea, cast a hook, and the first that comes up—that is, the firstborn from the dead; open, he says, its mouth, and you will find there a stater—that is, two didrachmas, four drachmas; because the didrachma, that is, two drachmas, was exacted per head. You will find there a stater, that is, four drachmas, give it to them for me and you (Matt 17:24-27). What is: For me and you? Christ himself, Peter, the Church of Christ; the four Gospels of the Church. The mystery lay hidden: yet Christ paid the tribute he did not owe. So he paid death too: he did not owe it, and he paid it. Unless he paid what was not owed, he would never free us from the debt.

8. 8. What, then, was impossible for the law, which made the transgressor, because the mind, not yet convicted, had not sought the Savior; in that it was weakened through the flesh, God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and from sin condemned sin in the flesh (Rom 8:3). How then did he not have sin, if from sin he condemned sin? We have already at some time expounded this to you; but let those who remember recognize it; let those who did not hear, hear; let those who have forgotten, recall. In the law a sacrifice for sin was called sin. The law constantly recalls this; not once, not twice, but very often the sacrifices for sins were called sins. Such a sin was Christ. For what shall we say? Did he have sin? God forbid! He did not have sin, and he was sin. He was sin, I said, according to that understanding, because a sacrifice for sin. Hear that in this way he was sin: hear the Apostle himself. Speaking of him he says: Him who knew no sin. I was expounding this very statement to you, when I said these things: Him, he says, who knew no sin—that is, our Lord Jesus Christ—God the Father made him who knew no sin to be sin for us; him, that same Christ who knew no sin, God the Father made to be sin for us, that we might be the justice of God in him (2 Cor 5:21). See two things: the justice of God, not ours; in him, not in us. Hence those great saints, of whom the Psalm says: Your justice is like the mountains of God. And as if it were said in that same Psalm, where it was said: Your justice; for not their justice, but: Your justice is like the mountains of God. For I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence help shall come to me; but not from the mountains: For my help is from the Lord; who made heaven and earth (Ps 121:1-2 (120:1-2)); therefore when he had said: Your justice is like the mountains of God (Ps 36:6 (35:7)); as if it were asked: Why then are others born who do not pertain to the justice of God? he added: Your judgments are like a great deep (Ps 36:6 (35:7)). What is: like a great deep? It is high, it is impenetrable, it is inaccessible to human aim. For the riches of God are unsearchable; his judgments unsearchable, his ways past finding out (See Rom 11:33). So here too: God sent his Son, on account of those foreknown and predestined, to be called, justified, glorified: that the mountains of God may say: If God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:31) God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and from sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the justice of the law might be fulfilled in us (Rom 8:3-4). It was not fulfilled by itself, it was fulfilled through Christ. For he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (See Matt 5:17).

9. 9. But how is the justice of the law fulfilled in us, or how is it fulfilled for us, or for which "us"? Do you wish to hear in which "us"? We who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit (Rom 8:4). What is it to walk according to the flesh? To consent to carnal covetings. What is it to walk according to the spirit? To be helped by the spirit in the mind, and not to obey the covetings of the flesh. So, then, the law is fulfilled in us, the justice of God is fulfilled in us. For now, in the meantime, it is fulfilled: Do not go after your covetings (See Sir 18:30). After your covetings, when you hear it, understand the unlawful ones. Do not go after your covetings, it must be fulfilled by our will helped by the grace of God; it must be fulfilled: Do not go after your covetings. For whatever that covetousness of the flesh did in us of past sins, whether in deeds, or in words, or in thoughts; all was blotted out by sacred Baptism; one act of pardon blotted out all the debts. There remains, then, the conflict with the flesh: because iniquity was blotted out, but infirmity remains. The delight of unlawful covetousness is within, it tickles; fight, resist, do not consent; and here is fulfilled: Do not go after your covetings; because even if at times they creep up, and usurp to themselves the eye, the ear, the tongue, the flitting thought, let us not even so despair of our salvation. Therefore daily we say: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). The justice, he says, of the law might be fulfilled in us.

10. 10. But in which "us"? We who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. For those who are according to the flesh savor the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the prudence of the flesh is death; but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace. For the prudence of the flesh is at enmity against God. For it is not subject to the law of God: for neither can it be (Rom 8:4-7). What is: for neither can it be? It is not that man cannot, not that the soul cannot, not finally that the flesh itself cannot, because it is God's creature; but the prudence of the flesh cannot, the vice cannot, not the nature. As if you were to say: Lameness is not subject to upright walking; for neither can it be. The foot can, but lameness cannot. Take away lameness, and you will see upright walking. But as long as there is lameness, it cannot; so as long as there is prudence of the flesh, it cannot. Let there not be prudence of the flesh, and man can. The prudence of the spirit is life and peace. Therefore what he says: The prudence of the flesh is at enmity against God, do not so take it as though this enemy could harm God. It is an enemy by resisting, not by killing. But it harms the one in whom is the prudence of the flesh; because the vice harms the nature in which the nature is present. But medicine was invented for this, that the vice might be driven out, and the nature healed. The Savior came, then, to the human race, found none healthy, therefore the great physician came.

10. 11. He said this for the reason that the Manichees, wishing to introduce another nature of evil against God, reckon their error somewhat aided by this testimony of the Apostle, and think it was said as though by nature, because it was said: It cannot, it is at enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, for neither can it be (Rom 8:7); and they did not attend that it was not said of the flesh: it cannot; not said of man: it cannot; not said of the soul: it cannot; but of the prudence of the flesh. This prudence is a vice.

11. 11. Do you wish to know what is: To savor according to the flesh? It is death (Rom 8:6). But that very same one man, and the same nature founded by the Lord, the true and good God, yesterday was savoring according to the flesh, today savors according to the spirit; the vice has been driven out, the nature healed. For as long as there was that prudence of the flesh, it could not be subject to the law of God at all. For as long as lameness is present through a vice, there can in no way be upright walking. But with the vice healed, the nature is restored. You were once darkness; but now light in the Lord (Eph 5:8).

11. 12. See then what follows: But those who are in the flesh—that is, those who trust in the flesh, who follow their covetings, who dwell in them, who are delighted by their pleasures, who set up the blessed and happy life in their delights, they are in the flesh; cannot please God. For it was not so said: But those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:8), as though it were said: When men are in this life, they cannot please God. Did the holy patriarchs, then, not please? Did the holy prophets, then, not please? Did the holy Apostles, then, not please? Did the holy martyrs not please, who before they laid down the body, by suffering, by confessing Christ, not only despised pleasure, but also bore pains most patiently? They pleased, but they were not in the flesh. They bore the flesh, they were not borne by the flesh. For already it had been said to the paralytic: Take up your pallet (Mark 2:11). Those who are in the flesh, then, as I said, as I have already expounded, not by living in this world, but by consenting to the covetings of the flesh, cannot please God.

12. 13. Finally, hear him, solving the question without any doubt. He was certainly speaking while living in this body; and yet he added: But you are not in the flesh. Do you suppose there is anyone here among us to whom it was said? Behold, he said it to the people of God, he said it to the Church; to the Romans indeed he was writing, but he said it to the universal Church of Christ; but he said it to the wheat, not to the chaff; he said it to the lump lying hidden, not to the stubble appearing. Let each one recognize it in his own heart. We speak to the ears, we do not see consciences; yet according to what we have said above too, I reckon that in the name of Christ there are in the people of Christ those to whom it was said: But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit: if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you (Rom 8:9). You are not in the flesh, because you do not do the works of the flesh by consenting to the covetings of the flesh; but you are in the Spirit, because according to the inner man you delight in the law of God; and this is: if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. For if you presume upon your own spirit, you are still in the flesh. If, then, you are not in the flesh, it is that you may be in the Spirit of God; for then you are not in the flesh. For if the Spirit of God withdraws, by its own weight the spirit of man rolls back into the flesh, returns to carnal deeds, returns to worldly covetings; and the last state of that man will be worse than the first were (See Matt 12:45). So, then, have free choice in such a way that you implore help. You are not in the flesh, and this from your own strength? God forbid! Whence then?

13. 13. If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his (Rom 8:9). Let it not, then, stretch itself out, let it not boast, let it not arrogate to itself its own virtue, this needy and vitiated nature. O human nature! O Adam, when you were healthy, you did not stand—and did you rise by your own strength? If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ: for the very Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ; for it is both the Father's and the Son's: If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, let him not deceive himself, he is none of his.

13. 14. Behold, with the help of his mercy, we have the Spirit of Christ; from the very love of justice, by whole faith, by catholic faith, we recognize that the Spirit of God is in us. But what of that mortal flesh? What of the law in our members fighting against the law of the mind? What of that groan: Wretched man that I am? (Rom 7:24) Hear: But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of justice (Rom 8:10). Are we then to despair of the body dead because of sin? Is there no hope? Does it so sleep that it does not rise again? (See Ps 41:8 (40:9)) God forbid! The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of justice. Sadness remained concerning our body. But no one ever hated his own flesh (See Eph 5:29). We see how anxiously the burial of the dead is cared for. The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of justice. You were saying for consolation: I would indeed wish my body too to be in life; but because it cannot be, let at least my spirit be, let at least my soul be. Wait, do not be anxious.

14. 15. For if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you; he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies (Rom 8:11). What do you fear? Why are you anxious even for the flesh itself? A hair of your head will not perish (Luke 21:18). Adam by sinning condemned your bodies to death; but Jesus, if his Spirit is in you, will also give life to your mortal bodies; because he gave his blood for your salvation. Do you doubt that the promise will be repaid, you who hold such a pledge? So then, O man, there will not be that striving of death, so will be fulfilled what was said: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24) Because Christ Jesus, if his Spirit dwells in you, will also give life to your mortal bodies. So you will be freed from the body of this death, not by not having a body, or by having another; but by no longer dying. For if he did not add: of this death, and said: Who will free me from the body? perhaps error would be suggested to human thought, and it would be said: You see that God does not wish us to be with a body? From the body, he says, of this death. Take away death, and the body is good. Let death, the last enemy, be taken away, and my flesh will be my friend forever. For no one ever hated his own flesh. Even though the spirit covets against the flesh, and the flesh covets against the spirit (See Gal 5:17); even though now there is a quarrel in this house, the quarreling husband seeks not the ruin, but the concord of the wife. God forbid! My brothers, God forbid that the spirit, by coveting against the flesh, should hate the flesh. It hates the vices of the flesh, it hates the prudence of the flesh, it hates the striving of death. Let this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality; let the body be sown an animal body, let it rise a spiritual body (See 1 Cor 15:53,44); and you will see full and perfect concord, you will see the creature praising the Creator. If then the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you; he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit dwelling within, who dwells in you (Rom 8:11); not because of your merits, but because of his gifts. Turning to the Lord, and so on.

1. 1. The height of the Word of God exercises our zeal, it does not deny us understanding. For if all things were closed, there would be nothing whence the obscure things might be revealed. Again, if all things were uncovered, there would be nothing whence the soul might receive nourishment, and have the strength by which it could knock at the closed things. In the earlier apostolic readings, which we expounded to your Charity as much as the Lord deigned to help, we suffered much labor and anxiety. We had compassion on you, and we were anxious both for ourselves and for you. But as much as I reckon, the Lord helped both us and you; and those things which seemed altogether most difficult, he deigned so to unravel through us that no question remained which might disturb a devout mind. For an impious mind hates even understanding itself; and a man sometimes, with a mind too perverse, fears to understand, lest he be compelled to do what he has understood. Of such the Psalm says: They were unwilling to understand, that they might do good (Ps 36:3 (35:4)). But you, dearly beloved, because it is good to think well of you, demand understanding; God demands fruit. For understanding is good, as it is written, to all who practice it (Ps 111:10 (110:10)). Yet this which remains and was recited today, although it does not have so great a difficulty as the earlier passages had, which we have now, as we could with the Lord's help, passed through, nevertheless desires your attention; for it is, as it were, a conclusion, on account of those things that were said in the earlier readings, where we labored, lest perhaps the Apostle be set up as guilty, as it were, of all sins, by saying: For I do not do what I will (Rom 7:15). Then, lest the law should seem either able to suffice for a man having free choice, even if no further divine help were extended, or else be believed to have been given in vain, the cause too was stated why the law was given: because it too was given as a help, but not as grace is.

2. 2. For it was given, as we have already expounded, and you ought to hold, and we ought more vehemently and diligently to commend to you; it was given that man might find himself, not that the disease might be healed, but that, with the disease growing through transgression, a physician might be sought. And who is this physician, except the one who said: The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are ill? (Matt 9:12) He, then, who does not confess the Creator, proudly denies his Author. But he who denies his own sickness judges the Savior superfluous. Therefore let us both praise the Creator in our nature; and on account of the vice that we have inflicted on ourselves, let us seek the Savior. And how do we seek the Savior? That he may give a law? It is too little: For if a law had been given that could give life, justice would altogether be from the law (Gal 3:21). If, then, no law was given that could give life, why was it given? It follows, and he shows why it was given: because even thus it was given as a help, lest you should think yourself healthy. If, then, a law had been given that could give life, justice would altogether be from the law. And as if we asked: Why then was it given? But the Scripture, he says, has shut up all things under sin, that the promise from the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe (Gal 3:22). When you hear of one who promises, await one who does. Human nature was capable, through free choice, of wounding itself: but now wounded and hurt, it is not capable, through free choice, of healing itself. For if you wish to live intemperately so as to fall sick, for this you do not require a physician; for your ruin you suffice for yourself. But when, by acting intemperately, you have begun to be sick, you cannot free yourself from sickness in the way you were able, through intemperance, to cast yourself headlong into sickness. And yet the physician prescribes temperance even to the healthy. A good physician does this, he does not wish to be necessary to one falling sick. So too the Lord God deigned to prescribe temperance to man created without vice; which if he had kept, he would not afterward have desired a physician for his disease. But because he did not keep it, he became feeble, he fell; being weak he created the weak, that is: being weak he begot the weak. And yet in all who are born weak God works what is good, forming the body, giving life to the body, providing nourishment, giving his rain and his sun upon the good and the evil (See Matt 5:45); there is no ground on which to accuse the good, neither for the evil. Moreover, the human race, condemned by his just judgment, he was unwilling to leave to everlasting destruction: but he sent also a physician, he sent a Savior, he sent one who would heal freely; it is too little that he would heal freely—he would even give a reward to the healed. Nothing can be added to this benevolence. Who is there who says: Let me heal you, and I will give you a reward? He did it best. For he knew that he had come, a rich man, to a poor man: and he both heals the sick, and gives gifts to the healed, and gives nothing other than himself. The Savior is the help of the feeble, the Savior himself is the reward of the healed.

3. 3. Therefore, brothers, as you have been admonished today, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (Rom 8:12). For to this we have been helped, for this we have received the Spirit of God, for this also in our labors we ask daily for help. The law, by threatening one who does not fulfill what it commands, makes him to be under it; these are under the law, not under grace. The law is good, if anyone uses it lawfully (1 Tim 1:8). What is it, then, to use the law lawfully? Through the law to recognize one's disease, and to seek divine help for health. Because, as I said, and it must be said often: If the law could give life, justice would altogether be from the law (Gal 3:21), nor would a savior be sought, nor would Christ come, nor would he seek the lost sheep by his blood. For so the same Apostle says in another place: For if justice is through the law, then Christ died in vain (Gal 2:21). What then is the usefulness of the law, and what its help? Because the Scripture has shut up all things under sin, that the promise from the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. And so the law, he says, was our tutor in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:22,24). From this likeness, attend to the matter of which I speak. The tutor does not lead the boy to himself, but to the master; but when the boy, well instructed, has grown up, he will no longer be under the tutor.

4. 4. The Apostle, treating of these things in another place too—for very constantly he commends this; but would that not to the deaf. He commends this constantly, commending faith to the Gentiles; because by faith they obtain help, that they may fulfill the law, not through the law, but obtaining through faith the strength to fulfill it; for this the Apostle constantly says and commends these things, on account of the Jews, who gloried in the law, and reckoned that the law sufficed by their free choice; and through this, because they reckoned that the law sufficed by their free choice, being ignorant of the justice of God—that is, the justice given from faith by God—and wishing to establish their own, as if fulfilled by their own strength, not obtained by faith crying out, they were not subject to the justice of God, as he says. For the end of the law is Christ, he says, unto justice to everyone who believes (Rom 10:3-4). So when he treats of these things, he set himself an objection: What then is the law? As if: What is the usefulness of the law? He answered: It was set down for the sake of transgression. This is what he says elsewhere: The law entered in, that the offense might abound. And there what did he add? But where the offense abounded, grace superabounded (Rom 5:20). Because in a lighter sickness the help of medicine was despised: the disease grew, and a physician was sought. What then is the law? It was set down for the sake of transgression; whence the neck of the proud might be humbled, of those who attribute much to themselves, and arrogate so much to their own will that they thought free choice could suffice for them unto justice: which, when it was in entire freedom—that is, in paradise—showed its strength, showed how much it could do, but for falling, not for rising. The law, then, was set down for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom it was promised, ordained through angels in the hand of a Mediator (Gal 3:19).

5. 5. But a mediator is not of one; but God is one (Gal 3:20). What is: A mediator is not of one? Because a mediator is certainly between two. If God is one, and the mediator is not of one; between what and God do we seek a mediator? Because a mediator is not of one, but God is one. Between what and what the mediator is, we find by the Apostle himself saying: For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). If you did not lie fallen, you would not have a mediator as necessary: but because you lie fallen, and cannot rise, God in a certain way has extended to you a mediator as his arm. And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? (Isa 53:1) Let no one, then, say: Since we are not under the law, but under grace; let us therefore sin, let us therefore do what we will. He who says this loves sickness, not health. Grace is medicine. He who wishes always to be sick is ungrateful to the medicine. Therefore, brothers, having received help, with divine aid extended to us from above, the arm of the Lord, and that very arm of the Lord the help extended to us, the Holy Spirit, we are debtors not to the flesh, to walk according to the flesh (Rom 8:12). Because faith cannot work well, except through love. For this is the faith of the faithful, lest it be the faith of demons; because the demons too believe, and tremble (See Jas 2:19). That, then, is the praiseworthy faith, that is the true faith of grace, which works through love (See Gal 5:6). But that we may have love, and from it may have good working, can we give it to ourselves, when it is written: The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us? (Rom 5:5) Love is so much a gift of God that God is called love, since the apostle John says: God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (1 John 4:16).

6. 6. Therefore, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die (Rom 8:12-13). Not because the flesh is evil: for it too is God's creature, and founded by the same one by whom the soul too is; neither the one nor the other is a part of God, but both the one and the other a creature of God. The flesh, then, is not evil: but to live according to the flesh is evil. God is supremely good, because he supremely is, who said: I am who I am (Exod 3:14). God, then, is supremely good: the soul is a great good, but not the supreme good. But when you hear, God is supremely good, do not think it said of God the Father only, but of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For this Trinity is one, and there is one God, and he is supremely good. So plainly is God one, that when you are questioned about the Trinity itself, you should answer this: lest perhaps, when you have heard, There is one God, you think the same one to be the Father, the same to be the Son, the same to be the Holy Spirit. It is not so: but he who is the Father in that Trinity is not the Son; he who is the Son in that Trinity is not the Father; he who is the Holy Spirit in that Trinity is neither the Son nor the Father; but the Spirit of the Father, and the same Spirit of the Son. For there is one Holy Spirit, both of the Father and of the Son, coeternal with the Father and the Son, consubstantial, equal. This whole Trinity is one God, supremely good. But the soul, as I said, was created by the supreme good, yet is not the supreme good, but a great good. Likewise the flesh is neither the supreme good nor a great good; but nevertheless a small good. The soul, then, is a great good, but not the supreme good; living between the supreme good and the small good—that is, between God and the flesh, lower than God, higher than the flesh; why does it not live according to the supreme good, but lives according to the small good? This is said more plainly: Why does it not live according to God, but lives according to the flesh? For it is a debtor not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. The flesh ought to live according to it, not it according to the flesh. Let it live according to that from which it lives. Certainly let each thing live according to that from which it lives. From what does your flesh live? From your soul. From what does your soul live? From your God. Let each of these live according to its life. For the flesh is not its own life; but the soul is the life of the flesh. The soul is not its own life: but God is the life of the soul. The soul, then, which ought to live according to God—for it is not a debtor to the flesh, to live according to the flesh: therefore, which ought to live according to God, if it lives according to itself, fails; does it live according to the flesh and prosper? But then the flesh lives rightly according to the soul, if the soul lives according to God. For if the soul should wish to live—I do not say according to the flesh, but according to itself, as I said; I am going to tell you what it is to live according to itself: for it is good, and very salutary, that you should know this.

7. 7. There have been philosophers of this world: some thought there was no happiness except to live according to the flesh, and placed the good of man in bodily pleasure. These philosophers were called Epicureans, from one Epicurus, an author, their master, and others like them. But there arose others, proud, as it were removing themselves from the flesh, and setting their whole hope of happiness in their soul, who placed the supreme good in their own virtue. The voice of the Psalm—the affection of piety in you has recognized it: you know, you are aware, you have recognized how they were mocked in the holy Psalm: Those who trust in their own strength (Ps 49:6 (48:7)). Such were the philosophers who were called Stoics. Those living according to the flesh, these living according to the soul, neither those nor these living according to God. Therefore when the apostle Paul had come to the city of the Athenians, where these disciplines of the philosophers seethed with zeal and contention, as is read in the Acts of the Apostles; where I rejoice that you anticipate our sermon by recognizing and recalling it, as it is written there: Certain of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him (Acts 17:18); those living according to the flesh debated with him, those living according to the soul debated with him, the one living according to God debated with them. The Epicurean said: For me to enjoy the flesh is good. The Stoic said: For me to enjoy my own mind is good. The Apostle said: But for me to cleave to God is good (Ps 73:28 (72:28)). The Epicurean said: Blessed is he whose fruit is the pleasure of his flesh. The Stoic said: Rather, blessed is he whose fruit is the virtue of his soul. The Apostle said: Blessed is he whose hope is the name of the Lord (Ps 40:4 (39:5)). The Epicurean errs: for it is false that the man is blessed whose fruit is the pleasure of his flesh. The Stoic too is deceived: for it is false, and altogether most lying, that the man is blessed whose fruit is the virtue of his soul. Blessed, then, is he whose hope is the name of the Lord. And because those are vain and lie: And he has not regarded, he says, vanities and lying follies (Ps 40:4 (39:5)).

8. 8. Therefore, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, like the Epicureans. But even if the soul should wish to live according to itself, it will be carnal; it savors the flesh, it does not rise from the flesh. For there is no way that one rises from there, who does not hold the arm extended to him as he lies. For if you live according to the flesh. For where it was said: What can man do to me? there it was said: What can the flesh do to me? (See Ps 56:4 (55:5)) For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. Not by that death, when one goes out of the body; for by that death you will die even if you live according to the spirit: but by that death of which the Lord in the Gospel terribly says: Fear him who has power to destroy both soul and body in the Gehenna of fire (Matt 10:28). If, then, you live according to the flesh, you will die.

9. 9. But if by the spirit you put to death the actions of the flesh, you will live (Rom 8:13). This is our work in this life, to put to death by the spirit the actions of the flesh; daily to afflict, diminish, bridle, slay them. For how many things, as we make progress, no longer delight us, which before delighted us? When, then, it delighted, and was not consented to, it was being put to death: because now it does not delight, it has been put to death. Tread on the dead, pass on to the living: tread on the one lying down, struggle with the one resisting. For one delight is dead, but another lives: and that one, while you do not consent, you put to death; when it has begun not to delight at all, you have put it to death. This is our action, this is our warfare. In this contest, when we struggle, we have God as spectator; in this contest, when we labor, we ask God as helper. For if he himself does not help us, I do not say we shall be unable to conquer, but we shall not even be able to fight.

9. 10. When, therefore, the Apostle had said: But if by the spirit you put to death the actions of the flesh, you will live; that is, those covetings of the flesh, to which it is great praise not to consent, and perfection not to have: if you put to death by the spirit these diseased actions of the flesh, which have their striving from death, you will live. Here now it is to be feared, lest anyone again presume from his own spirit to put to death the actions of the flesh. For not only is God spirit: but your soul too is spirit, and your mind is spirit. And when you say: With my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25); because the spirit covets against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit (Gal 5:17). Therefore, lest from your own spirit you presume to put to death the actions of the flesh, and perish by pride, and resistance be made to you, proud, grace not being granted except to the humble; for God resists the proud, but to the humble gives grace (See Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5).

10. 10. Lest, then, this pride should perhaps rise up in you, see what follows. For when he had said: If by the spirit you put to death the actions of the flesh, you will live; lest the human spirit lift itself up here, and boast itself fit and strong for this work, he added and said: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God (Rom 8:14). Why then did you wish to lift yourself up, when you heard: If by the spirit you put to death the actions of the flesh, you will live? For you were going to say: This my will can do, this my free choice can do. What will? What free choice? Unless he rules, you fall: unless he raises you up, you lie. How then by your own spirit, when you hear the Apostle saying: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God? Do you wish to lead yourself, do you wish to be led by yourself to put to death the actions of the flesh? What does it profit you that you will not be an Epicurean, and will be a Stoic? Whether you are an Epicurean or a Stoic, among the sons of God you will not be. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Not those who live according to their own flesh, not those who live according to their own spirit; not those who are led by the pleasure of the flesh, not those who are led by their own spirit; but: As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

11. 11. Someone says to me: Then we are led, we do not lead. I answer: Rather you both lead and are led; and then you lead well, if you are led by the good. For the Spirit of God who leads you is your helper as you act. The very name of helper prescribes to you that you yourself also do something. Recognize what you ask; recognize what you confess, when you say: Be my helper, do not forsake me (Ps 27:9 (26:9)). You certainly call upon God as helper. No one is helped, if nothing is done by him. For as many, he says, as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God (Rom 8:14): not by the letter, but by the Spirit; not by the law commanding, threatening, promising, but by the Spirit exhorting, illuminating, helping. We know, says the same Apostle, that for those who love God all things work together unto good (Rom 8:28). If you were not a worker, he would not be a fellow worker.

11. 12. But here be strongly vigilant, lest perhaps your spirit say: If the cooperation of God and the help of God withdraws itself, my spirit does this; even if with labor, even if with some difficulty it can, yet it can fulfill it. As if someone should say: With oars indeed we arrive, but with some labor; oh, if we had a wind, we arrive more easily. Not such is the help of God, not such is the help of Christ, not such is the help of the Holy Spirit. Plainly, if it is lacking, you will be able to do nothing good. You act indeed, without his help, by free will, but badly. For this your will, which is called free, is fit; and by acting badly it becomes a damnable slave. When I say to you: Without the help of God you do nothing, I mean nothing good. For to act badly you have, without the help of God, free will: although it is not free. For by whom anyone has been overcome, to him also he has been assigned as a slave (2 Pet 2:19); and: Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34); and: If the Son frees you, then you will be truly free (John 8:36).

12. 13. Plainly believe this, that you thus act with good will. Because you live, you certainly act. For he is not a helper, if you do nothing: for he is not a fellow worker, if you work nothing. Yet know that you act good things in such a way that the ruling Spirit is your helper; who, if he is lacking, you cannot do anything good at all. Not as certain ones began to say, who were at some time constrained to confess grace; and we bless God, because at least they said this at some time; for by drawing near they will be able to make progress, and to arrive at what is truly right. Now then they say that the grace of God is a helper, for doing things more easily. For these are their words: "For this," they say, "God gave his grace to men, that what they are commanded to do by free choice, they might be able to fulfill more easily by grace." By sail more easily, by oar more difficultly: yet one goes by oar too. By beast of burden more easily, on foot more difficultly: but yet one arrives on foot too. It is not so. For the true Master, who flatters no one, deceives no one, the truthful teacher and the same Savior, to whom that most troublesome tutor led us; when he spoke of good works, that is, of the fruits of the branches and shoots, did not say: Without me indeed you can do something, but more easily through me; he did not say: Your fruit you can produce without me, but more abundantly through me. He did not say this. Read what he said: the Gospel is holy, the proud necks of all are bowed. It is not Augustine who says these things, the Lord says these things. What does the Lord say? Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5). Now then, when you hear: As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, do not let yourselves down. For God does not so build his temple from you, as from stones that have no motion of their own: they are lifted, they are set in place by the builder. The living stones are not so: And you too, like living stones, are built together into a temple of God (See 1 Pet 2:5). You are led, but run also yourselves; you are led, but follow; because when you have followed, that will be true, that without him you can do nothing. For it is not of the one willing, nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16).

13. 14. Perhaps you were going to say: The law too suffices for us. The law gave fear: and see what the Apostle added on this point, when he said: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God (Rom 8:14); because when they are led by the Spirit of God, they are led by love: For the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5); he went on and added: For you have not received the spirit of slavery again unto fear (Rom 8:15). What is: again? As with the most troublesome tutor terrifying. What is: again? As on Mount Sinai you received the spirit of slavery. Someone says: One is the spirit of slavery, another the spirit of freedom. If it were another, the Apostle would not say: again. The same Spirit, then, but on tablets of stone in fear, on the tablets of the heart in love. The day before yesterday, you who were present heard how the voices, the fire, the smoke on the mountain terrified the people set far off (See Exod 19:16-18); but how, when the Holy Spirit came, that same finger of God, on the fiftieth day after the shadow of the Passover, how it came, and sat upon each one of them in fiery tongues (See Acts 2:1-4). Now then, not in fear, but in love; that we may be not slaves, but sons. For he who still acts well for this reason, that he fears punishment, does not love God, is not yet among the sons; yet would that he at least fear punishment. Fear is a slave, love is free; and, so to speak, fear is the slave of love. Lest the devil possess your heart, let the slave go before in your heart, and keep the place for the mistress who is to come. Do, do it at least from fear of punishment, if you cannot yet from love of justice. The mistress will come, and the slave will depart; because: Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). For you have not received the spirit of slavery again unto fear. It is the New Testament, not the Old. The old things have passed away, and behold all things are made new; but all things are from God (2 Cor 5:17-18).

14. 15. Finally, what follows? What then have we received, as if you said: But you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba, Father (Rom 8:15). The Lord is feared, the father is loved. You have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba, Father. This cry is of the heart, not of the throat, not of the lips; it sounds within, it sounds in the ears of God. With mouth closed and lips unmoved, Susanna cried with this voice (See Dan 13:35,42-44). But you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba, Father. Let the heart cry: Our Father who are in heaven (Matt 6:9). Why then not only Father? What does it mean: Abba, Father? For if you ask what is: Abba, it is answered you: Father. For in Hebrew "Abba" means "father." Why did the Apostle wish to put both? Because he saw the cornerstone, which the builders rejected, and which became the head of the corner (See Ps 118:22 (117:22); Matt 21:42), called the cornerstone not without reason, except that it receives in a kiss both walls coming from different directions. On this side circumcision, on that the uncircumcision, as far apart from each other and between themselves as they are far from the corner; but as near to the corner, so near to each other too; in the corner, however, joined to one another. For he himself is our peace, who made both one (Eph 2:14). Therefore, from there circumcision, from there uncircumcision, the concord of the walls, the glory of the corner. You have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba, Father.

15. 16. What sort of thing is it, if such is the pledge? Nor should it be called a pledge, but an earnest. For when a pledge is given, when the thing itself has been repaid, the pledge is taken back. But an earnest is given from that very thing which is promised to be given; so that when the thing is repaid, what was given is completed, not changed. Let each one, then, attend to his own heart, whether from the inmost marrow of the heart and with sincere love he says: Father. It is not now asked how great that love itself is, whether great, or small, or moderate; I ask whether it even exists. If it is born, by lying hidden it grows, by growing it will be perfected, perfected it will remain. For when perfect it does not decline into old age, and from old age come to death; it will be perfected for this, that it may remain eternal. For see what follows. We cry: Abba, Father. The Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are sons of God (Rom 8:15-16). Not our spirit gives testimony to our spirit, that we are sons of God; but the Spirit of God, the earnest, gives testimony for that thing which has been promised to us. The Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are sons of God.

15. 17. But if sons, then heirs also (Rom 8:17). For we are not sons in vain. This is the reward: And heirs. This is what I was saying a little before, that our physician both gives us health, and deigns moreover to bestow a reward. What is that reward? An inheritance. But not as the inheritance of a human father is. For he leaves it to his sons, he does not possess it with his sons; and yet he makes much of himself, and desires thanks to be given to him, because he wished to give what he could not take away. For dying, would he take it with himself? I suppose that if he could, he would have left nothing here to his sons. The heirs of God are such that God himself is our inheritance, to whom the Psalm says: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance (Ps 16:5 (15:5)). Heirs indeed of God; if it is too little for you, hear, that you may rejoice the more: Heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). Turning to the Lord, and so on.

1. 1. As your Holiness remembers that the Apostle said, dearly beloved brothers: In hope we have been saved. But hope, he says, that is seen is not hope; for what anyone sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:24-25). From this our Lord God himself admonishes us to offer you an exhortatory and consolatory sermon, to whom it is said in the Psalm: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living (Ps 142:5 (141:6)). He himself, I say, who is our hope in the land of the living, bids us address you in this land of the dying; that you may look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal; but the things that are not seen are eternal (See 2 Cor 4:18). Because, then, we hope for what we do not see, and await it through patience; rightly is it said to us in the Psalm: Wait for the Lord, act manfully, and let your heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord (Ps 27:14 (26:14)). For the promises of the world always deceive; but the promises of God never deceive. But because the world seems about to give here what it promises—that is, in this land of the dying, in which we now are; but God is about to give us what he promises in the land of the living; many grow weary of awaiting the truthful one, and do not blush to love the deceitful one. Of such Scripture says: Woe to those who have lost endurance, and have turned aside into crooked ways (Sir 2:14,16). While even to those acting manfully and with strengthened heart awaiting God, the sons of everlasting death do not cease to insult, boasting of their temporal delights, which for a time sweeten their throats, but afterward they will find them more bitter than gall. For they say to us: Where is what is promised you after this life? Who has returned here from there, and shown that the things you believe are true? Behold, we rejoice in the satiety of our pleasures, because what we see, we hope for; but you are tormented in the labors of self-restraint, by believing what you do not see. Then they add what the Apostle recalled: Let us eat and drink: for tomorrow we shall die. But see what he himself warned must be guarded against: Evil conversations, he says, corrupt good morals. Be soberly just, and do not sin (1 Cor 15:32-34).

2. 2. Beware, then, brothers, lest by such conversations your morals be corrupted, your hope overturned, your patience unstrung, and you turn aside into crooked ways. Rather, being meek and gentle, hold to the right ways which the Lord teaches you; of which the Psalm says: He will direct the meek in judgment, he will teach the gentle his ways (Ps 25:9 (24:9)). For no one can perpetually retain patience in the labors of this life—without which the hope of the future life cannot be guarded—except the meek and gentle; who do not resist the will of God, whose yoke is mild and burden light (See Matt 11:30), but who believe God, and hope in him, and love him. For thus, being meek and gentle, you will not only love his consolations, but also bear his scourges like good sons; so that, since you hope for what you do not see, you may await it through patience. So act, so walk. For you walk in Christ, who said: I am the way (John 14:6). How one is to walk in him, learn, not only by his word, but also by his example. For the Father did not spare this his own Son, but handed him over for us all (See Rom 8:32); not, indeed, unwilling, nor refusing, but equally willing; because there is one will of the Father and the Son according to the equality of the form of God, in which, though he was, he did not reckon it robbery to be equal to God; and singularly obedient, according to which he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (See Phil 2:6-7). For he himself loved us, and handed himself over for us, an offering and a victim to God for an odor of sweetness (Eph 5:2). So, then, the Father did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, that the Son himself also might hand himself over for us.

3. 3. Handed over, then, that Most High one, through whom all things were made, handed over on account of the form of a servant to the reproach of men and the abjection of the people, to insult, to scourges, to the death of the cross, he taught us by the example of his passion with how great patience we should walk in him; and he strengthened us by the example of his resurrection, what we should patiently hope for from him. For if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:25). We hope indeed for what we do not see; but we are the body of that head, in which what we hope for has already been perfected. For of him it was said that he himself is the head of the body, the Church, the firstborn, himself holding the primacy (Col 1:18). And of us it is written: But you are the body of Christ and members (1 Cor 12:27). But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience, secure; since he who rose again is our head, he guards our hope. And because before he rose our head was scourged, he strengthened our patience. For it is written: For whom the Lord loves, he chastises; and he scourges every son whom he receives (Heb 12:6). Therefore let us not faint under the scourge, that we may rejoice in the resurrection. For so true is it that he scourges every son whom he receives, that he did not spare even his Only-begotten, but handed him over for us all. Looking, then, at him who was scourged without the desert of sin, who died on account of our offenses, and rose again on account of our justification (See Rom 4:25), let us not fear that, being scourged, we may be cast off; but rather let us trust that, being justified, we will be received.

4. 4. For although the fullness of our joy has not yet come: yet even now we have not been left without joy; because in hope we have been saved. Therefore the Apostle himself, who said: If we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:25); says in another place: Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation (Rom 12:12). Having, then, such a hope, let us use much confidence (See 2 Cor 3:12); and let our speech be seasoned with salt, that we may know how we ought to answer each one (See Col 4:6). For it must be said to those who, having either lost or never undertaken endurance, dare even to insult us who await the Lord (because, hoping for what we do not see, we await it through patience), when they ought to imitate us: Where are your delights, on account of which you walk through crooked ways? We do not say: Where will they be, when this life has passed; but now: Where are they? When today has taken away yesterday, and tomorrow will take away today, what of the things you love does not run by and fly away? What does not flee almost before it is grasped, since not even one hour of this very today can be retained? For the second hour is shut out by the third, just as the first was shut out by the second. Of that one hour itself, which seems present, nothing is present: for all its parts and all its moments are fleeting.

5. 5. Why does a man sin, if he is not blinded when he sins, or if he attends when he would sin? He could see that the pleasure that is going to pass away is desired without prudence; or, when it has passed away, is thought of with repentance. You mock us, because we hope for eternal things, which we do not see; while you, subjected to those temporal things that are seen, do not know what sort of tomorrow will dawn for you; which, often hoping it good, you find evil; nor, if it should be good, will you be able to hold it lest it flee. You mock us, because we hope for eternal things; which, when they have come, will not pass away; because they do not even come, but always remain; but we will come to them, when, by the Lord's way, we have passed through these things that pass away. But from you temporal things never at some time cease to be hoped for, and yet, often hoped for, they deceive you; nor do they cease to inflame you when about to come, to corrupt you when coming, to torment you when passing away. Are they not the very things which, when coveted, burn; when obtained, grow cheap; when lost, vanish away? We too use them according to the necessity of our pilgrimage; but we do not fix our joys in them, lest, when they slip away, we be overthrown. For we use this world as though not using it (See 1 Cor 7:31), that we may come to him who made this world, and abide in him, fully enjoying his eternity.

6. 6. But what is it that you say: Who has come here from there, and who has shown to men what goes on among the dead? On this point too he closed your mouth, who raised a dead man on the fourth day (See John 11:39-44), and, never again to die, rose on the third day, and before he died, told what sort of life receives the dying—as one to whom nothing was hidden—both in the poor man resting and in the rich man burning (See Luke 16:22-24). But those do not believe these things, who say: Who has returned here from there? They wish to seem ready to believe, if one of their parents should come back to life. But cursed is everyone who places his hope in man (See Jer 17:5). For this reason, then, God made man, willed to die and rise again; that both what was going to be for man might be shown in the flesh of man, and yet faith might be given to God, not to man. And certainly the Church of the faithful, spread throughout the whole world, is now before their eyes. Let them read that it was promised so many ages ago to one man, who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations (See Rom 4:18; Gen 17:5). What then was promised to the one believing Abraham, we now see fulfilled; and do we despair that what is promised to the whole believing world will come to pass? Let them now go and say: Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die (1 Cor 15:32). They say they will still die tomorrow, but truth finds them, even while they say these things, already dead. But you, brothers, sons of the resurrection, citizens of the holy angels, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, beware of imitating those who die tomorrow by expiring, and today are buried by drinking. But, as the same Apostle says, lest evil conversations corrupt your good morals, be soberly just, and do not sin (1 Cor 15:33-34); walking the narrow but sure way leading to the breadth of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is our eternal mother; most firmly hope for what you do not see, patiently await what you do not yet have; because you most faithfully hold Christ, the truthful promiser.

1. 1. We have heard the blessed Apostle exhorting and confirming us, when he said to us: If God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:31) But for whom God is, he showed above, where he said: But those whom he predestined, them he also called; but those whom he called, them he also justified; but those whom he justified, them he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:30-31) God is for us, to predestine us; God is for us, to call us; God is for us, to justify us; God is for us, to glorify us. If God is for us, who is against us? He predestined us before we existed; he called us when we were turned away; he justified us when we were sinners; he glorified us when we were mortal. If God is for us, who is against us? Whoever wishes to be the adversary of those predestined by God, called, justified, glorified, let him prepare himself, if he can, to wage war against God. For where we have heard: If God is for us, who is against us? no one harms us, except one who conquers God. And who is there who conquers the Almighty? Whoever wishes to struggle against him harms himself. This is what Christ cried from heaven to Paul, still Saul: It does not profit you to kick against the goad (Acts 9:5; 26:14). Let him rage, let him rage as much as he can; he who kicks against the goad—does he not rage against himself?

2. 2. But in these four notable things which the Apostle commended, which pertain to those for whom God is—that is, predestination, calling, justification, glorification; in these four things, then, we ought to consider what we already have, and what we still await. For in those which we already have, let us praise God the bestower; in those which we do not yet have, let us hold him a debtor. For he became a debtor, not by receiving anything from us, but by promising what it pleased him to promise. For in one way we say to a man: You owe me because I gave to you; and in another way we say: You owe me, because you promised me. When you say: You owe me, because I gave to you, a benefit proceeded from you, but lent, not given. But when you say: You owe me, because you promised me, you gave nothing, and yet you demand. For the goodness of him who promised will give it, lest faith be turned into malice. For he who deceives is evil; but do we say to God: Repay me, because I gave to you? What did we give to God, when all that we are, and whatever good we have, we have from him? We gave him nothing, then. There is no way we may demand God as a debtor by this voice, especially with the Apostle saying to us: For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him? (Rom 11:34-35) In that way, then, we can demand of our Lord, that we say: Repay what you promised, because we did what you commanded; and this you did, because you helped us as we labored.

3. 3. Let no one, then, say: God called me for this reason, because I worshiped God. How would you have worshiped, if you had not been called? If God called you for this reason, because you worshiped God: then you gave first, and he repaid you. Does not the Apostle take this voice from you, when he says: Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him? (Rom 11:35) But behold, when you were called, you at least already existed. How would you be predestined, except when you did not exist? What did you give to God, when you, who might give something, did not exist? What then did God do, when he predestined one who did not exist? What the Apostle says: Who calls the things that are not, as though they were (Rom 4:17). If you already existed, you would not be predestined; unless you were turned away, you would not be called; unless you were impious, you would not be justified; unless you were earthly and abject, you would not be glorified. Who, then, has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him? For from him, and through him, and in him are all things. What then do we repay? To him be glory (Rom 11:36). Because we did not exist, when we were predestined; because we were turned away, when we were called; because we were sinners, when we were justified; let us give thanks to God, lest we remain ungrateful.

4. 4. But we had proposed to consider, of these four things, what we have already obtained, and what we still await to acquire. For we have already been predestined even before we existed. We have been called, when we were made Christians. This too, then, we already have. Justified—what? What is it: justified? Do we dare to say that we already have this third thing? And will there be anyone of us who dares to say: I am just? For I suppose this is the same: I am just, as: I am not a sinner. If you dare to say this, John meets you: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). What then? Do we have nothing of justice? Or do we have it, but do not have all of it? Let us, then, inquire into this. For if we have something, and do not have something; let what we have grow, and what we do not have will be filled up. For behold, men have been baptized, all their sins have been forgiven them, they have been justified from their sins; we cannot deny it: yet there remains the wrestling with the flesh, there remains the wrestling with the world, there remains the wrestling with the devil. But he who wrestles sometimes strikes, sometimes is struck; sometimes conquers, sometimes is slain; how he comes out of the arena is what is watched. For if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Likewise, if we say that we have nothing of justice, we lie against the gifts of God. For if we have nothing of justice, neither do we have faith; if we do not have faith, we are not Christians. But if we have faith, we already have something of justice. That very something—do you wish to know how great it is? The just lives from faith (Rom 1:17; Hab 2:4); the just, I say, lives from faith; because he believes what he does not see.

5. 5. The fathers, the holy rams, the leaders, the Apostles, when they proclaimed, not only saw with their eyes, but even handled with their hands; and yet the Lord, preserving for us the gift of faith, to one of his disciples handling, touching, seeking the truth with his fingers and finding it, crying out: My Lord and my God; the Lord and God himself said: Because you have seen, you have believed. And looking to us who were to be, he said: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed (John 20:28-29). We have not seen, we have heard, and we have believed. We have been foretold blessed, and do we have nothing of justice? The Lord came carnally to the Jews, and was killed; he did not come to us, and was received. A people whom I did not know served me, in the hearing of the ear it obeyed me (Ps 18:43-44 (17:44-45)). It is we, and do we have nothing of justice? We have it altogether. Let us be grateful for what we have: that what we do not have may be added, and that we may not lose what we have. Therefore this third thing too is already at work in us. We have been justified: but justice itself, as we make progress, grows. And how it grows I will say, and in a way confer with you; that each of you, now established in this very justification—having, namely, received the remission of sins through the laver of regeneration, having received the Holy Spirit, making progress from day to day—may see where he is, may draw near, make progress, and grow, until he is consummated, not so as to be ended, but so as to be perfected.

6. 6. A man begins from faith; what pertains to faith? To believe. But let this faith still be distinguished from the unclean spirits. To faith, what pertains? To believe. But the apostle James says: The demons too believe, and tremble (Jas 2:19). If you only believe, and live without hope, or do not have love: The demons too believe, and tremble. What great thing is it, if you say Christ is the Son of God? This Peter said, and heard: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona; this the demons said, and heard: Be silent. That man was called blessed; it is said to him: Because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven (Matt 16:16-17). But those hear: Be silent (See Mark 1:25,34); and they say this very thing, and are repelled. It is one voice: but the Lord questions the root, not the flower. Whence it is said to the Hebrews: Lest any root of bitterness, springing up, trouble you, and through it many be defiled (Heb 12:15). First, then, distinguish your faith from the faith of the demon. By what do you distinguish it? The demons said this in fear, Peter in love. Add, then, hope to faith. And what is hope, except from some goodness of conscience? And to that hope itself add love. We have a surpassing way, as the Apostle says: I show you a more surpassing way: If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am become like sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal; and he recounts the other good things, and confirms that without love they profit nothing. Let these, then, abide: faith, hope, love: but the greatest of these is love. Pursue love (See 1 Cor 12:31; 13:1-13; 14:1). Distinguish, then, your faith. You are already among the predestined, the called, the justified. The apostle Paul says: Neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith. Say more, Apostle, add, distinguish; because: The demons too believe, and tremble (Jas 2:19); therefore add and distinguish, for the demons believe, and tremble at what they hate. Distinguish, Apostle, and circumcise my faith, and distinguish my cause from a nation that is not holy (See Ps 43:1 (42:1)). Plainly he distinguishes, he discerns, he circumcises. And: faith, he says, which works through love (Gal 5:6).

7. 7. Let each one, then, my brothers, look upon himself within, weigh himself, prove himself in all his deeds, in his good works, which he does with love, not awaiting a temporal recompense, but the promise of God, the face of God. For whatever God promises you is worth nothing apart from God himself. God would not satisfy me at all, unless he promised me himself, God. What is the whole earth? What is the whole sea? What is the whole heaven? What are all the stars? What is the sun? What is the moon? What are the hosts of angels? I thirst for the Creator of all these: him I hunger for, him I thirst for, to him I say: For with you is the fountain of life (Ps 36:9 (35:10)). He who says to me: I am the bread who came down from heaven (John 6:41). Let my pilgrimage hunger and thirst, that my presence may be satisfied. The world smiles with many things, beautiful, strong, varied: more beautiful is he who made them, stronger and brighter is he who made them, sweeter is he who made them. I shall be satisfied, when your glory shall be made manifest (Ps 17:15 (16:15)). If, then, faith which works through love is in you, you already pertain to the predestined, the called, the justified: therefore let it grow in you. For faith which works through love cannot be without hope. But when we have arrived, will faith still be there? Will it be said to us: Believe? Not at all. We will see him, we will contemplate him. Most beloved, we are sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. Because it has not yet appeared, therefore faith. We are sons of God, predestined, called, justified; we are sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. Now, then, faith, before it appears what we shall be. We know that when he appears, we shall be like him. Is it because we believe? No. Why then? Because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2).

8. 8. What of hope? Will it be there? Hope will no longer be there, when the thing is there. For hope itself is necessary for the pilgrimage; it is what consoles on the way. For the traveler, when he labors in walking, bears the labor for this reason, that he hopes to arrive. Take from him the hope of arriving, and at once the strength for walking is broken. So hope too, which is here, pertains to the justice of our pilgrimage. Hear the Apostle himself: Awaiting the adoption, he says, we ourselves still groan within ourselves (Rom 8:23). Where there is groaning, that happiness cannot yet be spoken of, of which Scripture says: Labor and groaning have passed away (See Isa 35:10). Therefore still, he says, we groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body. We still groan. Why? For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For if anyone sees, why does he hope? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:24-25). In this patience, then, the martyrs were crowned; they desired what they did not see, they despised what they bore. In this hope they said: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or the sword? For on your account. And where is the one on whose account? For on your account, he says, we are put to death all the day long (Rom 8:35-36). On your account. And where is: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed? (John 20:29) Behold where it is, it is in you, because faith itself too is in you yourself. Or does the Apostle deceive us, who says that Christ dwells through faith in our hearts? (Eph 3:17) Now through faith, then through sight: now through faith, as long as we are on the way, as long as we are on pilgrimage. For as long as we are in the body, we are on pilgrimage away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:6-7).

9. 9. If this is faith, what will sight be? Hear what it will be: That God may be all in all (1 Cor 15:28). What is: All? Whatever you sought here, whatever you held for a great thing here, he himself will be to you. What did you wish for here, what did you love? To eat and drink? He himself will be food to you, he himself will be drink to you. What did you wish for here? Frail, passing health of the body? He himself will be immortality to you. What did you seek here? Riches? Greedy one, for what suffices you, if God himself does not suffice? But what did you love? Glory, honors? God will be your glory: to whom even now it is said: My glory, and the one who lifts up my head (Ps 3:3 (3:4)). For he has already lifted up my head. Our head is Christ. But why do you marvel? Because the head and the other members will be exalted; then God will be all in all. In this way we believe, in this way we hope: when we have come, we will hold; and then it will be vision, not faith: when we have come, we will hold, and then it will be the thing, not hope. What of love? Is it too only for now, and then will not be? If we love by believing and not seeing; how shall we love by seeing and holding? Therefore love will be, but it will be perfect; as the Apostle says: Faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Cor 13:13). Having this, and nourishing it in ourselves, secure with his help, persevering in him, let us say: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? until he himself shows mercy, he himself perfects. Tribulation? Or distress? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or the sword? For on your account we are put to death all the day long, we are reckoned as sheep for the slaughter. And who endures? Who bears all things? But in all these things we conquer. Whence? Through him who loved us (Rom 8:35-37). Therefore, if God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:31)

1. 1. Yesterday a sermon was delivered about our justification, which comes to us from the Lord our God, with us ministering, by his gift, and you hearing. And although we are in this life burdened with the load of corruptible flesh, certainly not without sin—for if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (See 1 John 1:8)—yet that we have been justified according to the measure of our pilgrimage, living by faith until we enjoy sight, became clear, as I reckon, to your Charity. We begin, then, from faith, that we may arrive at sight: the way is run, the fatherland is sought. On pilgrimage our soul says: For before you is all my desire, and my groaning is not hidden from you (Ps 38:9 (37:10)). But in the fatherland there will be no place for praying, but only for praising. Why will there be no place for praying? Because nothing is lacking. What is here believed, there is seen; what is here hoped for, there is held; what is here asked, there is received. Yet there is some perfection in this life, to which the holy martyrs attained. And therefore the ecclesiastical discipline holds—which the faithful know—that when the martyrs are recited at that place at the altar of God, they are not prayed for; but for the other commemorated departed, prayer is made. For it is an injury to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought to be commended. For he contended against sin even unto blood. But to certain ones still imperfect, and yet in part justified, the Apostle says to the Hebrews: For you have not yet resisted unto blood, contending against sin (Heb 12:4). If, then, those had not yet resisted unto blood, without doubt some did unto blood. Who unto blood? Certainly the holy martyrs; concerning whom the reading from the holy apostle James was just now heard. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations (Jas 1:2). It is now said to the perfect, who can even say: Prove me, O Lord, and tempt me (Ps 26:2 (25:2)). Knowing, he says, that tribulation works patience; but patience has a perfect work (Jas 1:3-4).

2. 2. For justice is to be loved; and in this loving of justice there are degrees of those making progress. First is that all things that delight should not be preferred to the love of justice. This is the first degree. What is it that I said? That among all things that delight, justice itself should delight you more; not that other things do not delight, but that it delights more. For certain things naturally delight our weakness, as food and drink delight the hungry and thirsty; as this light delights us, which is poured out from heaven when the sun has risen, or which shines from the stars and the moon, or which is kindled on earth by lamps consoling the darkness of the eyes; a melodious voice and a most sweet song delight us, a good odor delights us; whatever pertains to some pleasure of the flesh delights our touch too. And all these things, which delight us in the senses of the body, some are lawful. For these great spectacles of nature delight the eyes, as I said; but the spectacles of the theaters also delight the eyes. These are lawful, those unlawful. A sacred psalm sweetly sung delights the hearing: but the songs of actors also delight the hearing. This lawfully, that unlawfully. Flowers and spices delight the sense of smell, and these are God's creation; the incense on the altars of demons also delights the sense of smell. This lawfully, that unlawfully. Food that is not forbidden delights the taste; the feasts of sacrilegious sacrifices also delight the taste. This lawfully, that unlawfully. The embraces of marriage delight: those of harlots also delight. This lawfully, that unlawfully. You see, then, dearly beloved, that in these senses of the body there are lawful and unlawful delights. Let justice so delight that it conquers even the lawful delights; and to that delight by which you are lawfully delighted, prefer justice.

3. 3. Let us set before our eyes, on account of what I have said, an example of the contest. I ask whether you love justice; you will answer: I love it. Which you would not answer truthfully, unless it somewhat delighted you. For nothing is loved except what delights. Delight in the Lord (Ps 37:4 (36:4)), Scripture says. But the Lord is justice. For you ought not to fashion God for yourself as an idol. God is like to invisible things; and those things in us are better which are invisible. Faith is better than flesh, faith is better than gold, and faith is better than silver, than money, than estates, than household, than riches; and all these things are seen, faith is not seen. To which, then, shall we think God more like, to visible things, or to invisible? To precious, or to cheap? Let me speak of the cheaper things. You have two slaves, one deformed in body, the other most beautiful; but the deformed one faithful, the other unfaithful. Tell me which you love more: and I see you love invisible things. What then, when you love the faithful slave more, though deformed in body, than the beautiful unfaithful one, have you erred, and preferred ugly things to beautiful? Certainly not: but you have preferred more beautiful things to ugly. For you despised the eyes of the flesh, and raised the eyes of the heart. You questioned the eyes of the flesh, and what did they report to you? This one is beautiful, that one ugly. You repelled them, you rejected their testimony; you raised the eyes of the heart to the faithful slave, and to the unfaithful slave; this one you found ugly in flesh, that one beautiful; but you pronounced and said: What is more beautiful than faith? What more deformed than faithlessness?

4. 4. Therefore above all pleasures—that is, above even lawful delights—justice is to be loved. For if you have inner senses, all those inner senses are delighted with the delight of justice. If you have inner eyes, see the light of justice: For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light (Ps 36:9 (35:10)). Of that light the Psalm says: Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death (Ps 13:3 (12:4)). Likewise, if you have inner ears, hear justice. Such ears he sought, who said: He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Matt 11:15). If you have an inner sense of smell, hear the Apostle: We are the good fragrance of Christ to God in every place (2 Cor 2:15). If you have an inner sense of taste, hear: Taste and see, for the Lord is sweet (Ps 34:8 (33:9)). If you have an inner sense of touch, hear what the bride sings of the bridegroom: His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me (Song 2:6).

4. 5. Let us set forth, then, as I had begun to say, an example of this contest. Let us see, my brothers, who it may be; I ask, and let him answer what I am about to say, whether he is so delighted by justice that he prefers it to the other delights pertaining to these senses of the body. Behold, your gold delights you, it delights your eyes: it is a beautiful, most shining metal, it delights. It is beautiful, I do not deny it; for if I deny that it is beautiful, I do injury to the Creator. The tempter comes, then, and says to you: I take your gold from you, unless you bear false witness for me; but if you do, I add to it. Two delights contend in you: now I ask you what you prefer, what delights you more, gold, or truth; gold, or true witness. Or does this shine, and that not shine? Faith is sought in true witness. Does gold shine, and faith not shine? Blush, have eyes; what you loved in your slave, render to your Lord. For a little while ago, when I asked about your two slaves, one deformed and faithful, the other beautiful and unfaithful, which you would love more; you answered me justly, and preferred what was to be preferred. Return into yourself, because now it is about you yourself. Certainly you loved the faithful slave. Is your Lord unworthy to have you as a faithful slave? And what great thing were you promising your faithful slave? That you might love him much, the supreme reward of freedom. What great thing were you promising your faithful slave? Temporal freedom. Do we not see many serving who are not in want, and free men begging? And you demanded faith from him to whom you promised freedom: and do you not keep faith with him who promises you eternity!

5. 6. It is a long task to run through the individual senses of the body: but what I have said about the eyes, understand of the rest; and prefer to the delight of the flesh the delight of the mind. For unlawful pleasures delight your flesh; let the invisible, beautiful, chaste, holy, melodious, sweet justice delight your mind, so that you are not driven to it by fear. For if you are driven to it by fear, it does not yet delight. You ought not to sin, not from fear of punishment, but from love of justice. Hence the Apostle says: I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity; so now present your members to serve justice unto sanctification (Rom 6:19). What did I say? I speak in human terms: I say what you can bear. When you presented your members to iniquity to perpetrate disgraceful deeds, were you led by fear, or invited by delight? What do you say? Answer us, for even you who live well perhaps once lived badly. When you sinned, were you delighted in your sins; did fear lead you to sin, or the sweetness of sin? You will answer: The sweetness. Does sweetness lead to sin, and fear thrust you to justice? Prove yourselves, examine yourselves. Let him take the gold who threatens: justice is sweeter, justice is more shining. Let him not give the gold who promises: justice is to be preferred to gold, by delighting it is to be preferred; it is more brilliant, it is more shining, it is sweeter, it is more pleasant. Now then, if anyone proves himself, and in this contest has prevailed, he has heard the Apostle saying: I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Without doubt he spared the weakness; and he attempted to say something somehow more agreeable to the less fit.

6. 7. Behold, he says, this I say which you can grasp; you presented your members to unlawful delights, you were led by the sweetness of sins to do those things; let the sweetness and pleasantness of justice lead you to right deeds; love justice as you have loved iniquity. Justice is worthy to obtain from you that you present to it what you presented to iniquity; this is: I speak in human terms, that is, what your weakness can still bear. What then did the Apostle hold in suspense? What did he defer to say? What he deferred, I will say, if I can. Weigh justice and iniquity; is justice as worthy as iniquity was worthy? Is this to be loved as that was loved? God forbid that it be so—but would that it were even so. Therefore more? More altogether. In iniquity you pursued pleasure, for justice bear pain. In injustice, I say, you pursued delight, for justice bear pain; this is more. Behold some shameless youth of slippery age, with sweetness enticing, has cast his eyes on another's wife, has loved her, desires to attain her; yet he seeks to lie hidden: for he so loves pleasure that he more fears pain. Why does he seek to lie hidden? He fears to be seized, bound, led off, shut up, brought forth, tortured, killed. Fearing all these things, in that craving for his own sweetness he seeks a hiding-place; he watches for the husband's absence, he fears to find a helper of his own disgrace, because he dreads to involve a witness. And we see him led by sweetness: but that sweetness is not so great that it conquers even fear and pain and the fear of punishments. Give me beautiful justice, give me the beauty of faith; let it come forth into the midst, let it show itself to the eyes of the heart, let it inspire fervor in its lovers. Now it is said to you: Do you wish to enjoy me? Despise whatever else delights you, despise it for my sake. Behold, you have despised it, it is too little for it: It is human, because of the weakness of your flesh. It is too little that you despise whatever delighted you: despise whatever terrified you; despise prisons, despise chains, despise the rack, despise torments, despise death. These you have conquered, you have found me. In both degrees prove yourselves lovers of justice.

7. 8. We find perhaps some who prefer the delight of justice to the pleasures and delight of their body: but is there anyone among you, do you suppose, who would despise for it punishments, pains, and death? Let us at least think of what we do not dare to profess. What do we think? Where do we think? Thousands of martyrs lie before our eyes, the very true and perfect lovers of justice. Of them it was said: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations; knowing that the proving of your faith works patience; but patience has a perfect work (Jas 1:2-4). What can be added, that it may have a perfect work? It loves, it burns, it is fervent; it tramples on all things that delight, and passes on; it comes to harsh, dreadful, savage, threatening things; it tramples, breaks through, and passes on. O to love, O to go, O to die to self, O to arrive at God! He who loves his soul will lose it; and he who loses his soul for my sake will find it unto eternal life (See Matt 10:39; John 12:25). So is the lover of justice to be armed, so is the lover of invisible beauty to be armed. What I say to you in the darkness, say in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach upon the housetops (Matt 10:27). What is: What I say to you in the darkness, say in the light? What I say and you hear with the mind, say boldly. And what you hear in the ear, preach upon the housetops. What is: You hear in the ear? You hear in secret; because you still fear to profess and confess. What then is: Preach upon the housetops? Your houses are your bodies; your houses, your flesh. Climb up onto the housetop, tread on the flesh, and preach the word.

8. 9. But first, my brothers, bewail what you were, that you may be able to be what you are not yet. This of which I speak is a great thing. And whence is it great for us? It is supreme, it is perfect, it is best; whence is it for us? Hear whence it is for us: Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration (Jas 1:17). Thence is it that we have good, thence is it that we do not yet have it. You do not have it? Ask, and you will receive (See Matt 7:7). If you, says the Savior, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children; how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him? (Matt 7:11) Let every man, then, examine himself, and whatever good he finds in himself, which pertains to our justification, let him give thanks to him who gave it; and by giving thanks to him who gave it, let him ask of him also what he has not yet given. For you do not make progress in receiving, while he fails in giving. However capacious a throat, however capacious a belly you bring, the fountain overcomes the thirsty one.

1. The solemnities of the holy martyrs are exhortations to martyrdom, that it may delight us to imitate what it delights us to celebrate. To this the holy Scripture, fresh in our ears, exhorts and in a way kindles us, the Apostle saying: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For on your account we are put to death all the day long, we are reckoned as sheep for the slaughter (Rom 8:35-36). Then there follow other things which seem violent unto separation, in which, however, he gives the victory, that we may not be separated from him who is not separated from us. For on account of these straits and impending pressures, the faithful promiser and kind giver deigned to promise us that he would be with us even unto the consummation of the age (Matt 28:20). For I am certain, he says, that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither things present nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature—for he could not name them all—will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38-39). And that he might render us, lest we be separated from Christ, most strong in hope and confidence against all the temptations of this world—because our strength in no way suffices if we are abandoned by divine help—he said above: If God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:31) The Apostle, having briefly recalled certain things which seem to assail the Christian faith by raging, lest such things separate us from the love of Christ, armed us to bear all things for Christ.

2. But because not only the things that rage attempt to separate us, but also the things that flatter, just as we are armed by the apostolic words against the things that attempt to separate us from Christ by raging, so are we armed by the Lord Christ himself against the things that strive to seduce us by flattering. For it is to be feared lest perhaps one whom the cruel sword does not separate, carnal affection may be able to separate. Therefore, against those things too which assail our faith by flattering, lest they take by storm what they assail, let us hear the Lord saying: If anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and his own soul besides, he cannot be my disciple. And he who does not carry his cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26-27). The Lord recalled both: both what is sweet in enticing, that it may deceive, and what is heavy in threatening. For against the flatteries of deception by carnal affection he says: If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife, children, and so on; but against those things which by raging and terrifying turn one away from the faith, he fortifies us, set up and armed, by the one name of the cross. He who does not, he says, carry his cross and follow me—that is, he who does not bear (for this is to carry) all things that are bitter and hard in this world, as a cross, and follow me, cannot be my disciple.

3. Now then let us set the martyr of Christ in the midst between those who threaten and those who flatter; both doors are knocked at, by which entrance is made to the heart: desire and fear. The door of desire is knocked at by father, mother, wife, children, brothers: all are flattering, sweet, sweet things. But are they sweeter than God? are they sweeter than Christ? If you do not believe, taste and see how sweet the Lord is (Ps 34:8 (33:9)). The door of fear is knocked at by threats, fury, reproaches, finally by the very pains of the body, which no one can fail to feel by despising. For if he despises money, he suffers losses, not pains. The whole of this lies in the soul of the one despising: he does not torment you who takes from you what you do not love. But you love money: you fear him who threatens losses, nor does he torment you, but you have tormented yourself, because you have entangled yourself in pains. For avarice is the root of evils, which some craving have wandered from the faith and entangled themselves in many pains (1 Tim 6:10). He threatens losses: he who does not find you covetous, finds you free; you laughed at him as he came empty-handed, because you did not entangle yourself. So too the other things which by salutary teaching we learn to despise, we are admonished not to love, that in temptations we may be found free. To which freedom that apostolic reading exhorts us, where it is: And let those who use this world be as though not using it (See 1 Cor 7:31), that they may have the use of freedom, not the affection of desire. For the figure of this world passes away. I wish you to be without anxiety (1 Cor 7:31-32).

4. But there remains the weakness of the flesh, which each one of us, as long as he lives in this world, cannot estrange from himself. What do you do? When the flesh is pierced, does the heart not grieve? It is a wound of weakness, until it takes on the garment of immortality. There is the great wrestling. With the will turned away from money, the martyr of God stands secure against those who terrify with losses. "Let him take," he says, "what I do not love, where I feel it?" He threatens exile, but he threatens one by whom the heavenly fatherland alone is desired. Here the Christian, wherever he goes, is a pilgrim. He threatens reproaches. He has what to answer: This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience (2 Cor 1:12). He threatens dishonor. How great is transitory honor! A man threatens dishonor, but the Lord promises men eternal honor. With all these things despised, freedom is safe. But what of the flesh? There remains the soul with its garment, and that garment which only death strips off. Now man—that is, the soul—is pressed from near at hand, from the weakness of his flesh. Therefore those words of the Lord in the magnificent Psalm—where almost the gospel is recited, where it was said: They dug my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones. But they themselves looked upon me, they divided my garments among them and over my garment they cast lots (Ps 22:16-18 (21:17-19))—are seen, rather are understood, to be the words of one hanging on the cross; and yet it is said there: Do not depart from me, for tribulation is near (Ps 22:11 (21:12)). If you understand near as "of an approaching time," they will not be the words of one hanging on the cross: the tribulation was already present, if he was hanging. But why was it said: It is near? It is already in the flesh. Nothing is nearer to the soul than the flesh which it carries. Other things are without, they are called external, because they are outside. When the flesh is tortured, the soul is knocked at from near at hand.

5. These things are grave, but in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom 8:37). But why do we conquer even in these things? Because if God is for us, who is against us? (Rom 8:31) Therefore the Lord deigned by the name of the cross to signify all things terrible, hard, bitter, intolerable, and savage. For even among the kinds of death there is nothing more intolerable than the cross. With great weight indeed was it added by the same Apostle, when he commended to us the humility of the Lord; for he says: He did not reckon it robbery to be equal to God, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made into the likeness of men, and found in habit as a man (Phil 2:6-7). How great the humbling of the Lord, to become man! But hear still more. Behold, he was humbled, because he was made man. What further? He humbled himself, he says, becoming obedient unto death, not only unto human birth, but even unto death. Have you something to add to this? "I have," he says: even the death of the cross (Phil 2:8). Looking at this most bitter of all ends of the Lord, he called a cross all the things that the Christian flesh suffers, even if faith endures them, rightly for his name. For faith suffers nothing, rather it even renders the sufferings bearable. Instructed, then, on both sides, and having fortified both doors of desire and fear, desiring nothing more than what God promises, fearing nothing more than what God threatens, we repel both the flatterers and the threateners.

6. But someone arises and poses us a question and says: "Whatever bitter things, whatever hard, whatever savage and harsh to endure are indeed to be borne for the faith of Christ, to be borne altogether; but it moves me that he who, among his precepts, set as the first precept the loving of one's neighbor: Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you (Eph 6:2-3); and when the Apostle recalled this as a great thing, the Lord says to me: If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother (Luke 14:26). Which shall I hear? Which of these shall I take? How shall I obey the one commanding me to honor father and mother, and likewise the one commanding me to hate father and mother? Is it not one and the same who commands both, or—as certain vain people think—is one he who gave the law and another he who propagated the Gospel, since in the law it is written: Honor your father and mother (Exod 20:12), in the Gospel: Whoever does not hate father and mother?" God forbid! He himself is both the giver of the law and the propagator of the Gospel, he himself altogether. Acknowledge the Lord: lest he command contrary things, he distributed the precepts to their times. For if you think the precept by which we are commanded to honor father and mother, because it is read first in the Old Testament, contrary to the evangelical precept, in that same Old Testament there is written something such as we just now heard in the gospel when it was read. He who says to his father and mother: I do not know you, and who does not acknowledge his sons, he has pondered my testament (See Deut 33:9). How similar it is, how twin, how equal it is recognized to be. Therefore one Lord commanding both, but let us distinguish the times.

7. The martyr is armed for the crown, and father and mother come flattering, to hinder what God promises, promising a vain inheritance and taking away the eternity of light. Here plainly do not acknowledge those who hold you back, rather here hate the father, out of devotion hate such a one, lest he remain such. So father, so mother, so children, so brothers, so the wife—in whose case there is a greater question—when it has come to this point, hate even her, if she too attempts to hinder. Beware of Eve: then she is not your member, but the ministry of the serpent (See Gen 3:1-6). You who unwisely heard her first voice, and did not profit by experience; but that very wife, to hinder her husband, a martyr, from the crown, and by feminine wiles, prescribes to her husband as if from the law and from the Gospel itself. "Hear," she says, "the precept." What precept? "What God has joined, let not man separate (Matt 19:6). Plainly hear it, do not spurn it. What God has joined, let not man separate." But see, lest the wife separate you from God. "But what he has joined, man ought not to separate." Ought human affection to separate a man from God himself? And where will be what you just now heard: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom 8:35) Here, then, do not fear: man does not separate what God has joined, but God separates the one attempting to separate. Do not, then, listen to your wife saying to you: "I am your member, behold, you are a member." Answer: "If my member were rotting, and by rotting attempting to make the whole body waste away, would it not be cut off by the physician? Do I not hear the Lord himself, the true physician, saying: For it profits you that one of your members perish, rather than that your whole body go into Gehenna? (See Matt 5:29)" Answer, then, with the law well understood, against one misusing the law. For the serpent does nothing great, attempts nothing great in wishing through Eve to deceive you from the law, who deceived the first Adam without law. For he has seen you now feeding on the law, and he sets a snare in your food. But say: My eyes are ever to the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the snare (Ps 25:15 (24:15)). Therefore in this peril too, where you are tempted from the law, let your eyes be to the Lord, because he himself too was tempted from the law by that same serpent.

8. For when the Lord, to set us an example of contest and victory, deigned to be tempted by the devil, as he deigned to be crucified by the impious, in the first temptation—for we read that it was threefold—he answered the devil from the law, the devil saying: If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread (Matt 4:3), and he from the law: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God (Matt 4:4; Deut 8:3). Again in another temptation: Fall down and adore me, and I will give you these things (See Matt 4:9), and he from the law: It is written: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve (Matt 4:10; Deut 6:13). But when that crafty serpent saw himself twice repelled from the law, he stretched a third snare from the law: "Cast yourself," he says, "down from the pinnacle of the temple, if you are the Son of God (See Matt 4:6)." And at once to the instrument of the law, that he might fight from where he had been overcome: "For it is written," he says: "He has commanded his angels concerning you, and in their hands they will bear you up, lest perhaps you strike your foot against a stone (Matt 4:6; Ps 91:11-12 (90:11-12)). Because, then," he says, "if you are the Son of God, the angels take you up lest you be hurt, cast yourself down and prove to us what you are." Did the Lord here take his hand from the law, because the devil dared to put his hand to the law? Here too he wounded the enemy from the same law, laid him low, made him go away confounded. For he says: It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God (Matt 4:7; Deut 6:16). So here too, when you see your wife attempting to hinder you from martyrdom, reciting the law to you and saying: "What God has joined, let not man separate (Matt 19:6)," recite there, you too, the law of the Gospel: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children (Luke 14:26) . . ."

9. Do not, then, be angry, wife. The one with whom you are angry here in this case, because he hates you, hates the father too in this case, hates the mother too. But it is too little for the wife, because it is written: A man will leave father and mother and will cleave to his wife (Gen 2:24; Matt 19:5). For if the parents—that is, father and mother—should say to the son: "If your wife is unwilling to stay with us, you stay with us, and leave her," let the wife take up this precept and fight, let her prescribe to her husband and say from the law of God: "Rather leave them and do not leave me. For I recite: A man will leave father and mother and will cleave to his wife." You have recited, you have understood, you have conquered; plainly no one doubts that father and mother attempting to separate a son from his wife are to be left, that the wife not be deserted. But attend, woman, if you deign to be faithful, and do not disdain to hear the word of faith, attend: by what you have prevailed, by that allow yourself to be prevailed over. Behold, we restrain your father-in-law and your mother-in-law, the father and mother of your husband, who begot him, who nourished him, who brought him to this age at which he became your husband; we restrain them altogether and have rebuked them by divine authority and said: "Do not wish to separate the son from his wife on your account, for he is better separated from you than from her. If it can be done, all of you be together. But if this cannot be done, it is better for him to be with her than with you without her." We have pleaded your case. You have conquered in this judgment: allow yourself to be conquered in another, because there too we plead your case. Then, having faithfully pleaded the case of your flesh: ought we to abandon the case of your everlasting salvation? Learn. The father and mother of your husband did not separate you from your husband: you shall not separate your husband from your God.

10. There fornication is more to be feared, in that chastity which the soul owes to God; there fornication is more to be feared, of which the Apostle was afraid, saying: I betrothed you to one husband, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your minds too be corrupted from the chastity of God which is in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 11:2-3). You see that there too chastity is demanded. Why do you not wish to be separated from your husband? Lest you have the necessity of fornication? But in the martyrdom of your husband you ought to fear nothing. For with him crowned and translated from human affairs to divine, you will be a widow; if you marry, you will not be a fornicator. But perhaps, as the wife of a martyr, you blush to marry further. Behold, with your husband crowned, let your faith too be in safety. Do not drag your husband from the embrace of the spiritual marriage. There too chastity is demanded, and more there because greater there, more there because eternal there. You have destroyed everyone who fornicates away from you (Ps 73:27 (72:27)). For what else do you do, that your husband may be overcome by your flatteries, than that there be no virtue in him? In whom there will be no virtue, how badly off will your husband be! He is overcome, broken down, made effeminate by your flatteries: how will he be your husband, who will no longer be a man? For what do you do, except that he yield to your flatteries, despise God's precepts, deny Christ, sacrifice to idols? Behold, the soul of the one whose flesh you seek fornicates, behold it hears: You have destroyed everyone who fornicates away from you. But you wish that he cleave to you and be separated from God: hear what follows: You have destroyed everyone who fornicates away from you; but for me to cleave to God is good (Ps 73:27-28 (72:27-28)). Hear your husband, armed with faith, hurling against your iniquity the darts of justice: I am certain, he says, that neither death nor life, neither angel nor principality, neither height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:38-39). Perhaps here you say: "But in all these things he did not name a wife." In all these things, you say, he did not name a wife. Deceitful one, the apostolic virtue was vigilant even against you, by adding: nor any other creature. Or will you perhaps dare to say that you are not a creature? If you are a creature—rather, because you are a creature—neither will you separate the one whom no creature will separate.

11. We have spoken as though men hasten to martyrdom and are hindered by their wives: let us console the weaker sex too. How many have been crowned and were not overcome by husbands flattering them unmanfully! Whence was Perpetua made perpetual, except because . . . perpetual? Whence was Felicity capable of so great a felicity, except because temporal infelicity did not terrify her? Therefore, lest women too in this case be seduced by the flatteries of husbands, let Perpetua be attended to by them, let Felicity be attended to, and let perpetual felicity be held.

12. Let not, then, father and mother be angry in such a case, nor wife, nor children, nor brothers; and if they are angry, it is added: hate your own soul besides (See Luke 14:26). In this case, then, you badly love your wife, you who are commanded even to hate your own soul. What does it profit, he says, a man, if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his own soul? (Matt 16:26) And yet you are commanded to hate it, lest it too seduce, wishing to be here, wishing always to cleave to this flesh, unwilling to migrate to better things; hate such a soul, lest you have such a one. For what else does the peril of persecution, when it tempts men, whisper within, than: "Deny, live: afterward you will do penance"? It is the soul: it wishes to perish. Hate it as it wishes to perish. Lest you permit it to perish, chastise, rebuke, form it, call upon God for help. For it withers from you and fails through the perils of this life, and contemplates eternal life with eyes of faith that are not right: lift it up by exhortation and say: Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Perhaps it will answer you: "Because I am weak." Therefore you have what follows: Hope in the Lord, he will be your strength, he will be your firmness. Hope in the Lord, for I will confess to him, I will not deny him, for I will confess him. But you, soul, were murmuring: "Deny him." I will confess to him: the salvation of my countenance and my God (Ps 42:5,11 (41:6,12)). Therefore he who loves his soul, let him lose it here, that he may find it unto eternal life (See John 12:25). Therefore do not listen to those whispering contrary things, neither father nor mother, nor wife, nor children, nor your own soul.

13. Let the wife be heard, with the fear of conjugal separation, as long as she does not urge anything by which God is offended. Thus all the degrees will hold their order: virginity excelling, widowhood following, marriage third, none without reward. Let virgins think of Mary, widows of Anna, the married of Susanna. All have their rewards, and from all these degrees martyrs have by no means been lacking. The husband fears, at the point of martyrdom, lest his wife be an Eve to him; the wife too fears, at the point of martyrdom, lest her husband be a serpent to her. But let her not listen to anyone urging anything against God. Thus far let carnal affection avail; let the weakness of the flesh not climb over the spiritual wall: let it be below, because it is below. Let the soul, subject to God, lead the flesh; let the soul not be seduced from God into the rule of the flesh: that is perverse. You wish to have rule in your house, much more does God in his. Hold these things and meditate on them, imitate these things in all the solemnities of the martyrs, and the God of peace will be with you (Phil 4:9). Turning to the Lord . . .

1. The divine readings, which spiritually feed us, admonish us to dispense to you, as you await and attend, and, as it were from the Lord's storehouse, of which we are the stewards, to set something before you who hunger. The apostolic reading was announced to us in these words, which your holiness recalls with us: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory forever and ever. Amen (Rom 11:33-36). But that the Apostle should cry out and, as if terrified by a certain depth of the judgments of God, say: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, he had said above: God has shut up all under sin, that he might have mercy on all (See Rom 11:32). After this statement, then, where he says: God has shut up all under sin, that he might have mercy on all, because truly there is something deep in men having first been made manifestly guilty in their own conscience, that they might be helped when confessing, he cried out: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Where is the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God? In that God has shut up all under sin, that he might have mercy on all. By what sin? Of unbelief. For he used this word: He has shut up, he says, God all under unbelief, that he might have mercy on all. May the Lord our God himself, then, be present, whose riches the Apostle praising cries out, and may he deign to impart to us something of those hidden and deep riches of his, that what we sense to be inexplicable, we may in some way say, not to explain it, but to commend the inexplicable things. For the Apostle seems, by a certain human weakness, to have as it were failed in explaining what he rejoiced in beholding. He saw something which the tongue could not explain, he beheld with the heart that for which he was less fit in words, and he did not find how to make us attentive to what he saw, except by crying out and lifting up our hearts, saying: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, that our lifted-up hearts may be directed to him whose riches, seeing, he cried out over, not to the mouth of a weak steward who could not explain those riches. Let us therefore do this, according to our small measure, and direct your hearts to him whose we all are, and under whom, one Master, we are all fellow disciples in this school, where the riches of God are, where is the depth of the riches, and where his judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out, because he has shut up all under unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (See Rom 11:32-33).

2. He who has shut up all under unbelief seems to be angry, but he who has mercy on all is gentle. Therefore the chapter of the Apostle agrees with the Psalm: O God, you have repelled us and destroyed us, you have been angry and have had mercy on us (Ps 60:1 (59:3)). Hear one angry and merciful. God has shut up all under unbelief, that he might have mercy on all. What did the Lord our God wish to do? First to be angry, to repel, to humble, and afterward to help, to call back the one turned away, to hear the one turned back, to aid the one heard, to change the one aided, to crown the one changed. Join other testimonies of the Scriptures. The very voice of a certain one man laboring in this earth—that is, of Adam himself, of the human race—which human race, however, the second man from heaven did not abandon, that, having first been earthly, afterward they might become heavenly (See 1 Cor 15:47-49). For because humbled, thence earthly; because cast down, thence earthly; because repelled, thence earthly; but because he who repelled and cast down and humbled had mercy on us, thence heavenly. Let us hear, then, the voice of that same man saying elsewhere: Before I was humbled, I sinned (Ps 119:67 (118:67)). Groaning in his humiliation, he acknowledged his sin; he attributed iniquity to himself, justice to God. For what does he say? Before I was humbled—which is the punishment that God inflicted—I, he says, sinned. Lest God who humbled me seem unjust, my sin went before, my humiliation followed. The Lord my God is therefore a just judge (See Ps 7:11 (7:12)). For I would not come to this humiliation, unless I first sinned. And because that humiliation of his seems indeed to sound the wrath of God the judge, but pertains to mercy, hear his voice elsewhere: It is good for me, he says, that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes (Ps 119:71 (118:71)). Let your Charity attend to what he says: Before I was humbled, I sinned. In punishment he seems to groan, in fetters to sigh, in this mortality and earthly weakness to seek by confessing the help of him whom he had offended by sinning. For this is what these words sound: Before I was humbled, I sinned, that is: I do not impute my humiliation to you, my God: I did what is wicked, you did what is just.

3. With these words agree those words which we sang. For he who says: O God, you have repelled us and destroyed us (Ps 60:1 (59:3)), himself says: Before I was humbled, I sinned (Ps 119:67 (118:67)). For you have heard that God repelled; you have heard that God cast down, that is, threw down from the height to the earth. You have heard it. Seek the cause why God did this: Before I was humbled, I, he says, sinned. You have heard your sin going before and the justice of God following; hear that this very justice of God, which humbled you, indicates not only the severity of a just judge, but also the clemency of a merciful one. For he says, as I said a little before: It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes (Ps 119:71 (118:71)). What then, my brothers? Was God angry when he humbled, or merciful? If the humiliation profited us nothing, let it be reckoned to excessive severity of God; which indeed, if it existed, we could not complain of his injustice. For let the sinner pay back his deserving; let the proud and unjust man not flatter himself; let him first find what he is worthy of, that so he may recognize what God has bestowed. Does the heart of any sinful man dare to announce to itself anything but punishment, to announce to itself anything but a most just penalty? Or if the punishment has followed the iniquity of man, can it be said to the just judge: "You did wrong to condemn the sinner"? This, then, let us as sinners announce to ourselves, thus let us confess in our punishments both our sins and the justice of our God: for thus we shall deserve to find, in our very punishment, the mercy of God. This, dearly beloved brothers, no one finds, except one who has first humbled himself. And because I am going to speak as I can, I do not think any of you will understand what I am going to say, unless he first suppresses the smoke of pride, by which the eyes of the mind are darkened, so that the mercy of God in the very punishment cannot be understood.

4. But first see this in daily life itself—for thence you can have a way to understanding, because he did not abandon the mortality of men—by certain likenesses in their very deeds, that it may be shown to us that a punishment can be inflicted mercifully. What shall I say? You give discipline to your slave, and in giving discipline, in that very thing in which you seem to punish, you certainly have mercy; but I do not say "to the slave": perhaps you are so angry with the slave that you hate him. You ought not indeed to be so, if you are a Christian; you ought not to be so, if you consider that you are a man; you ought not to be so, if you consider that "slave" and "master" are indeed different names, but "man" and "man" are not different. You ought not so to persecute with hatred a sinning slave. But because men are wont to be so, let us reject this likeness, and set up a son. No one can but love his sons: for a man is not to be praised who loves his son. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have, says the Lord, do not the tax collectors do this? (Matt 5:46) How much more sons, whom men beget as successors to themselves. No one at all can, by the very right of nature, hate one whom he has begotten. Nor is a man to be praised in that which is found in a beast. No one praises a man for loving his sons. You find this not only in gentle herd animals: the ferocity of lions grows gentle toward their cubs, tigers love their young, serpents cherish their eggs and nourish their offspring. Therefore, if those things which seem to be savage and harsh in creation do not keep their harshness and savagery toward those they beget, what great thing does a man do to love his son? But I have said these things, brothers, that you may see, from the example of sons—from that thing which no one can hate—that there can be a punishment of one who is merciful. So someone sees his son going into pride, lifting himself up against his father, claiming for himself more than he ought, wishing to dissipate himself in delightful trifles, wishing to squander what he does not yet possess; and that one, when he does this, is glad, laughing, rejoicing, exulting; but the father restrains him by rebuke, punishment, scourges, takes away his laughter, brings on weeping, seems to have taken away a good and brought in an evil—see what he took away: gladness; see what he brought in: groaning—and yet, if he had let that unpunished gladness go, he would be cruel; because he forced him to weeping, he is found merciful. If, then, a father who forces to weeping is found merciful, why do we not understand that our Creator too could do what we sang: O God, you have repelled us and cast us down? But why this? Was it unto destruction, unto perdition? Hear what follows: You have been angry and have had mercy on us (Ps 60:1 (59:3)). Why is he justly angry with you? Join, since we have said: Before I was humbled, I sinned (Ps 119:67 (118:67)). What does it profit you that you were repelled and cast down? It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes (Ps 119:71 (118:71)).

5. Let us now bring back the mind to that apostolic saying: God has shut up all under unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (See Rom 11:32). The first sin of man was pride: so we read in Genesis, so we find in another Scripture. In Genesis what do we read? That man, created and formed, was placed in paradise, under a certain law, under a certain commandment (See Gen 2:15-17); the commandment which was imposed on him showed him this: that he was made great in such a way that he had a greater above himself. Therefore God commanded humility always to be retained by man, subject to himself—that is, that the humility of man, set under God, be preserved. Man indeed was made to the image of God, and, as is written in another place, he gave him the power of containing all things (See Sir 17:3-4): all things were under him, but above him was he who made all things. So, then, man ought to have attended to the things that were under him in such a way as the more to attend to him who was above him; for cleaving to the higher, he would more securely possess the lower; but withdrawing from the higher, he would be subjected to the lower. Just as if we set up three men: one man having a slave, and having also a master, as it often happens that slaves with savings have slaves. Attend: he has a slave, he has a master; he is under one, he is over the other; he is higher than the slave, lower than his master. We have set up a third, the slave of a slave; the first, the master of a master; the middle one, both slave and master: the master of his slave and the slave of his master. That third is nothing but a slave, that first is nothing but a master, that middle one is both slave and master. But he securely possesses his slave, if he has not offended his master. And we have indeed said three men: all are of the same race, all subsist of the same substance and nature. Not so those three: God, and man, and the creature lower than man. For of another race and not of the same substance are the creator and the created, the maker and the made, the artisan and the work, the creator and the creature. But the things that are created are indeed generally all called created, but they differ in natures and orders and merits and places. For first there are spiritual things and afterward carnal, the very things that God founded, that God made. The first place spiritual things have, the last corporeal things have. But the human mind is something spiritual, where the likeness and image of God is imprinted (See Gen 1:26-27); but corporeal are all the things which we discern to lie beneath the senses of the body: they are known to all, they are seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched; hard, soft, hot, cold, rough, smooth, all these are called corporeal, they are lower. Above all these man was set (See Gen 1:28), but according to the mind, according to the intellect, according to that which in him was made to the image and likeness of God. For God is not circumscribed and enclosed by a corporeal form, so as to have a back on one side, eyes on another, but he is a certain light, not such as we see with the eyes, nor such that, if you increase this which we see with the eyes, dilating it through the fantasy of your thoughts, and make fields of light and mountains of light and trees of light, flitting about through the vanities of your thoughts. Do you wish to understand spiritual light? Seek whence you understand.

6. Understand, I say, this very light, by which you understand. What did I say? You see white and black with the bodily eyes, you are helped from without by the light either of the sun or of the moon or of a lamp or of some little fire. Further, if that light did not help your eyes from without, your eyes would be open in vain and would without cause be called eyes. But what is open in you and sound—that is, the eye—and what is brought to bear as a help from without—that is, the light—and what is the thing for the seeing of which you are helped—that is, colors and shapes—you know and distinguish. This we have said about the eyes. You hear sounds, you know whence you hear. The eyes do not hear, but neither do the ears see. Something is lacking to the eyes for perceiving sounds, and something is lacking to the ears for perceiving colors. But to you none of these is lacking, because through the eyes you see, through the ears you hear. You recognize, then, the things that have odor too, and you know what member you bring to bear by which you perceive odor. For you do not bring the ear to bear to perceive the sweetness of an odor, but you bring that which God created for you for smelling. Nor, when you wish to taste some dish, do you set it to the ears or to the eye: you know there is no sense there discerning flavors. And do you wish to perceive whether something is hard or soft, cold or hot? You know that with your whole body you can perceive contact. These things you know. Good. Attend to that inner thing: who is this within to whom all these senses report what men perceive? For these are, as it were, instruments, these are, as it were, subjected in servitude. The sense is some inner emperor, to whom these messengers report whatever they find without. But that inner one, who discerns all these things, is surely higher than all these things are. Therefore the eye has what it sees, the ear what it hears, the nostrils what they smell, the mouth what it tastes, the hand what it touches, and does the mind not have what through itself it can behold? The mind indeed perceives white and black, but with the eyes reporting; it perceives in sounds the melodious and the harsh, but with the ears reporting; it perceives in odors the sweet-smelling and the foul-smelling, but with the nostrils reporting; it perceives sweet and bitter, but with the mouth reporting; it perceives hard and soft, but when the hand, handling, has reported. Can it, then, with the body reporting, perceive so many and varied things: is it not, through itself, fit to perceive something, with no member of the body reporting to it? Seek, then, what through itself it perceives, and you will find where the image of God is. White and black it perceived through the eyes, melodious and discordant the ears reported. And, not to run again through the individual things that lie beside the body, the members of the body reported. The just and the unjust—do the eyes report it? The just and unjust the mind discerns and says: "This is just, this is unjust." Seek who reported it. If justice is a color, the eyes reported; if justice is a sound, the ears reported; if it is an odor, the nostrils reported; if a flavor, the mouth reported; if it is hardness or softness, the hand reported. If it is none of these, who reported it, except the inner light? This nature, then, this substance which you see to be excellent, of which, if I should wish to speak more copiously, time does not suffice, something inner, something divine in us made to the image and likeness of God, is above all corporeal things, and was so made that all corporeal creation, subject to it, might serve it; but yet the mind itself is not God. For if it were God, would it have sinned? For God is unchangeable. But our mind, because it is created, because it is made, is not what God is. It is changeable. We see even now these very changes. It is wise, it is foolish; it remembers, it forgets; it wills, it does not will; it is delighted, it is saddened. These changeabilities do not befall God, who is above the mind, and is the creator of the mind.

7. But yet all this which I have said is above the body, below God, below the master and above the slave. These are the three of which I was speaking a little before. If, then, three men, since all are men, are ordered by a certain condition of this life, so that one of them is only a master, another of them is only a slave, but another of them is both slave of the master and master of the slave, how do you suppose, and how much more easily and how much more distinctly the whole creation is ordered? The nature and substance of the mind set under God, the nature of the whole body set under the mind. But as I was saying: then he securely possesses his slave, if he has not offended his master; so that mind, if it did not, by a certain pride, by which it wished to be of its own power, offend its master, the whole nature of the body would always be subject to it as a slave. But because by pride it offended its Lord, the creature of the body, which had been given into servitude, was made for it unto the torment of punishment, unto the torment of vengeance. For through the difficulty of the body the mind is now tormented, though formerly it had dominion over the whole nature of the body. Just as if that man—for hence you grasp the more illustrious likeness, because this very thing, that we understand with difficulty, pertains to the punishment by which we have been humbled: from custom we give some illustrations. Set those three slaves again before your eyes, because you scarcely understand this, though it is more distinct; for these things are more distinct, in that they are diverse: for God is far other than the mind, and the mind far other than the body. But in those three there is man, and man, and man. The nature is not diverse, but the condition makes the order; yet because those things are in our custom, we understand them more easily than those which are more distinct. Now, then, understand this which we say. Make that middle one—because he is a slave in such a way that he is also a master; he is a master in such a way that he is also a slave: slave of the higher, master of the lower—make him, then, to have offended his master. Whence did he offend? By a certain pride. For he considered that he too had a slave, and dared to be lifted up against his master, by that very thing by which he seemed to have his slave in his power. He raised himself against his master; his master commanded that he be beaten by his slave. For that master, master of the master, was master of both. For that slave did not have his slave in his power as much as the master of both had both. For when could he despise that master, no one's slave, so as not to beat his own master, at the command of the more powerful master of both? Our God, then, commanded—because we offended him—that we be tormented by our body; and our body was made mortal, and we began to suffer punishments from there, whence we dared to be proud against the Lord. We are beaten now, then, by our slave. We are tormented in the torments of our flesh; the Lord has humbled us, that we should be flogged by a slave.

8. But why has he humbled us, that we should be flogged by a slave? Because we first sinned: Before I was humbled, I sinned (Ps 119:67 (118:67)). Set, then, under the lashing of your slave, cry out to the Lord your God, and say to him: It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes (Ps 119:71 (118:71)). What statutes of yours? That, as I have a slave, my body, so you too have me as a slave. And as I seek that my body obey me, so I ought to obey you. Therefore from this I have learned your statutes, as though my Lord were speaking to me from above and saying: "O wicked slave (See Matt 18:32), now at least, set in this humiliation, acknowledge whom you have offended, and to whom you are subject. Certainly you are tormented by your slave: you have a body and you wish it to obey you in all things, you wish that when you raise your hand, the hand follow; when you raise your foot, the foot follow. And although I have wished you to be beaten by your slave, still your slave serves you." For when we wish to walk and change the body's place, we command the feet, and they obey; we command the eye to see, when we wish to behold something: it does not contradict us, it turns, it reports to us. We bring the ear to bear on sounds, at once it reports what is sounding; we raise the hand to handle something, it does not resist. For in that the body serves us, it indicates that we are its masters; but in that it resists us, it indicates that we have a Master. But let us see in what your body does not obey you. For example, you can walk ten thousand paces, you wish twenty: it does not obey. You can walk fifty miles, you wish sixty: it does not obey. You wish to keep vigil for two nights: it obeys in part, in another part it does not obey. You wish to move the hand to lift something: you lift something; you try at something else: it does not obey. Add so many tormenting difficulties of its weakness and corruption, which cannot be numbered, and attend to how the body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul (See Wis 9:15). In that, then, in which it serves you, it shows that you are its master; but in that in which it resists you, it admonishes you to serve your Lord. Therefore say to your Lord: It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes (Ps 119:71 (118:71)). How do you learn his statutes? So that you may now no longer disdain to serve your Lord, as you wish your body to serve you. And you begin now to serve your Lord, and your body does not yet serve you as you wish. For you believe, who were unbelieving, you follow the precepts of your Lord, you walk the way, but justice is not yet perfect in you: therefore obedience is not yet perfect in your slave; there still remains something of bitterness, lest this world grow sweet to you, and you not desire your Lord who made the world.

9. Cry out to him from the ends of the earth, O Church spread throughout the world, say in the Psalm: From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my heart was in anguish (Ps 61:2 (60:3)). In the Psalm these things are written: On a rock you have exalted me, you have led me, because you have become my hope (Ps 61:2-3 (60:3-4)). For God has exalted us on a rock. On what rock? And the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4), says the Apostle. And how was our hope made there? Because our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we were made, is himself the Word of God, through whom all things were made (See John 1:3). He took flesh from the mass of our mortality, and the death which pertained to the punishment of sin he took up—not the sin, but by the mercy of freeing us from sin he handed over his own flesh to death. For he was not handed over unwillingly; he would not be crucified, unless he had handed himself over. For that Judas handed him over, he handed over one willing. Yet the merit of Christ's will is not imputed to Judas, but the merit of his own greed. For when he handed over the Lord, he did not consider our salvation, but his own avarice and his own perfidy. For Judas handed over, Christ handed over, the Father of Christ handed over. They all seem to have done one thing. They did one thing, but they did not do it with one intention. The Father handed over the Son in mercy, the Son handed over himself in that same mercy, Judas handed over the master in perfidy. There seems to be no difference between the handing over and the handing over, but between mercy and perfidy there is the greatest difference. How did the Father hand over? Hear the Apostle: Who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all (Rom 8:32). How did the Son hand over? The same Apostle says of the Lord himself: Who loved me and handed himself over for me (Gal 2:20). He handed over, then, this flesh to be killed, that you might fear nothing for your flesh. He showed in his resurrection after three days what you ought to hope for at the end of the age. He leads you, then, because he has become your hope (See Ps 61:3 (60:4)). You walk now to the hope of the resurrection, but unless our head first rose, the other members would not find what to hope for.

10. What then, my brothers? Although, even before the Lord suffered, his body served him as its master—for he was not so bound to the body, as if for vengeance, as if for punishment, that he should be beaten by his slave as we are; but if he wished to suffer anything in his body, he suffered it by will and by power, not by necessity and want, as he himself said: I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again: no one takes it from me, but I myself lay it down of myself (John 10:18). Great, then, is the power in him; yet what he wished to suffer in the flesh he there demonstrated, what you suffer deservedly. He suffered undeservedly, you suffer deservedly. But that you may bear what you suffer deservedly, he consoles you who suffered undeservedly. Bear, then, what you suffer, until your mortality passes away. Your reign comes, then, by fixed measures of time; he exhibits what he promised, because in himself he has already exhibited that he rose. For he rose after three days; he wished to rise first and show us what we ought to hope for at the end. We thought the flesh was going to perish; therefore he was unwilling to take flesh from any other source than where we too had flesh. For if he took it from another source, we would say: "The flesh could rise, which was taken from another source." Was it taken from where we were taken? He did not indeed admit male partnership to his mother, because he was the only Son of God. Because he had a Father above, on earth he sought only a mother. He showed us that what he created is not evil: he created male and female, both he himself created (See Gen 1:27). But because through a woman man had been seduced, women might despair of themselves, unless that sex were honored through the Virgin Mary. He chose to be born of a woman; it was fitting to take up a man, to be born a man. But God had not created only the male, he had created the female too. Women might, as I said, despair of themselves and say that they did not pertain to the mercy of God, because through a woman man was deceived; he deigned to be born of a woman, with a man taken up, and he honored the sex; he showed himself the founder of each sex, and afterward the liberator. For because through a woman death was prepared for man by the serpent, life was announced to the very men through women (See Gen 3). For the women first saw the Lord rising and announced it to the men, the Apostles. Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ showed us in his flesh what we ought to hope for at the end. He humbled us, then, that we might learn his statutes (See Ps 119:71 (118:71)).

11. Now let us return humbled, who were cast down proud. For the whole cause of our mortality, the whole cause of our weakness, the whole cause of all our torments, all our difficulties, all the hardships in this world which the human race suffers, is nothing but pride. You have Scripture saying: The beginning of all sin is pride (Sir 10:13). And what else does it say? The beginning of man's pride is to apostatize from God (Sir 10:12). If pride seems to you a small evil, at least tremble at apostatizing from God. Further, if you tremble at apostatizing from God, cast away the cause of apostatizing. For pride made man apostatize from God. Because, then, it is the head of all our diseases—for we are sick in this life. As a skilled physician, when he sees a man languishing with various diseases, does not attend to the proximate causes and leave the origin of all the causes—for if he treats the proximate causes, the source of the diseases being preserved, the derivations of the calamity return, and he seems to heal for a time, but does not heal thoroughly; but that physician is found most skilled, who well collects all the causes of all the diseases, and the first cause he finds, whence all those diverse things seem to have arisen as branches, he amputates the root, and the whole forest of pains is cut down—so the Lord Jesus Christ. Why is he called Savior, and he who said: The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are ill (Matt 9:12), came to the sick, because the sick could not come to him; he sought those not seeking him, he turned himself to the weak, he suffered many things, he endured being killed by the blind, that from his very death he might heal their eyes. He did all these things, and because he saw pride to be the cause of all our diseases, he healed us by his humility.

12. Do not, then, mock the humility of Christ. For many pagans mock that Christ came humble—and would that only pagans!—and many heretics who call themselves Christians. It is offensive to them that Christ was born of a woman; it is offensive to them that he was fixed to the cross and wounded, and that those wounds were true which he received, and those nails were true which were driven in; it is offensive, and they say: "He simulated all those things, he feigned and did not endure them." Did the truth, then, free you by a lie? Were you laboring under a lie, and were you healed by a lie? Whence can this be? But whoever say these things show what sort of masters they themselves are. For if the Lord rose and offered to his doubting disciple his hands and his scars to be felt and handled, to one saying: "I will not believe unless I put my fingers into his side" (See John 20:25), he showed himself not only to be seen with the eyes but also to be handled with the hands; but that one, when he handled the scars, found the truth expressed and cried out: My Lord and my God (John 20:28). If, then, Christ deceived, will you tell the truth? How shall I hear you, tell me. Do you wish me to hear you as a master? "As a master," he says to me. What do you say to me, what do you teach me? "I teach you," he says, "that Christ was not born of a woman, and did not have true flesh, and that death was not true, nor were those wounds true, and if not true wounds, then not true scars either." And I, on the contrary, have learned from the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, when the disciple doubted, offered him his scars. He certainly could have risen without scars, who could heal the eyes of one born blind. But why did he wish to bring the testimony of scars? Because the testimony of the scars of the body was medicine for the wounds of the mind. What then will you teach me: that those things were false, and Christ simulated all these things, and the disciple, deceived by falsity, cried out: My Lord and my God? If, then, he wished to make one whole from falsity, whence do I know whether you tell me the truth or lie? For you do not think it a crime to lie, when you try to set Christ before me as the author of a lie. For I am going to say to you: You lie, and you to me: "God forbid, I do not lie." You lie plainly. "God forbid that I should lie." This you are going to say to me, that I may believe you. For say to me: "I am lying," I want to know whether I should believe you anything. But that I may believe you anything, you are going to say to me: "God forbid that I should lie." Why did you say: "God forbid that I should lie," unless you think it a crime to lie when you teach? What, then, you think a crime for yourself, this you assign to Christ? Therefore let human deceits depart: as it is written in the gospel, so Christ came. Let not the humility of Christ be offensive to you; that humility is offensive to pride. Do not be proud, and the humble Christ will not be offensive.

13. The Apostle says: All things are clean to the clean. But to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled (Titus 1:15). With a chaste heart say: "A woman conceived, a virgin conceived." By faith she conceived, a virgin she conceived, a virgin she gave birth, a virgin she remained. Believe all these things, and let those organs not seem unclean to you. For even if that flesh had been wholly unclean, Christ coming to the flesh would cleanse the unclean, he would not be made unclean by the unclean. See the humility of your Lord: if it horrifies you, you are proud. Humility horrifies the proud. So, in the way you are proud, force yourself, that the cup of your swelling may not horrify you. For when you are proud, you swell; you are not great. If you swell, drink the cup, that your inner parts may be reduced, that you may be able to be healthy. This cup the physician has tempered for you, that you may drink. The physician himself has tempered the cup for you: drink the bitter cup, if you wish to be healthy. Do you not see that you swell, do you not see that your inner parts are not healthy? You think yourself great, and you swell. This is not greatness, but disease. Do you wish to be free of disease, do you wish to be free of swelling? Drink the cup of humility. He tempered it for you who came humble to you. And lest you doubt to drink, the physician first drank, not because it was necessary for the physician, but to take away the sick man's doubt. Do not, then, despise the humility by which you are healed. Pride is the head of all diseases. To heal the head of all diseases he came who deigned to become the head of the Church (See Eph 5:23). With the head of all diseases taken away, you will be healthy. Humble yourself and you will be healthy, and you will say more securely: It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes (Ps 119:71 (118:71)). For you raised yourself up and were humbled. Humble yourself and you will be raised, because God resists the proud, but to the humble gives grace (Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5). Therefore God has shut up all under unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (See Rom 11:32).

14. Man withdrew from God, followed his own covetings (See Sir 18:30), loosened the reins: by erring, by wandering, he came even to the worship of idols. The very nation of the Jews, which worshiped one God, had grown proud, had grown proud and gone into iniquity. God, wishing to show them that they are weak, wishing to show them that they lie under the frailty of their flesh, that that covetousness which was drawn from the propagation of their parents still remained in them, gave them the law and commandments just and good and holy, as the Apostle says: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment just and holy and good. Did then what is good, he says, become death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good (Rom 7:12-13). See how he called good the very law which had been given to the Jews. He called it good, because God had given it. And truly he had commanded all good things in the decalogue. Or was there perhaps something evil: You shall not steal, you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not bear false witness, and the rest, you shall not covet your neighbor's property? (See Exod 20:13-17) For even if you do not steal, but only covet, the laws do not hold you in the forum, but God holds you in judgment. Attend, then, brothers: the law was given to the Jews, weak but proud. They began to try to do the just things of the law and to be cast down by their own covetings, and they were made guilty, who before were unjust, but were not guilty of the law, were not transgressors. Whence the Apostle says: For where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15). When the law is given, he who acts against the law, although he does this which he was doing, yet when he did this without the law, he was a sinner, he was not a transgressor; but when he now does it with the law received, he is not only a sinner, but also a transgressor. Because, then, he is not only a sinner, but also a transgressor, what the Apostle says is fulfilled: But the law entered in, that the offense might abound (Rom 5:20). But why did the offense abound? For this is: O God, you have repelled us and cast us down (Ps 60:1 (59:3)). But it follows and he says: But where the offense abounded, grace superabounded. Because, then, the offense abounded, we rightly say: O God, you have repelled us and cast us down, you have been angry. But because grace superabounded, we rightly add: And you have had mercy on us (Ps 60:1 (59:3)). Let not the Jews, then, say: "We are something." For God has shut up all under unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (See Rom 11:32).

15. Let us, then, dearly beloved brothers, know our life, our Lord Jesus Christ; let us hold the medicine of our pride, the humility of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us believe in him, let us hope wholly from his mercy, who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all (Rom 8:32); and when perhaps we make progress in his statutes, let us not be proud and despise the rest, but let us attend, on the road of justice, not to how much we have traveled, but to how much remains for us to traverse; and let us everywhere groan, and let us groan as long as we are pilgrims, because our joy will be only in the fatherland, when we have been made equal to the angels (See Luke 20:36). As long as we are in the body, we are on pilgrimage away from the Lord (2 Cor 5:6). Why are we on pilgrimage away from the Lord? For we walk by faith, he says, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). Faith is to believe what you do not see, sight is to see what you had believed. When, then, sight has come, that flame of love will be sharper, because what you desired when absent you embrace when present; what you believed when absent you see when present. And if God believed is sweet, what will he be when beheld? When, then, all these things which still torment us on account of the remnants of our sins have been finished, then there will be the fullness of justice, then, joined to the angels, we will sing the everlasting hymn "alleluia": the praise of God will be ours without failing, nor will hunger drive us from there, because the body does not hunger except what is corrupted and weighs down the soul (See Wis 9:15); nor will we thirst nor grow weak nor grow old nor incline to sleep nor be wearied by any weariness, but such as the bodies of the angels are, such will our flesh be in the resurrection of the dead (See Luke 20:36; Matt 22:30). Do not marvel that this flesh will be heavenly bodies in the resurrection of the dead. Consider that, before we were, we were nothing, and from that believe what we will be when we have risen. Let each one consider himself: before he was born, what was he, where was he, where did he lie hidden? All this distinction of the body: ears, eyes, face, the spirit enlivening the whole mass of the body, where were all these things? Certainly in the secret of nature, certainly where they were not seen. They came forth thence, God formed you who were not. What great thing is it for God to make an angel from a man, who made man from mud? (See Gen 2:7) What were you? and you are a man; you are a man, and will you not be an angel? An angel is more closely made from a man, than a man is made from what you were. He did what is more marvelous in you; will he not do what remains?

16. It is needful that you believe, and that your faith not abandon Christ, not abandon the gospel, not abandon his promises. Understand that all the things that are written are nearly accomplished, few are those that remain. This Church, which you see spread throughout the whole world, a little time ago did not exist. You a few years ago were pagans, now you are Christians; your parents served demons, before, the temples were full of those burning incense, now the Church is full of those praising God. How did God suddenly change human affairs? Before all these things came to be, things written were read, were believed, and were not seen; now we see the things that our elders read. If, then, these so great things have been fulfilled, will the few things that remain not come to pass? Believe strongly that they will come to pass, brothers, because all these things too which have already come, came in no other way than as they were written down and foretold before they came. Many thousands of years ago, when it was said to Abraham: In your seed all the nations will be blessed (Gen 22:18), it was said to one man: In your seed all the nations will be blessed; he considered himself one, and this seed, and his wife already an old woman and worn out with old age itself, and it was said to him not only: "There will be seed from you"—which, if it alone were said, what would be more marvelous?—it was too little to say to one already worn out with old age: "You will have a son," In your seed, he says, all the nations will be blessed. God said marvelous things, said impossible things, but easy for himself (See Luke 1:37). That one man believed what he did not see, and we see; what he believed, has been exhibited to us, rather has been rendered to us, what has been exhibited in us. For from the seed of Abraham came Isaac, and from Isaac Jacob, and from Jacob the people of the Jews, and from the people of the Jews David, and from the seed of David the Virgin Mary, and from the Virgin Mary the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore in Abraham's seed all the nations will be blessed, because all the nations are blessed in Christ. Behold, now there has been exhibited to us what was promised to him. God, then, almighty and faithful, has exhibited what he promised to one man: will he not exhibit what he promised to all? My brothers, let your faith be built up, let your hope be strengthened. He did not deceive one; will he be able to deceive the whole world? He has exhibited to one a world full of Christians; he will exhibit a world living forever with Christ his Son.

17. Holding these things, brothers, understand that the Church is not in a part, but is in the whole. Christ bought the whole, he gave his blood for the whole: the whole world has Christians, the unity of Christ is the Church. Without cause the heretics quarrel with the Church of Christ: it is too little that they wished to be disinherited—they slander the heirs too. You draw them in unity to the whole; let them not seduce you to a part. If you follow them, you will go to a part; if they hear you, they will come to the whole: they are conquered to their own gain. For Christ bought the whole, when he hung on the cross, my brothers: the bargains of Christ, the passion of Christ; there he bought us, where he was crucified. For there he shed his blood, our price, there where it was foretold in the Psalms as still to come. See how many years before it was foretold: They dug my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones; but they looked upon and considered me, they divided my garments among them and over my garment they cast lots (Ps 22:16-18 (21:17-19)). All these things can scarcely be distinguished, whether they are heard in the Psalm, or recited from the gospel. Is it not that, as they are sung in the Psalm, so they are read in the gospel: They dug my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones? There Christ bought us, where all his bones were numbered; where his hands and his feet were dug with nails, there he bought us. For there he shed his blood, which is our price. In that very Psalm it is understood what he bought. Do you wish to know? Question the Psalm itself. What did Christ buy, hanging on the tree? For after a few verses it says: All the ends of the earth will be reminded and will turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will adore in his sight (Ps 22:27 (21:28)). Why will they adore? Because the kingdom is his, and he will have dominion over the nations (Ps 22:28 (21:29)). As if it were answered why, who is this to whom all the ends of the earth will turn and in whose sight all the families of the nations will adore? Because the kingdom is his, he says, and he will have dominion over the nations. Why is it his? Because he himself bought it.

18. Now the enemy possessor rushes in, and this under the name of Christ. He can divide some garments of Christ; that tunic which is woven from above (See John 19:23) no one will divide. They divided, he says, my garments among them and over my garment they cast lots (Ps 22:18 (21:19)). And the evangelist says: There was there a certain tunic woven from above, and they said among themselves—those who crucified the Lord—Let us not divide it, but let us cast lots over it (John 19:23-24). It was not placed in the division, that tunic was apart from the division. Why was that tunic apart from the division? Because it was woven from above. It was signified why it did not deserve to be divided, being woven from above. What is it that is woven from above? Whence it is said to us "hearts on high." And so he who has his heart on high cannot be divided into parts, because he will pertain to that tunic which cannot be divided. Therefore, my brothers, that tunic fell by lot to our Lord Jesus Christ himself, because the lot is his inheritance. And since it was his inheritance, he bought it. But those who are divided can pertain to the other garments of Christ, because he is clothed with all. All who believe in him, in some way he is clothed with them. But whoever seek earthly honors, temporal advantages, corporeal fantasies, are not woven from above, because they desire worldly things. They, then, can be divided. But that tunic which is woven from above cannot come into the division. Rejoice that you pertain to it, you who are the offshoots of the catholic Church. Question your heart whether you seek from Christ nothing but the kingdom of heaven: not vain, not temporal things, not corporeal images, not those things which delight in this world and on this earth. When you have questioned yourselves, your conscience answers you that you have your "hearts on high." And if you have your "hearts on high," you are woven from above; if you are woven from above, you cannot be divided.

1. We have been admonished by the Apostle, that he who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31); and to that Lord we have sung: In your justice rescue me, and deliver me (Ps 31:1 (30:2)). This, then, is to glory in the Lord: to glory not in one's own justice, but in his. But this justice was hidden from those who glory in their own justice. And this vice appeared most of all in the Jews, who refused the New Testament and remained in the old man. In vain and unfruitfully had they read and sung in their books: In your justice rescue me. For being ignorant of God's justice, and wishing to establish their own, they were not subject to the justice of God (Rom 10:3). Let no one, then, glory as if in his own justice, even if he is just. For to one glorying in his own justice it was said: For what do you have that you have not received? (1 Cor 4:7) Therefore he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. For what is more secure than to glory in him, of whom no one can ever be put to shame? For if you glory in a man, something can be found in a man, rather many things can be found in a man, of which the one glorying in him is put to shame. But when you hear that one ought not to glory in a man, certainly not in yourself either: for you are not other than a man. If, then, you glory in yourself, you glory in a man; and this is more foolish and more execrable. For if you glory in some just man or other wise one, that one in whom you glory does not glory in himself; but you, if you glory in yourself, are not wise, are not just; but if one ought not to glory in a wise man, much less ought one to glory in an unwise one. But he who glories in himself glories in an unwise one. For by that very thing he is convicted unwise, that he glories in himself. Therefore: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord. Nothing safer, nothing more secure. If you can, you have what to lay hold of; glorying in the Lord, you will not be put to shame. For nothing of reprehension can be found in him in whom you glory. And through this even that one who did not say: In my justice rescue me; but: In your justice rescue me (Ps 31:1 (30:2)); said this first: In you I have hoped, O Lord, let me not be confounded forever (Ps 31:1 (30:2)).

2. For is there anything else in which the Jews erred, or by what other vice were they made exiles from evangelical grace, except that one of which the Apostle was not silent, which I recalled a little before? I bear them witness, he says, that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge (Rom 10:2). Where he praised, he also reprehended. Whence, then, are they faulty? Because, although they have a zeal for God, it is not according to knowledge. And as if we consulted the Apostle, and said: What is it that you said: Not according to knowledge? What is this knowledge, which those do not have who nevertheless have a zeal for God? What knowledge they do not have, do you wish to hear? Attend to what follows: For being ignorant of God's justice, and wishing to establish their own, they were not subject to the justice of God (Rom 10:3). If, then, you have a zeal for God, and wish to have it according to knowledge, and to pertain to the New Testament, to which the Jews therefore could not pertain, because they had a zeal for God not according to knowledge; acknowledge God's justice, and do not wish to establish your own, this very thing, if you have any; if you live well, if you do the precepts of God, do not think it your own; for this is to wish to establish your own justice. Acknowledge from whom you have received it and have what you have received. For you do not have what you have not received. But if you have received, why do you glory, as if you had not received? (1 Cor 4:7) For when you glory, as if you had not received, you glory in yourself; and where is: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord? (1 Cor 1:31) Hold the gift, but acknowledge the giver. When the Lord promised that he would give his Spirit: If anyone thirsts, he says, let him come to me, and drink. He who believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from his belly (John 7:37-38). Whence is this river in you? Recall your former dryness. For unless you had been dry, you would not have thirsted; if you had not thirsted, you would not have drunk. What is: If you had not thirsted, you would not have drunk? Unless you had found yourself empty, you would not have believed in Christ. Before he said: Rivers of living water will flow from his belly; he first said: If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink. Therefore you will have a river of living water, because you drink; you do not drink, if you do not thirst; but if you were thirsting, why did you wish to glory as if of your own river? Therefore: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.

3. And I, he says, brothers, coming to you, came not in loftiness of speech or of wisdom, announcing to you the mystery of God. He also says: Did I say I knew anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified? (1 Cor 2:1-2) And if he knew this alone, there is nothing he did not know. It is a great thing to know Christ crucified; but before the eyes of little ones he set, as it were wrapped up, a treasure. Christ, he says, crucified. How much does this treasure have within? Then in another place, when he feared for certain ones, lest through philosophy and empty deceit they be seduced from Christ, he promised the treasure of the knowledge and wisdom of God in Christ. Beware, he says, lest anyone seduce you through philosophy and empty seduction, according to the elements of the world, not according to Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:8,3). Christ crucified, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. Do not, then, he says, be deceived by the name of wisdom. To this wrapping call yourselves, pray that it may be unwrapped for you. Foolish philosopher of this world, what you seek is nothing; what you do not seek . . . What does it profit that you thirst much, and trample the fountain underfoot as you pass by? You despise the humility, because you do not understand the majesty. For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). Jesus Christ, he says, crucified. I did not say I knew anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2); his humility, which the proud mock, that there may be fulfilled in them: You have rebuked the proud; for cursed are those who turn aside from your commandments (Ps 119:21 (118:21)). And what is his commandment, except that we believe in him, and love one another? In whom should we believe? In Christ crucified. What pride is unwilling to hear, let wisdom hear. His commandment is that we believe in him. In whom? In Christ crucified. This is his commandment, that we believe in Christ crucified. This altogether; but that proud one, with neck erect, with swelling throat, with lifted tongue, with puffed cheeks, mocks Christ crucified. Cursed, then, are those who turn aside from your commandments. Why do they mock, except because they see a cheap little garment thrown around the outside, and do not see the treasure lying hidden within? He sees the flesh, he sees the man, he sees the cross, he sees the death, he despises these things. Wait, do not pass by, do not spurn, do not insult. Wait, search; perhaps there is something within that delights you much. If you should find what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it ascended into the heart of man (1 Cor 2:9). The eye sees the flesh; there is beneath the flesh what the eye does not see. Your ear hears the voice; there is there what the ear has not heard. There ascended into your heart, as from earthly thoughts, a man crucified and dead; there is there what has not ascended into the heart of man. For accustomed thoughts ascend into our heart: It ascended, it says, into the heart of Moses to visit his brothers (See Acts 7:23; Exod 2:11); this is the human condition. And when the disciples doubted about the Lord himself, and said among themselves, when they suddenly saw him risen: It is he, it is not; it is flesh, it is a spirit; he says this to them: Why do thoughts ascend into your heart? (Luke 24:38)

4. Let us seek, then, if we can, not what can ascend into our heart, but whither our heart may deserve to ascend. For he will deserve to be glorified in the reigning one, who has learned to glory in the crucified one. Whence the Apostle himself, seeing not only whither he may ascend, but also by what way he may ascend; for many have seen whither, and have not seen by what way; they loved the fatherland of the heights, but were ignorant of the way of humility; the Apostle, then, knowing and thinking and premeditating, not only whither, but also by what way: For me, he says, God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ (Gal 6:14). He could have said: In the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he would say the truth; he could: In the majesty; and he would say the truth; he could: In the power; and he would say the truth; but he said: in the cross. Where the philosopher of the world blushed, there the Apostle found the treasure; not despising the cheap wrapping, he arrived at the precious thing wrapped within. God forbid, he says, that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. You have taken up a good burden, there is the whole of what you sought; and you have shown what great thing lay hidden there. What sort of help? Through whom, he says, the world is crucified to me, and I to the world (Gal 6:14). When would the world be crucified to you, unless he through whom the world was made were crucified for you? Therefore: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31). In what Lord? In Christ crucified. Where humility is, there majesty; where weakness is, there power; where death is, there life. If you wish to arrive at those things, do not despise these.

5. You heard in the Gospel the sons of Zebedee. They sought the heights, asking that one of them sit at the right hand of so great a head of the household, the other at the left. They sought a great loftiness indeed, great; but because they put in second place the way, Christ calls them from where they wished to go, to that by which they ought to go. For to those seeking so great a loftiness, what did he answer? Can you drink the cup which I am about to drink? (Matt 20:22) What cup, except that of humility, except that of the passion? Which he was about to drink, and, transforming our weakness into himself, he says to the Father: Father, if it can be, let this cup pass from me (Matt 26:39). Transforming into himself those very ones who refused to drink such a cup, and sought the heights, and neglected the way of humility: Can you drink, he says, the cup which I am about to drink? You seek Christ exalted; return to him crucified. You wish to reign and to glory in the seats of Christ; first learn to say: God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal 6:14). This is Christian teaching, the precept of humility, the commendation of humility, that we glory only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. For it is not a great thing to glory in the wisdom of Christ; it is a great thing to glory in the cross of Christ; whence the impious insults you, thence let the devout glory; whence the proud insults, thence let the Christian glory. Do not be ashamed of the cross of Christ; therefore you have received that very sign on the forehead, as on the seat of shame. Recall your forehead, lest you dread another's tongue.

6. The sign of the Old Testament is circumcision in the hidden flesh, the sign of the New Testament is the cross on the free forehead. For there is concealment, here revelation; that is under a veil, this on the face. For as long as Moses is read, a veil is placed over their heart (2 Cor 3:15). Why? Because they have not passed over to Christ. For when you have passed over to Christ, the veil will be taken away (See 2 Cor 3:16); so that you who had circumcision in secret may bear the cross on the forehead: But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, he says, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18). Do not attribute this to yourself, do not think it your own, lest, being ignorant of God's justice and wishing to establish your own, you be not subject to the justice of God. Pass over, then, to Christ, O you who glory in circumcision. For you wish to have glory from that which you blush to show. It is a sign, it is true, it was commanded by God; but it is a sign of concealment. For the New Testament was veiled in the Old; the Old Testament is revealed in the New. Therefore let the sign pass over from the hidden to the manifest, and let what lay hidden under the garment begin to be on the forehead. For who doubts that in that sign Christ was foretold? Hence the stone knife: and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4). Hence the eighth day of circumcision, and the Lord's day of resurrection. Therefore the Apostle, passing over from there, coming from there—passing over, namely, to Christ, that the veil might be taken away—knows whence to glory. But God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. For what had he said before? For neither do those who are circumcised keep the law; but they wish you to be circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh (Gal 6:13). What of you, Apostle? Transfer the sign to the forehead. But God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here, he says, I have what I was ignorant of. The New Testament has come, what was hidden has been revealed. Those who sat in the shadow of death (See Luke 1:79), a light has risen for them. What was hidden has been revealed to them; what lay hidden is in the open. The Rock himself has come, he has circumcised us all in spirit, and fixed the sign of his humility on the forehead of the redeemed.

7. Now let the glorying be in the cross of Christ; let us not be ashamed of the humility of the Most High. How long the distinction of foods, and the circumcision of the flesh? Whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame (See Phil 3:19). To them future things were foretold; now let them be believed as accomplished. Let us not be ungrateful to him who came, if we waited for him to come. But whence are the Jews exiles, strangers, fugitives from this grace? Because they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. What knowledge? Being ignorant, he says, of God's justice, and wishing to establish their own (Rom 10:2-3); not holding God except in the precepts, and reckoning that they could fulfill the precepts by their own strength, they avoided the help. For the end of the law is Christ, the perfection of the law is Christ, unto justice to everyone who believes (Rom 10:4). And what does Christ do? He justifies the impious. For to one believing in him who justifies the impious—not the devout, but the impious; making devout one whom he finds impious—to one believing, then, in him who justifies the impious, his faith is reckoned unto justice. For if Abraham was justified by works, as though he himself had done it, as though he himself had bestowed this on himself; he has glory, but not before God (Rom 4:5,2). But he who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31); and let him say securely: In your justice rescue me, and deliver me (Ps 31:1 (30:2)). For he rescues and delivers those who hope in him; not attributing what they have received to their own strength. For this very thing is of wisdom, to know whose gift it is (See Wis 8:21). Who said this? He who asked God to give him self-restraint. What justice, what particle of justice can be fulfilled without some self-restraint? For it delights to sin; for if it did not delight, it would not be done. But justice delights less, or does not delight, or delights less than it deserves. Whence is this, except from the languors of the soul? Bread is loathsome, and poison delights. Whence will this languor be healed, I beseech you? Is it from ourselves and through ourselves? We who were all fit to wound ourselves, who of us is fit to cure what he did? So too in our very sins, who does not, when he wills, wound himself? But not whoever wills, heals himself. Let the mind, then, be devout, let it be faithfully Christian, let it not be ungrateful to grace. Let the physician be acknowledged: the sick man never heals himself.

1. 1. We have heard the Apostle, when he was read, rebuking and restraining human lusts; and saying: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Taking, then, the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? God forbid! (1 Cor 6:15) He said, then, that our bodies are members of Christ; since Christ is our head, in that he became man for our sake, the head of whom it was said: He is the Savior of our body (See Eph 5:23). But his body is the Church (See Col 1:24). If, then, our Lord Jesus Christ had taken up only a human soul, his members would be only our souls; but because he took up a body too, through which he is also head to us, who consist of soul and body; surely our bodies too are his members. If, then, each one craving to fornicate cheapened himself, and despised himself in himself; let him not despise Christ in himself; let him not say: I will do it, I am nothing: All flesh is grass (Isa 40:6). But your body is a member of Christ. Where were you going? Return. Whither did you wish, as it were, to cast yourself headlong? Spare Christ in you, acknowledge Christ in you. Taking, then, the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? For she is a harlot who consents to you for adultery; and perhaps that Christian woman takes the members of Christ, and makes them members of an adulterer. You despise Christ in one another, and neither acknowledge your Lord, nor think of your price. But what sort of Lord is he, who made his slaves his brothers? But it was too little to make them his brothers, unless he made them his members. Has so great a dignity, then, become cheap? Because it was so kindly bestowed, is honor not rendered him in return? If it were not bestowed, it would be desired; because it was bestowed, is it despised?

2. 2. But these our bodies, which the Apostle says are members of Christ, on account of the body of Christ, which he took up from the kind of our body; these our bodies, then, the same Apostle says are a temple in us of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God. On account of the body of Christ our bodies are members of Christ; on account of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. Which of these do you despise in yourself? Christ, whose member you are? Or the Holy Spirit, whose temple you are? That very harlot, who consents to you for evil, you perhaps do not dare to bring into your bedroom, where you have your marriage bed; but you seek some abject and foul place in your house, in which to wallow foully. You render honor, then, to your wife's bedroom, and do you not render it to the temple of your God? You do not bring an unchaste woman to where you sleep with your wife, and you yourself go to an unchaste woman, when you are the temple of God? I suppose that the temple of God is better than the bedroom of your wife. For wherever you go, Jesus sees you; who made you, and redeemed you when lost, and died for you, dead, on your behalf. You do not acknowledge yourself; but he does not turn his eyes away from you—not to help, but to punish. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and his ears toward their prayers (Ps 34:15 (33:16)). At once he added, and terrified those who gave themselves a bad security, who said to themselves: I will do it; for God does not deign to regard me doing such foul things. Hear what follows, attend whose you are; since, wherever you go, Jesus sees: But the face of the Lord is upon those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth (Ps 34:16 (33:17)). But from what earth? Where it is said: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living (Ps 142:5 (141:6)).

3. 3. For perhaps the evil, unjust, adulterous, unchaste, fornicating man rejoices that he does it, and grows old while in him lust does not grow old, and says within himself: Certainly it is true: But the face of the Lord is upon those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth (Ps 34:16 (33:17)). Behold, I have now grown old, who from my earliest age to this present day commit such great things; I have buried before me many chaste men, I myself have led to the tomb the funerals of many chaste youths, and, unchaste, I have outlived the chaste. What is it that is said, that: The face of the Lord is upon those who do evil, to destroy their memory from the earth? There is another earth where the unchaste one is not, there is another earth in the kingdom of God. Do not err; neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor the abusive will possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10). This is, he will destroy their memory from the earth. For many committing such things set up hope for themselves; on account of those who, living in a ruinous way, set up hope for themselves in the kingdom of God, to which they are not going to come, it was said: He will destroy their memory from the earth. For there will be a new heaven, and a new earth, which the just will inhabit. There the impious, there the evil, there the most worthless are not permitted to dwell. Let him who is such now choose where he wishes to dwell, while it is time that he can be changed.

4. 4. For there are two dwellings; one in the eternal fire, the other in the eternal kingdom. Suppose that in the eternal fire one is tormented in one way, another in another; yet there they will be, there all will be tormented; that one less, this one more. Because it will be more tolerable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for another city (See Matt 10:15); and certain ones go around sea and land to make one proselyte, and when they have made him, they make him a son of Gehenna twice as much as they are themselves (See Matt 23:15). Suppose that some are tormented double, others single; suppose that some more, others less; it is not a region where you may choose a place for yourself. Whatever the milder torments there, they are worse than what you dread in this world. Consider how you tremble, if someone makes a false charge against you, lest you be sent to prison; and do you yourself live badly against yourself, that you be sent into the fire? You tremble, you are disturbed, you grow pale, you run to the church, you long to see the bishop, you roll at his feet. He asks why? Free me, you say. What is happening? Behold, that man makes a false charge against me. And what will he do to you? Lord, I am shaken; Lord, I am being sent to prison; have mercy on me, free me. Behold how prison is feared, how confinement is feared; and the burning of Gehenna is not feared! Finally, when calamity increases, and the pressure rages more atrociously, and rages even unto death, when it seems good to a man that he not die, not be killed, all cry out that he must be helped, all aids are implored: come to the rescue, run, for the soul's sake. The whole heightening of the calamity is that it is said, for the soul's sake. Help must indeed be given, nor must aid be denied to this fear; what can be done must be done, by him who can.

5. 5. Yet I wish to question the one in peril, who moves my inmost being with that word; since he says: Run, for the soul's sake. I easily answer him: I indeed run for your flesh; would that you ran for your soul. And know that I run for your body, not for your soul. I would rather hear Christ telling the truth, than you murmuring with a false fear. For the Lord himself says: Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul (Matt 10:28). Certainly you wish me to run for your soul; behold, he whom you fear, and under whose threats you grow pale, cannot kill your soul; he rages as far as the body; do not you rage against your soul. By him it cannot be killed, by you it can; not by lance, but by tongue. The enemy who strikes you ends this life: But the mouth that lies kills the soul (Wis 1:11). From these things, then, which men fear in this time, let them form a conjecture of what they ought to fear. For he fears prison, and does not fear Gehenna? He fears the torturers who put men to the question, and does not fear the infernal angels? He fears temporal torment, and does not fear the punishments of eternal fire? Finally, he fears to die for a little while, and does not fear to die forever?

5. 6. He who is going to kill you, whom you fear, whom you dread, whom you flee, from fear of whom you are not allowed to sleep, and whom, if you see him in dreams when you have slept, you tremble at: what is he going to do to you? He is going to shut your soul out of your flesh; where your soul, shut out, goes, see. For he cannot otherwise kill your flesh, except by shutting out from it your soul, by which your flesh lives. For by the presence of your soul the flesh lives, and as long as your soul is present in your flesh, your flesh must necessarily live. But he who seeks your death wishes to cast out of your flesh your life, by which your flesh lives.

6. 6. Do you suppose there is not some life by which your very soul lives? For the soul is a certain life, by which your flesh lives. Do you suppose there is no other life by which your very soul lives; or, just as your flesh has a life, the soul by which your flesh lives, so does your soul too come to have some life of its own? And just as the flesh, when it dies, breathes out the soul, its life; so does the soul too, when it dies, breathe out some life of its own? If we find what this life is—not of your body, which is your soul; but the life of the life of your body, that is, the life of your soul; if we find it, then from this death, by which you fear lest your soul be cast out of the flesh, I suppose you ought rather to fear that death, lest the life of your soul be cast out of your soul. Briefly, then, I will say it: and why am I held by many words? The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is God. The Spirit of God dwells in the soul, and through the soul in the body, so that our bodies too are a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God. For the Spirit comes to our soul; because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5); and he possesses the whole who holds the principal part. For in you that has the rule which is better. God, holding what is better—that is, your heart, your mind, your soul—surely through the better part possesses the lower part too, which is your body. Let the enemy, then, rage, let him threaten death, let him do it if he is permitted, let him shut your soul out of your flesh; let your soul not shut out from itself its own life. If you rightly bewail, and think to say pitiably to your powerful enemy: Do not strike, spare my blood; does not God say to you: Have mercy on your soul, pleasing God? (See Sir 30:24) Your soul perhaps says: Ask him not to strike; for I dismiss you. For if he strikes, I cannot remain with you. Ask him not to strike, if you wish me not to dismiss you. Who says to you, if you wish me not to dismiss you? You yourself; for you who speak are the soul. If, then, he strikes the flesh, you flee, you go out, you migrate, earth lies in earth. Where will be what enlivened the earth? What was given you by the breath of God (See Gen 2:7), where will it be? If it has not breathed out its own life—that is, its own God—it will be in him whom it has not lost, it will be in him whom it has not shut out from itself. But if you obey the weakness of your soul, saying to you: He strikes, and I dismiss you; do you not fear God saying to you: You sin, and I dismiss you?

7. 7. From a vain fear let us take a useful fear. The fear of all men fearing to lose temporal things is vain—men who are some day going to migrate, and who tremble to migrate, wishing always to defer what they cannot take away. This fear of men is vain; and yet it exists, and is vehement, and cannot be resisted. Hence men are to be reproached, hence to be rebuked, hence to be bewailed, hence to be mourned, who fear to die, and do nothing else but die later. Why do they not act so as not to die? Because whatever they do, they do not bring it about that they do not die. But can they do something whereby they bring it about that they never die? In no way. Plainly, whatever you do, however much you keep watch, wherever you flee, whatever fortifications you seek, with whatever riches you ransom yourself, by whatever cunning you deceive the enemy; you do not deceive the fever. For you do nothing else, that you may not die soon by the enemy, except that you may die later at some time by the fever. You have what to do, that you may never die. If you fear death, love life. Your life is God, your life is Christ, your life is the Holy Spirit. You do not please him by acting badly. He does not inhabit a ruinous temple, he does not enter a filthy temple. But groan to him, that he may cleanse a place for himself; groan to him, that he may build a temple for himself; what you destroyed, let him construct; what you laid waste, let him reform; what you cast down, let him raise up. Cry out to God, cry out inwardly, cry out where he hears; because even there you sin, where he sees; there cry out, where he hears.

7. 8. And when you have corrected your fear, and begun usefully to fear, not temporal torments, but the punishments of eternal fire, and have therefore not been an adulterer; for of this we were speaking, on account of the Apostle, who said: Your bodies are members of Christ (1 Cor 6:15); when, then, you have not begun to be an adulterer for this reason, because you fear to burn in the everlasting fire, you are not yet to be praised; not indeed so much to be grieved over as before, but yet not yet to be praised.

8. 8. For what great thing is it, to fear punishment? It is a great thing, but to love justice. I question you, and I find you out. Look at my questioning as it sounds aloud, and make of yourself a silent questioning. I say to you, then: When, overcome by lust, you have one consenting, why do you not commit adultery? And you will answer: Because I fear Gehenna, I fear the punishment of eternal fire, I fear the judgment of Christ, I fear the fellowship of the devil, lest I be punished by him, and burn with him. What? Am I going to say: You fear wrongly? As I was saying to you about the adversary, that he sought to kill your body. For there I rightly said: You fear wrongly, your Lord made you secure, saying: Do not fear those who kill the body. But now, when you say to me: I fear Gehenna, I fear to burn, I fear to be punished forever; what am I to say? Do you fear wrongly? Do you fear vainly? I do not dare to, since the Lord himself, having taken away one fear, set up another fear; and he says, where he said: Do not fear those who kill the body, and afterward have nothing more they can do; but fear him who has power to kill both body and soul in the Gehenna of fire; thus I say to you, fear him (Luke 12:4-5). When, then, the Lord has struck in fear, and struck vehemently, and by repeating the word has doubled the threat, am I going to say: You fear wrongly? I will not say these things. Plainly fear, you fear nothing better; there is nothing you ought to fear more. But I question you: If God did not see you when you do it, nor would anyone convict you in his judgment, would you do it? You, look at yourself. For you cannot answer all my words; look at yourself. Would you do it? If you would do it, then you fear punishment, you do not yet love chastity, you do not yet have love; you fear in a servile way; it is dread of evil, not yet love of good. But fear nonetheless, that this dread may guard you, that it may lead you to love. For this fear, by which you fear Gehenna, and therefore do not do evil things, restrains you; and so it does not allow the inner mind, willing to sin, to do so. For fear is a certain guard, as it were the tutor of the law; it is the threatening letter, not yet the helping grace. Yet let this fear guard you, while you do not act, by fearing, and love will come; it enters into your heart, and as much as love enters, so much does fear go out. For fear was bringing it about that you not do it; love brings it about that you not wish to do it, even if you could do it with impunity.

9. 9. I have said what you should fear, I have said what you should desire. Pursue love, let love enter; admit it, by fearing to sin, admit the love that does not sin, admit the love that lives well. As it enters, as I had begun to say, fear begins to go out. The more it enters, the less the fear will be. When it has wholly entered, there will be no fear; because perfect love casts out fear (See 1 John 4:18). Love enters, then, it drives out fear. But it does not enter unaccompanied either. It has with it its own fear, which it itself brings in; but that chaste fear, remaining forever and ever (See Ps 19:9 (18:10)). It is a servile fear, by which you fear to burn with the devil; it is a chaste fear, by which you fear to displease God. Consider, dearly beloved, and question even human affections. A slave fears to offend his master, lest he order him to be beaten, order him to be put in fetters, order him to be shut up in prison, order him to be ground down at the mill. Fearing these things, the slave does not sin; but when he senses the eyes of his master absent, and has no witness by whom he can be convicted, he does it. Why does he do it? Because he feared punishment, he did not love justice. But the good man, the just man, the free man (for the just man alone is free; for everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (See John 8:34)), is delighted by justice itself; and if he could sin without a witness, he dreads even God as witness; and if he could hear God saying to him: I see you when you sin, I will not condemn you, but you displease me; he, unwilling to displease the eyes of a father, not of a fear-inspiring judge, fears, not lest he be condemned, not lest he be punished, not lest he be tortured; but lest he offend the joy of the father, lest he displease the eyes of the one loving him. For if he himself loves, and senses his Lord loving him, he does not do what displeases the one loving him.

10. 10. Attend to slippery and dishonorable lovers; if anyone, out of love for a woman, wanton and worthless, clothes himself otherwise than as pleases her, clothes himself otherwise than as pleases his beloved, or adorns himself otherwise than as pleases her. She has said: I do not wish you to have such a cloak; he does not have it; if in winter she says to him: I love you in the mantle; he chooses to shiver rather than to displease. Is she whom he displeases going to condemn him? Is she going to send him to prison? Is she going to apply torturers? This alone is feared there: I will not see you; this alone is trembled at there: You will not see my face. If an unchaste woman says this, and terrifies, does God say it, and not terrify? Indeed very much; but only if we love. But if we do not love, we are not terrified by it; but are we terrified as slaves, by the fire, by Gehenna, by the most atrocious threats of Tartarus, by the most heightened angels of the devil and their punishments? Let us at least be terrified by that. If we love that less, let us at least fear these things.

11. 11. Let there be no fornications, then. You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him (1 Cor 3:16-17). Marriages are lawful, seek nothing more. For no great burden has been imposed. On virgins a greater love imposed a greater burden. The virgins were unwilling for what was lawful, that they might please more him to whom they devoted themselves. They sought after that greater beauty of their heart. What do you command? as though they said: What do you command? That we not be adulteresses, this you enjoin? By loving you, we do more than you command. Concerning virgins, says the Apostle, I have no precept of the Lord. Why then do they do this? But I give counsel (1 Cor 7:25). But those loving women, to whom earthly marriages have grown cheap, who did not desire earthly embraces, so accepted the precept that they did not refuse the counsel; that they might please more, they adorned themselves more. For the more the ornaments of this body—that is, of the outer man—are sought after, the greater are the losses of the inner; but the less the ornaments of the outer man are sought after, the more is the inner man adorned with beautiful morals. Whence Peter too says: Adorning yourselves not with braided hair (1 Pet 3:3). For when he had said: Adorning yourselves; what else but those visible ornaments would carnal people suppose? At once he took from their thought what covetousness was seeking. Not, he says, with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly garment; but that hidden man of the heart, who is rich before God (See 1 Pet 3:3-4). For God would not give riches to the outer man, and leave the inner needy; he gave to the invisible invisible riches, and adorned the invisible invisibly.

12. 12. Striving for these ornaments, the maidens of God, the holy virgins, neither sought what was lawful, nor consented to what they were compelled to. For many overcame even the contrary attempts of their own parents by the fire of heavenly love. The father was angry, the mother wept; she did not care, before whose eyes was set the one beautiful in form beyond the sons of men (Ps 45:2 (44:3)). For she desired to adorn herself for him, that he might take all care of her. Because she who is married thinks about the things of the world, how to please her husband; but she who is unmarried thinks about the things of God, how to please God (1 Cor 7:34). See what it is to love. He did not say: She thinks about how not to be condemned by God. For this fear is still that servile one, the guard indeed of the bad, that they may abstain from evils, and by abstaining be worthy to admit love to themselves. But those women do not think about how they may not be punished by God, but how they may please God, by inner beauty, by the comeliness of the hidden man, by the comeliness of the heart, where they are naked before his eyes; naked within, not without; whole both within and without. Let the virgins at least teach the married men and women not to go into adultery. Those do more than is lawful; let these not do what is not lawful.

1. The question from the Letter to the Corinthians of the blessed apostle Paul, where he says: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body (1 Cor 6:18); I do not know whether it can be resolved with full clarity, although something can, by the Lord's gift, be probably said about it: so deep is it. For when the Apostle had said earlier in the same Letter: Do not err; neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor the abusive, nor the rapacious will possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10); and a little later: Do you not know, he says, that your bodies are members of Christ? Taking, then, the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? God forbid. Or do you not know that he who cleaves to a harlot is one body? For they will be, he says, two in one flesh. But he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication; and there he added: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a great price; glorify and bear God in your body (1 Cor 6:15-20); when, then, he had first enumerated in this chapter many and horrible sins of men, to whom the kingdom of God will not be given, which nevertheless cannot be perpetrated by men except through the body; which body, indeed, of the faithful, he says is the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God; and the very members of our body he asserts to be members of Christ; concerning which, arguing and in a way questioning, he says: Taking, then, the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? and he answered himself: God forbid! Let him add further and say: Do you not know that he who cleaves to a harlot is one body? For they will be, he says, two in one flesh; but he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit; and let him conclude: Flee fornication; yet he himself follows on, and says: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body; as though indeed those sins which he enumerated, saying: Do not err; neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor the abusive, nor the rapacious will possess the kingdom of God; all these crimes and disgraceful deeds—can they be done or carried out except through the body? Who of sound mind would deny this? For the Apostle was treating and defending this whole passage on account of the body itself, now bought at a great price—that is, by the precious blood of Christ—made by the Lord a temple of the Holy Spirit, lest it be polluted by such disgraceful deeds, but rather kept inviolate as a dwelling of God. Why then did he wish to add this, whence a difficult question arises—that is, to say: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body; when both fornication itself, and other sins of this kind most like to baseness and fornication, which are not done except through the body, are not carried out or exercised except through the body itself? For what? Could anyone (to be silent about the rest mentioned above) be a thief, or a drunkard, or abusive, or rapacious, outside the operation of this body? Although neither idolatry itself nor avarice itself could come to its use and enjoyment apart from the service of this body. What then is: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body? First, because a man set in this body, whatever he can wickedly covet in the mind alone, cannot be said to do outside this body, since it is agreed that he does this by carnal sense and carnal prudence, still encompassed by this body. For even what is written in the Psalm: The fool has said in his heart: There is no God (Ps 14:1 (13:1)); the same blessed apostle Paul could not separate from a corporeal work, in that place where he says: We will all stand before the tribunal of Christ, that each one may receive according to the things he did through the body, whether good or evil (2 Cor 5:10). Since, namely, only set in the body could the fool say: There is no God. To be silent about what in another Letter the same Teacher of the Gentiles says: But the works of the flesh are manifest; and he goes on: which are fornications, uncleannesses, debaucheries, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, drunkennesses, and the like; which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God (Gal 5:19-21). For do not those other things which he inserted there—jealousies, animosities, dissensions, envies, heresies—seem to us to be done outside the body? And yet the Teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth attributed these things to the works of the flesh. What then is: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; and, naming only one sin of fornication, he says: But he who fornicates sins against his own body?

2. It is apparent, then, even to anyone slow and obtuse, how difficult this question is; about which, if the Lord deign somewhat to grow clear and reveal it to our devout intention, we shall be able to say something reasonably. For the blessed Apostle, in whom Christ was speaking, seems either to have wished to heighten the evil of fornication above all other sins, which, even if they are committed through the body, do not nevertheless make the human mind so bound and liable to carnal concupiscence, as in the sole work of corporeal fornication the immense force of lust makes the mind mingle with the body itself, and in a way be glued together and bound to it as one; so much so that nothing else may a man be permitted, at the very moment and experience of so great a disgraceful deed, to think of or attend to, except that to which the mind addicts itself, the mind which the very submersion, and as it were absorption, of lust and carnal concupiscence subjects as a captive; so that this seems to be what was said: But he who fornicates sins against his own body (1 Cor 6:18); because then properly and intimately the heart of the fornicating man becomes a slave of the body, especially at the time of that most worthless operation; so much so that the Apostle himself, wishing more emphatically to commend to men that this evil be avoided, said: Taking, then, the members of Christ, shall I make them members of a harlot? and, execrating and detesting it, answered: God forbid! Or do you not know, he says, that he who cleaves to a harlot is one body? For they will be, he says, two in one flesh (1 Cor 6:15-16). Could this be said of any other crimes of men whatever? For it is free to the human mind, in other crimes whatever, both to do some one of them, and at that very time to be stretched out elsewhere in thought; which in the very work and time of fornication is not permitted to the mind, to be free to think of something else. For thus the whole man is absorbed by it and in the body itself, that it can no longer be said to be its own mind; but the whole man together can be said to be flesh, and a spirit going and not returning (See Ps 78:39 (77:39)). So, then, we can understand that: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body; so that the Apostle, as I said, seems to have wished so to heighten the evil of fornication, that in comparison with this fornication he reckoned all other sins whatever to be held outside the body; that by this one evil of fornication alone he said one sins against one's own body, because with a greater ardor of lust, than which there is none higher, the pleasure of the body itself holds him a slave, and makes him captive.

3. Let these things be said about the special fornication of this body. But because not only fornication is rebuked and named in the sacred Writings specially, but also generally; let us attempt, with God's help, to say something probable about this too. The general fornication, then, is openly manifested in the Psalm, where it is said: For behold, those who put themselves far from you will perish; you have destroyed everyone who fornicates away from you (Ps 73:27 (72:27)). Where, subsequently, how this general fornication can be evaded and escaped, he added, saying: But for me to cleave to God is good (Ps 73:28 (72:28)). So that from this we may easily perceive that this is the general fornication of the human soul, by which anyone, not cleaving to God, cleaves to the world. Whence the blessed apostle John says: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15). And the apostle James says: Adulterers, do you not know that the friendship of this world is enmity with God? (Jas 4:4) Briefly, then, it has been defined that he cannot have the love of God who has had the love of the world; and that he is an enemy of God who wishes to be a friend of the world. To this also pertains what the Lord says in the Gospel: No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will bear with the one and despise the other. And he concludes: You cannot serve God and mammon (Matt 6:24). This is, then, as has been said, the general fornication of the soul, containing in itself absolutely all things, by which God is not cleaved to, while the world is cleaved to; so that we can also understand in this way, according to this general fornication, what the Apostle says: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body (1 Cor 6:18). Because if the human soul does not fornicate, by cleaving to God, and not cleaving to the world, whatever other sins, wholly alien from carnal concupiscence, a man could incur, on account of the very frailty of mortality, whether by being ignorant, or negligent, or forgetful, or not understanding, this would be what was said: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; because no sin of corporeal or temporal concupiscence could here be found; whence rightly any such sin is said to be outside the body. But if a worldly man, cleaving to the world, puts himself far from God, by fornicating away from God himself, he sins against his own body; because by corporeal concupiscence into temporal and carnal things, by carnal sense and prudence, the human mind is drawn and dragged away, serving the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

4. So then, as it seems to me, with faith preserved, the evil of each fornication—both the special and the universal—can be understood in this one chapter of so great and so mighty a Teacher, where he says: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body (1 Cor 6:18); so that either a heightening was made by the Apostle of this special fornication, by which one is rightly understood to sin against one's own body; because nowhere is the whole man so addicted to the pleasure of the body itself, and ineffably or inevitably affixed, that in comparison with this so great an evil, the other sins seem to be outside the body, even if they are exercised through the body. Just as a certain force of imperious lust, of fornication alone, subjects to its condition, and makes the worst slave of the body itself, especially at the time of that most unclean operation; so that anything other than what he does in the body itself is not free to the human mind either to think or to attend to. But if the Apostle also wished to signify general fornication, on account of which he seems to have said: Every sin whatever a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins against his own body; it must be taken and understood thus, that anyone who, while not cleaving to God, cleaves to the world, loving and coveting all temporal things, is rightly said to sin against his own body—that is, made given over and subject to all carnal concupiscence, as though a whole slave of the creature, estranged from the Creator himself, through that pride which is the beginning of all sin, of which pride the beginning is, as it is written, to apostatize from God (Sir 10:12-13). From which evil of general fornication, anyone who is free, whatever other sin he, still a corruptible and mortal man, could incur, let this be understood to be outside the body; that is, to be alien from the evil of all corporeal and temporal concupiscence, to be outside the body, as has often been said. For only by the evil of carnal and general concupiscence does the soul fornicate in all things away from God; as though bound and tied to corporeal and temporal desires and delights, it sins against its own body, by serving whose universal concupiscence it is bent down to the world, and estranged from God; which is, as has been said: The beginning of man's pride, to apostatize from God (Sir 10:12). On account of which evil of general fornication, to be avoided, the blessed John admonishes, saying: Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world; for the things that are in the world are the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father, but from the world. And the world passes away, and its concupiscence. But he who does the will of God abides forever, as he abides forever (1 John 2:15-17). This love of the world, then, which contains in itself the universal concupiscence of the world, is the general fornication, by which one sins against one's own body; in that the human mind unceasingly serves all corporeal and visible and temporal desires and pleasures, desolated and abandoned by the very Creator of all things.

1. It is good to speak of love to those who love it, by which whatever is loved is well loved. For according to the Apostle there is in love a most surpassing way. Just now it was read, we heard: I show you, he says, a surpassing way (1 Cor 12:31). Then he recounted many gifts, and those indeed splendid, not to be esteemed lightly; yet he said they profit nothing to men who do not have love. Among which gifts he recalled: to speak with the tongues of men and of angels; to have all prophecy, all knowledge, all faith, so as to move mountains; to distribute all one's goods to the poor, to hand over one's body to be burned (See 1 Cor 13:1-3). All these are great and divine, but only if they are placed on the foundation of love, and arise from the root of love. But that many of these gifts existed in many who did not have love, we would not dare to say, unless we were taught by examples, not of any men whatever and sought from anywhere, but from the Sacred Scriptures themselves, whoever does not have faith in which cannot have love. But among the chief things that were named, prophecy or faith appears great there. What then of the rest? If one having prophecy profits nothing by it, if he does not have love, and one having faith cannot arrive at the kingdom of God unless he has love, what shall we say of the rest? Or to speak with tongues, what is it compared to prophecy and faith? Or to distribute all one's goods to the poor, what is it compared to prophecy? And to hand over one's body to be burned? For the most part rash and headlong people do this. Therefore those two things there are great, about which it is truly to be marveled at, if we can find some man having prophecy and not having love, or having faith and not having love.

2. Of prophecy the Book of Kingdoms gives us an example. Saul was a persecutor of holy David. When he was persecuting him, and was sending his attendants to seize him for punishment, those who were sent to lead David to be killed found him among the prophets, where there was also holy Samuel, the son of the barren Hannah, whom she had asked of the Lord to conceive, had received from the Lord, and, born, had given to the Lord. At that time, then, was Samuel, in the time when David was, that most outstanding of the prophets; for David was anointed by him. And so when he was suffering persecution from Saul, he fled to Samuel, just as now, for example, one who happens to be suffering some persecution outside, flees to the Church. Therefore he had fled to where there was not only Samuel, the most outstanding of all the prophets, but also many other prophets. Among them, while they were prophesying, came those sent by Saul, who, as I said, were to seize him for death. The Spirit of God leapt upon them, and those who had come to lead the holy and just man of God to the sword, and to snatch him from the midst of the prophets, began to prophesy; suddenly filled with the Spirit of God they were made prophets. This perhaps was the innocence of these men; for they had not come of their own will to seize him, but had been sent by their king. And perhaps they had indeed come to that place where David was, but were not going to do what Saul had commanded; perhaps they too were going to remain there. For even today these things happen. Sometimes an officer is sent by a great power to seize someone from the church; he does not dare to act against God, and, lest he himself incur the sword, he remains there, where he was sent to seize. Someone, then, marveling, might say that these prophets were suddenly made because they were innocent; the very prophecy bore them the testimony of innocence. The messengers came, but were not going to do what that evil man had commanded. Let us believe this of them. Others were sent; and the Spirit of God leapt upon them too, and they too began to prophesy. Let us number these too with the former by the merit of innocence. A third group was sent; this was done to them too. Let them all have been innocent. When they delayed, and what Saul had commanded was not done, he himself came too. Was he too innocent? Was he too sent by some power, and not perverse by his own will? And yet the Spirit of God leapt upon him too, and he began to prophesy. Behold Saul prophesies, having prophecy, but not having love (See 1 Sam 19:18-24). He was made a certain vessel, to be touched by the Spirit, not to be cleansed by the Spirit.

3. For the Spirit of God touches some hearts unto prophesying, yet does not cleanse them. And if it touches and does not cleanse, is the Spirit itself perhaps defiled? For it is of the divine substance to touch all things, to be defiled nowhere. And do not marvel, if this light which is poured out from heaven touches all unclean things scattered everywhere, and is nowhere darkened by the unclean. Nor only this which is from heaven, but even that which is sent out from a lamp touches wherever you lead the light; and perhaps whoever passes through a sewer is himself defiled if he touches it; but if he carries a lamp, the splendor of the lamp passes over all things, and nowhere contracts a stain. If God could grant this to corporeal lights, can he himself, the true and eternal and unchangeable light, be defiled anywhere? Or can the light of God be lacking anywhere, of which it was said: It reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly? (Wis 8:1) It touches, then, what it wishes, and cleanses what it wishes; it does not cleanse whatever it touches, but it touches what it cleanses. And so the Spirit of God did not cleanse Saul, the persecutor of God, but yet touched him unto prophesying. Caiaphas, the chief of the priests, was a persecutor of Christ; and yet he spoke prophecy, when he said: It is expedient that one man die, and the whole nation not perish (John 11:50). The Evangelist, going on, expounded the prophecy, and said: But this he did not say of himself, but, being high priest, he prophesied (John 11:51). Caiaphas prophesied, Saul prophesied; they had prophecy, but did not have love. Did Caiaphas have love, who was persecuting the Son of God, whom love led to us? Did Saul have love, who was persecuting him by whose hand he had been freed from his enemies, being not only envious, but also ungrateful? Therefore we have proved that prophecy can be in someone, and love not be there. But to these prophecy can profit nothing, according to the Apostle: If I do not have love, he says, I am nothing (1 Cor 13:2). He does not say: Prophecy is nothing, or faith is nothing; but: I myself am nothing, if I do not have love. Having great things, he is nothing; although he has great things, he is nothing; for the great things themselves which he has, he has not unto help, but has unto judgment. To have great things is not great, but to use great things well is great; but he does not use them well who does not have love. For one does not use any thing well, except a good will; a good will cannot exist where there is no love.

4. What of faith? Do we find someone having both faith and not having love? There are many who believe, and do not love. Nor need men be enumerated; we find that the demons believed what we believe, and do not love what we love. For when the apostle James was rebuking those who thought it sufficient for them to believe, and were unwilling to live well—which is not done except from love; for a good life pertains to love, nor can one having love live badly; because this very thing, to live well, is nothing other than to be filled with love—when, then, certain ones were boasting that they had believed in God, and were unwilling to live well and fittingly to so great a faith as they had received, he compared them to demons, saying: You, he says, say that there is one God. You believe well; but the demons too believe and tremble (Jas 2:19). If, then, you only believe, and do not love, you still have it in common with the demons. Peter said: You are the Son of God; and it was said to him: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven (Matt 16:16-17). We find that the demons too said: What have we to do with you, Son of God? (Matt 8:29) The Apostles confess the Son of God, the demons too confess the Son of God; the confession seems equal, the love unequal. Those believe, and love; those believe, and fear; love awaits a reward, fear a punishment. Therefore we find that anyone can have even faith, and not have love. Let no one, then, boast of any gift of the Church, if he happens to be eminent in the Church by some gift attributed to him, but let him see whether he has love. For the same apostle Paul spoke, and enumerated many gifts of God in the members of Christ, which is the Church; and he said that proper gifts are attributed to particular members, and it cannot be that all have one gift. Nor yet will anyone remain without a gift; Apostles, he says, Prophets, Teachers, interpreters, speakers in tongues, those having powers of healings, those having helps, governments, kinds of tongues (See 1 Cor 12:28). These things were said; and we see some things in some, other things in others. Let no one, then, grieve that what he sees granted to another is not granted to him; let him have love, let him not envy the one having it, and with that one he has what he does not have. For whatever my brother has, if I do not envy it, and love it, it is mine. In me I do not have it, but in him I have it; it would not be mine, if we were not in one body and under one head.

5. The left hand, for example, in the body has a ring, and the right does not have it; has it then remained without ornament? Look at the individual hands, and you will see that one has it, the other does not have it; look at the framework of the body, to which both hands cleave, and see that the one which does not have it, has it in the one which has it. The eyes see where one goes, the feet go where the eyes look ahead; neither can the feet see, nor the eyes walk. But the foot answers you: I too have light, but not in myself, but in the eye; for the eye does not see for itself, and not see for me. The eyes too say: We too walk, not in ourselves, but in the feet; for the feet do not carry themselves, and not carry us. The individual members, then, distributed to their individual and proper offices, perform what the mind commands; yet all are set in one body, and hold unity; nor do they arrogate to themselves what the other members have, if perhaps they do not have those members; nor do they think it alien from themselves, what in one body they have together. Finally, brothers, if some trouble befalls some member of the body, what members will deny their aid? What seems so far out in a man as the foot? And in the foot itself, what seems so far out as the sole? And in the sole itself, what seems so far out as the very skin, by which the earth is trodden? Yet this outermost part is so held by the framework of the whole body, that if in that very place a thorn is trodden on, all the members run together to the aid of plucking out the thorn; at once the knees are bent, the spine is curved—not the one that was pierced, but the one that holds the whole back; one sits down, that the thorn may be plucked out; now to sit down, that this may be done, is the work of the whole body. How tiny a place is in trouble! The place is as little as the thorn could prick; and yet the trouble of that outermost and tiny place is not abandoned by the whole body; the other members feel no pain, and in that one place all feel pain. The Apostle himself gave from this an example of love, exhorting us so to love one another as the members in the body love one another: If one member suffers, he says, the other members suffer with it; and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together. You are the Body of Christ and members (1 Cor 12:26-27). If the members love one another which have their head on earth, how ought the members to love one another whose head is in heaven? Certainly they do not even love themselves, if they are deserted by their head; but when that head is so the head, and is so exalted, and is so placed in heaven at the right hand of the Father, that yet it labors on earth, not in itself, but in its members, so that it says at the end: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, when it will be said to him: When did we see you hungry and thirsty? and as though he answered: I, the head, was in heaven, but on earth my members were thirsting—finally he says: When you did it to one of my least, you did it to me (Matt 25:35-40), and again to those not doing it: When you did not do it to one of my least, neither did you do it to me (Matt 25:45)—to this head we are connected only through love.

6. For thus, brothers, we see the individual members in their offices doing their proper work, so that the eye sees, but does not work; the hand works, but does not see; the ear hears, but neither sees nor works; the tongue speaks, but neither hears nor sees; and though they are individually distinct and separate in their offices, yet, bound together by one framework of the body, they have something common in all. The offices are diverse, the health is one. This, then, in the members of Christ, is love, which in the members of the body is health. The eye is set in a better place, on high, and as it were set in the citadel for counsel, whence it may look out, whence it may see, whence it may point out; great honor is in the eyes, both in place, and in keener sense, and in agility, and in a certain power which the other members do not have. Accordingly men for the most part swear by their eyes, rather than by any other member. No one has said to another: I so love you as my ears; and the sense of the ears is next and nearest to the eyes. What shall I say of the rest? Daily men say: I so love you as my eyes. And the Apostle, signifying that greater love is held in the eyes than in the other members, when he said that he was loved by the Church of God, said: For I bear you witness, that, if it could be, you would have plucked out your eyes, and given them to me (Gal 4:15). There is nothing in the body, then, more sublime than the eyes and more honored; and there is nothing in the body, perhaps, more outermost than the little toe of the foot. Since this is so, yet it is more profitable in the body to be a finger, and be healthy, than to be an eye, and be bleary in disturbance; for health, which is common to all the members, is more precious than the offices of individuals. So you see in the Church a small man having some small gift, and yet having love; another perhaps eminent in the Church by some greater gift, and yet not having love. Let that one be the outermost finger, that one the eye; that one pertains more to the framework of the body, who could obtain health. Finally, whatever falls sick in the body is troublesome to the rest of the body; and effort is indeed given by all the members, that what is sick may be healed, and for the most part it is healed. But if it is not healed, and conceives so great a rottenness that it cannot be healed, it is so consulted for by all the members, that it is cut off from the framework of the body.

7. Let some Donatus, then, have been as it were an eye in the body, let it have been so; we do not know what sort he was, but let him have been just such as he is said to be; what did the excellence of honor and glory profit him? He could not keep health, because he did not have love. Finally, those men have so rotted away that they had necessarily to be cut off; and as for those whom they say they have, they are worms of rottenness; cut off, they are worms, nor can they admit health. For a member admits health only as long as it is not cut off from the body; for from the rest of the healthy parts health flows to the place of the wound; but when the member where the wound is has been cut off, by what way and whence health may come to it is not found. Therefore they are also compared to cut-off branches, and the gospel reading runs together with the apostolic reading. For there too the Lord, that we may abide in him, commended to us nothing more than love: I am, he says, the vine, you are the branches, my Father is the husbandman. Every branch that bears fruit in me, he purges it, that it may bring more fruit; but that which does not bear fruit in me, he cuts off (John 15:5,1-2). The fruit is from love itself, because fruit comes only from the root. But the Apostle says: That, rooted and grounded in love (Eph 3:17). There, then, is the root, whence all fruit arises. He who has begun to dissent from the root, although he seems to remain for a while, has either been cut off secretly, or is even openly to be cut off; for he can in no way bear fruit. They were once in unity. They have been cut off. Whence have they been cut off? From unity. But you, they say, are cut off. What do we do? I say: You are cut off; you say: You are cut off. Let God judge. Have we then deferred the question, and sent it to the judgment of God? Not at all. In many matters we do this, where the sentence of God does not yet appear; but where it appears, let us use it, let us not defer. I produce Scripture, and I see who is cut off from where. For if Scripture bore witness to the party of Donatus, to some Church set up in some part of the world, as the party of Donatus is set up in a part of Africa, let them say we are cut off, and let them say they are rooted. But if Scripture bears witness only to the Church spread throughout the whole world, why do we seek a man as judge of our suit? We have God; he does not yet preside in judgment, he already presides in the Gospel.

8. Crispinus the heretic has just been judged. But what does he say? Have I been overcome by an evangelical sentence? Asserting himself not to have been conquered, because the proconsul judged against him, not Christ. If, then, he esteems the judgment of a man little, why did he appeal from the proconsul to the emperor? He himself demanded the very judgment of the proconsul; he himself said: Hear me, I am not a heretic. Does the judgment of him whose judgment you demanded displease you? Why? Because he judged against you. If he judged for you, he judged well; because he judged against you, he judged badly. Before he judged, he was a good judge, to whom you said: I am not a heretic, hear me. But the proconsul judged, he says, according to the laws of the emperors, not according to the laws of the Gospel. So be it, the proconsul judged according to the laws of the emperors; if, then, the emperors judge badly against you, why did you appeal from the proconsul to their judgment? Were the laws of the emperors already against you, or were they not yet? If they were not yet, the proconsul did not judge according to them; if they already were, will the emperors judge for you against their own laws? Then I ask you: Those very laws of the emperors which are against you—what is the matter? What was done? Teach me. For it is manifest, and not denied, that there are many laws of the emperors against them. Whence did this happen? Whence was this done? Did we perhaps persecute, and say many evil things about you to the emperors? This indeed they say to those whom they deceive, the wretched and unlearned. For they utterly conceal the case, as it was conducted at that time, from those whom they wish to deceive. But however much they conceal it, it is dug out, it lies open, it is published, it is brought into the knowledge even of the unwilling and refusing. Let those who close their eyes, and are unwilling to see the light, be struck by the very light. Let it not be permitted them to dissemble manifest things; let it not be permitted them to turn away from open things; let it not be permitted them to cover what is plain. Let us press them with manifest truth. You demanded the emperor's judgment. You lie, he says. The public documents are extant. The Donatists themselves of the party of Majorinus, who was ordained first against Caecilian, went to the proconsul Anulinus at that time, and brought forward accusatory documents about the name of Caecilian, sealed in leather, saying that they had written in that document the charges against Caecilian, and asking that he send their very accusation to the court, to the emperor. The report of the proconsul Anulinus is extant, writing to the emperor Constantine, that men of the party of Majorinus had come to him with documents of accusation of Caecilian, asking that he send the same documents to the emperor; and he says he did what they asked. The emperor wrote to bishop Melchiades and to Mark, transferring to them the ecclesiastical case, and removing it from himself. In the same letter the emperor writes that he had sent the documents sent by Anulinus; and in the letter itself it is not known what those documents are, but in the report of Anulinus it is known, which today is contained in the public records. Then the same Constantine writes to Anulinus, that he send the parties to Rome to the episcopal judgment. Anulinus too reports at the end that he sent the parties. You, then, went to those, to the emperor; you brought the case of the Church to a human power. He was better than you: for you brought it to the emperor, he to the bishops. The case was tried in the episcopal judgment, with them accusing first. The sentence was pronounced for Caecilian. They, not content with the ecclesiastical judgment, began to murmur, and again went to the same emperor, seeking after the episcopal judgment an imperial judgment. He gave another ecclesiastical one at Arles; from that judgment too they appealed to the emperor himself. Overcome by their importunity, he himself wished to take up the case and examine it. He took it up, examined it, judged Caecilian most innocent; and now all the orders of the emperors are against them. What wonder? Do you dare to refuse the sentence of him whose judgment you demanded? Why did you wish to bring the judgment to him? You had the Church in Africa; did you not have it in the whole world? But where were they going, whence they had already cut themselves off? They no longer cleaved to the Church; but the emperor cleaved there, to whom the judgment was being brought. Accordingly he most gently wished the bishops to judge; and afterward yielded to them, that he himself too should judge. Hence are the laws against you; see whether they are not against you. First you yourselves were there; you the first accusers, you the last appellants, you the latest murmurers. Yet, he says, was I overcome from the Gospel? You were overcome by that judgment which you yourself chose.