On Cain and Abel

[Book One.] In the preceding work, on paradise, we set out, according to our capacity and as well as we could, the meanings that the Lord poured into us and our understanding found, in which the fall of Adam and Eve was treated. Now, since that guilt did not stop with its authors, but, what is worse, found a worse heir, let us take up the next part of the history and pursue in our work what is joined to it according to the divine Scriptures.

"And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and said: I have acquired a man through God." In things we acquire, it is usual to consider from what, by whom, and through what we acquire them: from what, as from material; by whom, as author; through what, as through some instrument. Does she say here, "I have acquired a man through God", so that you are to understand God as an instrument? Certainly not, but so that you may understand God as author and maker. So she gave more to God in saying, "I have acquired a man through God", so that we too, when we acquire anything, or in all favourable outcomes, should give credit to God rather than claim it for ourselves. And she went on to bear Abel.

When something is added, what was there before is taken away. This is gathered from the parts of arithmetic or from the thoughts of the soul; for when a number is added, another number results and the former is done away with, and a new thought coming in shuts out the former. So when Abel is added, Cain is taken away. This is grasped more fully from the interpretation of the names. For Cain was called "acquisition", because he acquired everything for himself; Abel, one who referred everything to God, devoted with the pious attention of his mind, claiming nothing for himself as his elder brother did, but attributing to the Creator all that he had received from him.

So there are two schools of thought, under the names of the two brothers, fighting each other and opposed to each other: one that ascribes everything to its own mind, as to the governing power and, so to speak, the author of all thought, sense and motion, that is, which ascribes all discoveries to human ingenuity; the other, which gives credit to God as maker and creator of all, and subjects all things to his government as parent and ruler. The first is signified by Cain, the second is called Abel. One soul gives birth to these two schools, and so they are held to be brothers, because they are founded in one womb; but they are opposed, because once they have been brought forth by a kind of birth of the soul, they must be divided and separated; for those who fight each other cannot share one lodging for ever. Indeed Rebecca, when she was in labour with two natures of human character, one evil and one good, and felt them leaping within her womb (for Esau was a type of wickedness, and Jacob bore the figure of goodness), wondering what it was that she perceived a kind of discord in the children conceived, consulted God, that he might reveal the condition and give a remedy. And to her prayer the answer was given: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will come out of your belly." If you refer this to the soul, you will understand it as the same parent of good and evil, since both flow from a single spring of the soul; but it is usually the mark of a sober judgment to reject the evil and, as it were, nourish and strengthen what is good. Before, then, it brings forth the good, that is, the reverence owed to God, so as to give everything to him, it prefers its own things; but when it has given birth to the confession that is given to God, it lays aside the swelling of its heart. So God, adding to the soul the good teaching, Abel, took away the wicked teaching, Cain.

I, however, in this place, according to Scripture, understand rather the mystery of two peoples: that God, by adding to his church the faith of a devout people, took away the faithlessness of the transgressing people, since the very words seem to signify this, God saying: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will come out of your belly." This figure of the synagogue and the church went before in these two brothers, Cain and Abel. By Cain is understood the murderous people of the Jews, who pursued the blood of their Lord and maker and, according to his birth from the Virgin Mary, of their brother, so to speak; by Abel is understood the Christian who clings to God, as David too says, "But for me it is good to cling to God", so as to join himself to heavenly things and separate himself from earthly ones. And elsewhere he says, "My soul has fainted for your word", because he had placed the order and practice of living not in earthly pleasures but in the knowledge of the word. From this it is known that what we read in the books of Kingdoms was not written idly, but with weighing and examination: "And he was gathered to his fathers." For it is given to understand that he was like his fathers in faith. Hence it is clear that he was brought not to the burial of the body but to fellowship of life.

Indeed it is thought not to have been written perfunctorily of Isaac that, leaving the appearance of this body which was joined to his soul, he was gathered to his kind, because he clung to the ways of his father. And beautifully it says "to his kind", not "to his people" as elsewhere. For we read in other places that some were gathered to their people, but these were not so excellent; he is more excellent who is like the few, not the many (there are more in one's people than in one's kind), and it is reckoned more excellent to be like the few than the many. He, then, who was born by the promise of God, who was chosen for the sacrifice to prove piety, who was content with one wife, that is, with the company of wisdom alone, of that heavenly kind which is one and always consistent with itself, was not to be presented by the testimony of the divine Scripture as an imitator of common baseness. For where there is labour, teaching and study, there is a fellowship shared with many and a kind of popular partnership; for most people advance by hearing, and these he named the people. But where discipline is grasped not by human tradition but by a gifted gathering without the use of labour, there is the uncorrupted sincerity of a lofty kind. And so Isaac, as a gift of God, is read to have been gathered to his kind rather than to his people, so that you may recognize that he was a diligent imitator of divine rather than human things.

Blessed too is that mind which, rising above species and kind itself, deserves to hear what was said to Moses when he was separated from the people: "But you, stand with me." For as in Isaac the type of the Lord's incarnation, going beyond the custom of human generation, surpassed those before him, so that in him not an ordinary and common grace but a special prerogative excelled, as the reading teaches ("For the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as to one, that is, to your seed, which is Christ"), so too in Moses the figure of the teacher to come, who would teach the law, preach the gospel, fulfil the old covenant, found the new, and give heavenly food to the peoples, went beyond the dignity of the human condition so far as to be given the name of God, as we have it written, the Lord saying: "I have made you a god to Pharaoh." For, victor over all passions and captured by no allurements of the world, he had covered all this dwelling according to the body with the purity of heavenly conduct, ruling the mind, subjecting the flesh and chastising it with a kind of royal authority; and he was called by the name of God, to whose likeness he had formed himself by the abundance of perfect virtue.

And so we do not read of him, as of others, that he failed and died, but that he died through the word of God; for God suffers neither failing nor diminution, nor does he admit addition. Hence Scripture added too that "no one knows his burial place to this day", so that you may understand his translation rather than his destruction; for death is a kind of separation of soul and body. He died, then, through the word of God, as Scripture says, not according to the word, so that you may notice that what is expressed is not a notice of death but a gift of grace: he was translated rather than abandoned, and no one has known his burial place. For who on earth could find the remains of one whom the Son of God showed in the Gospel to be with him? Indeed Elijah too was seen with him, who was taken up in a chariot and is not read to have been buried or to have died; for he lives who is with the Son of God. Moses is indeed read to have died, but to have died through the word of God, through which all things were made. "By the word of God the heavens were established"; so through the word of God there is no collapse of the work, but its establishment. So he is not found as one who fell back into the earth by the dissolution of the body, but as one endowed with the working and gift of the heavenly Word, so that his flesh received rest rather than a tomb.

Well is the distance kept between the Lord and the servant, so that you may understand the prerogative of the Lord and the grace of the servant. Of Moses it is read that no one knows his burial place; of Christ, that his burial place was taken away from the earth, because the one, according to the mystery of the law, awaited redemption so that he might rise, while the other, according to the gift of the gospel, did not await redemption but gave it. And so his burial place was not unknown, but lifted up; creation could not hold it any longer, because through him all creation hastened to be raised from the slavery of corruption. No one, then, knows the burial place of Moses, because all know his life; but we saw Christ's burial place, and now we know it no longer, because we have recognized his resurrection. For his tomb had to be known so that his resurrection might be made manifest. And so in the Gospel the tomb is described with the fullest expression, but in the law it is not sought, because, although the law announced his resurrection, yet the course of the Gospel has proved it to us most fully.

So, to complete what we set out to say: "She went on," it says, "to bear Abel", that is, Eve, who had sinned gravely before, brought forth from herself a better judgment, so as to abolish the error of the former judgment. I lie if this is not proved in all men. For we are so born that first the weak sense of infancy is in us, then that of childhood, knowing only the care of the body, having no worship and no observance of divine things. That is why the prophet, to prove that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin by a manifest novelty of nature, says: "Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel. He will eat butter and honey before he knows evil or good; for before he knows good or evil he does not trust in wickedness, so as to choose what is good"; and further on: "Before the boy knows how to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians." For he alone was not captured by the vanity of this world and the swelling of the flesh, since he "humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death": far unlike each of us, who exalt ourselves in vain, puffed up with the mind of the flesh. Hence no one is without sin, not even an infant of one day; but he did no sin. And so in us Cain is born first, preferring himself; afterwards Abel is begotten, in whom there is reverence for the divinity. First, then, what is evil creeps in; afterwards what is good is recognized. And where there is good, there is the just; where there is justice, there is holiness, that is, Abel, who clings to God.

"And Abel became a shepherd of sheep, but Cain tilled the ground." It is not idle that, though Cain was born first, as the reading teaches, Abel is put first here, and the order of the names is not the same as the order of nature. What does this change of order mean, that it mentions the younger first where the state of life and the practice of work is described? Let us examine the difference of their occupations, so as to gather the cause of the preference. Tilling the ground is earlier in practice, but lower in grace, than pasturing sheep. For the latter is like the role of a teacher and leader; and rightly the elder began from the more ancient things, while the younger put first the more recent ones, which would sprout no thorns, no thistles, and would be liable to no sentence. Indeed Adam, guilty of sin, was sent out of the paradise of delight to till the ground. Rightly, then, where these brothers are born, the order of nature is kept in naming them; but where the discipline of living is described, the younger is put before the elder, because, though younger in time, he is more excellent in virtue. For innocence is later in time than wickedness and of nearly equal age, but more ancient in nobility of merits; for old age is venerable, not white with years but with character. "And a spotless life," it says, "is the age of old age." So where birth is described, let Cain come first; where disciplines are proclaimed, let Abel run ahead. Who would deny that adolescence, and youth itself at its beginning, seethes with the allurements of various passions, but that when a riper age has come, the storm of budding wantonness, as it were, is dispersed, tranquillity is restored, and the weary ship of the soul is drawn up into quiet harbours? So the heavy motions of our adolescence are calmed in the safe anchorage of old age.

So, taught by such examples from nature, do not doubt that wickedness comes first in time but grows young again in weakness. It has the pay of age, but virtue has the prerogative of glory, which the wicked man often yields to the just man, even with himself as judge. The divine Scripture is a faithful witness of this, which teaches that Esau, a man whose surname was folly, patiently yielded his rights as firstborn to his brother Jacob, so as to say: "What use to me are the rights of the firstborn?" But what he cared little for, the man endowed with the surname of exercise sought to deserve. Does not Esau seem to you, as if beaten in a contest and thinking himself unequal through the weakness of his own mind, to have yielded the crown to the victor, whom he saw bent by no allurements of the passions, whose dust he himself could not endure? "What use to me," he says, "are the rights of the firstborn?" For among the slothful there are no insignia of virtue, while among the wise they are held first; for the pursuits of virtue are a kind of instruments. So, as a warrior cannot be without arms, neither can virtue be without exercise. Hence the Lord too says in the Gospel: "From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffers force, and the forceful seize it"; and elsewhere: "Seek the kingdom of God, and behold, all things are ready for you." Rewards are promised not to the sleeping or idle but to the watchful and labouring ... but the wage is prepared for labour, which, though not pleasant for enjoyment, is fruitful for reward. The word of the law teaches this, as we find written:

"If a man," it says, "has two wives, one of them loved and the other hated, and both bear him sons, the loved and the hated, and the firstborn son is of the hated wife, on the day he leaves his sons as heirs of his property he may not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the loved wife, passing over the son of the hated; but he shall acknowledge the firstborn son of the woman, giving him a portion of all that is found to be his, because he is the beginning of his sons and to him the rights of the firstborn are due." What deep secrets of mysteries lie hidden in the letters! Recognize, soul, your offspring, and seek the mystery of this hated woman. You will find it within you, if you look. Go back over your thoughts, reread your senses, and you will recognize to whom the rights of the firstborn are due. For two women live with each one of us, at odds in enmity and discord, filling the house of our soul, as it were, with quarrels of jealousy. One of them is our sweetness and love, a coaxing counsellor of pleasure, who is called Pleasure. We think her our companion and of our household; the other we believe harsh, rough and savage, and her name is Virtue.

Pleasure, then, bold with a harlot's movements, her gait weakened by luxury, with roving eyes and playful eyelids casting nets with which she catches the precious souls of young men (for the eye of a harlot is the snare of the sinner), attacks with charming words whomever she sees passing with wavering mind at the corner of the way to her house, making the hearts of young men fly; restless at home, wandering in the streets, lavish with kisses, cheap in shame, rich in dress, with painted cheeks. For since she cannot have the true beauty of nature, she pimps with the counterfeit paints of a feigned beauty, an appearance, not the truth. Girded with a retinue of vices and surrounded by a kind of chorus of wickedness, the leader of crimes attacks the wall of the human mind with such engines of words as these: "I have a peace offering; today I pay my vows. For this reason I came out to meet you, longing for your face; I have found you. I have woven my bed with cords and spread it with tapestries from Egypt. I have sprinkled my bed with saffron and my house with cinnamon. Come, let us enjoy friendship until dawn; come, let us wrestle in desire." For in this we see the figure of a harlot portrayed by the mouth of Solomon. For what is so harlot-like as worldly pleasure, which enters from the window of her house, playing out her first temptations through the eyes, and quickly penetrates, if you look out on the street, that is, on the public ways of passers-by, rather than fixing the gaze of your mind on the inner mysteries of the law? She it is who has woven, as it were, a couch of common fellowship with us with stronger chains, so that whoever reclines on it is bound; and she covers the couch of her body with the veil of shameful fraud to entice the minds of young men, covering over the absence of the husband, that is, neglect of the law. For the law is absent for those who sin; if it were present, no wrong would be done. And so she says: "For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a very long journey, taking a bag of money in his hand." What should I say this is, except perhaps that the rich think there is nothing that does not give way to their money, and want the law to be for sale in their favour? Pleasure scatters her perfumes because she does not have the fragrance of Christ; she shows treasures, promises kingdoms, pledges endless loves, promises unexamined unions, learning without a tutor, talk without an admonisher, life without care, soft sleep, insatiable desire. "Leading him astray," it says, "with much flattery of words, and binding him with the snares of her lips, she drew him all the way to her house. And he followed her, ensnared." The hall shone, splendid with royal luxury and carved walls, and the floors swam with wine on the wet ground. The earth smelled of ointment, covered with fish bones and slippery with flowers already wilting. There the uproar of revellers, the shouting of rivals, the blows of quarrellers, the harmony of singers, the din of dancers, the guffaws of laughers, the applause of the wanton; everything confused, nothing in the order of nature. Shaven dancing girls and boys with curled hair; the indigestion of feasters, the belching of eaters, the thirst of drunkards; yesterday's hangover, today's drunkenness; drinkers' cups filled with vomit, with a stronger smell of drunkenness than if they smelled only of fresh wine. She herself, standing in the middle, says: "Drink and be drunk, so that each may fall and not rise again. First with me is he who is most abandoned of all; he is mine who is not his own; he is more welcome to me who is worse to himself. The golden cup of Babylon is in my hand, making all the earth drunk; all nations have drunk of my wine. So whoever is most foolish, let him turn aside to me; and to those who lack wisdom I give instruction, saying: Enjoy hidden bread sweetly, and drink water that is sweeter when stolen. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud and be scattered like a mist. Come, then, let us enjoy the good things that exist, and use creation eagerly as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let not the flower of the season pass us by. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither. Let there be no meadow that our luxury does not pass through; everywhere let us leave signs of our gladness. Here everything is left behind; no one will take anything with him except what he has enjoyed by the pleasure of the body. In short, I founded philosophy itself; and there is none truer than that which asserts the good to be what is sweet and pleasant. So believe either philosophy or the wisdom of Solomon."

Hearing these things, he sticks fast, wounded, like a stag shot in the liver. Virtue, pitying him and seeing him about to fall quickly, meets him unexpectedly, fearing that during delay the human mind may be captured by soothing allurements. "I have appeared openly to you," she says, "though you did not seek me, so that the unbridled and luxurious woman who knows no shame may not deceive you unawares and ensnare you. She sits at the doors of her house on a seat, openly in the streets, calling to the passers-by. Now therefore, son, hear me and attend to the words of my mouth. Let not your heart turn aside into her ways; for she has cast down many by wounding, and countless are those she has slain. Her house is the way to hell, leading down to the chambers of death. So put away from you a perverse mouth, and drive unjust lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight; do not attend to a deceitful woman. For honey drips from the lips of a harlot, which for a time fattens your throat, but afterwards you will find it more bitter than gall." The day would fail me sooner than I could set out her vices, which however are described and portrayed in Proverbs by the mouth of wisdom. "Let not desire for beauty overcome you." It is counterfeit, smeared with paint, in no way shining with true and sincere beauty. "And do not be caught by her eyes"; for nets are spread around. Be rather like him and follow him who "leaps upon the mountains and bounds over the hills, looking through the windows", rising above the nets. Evil are the chains of pleasure. It delights the eyes, soothes the ears, but defiles the mind. It tells many lies, adds falsehoods, removes truths; it promises money, offers gold, but takes away discipline. "But you, take discipline rather than money, and knowledge above tested gold; for it is better than precious stones." I will not hide from you what are said to be her greatest offers, lest I seem to uncover what displeases in pleasure and to throw a shadow over what pleases. For she lifts up and exalts the mind with persuasive words; she shows all the kingdoms of the earth, saying: "All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me." There, beware lest you be caught by things that slip by and do not last, in which there is great temptation.

The Lord Jesus certainly taught you how to resist temptations of this kind. The devil had first stretched out the snare of gluttony, saying: "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." The Lord answered: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." With this saying he loosed the snare. The devil then set the second snare, of boasting, which usually strangles even a good mind running on prosperous paths. "And he led him," it says, "to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; for it is written that he has commanded his angels concerning you to keep you, because they will lift you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone." So, although the Lord Jesus could have thrown himself down without any danger, since spiritual flights were available to him, yet, lest it be a kind of boasting, he answered the devil: "You shall not tempt the Lord your God." At the same time he taught us to beware of doing the devil's will. If, then, boasting about what is true is to be avoided, how much more should no one boast of what is false as if it were true! The third snare remains, of avarice and ambition. He showed him, placed on a mountain, all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. Well "in a moment", because they cannot last. Wait a little, and they quickly pass. So those who follow them seem to themselves to be on a mountain, but they are not lasting, as you have written: "I saw the wicked man highly exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not." But one who makes much of them seems to worship the devil, "whose god is the belly and whose glory is in shame". But you, seek glory in God, who says to you: "You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone", from whom you may receive eternal, not temporal, things.

Yet if these things too delight anyone, let them be asked for more moderately from him who is the true source of all. For even the possessions which the devil seems to have as his own belong to another, as he himself said: "To you I will give all this power and their glory, because they have been handed over to me." Hope, then, from him (although for a short life a long provision should not be sought), yet hope from him who made all creation, who handed these things over to the devil for a time, not to possess but to tempt; for there could be no crown without a contest. The doubtful had to be tested, so that the righteous might be crowned.

So he gave these things to the devil, because the punishment of the one who receives them lies in them, if he does not know how to use them. For what is a treasure to a profligate but the means of profligacy? But it is not the profligate but the frugal man who is approved. And so use as a frugal man what is set before you, so that when you eat much you may not become hateful; for sleeplessness and torments belong to the greedy man; and further on: "If you have been forced to eat, rise and vomit, and it will refresh you, and you will not bring sickness on your body." Gluttony has killed very many, frugality none; wine has harmed countless people, thrift none. Many have poured out their life at banquets and filled the tables with their own blood. In others, indigestion has taken away both voice and sense; and if indigestion did not harm some, drunkenness brought them ruin. Drunkenness drove some into crime, though it is itself a crime; others it reduced to poverty. Finally, hear whom Christ shuts out: "When the master of the house has come in and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, Open to us. And he will answer and say: I do not know where you are from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. Then you will begin to say: We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. And he will say to you: I do not know where you are from." You have heard what he said about those who eat; now hear what he says about those who fast: "Blessed are those who now hunger and thirst, for they will be satisfied"; and further on: "Woe to you

who are full, for you will hunger." But do you want to eat, do you want to drink? Come to the banquet of wisdom, who invites all with great proclamation, saying: "Come and eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed for you." Do songs delight you, to soothe you as you feast? Hear the church exhorting, hear her singing, not only in canticles but also in the Song of Songs: "Eat, my friends, and drink, and be drunk, my brothers." But this drunkenness makes men sober; this is the drunkenness of grace, not of intoxication; it produces gladness, not staggering. Nor need you fear that at the banquet of the church you will lack pleasant fragrances or sweet foods or various drinks or noble guests or seemly servants. What is nobler than Christ, who at the banquet of the church both serves and is served? Attach yourself to the side of this reclining guest and join yourself to God. Do not disdain the table which Christ chose, saying: "I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spices; I have eaten my bread with my honey, and drunk my wine with my milk." In the garden, that is, in paradise, is the banquet of the church, where Adam was before he committed sin. There Eve reclined before she created and gave birth to guilt. There you will gather myrrh, that is, the burial of Christ, so that, buried with him through baptism into death, as he rose from the dead, you too may rise. There you will eat the bread that strengthens the heart of man; you will taste honey, by which the passages of your throat may grow sweet. You will drink wine with milk, that is, with splendour and sincerity: whether because it is pure simplicity, or because it is spotless grace which is taken for the forgiveness of sins, or because it nourishes the little ones at the breasts of its consolation, so that, weaned in delights, they may grow up to the fullness of a perfect age. Come, then, to this banquet. Or do you fear that a narrow house and a small dining place will crowd you? "O Israel, how great is the house of God and how vast the place of his possession! Great and without end, high and immeasurable. There were the giants, famous from the beginning, of great stature, skilled in war. God did not choose these." And rightly he did not choose them, because they knew war, not peace; and so you, learn peace, so that you may be chosen by God. But lest you think the greatness of the house is unadorned, and colonnaded lodgings delight you: "Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars." The Lord Jesus himself too recalls that there are many dwellings with his Father. In this house, then, you will feast on food for the soul and drink for the mind, so that afterwards you may never hunger or thirst; for he who eats eats to the full, and he who drinks drinks to drunkenness.

But this drunkenness is the guardian of chastity; that drunkenness of wine is the tinder of lust, by which the inner organs are heated through the flesh, the mind takes fire, the soul is burned up. Lust is a savage goad to crimes, which never allows the feelings to rest quietly. It burns by night, pants by day, rouses from sleep, draws away from business, calls back from reason, takes away counsel, disturbs lovers, bends down the fallen, lies in wait for the chaste, inflames by gaining and is kindled by use. There is no limit to sinning, and the insatiable thirst for crimes cannot be quenched except by the death of the lover. And so the Apostle says: "Flee sexual immorality", so that by swift flight we may escape the savagery of a raging mistress, as it were, and come out of a foul slavery.

For what shall I say of avarice, an insatiable desire for money and a kind of lust for bronze, which the more it has taken, the poorer it believes itself? Envious of all, worthless to itself, poor in feeling amid the greatest riches, it diminishes what it has in abundance by its wealth. There is no limit to seizing where there is no measure to desiring. It so inflames the mind, so feeds the mind with its own fire, that it differs only in this: that lust is the adulteress of beautiful forms, avarice of lands. It shakes the elements; it ploughs the sea, digs up the earth, wearies heaven with prayers; it is pleased neither with fair weather nor with cloud; it condemns the yearly harvests and blames the produce of the lands. But this is a sickness of the soul, not health. Indeed Ecclesiastes says: "There is an evil sickness which I have seen under the sun: riches kept to the harm of their owner"; and above: "He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver." Nor is there an end to their acquiring. If you seek treasures, take invisible and hidden ones, which you should seek in the heights of heaven, not in the veins of the earth. Be poor in spirit, and you will be rich whatever your wealth, because a man's life is not in the abundance of riches but in virtue and faith. These riches will make you truly rich, if you are rich toward God.

You have heard the mysteries of pleasure; you have heard also the gifts of our riches, which I thought should be shown not covered with furnishings but by the bare words of Scripture, so that they might shine by their own light and speak for one another of themselves. For the sun and moon need no interpreter; they have as interpreter the brightness of their light, with which the whole world is filled. Their enlightening is a faith that needs no informer, a witness, so to speak, that needs no document, which needs no other's testimony and suddenly pours itself on the eyes of all. So our works are not announced, but cry out and announce themselves. Indeed, so that I may not pass over this too, which is thought laborious in our way: faith is required, zeal is desired, deeds are sought. For by these three the Lord Jesus defined the duties of human devotion, saying: "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you"; and further on: "Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man."

He who has zealously pursued these things will receive the rights of the firstborn's blessing, like the patriarch Jacob, who by continence and faith overthrew the footsteps of human passions. He says: "God has had mercy on me, and I have all things." So let us earn this mercy by faith, zeal and works, by which disciplines Israel found the grace of God and through it all things; for he rejoiced not that the riches of this world were at his disposal, but the disciplines of the virtues. Let us appoint these as our heirs, whom holy Abraham appointed as his own in his son Isaac, assigning the whole inheritance of his works to the wise and just man, and leaving no hereditary right to the slave women or the sons of the slave women, but only gifts. For perfect virtues receive the whole patrimony of glory, while something cheap is sprinkled on the ordinary and middling ones. And so Hagar, whose name in Latin means stranger and sojourner, and Keturah, which means fragrant, are not heirs. For one who uses the intermediate disciplines is a sojourner, not an inhabitant, of wisdom. Sprinkled with fragrance, he is not filled with fruit. But food, not fragrance, brings health, since fragrance is only a herald of fruits. So we recognize that, for those who follow, the principal disciplines are to be preferred, and natives to sojourners. This is according to the moral sense.

But according to the mystery, Abraham, father of the nations, gave the whole inheritance of his faith to his lawful seed, which is Christ, he who was like a stranger in this land, so as to bring back the fragrance rather than the fruit of this life. When the mind hears these things, it turns away from pleasure and joins itself to virtue, admiring the grace of true beauty: a pure disposition, a simple judgment, a modest garment, that is, "not in the persuasiveness of speech but in the demonstration of the Spirit", as is the form of the apostolic judgment; shining with the cloak of wisdom and piety, more precious than all gold; then receiving the chorus of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, which breathe the fragrance of the disciplines, striking reverence and pouring in grace. So, moved by such things, it chooses the pursuits of virtue, on which Jacob, a man full of exercise, set his mind. And so he is presented as a shepherd of sheep, because to command the body and its senses and pleasures, and to keep the measure of one's voice, lest it wander uncertain like a sheep, is thought more excellent than to rule peoples and govern cities; for it is harder to rule oneself than another. To conquer the mind, check anger, and bring the warring laws of flesh and mind into one belongs to an immortal man, whom the gate of hell will not have seized. Indeed the lawgiver himself claimed this task, to pasture the sheep of Jethro, who is called "superfluous", and to drive them into the desert, because he forced the irrational loquacity of superfluous and common speech into certain secret mysteries of sober teaching. And so shepherds of sheep were an abomination to the Egyptians; for all who are given to the passions of the body and indulge their pleasures turn away with a kind of execration from the examiner of the word and the teacher of virtue. And so by these riddles Moses taught that the sacrifices fit for God, which every foolish man shuns, are the works and precepts of virtue. And so Abel is read to be a shepherd, but Cain a tiller of the ground, who, being a foolish man, could not bear the form and likeness of virtue expressed in his brother.

"And after some days Cain offered a gift to the Lord from the fruits of the earth." A twofold fault: one, that he offered after some days; the other, that he offered from the fruits, not from the first fruits. A sacrifice is commended both by speed and by grace. Hence it is commanded: "If you vow a vow, do not delay to pay it; for it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay." For when you delay, you do not pay. A vow is a request for good things from God, with a promise to pay a gift. And so, when you have obtained what you asked, it is the mark of an ungrateful man to delay what was promised. But sometimes either forgetfulness of what they obtained creeps up on the negligent, or the swollen and proud like to claim the outcome for themselves and to attribute it to their own virtues, not assigning it to the grace of the giver, but considering themselves the authors of their own good things. There is a third kind of sin, lesser indeed but of nearly equal arrogance: that of those who do not deny that God is the giver of good things, but think that what has befallen them was rightly brought to them because of their prudence and the merits of their other virtues, and that they were therefore held worthy of divine grace, since they seemed in no way unworthy that such things should come to them by divine benefits.

So that nothing of this kind may happen, by which your vow might become sin for you, the law has formed and instructed you, the Lord who gave the law saying: "Take heed to yourself, lest you forget the benefits of the Lord your God and do not keep his commandments and judgments and righteous decrees which I command you today; lest, when you have eaten and been filled, and have built good houses and begun to live in them, and when your sheep and your oxen have multiplied, and you have been filled with bronze, silver and gold, and begun to possess all things, and your barns are full, you lift up your heart and forget the Lord your God." You will forget the Lord, then, when you have forgotten yourself. But if you know that you are weak, you will know that God is above all, and you cannot be forgetful so as not to pay him the reverence you owe.

Learn now how each one is warned not to think himself the author of his own good things. "Do not say," it says, "in your heart: My strength and my power have done this great virtue for me; but you shall keep in mind the Lord your God, because he himself gives strength so that you may do virtue." Hence the Apostle, as an interpreter of the law, rightly did not boast of his own virtue, but said that he was the least of the apostles, and that whatever he was belonged to divine grace and not to his own merit, and that we have nothing that we have not received. "For what do you have," he says, "that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" You have learned, then, to follow humility rather than arrogance, to aim at diligence rather than power. You have received saving precepts; do not neglect the useful instruments of medicine by which every fibre of a deadly wound is cut away.

He too who justifies himself should not be puffed up by the swelling of his heart; he too has received a wholesome command, as the oracle sounds forth to this effect: "Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God begins to destroy those nations before you: Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land; but because of the iniquities of these nations the Lord will root them out before you. Not because of your righteousness nor because of the uprightness of your heart have you entered to possess this land, but because of the iniquity of the nations the Lord will destroy them before you, and he will establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers." The covenant is the perfect grace of God; for God gives nothing imperfect, and virtue and the works of virtue are perfect. A testament is said to be that by which an inheritance of goods is handed on. Rightly it is called both a testament and divine, since what is truly good is conferred by the attestation of heavenly commands. And it is called a testament because it was dedicated with blood, the old in type, the new in truth. By this testament we hold the pledge of divine grace, because God so loved this world that he gave his only Son for us all. Hence the Apostle, proclaiming the perfection of grace, says: "How will he not also with him give us all things?"

The first grace of a vow, then, is speed in paying it. Indeed Abraham, commanded to offer his son as a burnt offering, did not offer after some days, as Cain did, but "rising early he saddled his ass and took with him two servants and Isaac his son, and having cut the wood for the burnt offering, he rose and went and came to the place which God had told him, on the third day". First notice the ready and hasty zeal of the one about to sacrifice, so that there was no delay of waiting except until the oracle was heard; then that he saddled his own ass, took on himself every service and prepared what was necessary for the sacrifice, and led his victim with two virtues of faith accompanying him, certain of God's power and secure in his goodness.

And when it says "on the third day", it is either because devotion should be continual and perpetual (for time is threefold, past, present and future, and we are reminded that no forgetfulness should creep in of God's past, present or future benefits, but that a tenacious memory of grace should persevere and obedience not fail), or because one who sacrifices ought to believe in one splendour, one light of the Trinity; for to him who sacrifices faithfully it is day, there is no night. So too in Exodus Moses says: "We will go a three days' journey and sacrifice to the Lord our God." But also elsewhere, when God appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, "looking up," it says, "Abraham saw with his eyes, and behold, three men stood over him. And seeing them he ran to meet them at the door of his tent and bowed down on the ground and said: Lord, if I have found favour before you." He sees three, he worships one; he offers three measures of fine flour. For although God is immeasurable, yet he holds the measure of all things, as it is written: "Who has measured the water in his hand and heaven with his span and the whole earth in his closed hand?" So the holy patriarch offered a sacrifice to the Trinity, perfect in each person, in the inner secret of the mind, that is, of spiritual fine flour. This is the fine flour which that woman grinds in the Gospel who will be taken; for "one will be taken," it says, "the other left". The church will be taken, the synagogue left; or the good mind will be taken, the wicked left. And so that you may know that Abraham too believed in Christ: "Abraham," he says, "saw my day and was glad." And he who believes in Christ believes also in the Father, and he who believes perfectly in the Father believes in the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three measures, then, one fine flour, that is, there was one sacrifice, which was offered to the venerable Trinity with an equal measure, as it were, of devotion and a fitting fullness of piety.

Learn further the zeal of swift devotion. "He ran," it says, "and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to his servant, and hastened to prepare it." Everywhere tireless devotion, and so his gift was acceptable to God. You have elsewhere too that you should anticipate the sunrise with prayer: "Hasten," it says, "to meet the sunrise." You have in the Gospel the Lord Jesus saying: "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down." And he, who had obtained what he wished, to see Christ, and had obtained more, to be seen and called by Christ, came down in haste and received him rejoicing. And so the Lord approved his feeling and gave him a swift reward, saying that "today salvation has come to this house". For the Lord too hastened to the benefit, and so he did not wait to promise and fulfil later, but did it first and declared it afterwards. For he said: "Salvation has come", which was certainly the word of one who anticipates, not of one who promises. The righteous man, then, commends his vow by speed. And so our fathers ate the Passover in haste, with loins girded, not taking their feet out of the bonds of their sandals, and as it were laying aside the burden of the body, so as to be ready for the passing over; for the Lord's Passover is the passing from the passions to the exercise of virtue. And so it is called the Lord's Passover, because both then, in that type of the lamb, the truth of the Lord's passion was announced, and now its grace is celebrated.

Seek this quickly, then, soul, so that you may also quickly hear, as Jacob heard: "What is this, that you have found it so quickly, my son?" And he answered according to the doctrine: "Because the Lord your God delivered it into my hands." God gives quickly, because "he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created". For the Word of God is not, as someone says, a work, but a worker, as you have it written: "My Father is working until now, and I am working." He anticipates all things; for he is before all things, as the Father is, and in all things, as the same Father is, penetrating all things. For he is "strong and sharp, sharper than any sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow", anticipating the thoughts of all. Of him God the Father says: "Now you will see whether my word overtakes you or not." For where God is, there is the Word too, as he said: "We will come and make our dwelling with him." And as you have read elsewhere of God, "I stood here before you", so the Word too says: "Before you stood under the fig tree, I saw you." And of the Word himself, that is, the Son of God, it is said: "Among you stands one whom you do not know." For wherever the saints are, there in the midst is the Word of God in the heart of each, filling seas and lands. And when he is here, he is elsewhere too, not by changing place but by filling everywhere with his presence; for he is everywhere who is through all things and in all things, leaving no place empty of himself; and where he is present, he was; and where he was, he is present. And so one who knows that the Word of God is swift asks quickly and obtains quickly.

But Pharaoh, who spent his zeal on vain and empty opinions (Egypt being filled with frogs that gave back an empty sound of things and a vain noise), when Moses said, "Appoint for me when I shall pray for you and your servants and your people, that the Lord may destroy the frogs", though placed in such great need he ought to have asked that Moses pray at once and not delay, answered: "Tomorrow", idle and negligent, about to pay the penalty of delay by the destruction of Egypt. So whenever he obtained something, he became forgetful of the grace, and, lifted up in the mind of his flesh, he forgot God.

But humility commended prayer, since that Pharisee too was rebuked who listed his fasts as if they were favours, and as it were threw them in God's face, and recounted that he was free of crimes; but the tax collector was praised, who, standing far off, would not raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying: "Lord God, be merciful to me a sinner." And so the divine sentence preferred him, saying that "this tax collector went down justified rather than that Pharisee". For he is justified who confesses his own sin, as the Lord himself has spoken: "Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified." And David says: "A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit"; and again: "A contrite and humbled heart God does not despise." Jeremiah too says: "A soul in distress and an anxious spirit cries to you." So both Pharaoh and the Assyrian, who said, "Which of the gods of these nations has delivered his land out of my hand, that your God should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?", were cast down by their exaltation; but the righteous man, like Jacob, refers to God as author whatever good things he has obtained, saying of all that he knows has prospered for him: "Because the Lord your God delivered them into my hands." This, then, is the better payment of vows, as David too says: "Offer to God a sacrifice of praise and pay your vows to the Most High." To praise God is to commend and to pay a vow. Hence also that Samaritan is preferred to the others, who, cleansed of leprosy with the nine other lepers according to the Lord's command, alone returned to Christ, glorified God and gave thanks. Of him Jesus said: "Was there no one found among them to return and give thanks to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him: "Rise and go, for your faith has saved you."

There is also this discipline for commending prayer and a vow: that we do not publish our prayer abroad, but keep the mysteries hidden, as Abraham kept them, who made cakes baked under the ashes. The fathers kept them too, who baked the dough they had brought out of Egypt, making unleavened cakes under the ashes, which in Greek are called ἐγκρυφίαι because they are hidden in the ashes, signifying, like that leaven which the woman in the Gospel hid in three measures until the whole was leavened, that the teaching of the mysteries too must be kept close. The Lord taught this more plainly in his Gospel, saying: "But you, when you pray, go into your room and, having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not speak much"; and further on: "For your Father knows what you need before you ask him." Your room is the secret of your mind and the hidden place of your soul. Go into this room of yours, that is, go into the depths of your heart; enter wholly from the outer porch of your body, and shut your door.

Learn what your door is: "Set a guard, Lord, over my mouth, and a door around my lips." And Paul asks to be prayed for, "that a door of the word may be opened to me," he says, "to speak the mystery of Christ". But he, as one chosen to preach the Gospel, rightly wished a door of the word to be opened for himself, because from his mouth went out the salvation of the Gentiles, from his mouth came forth the life of the peoples; but let us shut the door, so that guilt may not enter, so that no slip of speech may go out. Guilt enters if a slip goes out. Hear how guilt enters: "In much speaking," it says, "you will not escape sin." Much speaking went out, sin came in, because in much speaking the word that goes out is never weighed. It slips imprudently, though to speak anything beyond measure is itself a great sin.

And so beware of speaking imprudently; for "the lips of the imprudent lead him into evils". Beware of exalting yourself in prayer; for "the prayer of one who humbles himself has pierced the clouds". Beware of carelessly publishing the mysteries of the Creed or of the Lord's Prayer. Do you not know how grave it is to incur sin in prayer, where you hope for a remedy? Certainly the Lord taught through the prophet that this is a grave curse, saying: "And let his prayer become sin", unless perhaps you think this a small thing. For it is to distrust the power of God to think that you are not heard unless you shout. Let your works cry out, let your faith cry out, let your feeling cry out, let your sufferings cry out, let your blood cry out, like that of holy Abel, of whom God said to Cain: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me." He who cleanses in secret hears you in secret. We cannot hear anyone unless he speaks; with God it is not words but thoughts that speak. And so that you may know this is true, the Lord Jesus said to the Jews: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" This is not the voice of one who asks, but of one who knows; which the evangelist makes plain to you, saying: "But Jesus knew their thoughts." As, then, the Son knows, so the Father knows. You have learned that the Son knows; hear that the Father knows, from the counsellor and witness of the Father, saying: "For your Father knows what you need before you ask him." So bake your ash-cake with the warmth of the Holy Spirit; bake also the passions of your soul with the heat of the Word. Even if your passions are rather raw, perhaps having lately come out of Egypt, cover them and bake them thoroughly with a slow heat, lest they cannot bear a stronger fire and are half-burned rather than baked; for there are very many things that displease when raw and delight when cooked. Cherish the deep mysteries in your breast, so that you do not entrust them, as if uncooked, by premature speech to unfaithful or weak ears, and the hearer turn away and loathe them with horror.

But if he tasted them better cooked, he would perceive the sweetness of spiritual food. Divinely too the Lord Jesus taught you the goodness of the Father, who knows how to give good things, so that you may ask good things of the good one; and he urged earnestly and often that we should pray, not so that prayer should be continued to the point of weariness, but frequently and assiduously. For empty things are often poured into a long prayer, while carelessness creeps altogether into one that is broken off. Then he warns that when you ask pardon for yourself, you should know that then above all you must grant it to others, so that you may commend your prayer by the voice of your deeds. The Apostle too teaches that we should pray without anger and dispute, so that your prayer may not be disturbed or interrupted. He teaches also that we should pray in every place, although the Saviour says: "Go into your room." But understand not a room closed by walls, in which your limbs are shut in, but the room that is in you, in which your thoughts are enclosed, in which your senses move. This room of your prayer is with you everywhere and is secret everywhere, and it has no witness but God alone.

You are taught to pray especially also for the people, that is, for the whole body, for all the members of your mother, in which is the mark of mutual charity. For if you ask for yourself, you will ask for yourself alone; and if each prays only for himself, the grace of the one praying is less than that of the one interceding. But as it is, because each prays for all, all also pray for each. So, to conclude: if you ask only for yourself, you alone, as we said, will ask for yourself; but if you ask for all, all will ask for you, since you too are among all. So great is the reward that by the prayers of each the support of the whole people is gained for each. In this there is no arrogance, but greater humility and richer fruit.

But it is now time to pass to another point, since we have said fully, regarding Cain's offering after some days, that it is a sign of supine pride, since the very request of a vow should be prompt, lest we seem to have hoped for a remedy from human arts, that is, from skill in healing and the juices of herbs, rather than to have asked help from God. For we must first take refuge with him who can cure the passions of our soul. But men, in reversed order, first call for help from men, and when human aid has failed, then they think the grace of divine favour must be asked.

Having closed that charge, then, and convicted Cain's crime, let us discuss another fault of his offering. He offered from the fruits of the earth, not first fruits from the first fruits to God: that is, to claim the first fruits for oneself first and to give the following ones to God. So since the soul, as mistress, must be preferred to the body as servant, we must certainly offer its first fruits, that is, those of the mind rather than of the body. The first fruits of the soul are the first motions of good disciplines. Although these are later in time than the first fruits of the body, which are food, growth, sight, hearing and touch, smell, voice (mind and sense being partly of the soul, partly of the body), yet they come first among the disciplines. The first of these is thanksgiving offered to God with a pure heart and simple speech.

These gifts Abel offered, and so God looked upon his gifts, because he offered from the firstlings. Add that he offered from the firstlings of the sheep and from their fat. Consider that he offered not from things without sense but from living creatures. For the animate is more than the earthly, since the animate is nearest to the spiritual. "For first is not the spiritual but the animate, then the spiritual." What is animate breathes and has a life-giving spirit, which is not so with what comes from the fruits of the earth. Then he offered not second things but first, not meagre but fat; such as the law approved and commanded to be offered, as it is written: "And it will be," it says, "when God brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to your fathers, and gives it to you, you shall set apart to the Lord every male that opens the womb. Every one that opens the womb of your herds and flocks, whatever males are born to you, sanctify to the Lord. Every one that opens the womb of an ass you shall exchange for a sheep; and if you do not exchange it, you shall redeem it." What has so deep a mystery, so lofty and secret a wisdom, as that in certain veins of simple words you may find and draw out the richness of spiritual grace? For the Canaanites are fickle and restless. So when you have entered their land, whom you see driven from possession because of their levity, restlessness and instability of character, hold fast to constancy. Let no cheap reasoning, no light speech disturb you; for this is the Canaanite: fickle speech, unstable feeling and restless contention; but keep calmly the tranquillity of the heart and the serenity of the mind, so that, as on the swell of the sea, you may offer ships a safe anchorage in a kind of harbour of your mind.

This possession the Lord promises you and pledges with a kind of bond of oath, so as to strengthen your constancy. For God does not swear because he needs the faith of the believer, or, lacking the support of witnesses, needs the help of an oath, as men do, who win credit for ourselves by an oath, and therefore swear so as to be believed to have spoken the truth. But God is faithful even when he speaks, and his word is an oath; for God is not faithful because of the oath, but the oath is faithful because of God. For what reason, then, does Moses present God as swearing? Because we are shut in by a certain custom of mortals and wrap ourselves in a shell of common opinion like hedgehogs, or like snails, which cannot breathe unless they are inside the covering of their shell, nor take in or bear the free air; so we move only within certain earthly hiding places of human custom. Hence, because we usually believe more firmly what is confirmed by an oath, so that our faith may not limp, God is written to swear, who himself does not swear but is the judge of those who swear and the avenger of perjurers. Indeed it is written: "The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest for ever." He kept what he swore; he gave us an eternal high priest, so that you too may know that what you swear must be kept, so that, since you swear by him who does not lie, you may know that he will be your avenger if you lie.

So when the restless and fickle thoughts have been driven out, God will give you the empty possession of heart and mind, so that you may till it with a kind of tranquillity and gather fruit from it, and not allow the Canaanites, that is, turbulent senses, to return to it; that you may root out every pagan enclosure of vices and destroy their groves, by which truth is overshadowed and a certain free view of heavenly knowledge is hidden by the horror of dark disputation.

But you cannot do this unless endowed with a divine gift. And so it says: "God will give you", that is, the best thoughts, calm counsels, tranquil discoveries. When he has given these, "you shall take every male that opens the womb and sanctify it to the Lord". God, who has given all, does not demand all from you. For he gives many things for the use of human life, and where there is the use of nature, that cannot be a divine sacrifice. To eat, drink, sleep and the other services of the body have been given to you as gifts, not returned by you to God as offerings. But whatever holy thing you think, this is God's gift, God's inspiration, God's grace; just as, on the contrary, the things that are in the use of human nature do not defile a man, but what comes out of the mouth, thefts, false testimonies, sacrileges: these are what defile a man.

Let us cleanse our inner parts, then, so that the offering may not displease. There let us seek every male that opens the womb, that is, what is just and principal, which we ought to sanctify to the Lord. For it is not these bodily unions and conceptions and births that sanctify us, by which a woman's womb is opened when the modesty of virginity is deflowered. For although the wife sanctifies the husband and the husband the wife, yet it often happens that a virgin's womb is opened even without the sanctity of marriage. Nor again is grace for men alone while the woman is a stranger to sanctification, or is the nature of both sexes confused, so that both pour themselves into bodily births. Men have their own functions; women have the distinct duties of their sex. This generation for human succession befits the woman; it is impossible for the man.

So if this sense does not fit the use of the flesh, let us examine the functions of the soul. I find the soul to be distinguished by no sex. And though it has no sex, it represents the functions of both sexes: it marries, conceives, gives birth. And as nature gave women a womb, in which the offspring of each living creature is formed over the months, so there is a power of the soul which, as in the secret of a generative womb, usually receives the seeds of our thoughts, cherishes what is conceived, and brings forth births. For Isaiah would not otherwise say, "We have conceived in the womb and brought forth the spirit of salvation", unless he had known the womb of the soul. Of these births, some are female: malice, wantonness, luxury, intemperance, unchastity and other vices of this kind, by which a certain manliness of our soul is unnerved. Male are chastity, patience, prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, by which our mind and the flesh itself are strengthened and roused to perform the duties of virtue with vigour. These births that prophetic womb brought forth. And so he says: "We have conceived in the womb and brought forth the spirit of salvation." So he who poured out the spirit of salvation both laboured and brought forth a male.

[Book Two.] Let our soul be in labour with these births, and not only be in labour but also give birth, and give birth when the days are fulfilled, so that the day of judgment may not find the births premature. For of these births the Lord Jesus said: "Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing in those days." So let this birth be completed early, and let our thoughts be unfolded in the progress of good works, so that our end may find nothing imperfect, the close of our life meet nothing undeveloped, the course of our work leave nothing, as it were, on the anvil. Hasten, then, soul, to form your offspring, to complete them more speedily, to nourish more quickly those you have begotten.

What the form of so great a birth is the Apostle shows, saying: "My little children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you." Into this form let the whole inner being of our mind grow together, and in that generative womb of our soul let Christ shine out. Let our offspring be faith, our nourishment the precepts of doctrine. With these let the infancy of our heart be imbued, its boyhood instructed; let its adolescence grow young and its old age grow white; for "a spotless life is the age of old age". So that old age of the soul is good which no defilements of faithlessness have stained. And so Paul defends his offspring from this stain ("I begot you," he says, "through the gospel"), lest someone's savage whispering tempt the infancy of a raw faith. He was begetting males, then, who longed for the peoples he taught to come together into the perfect man in the unity of the faith and, in the knowledge of the Son of God, to hold the perfect measure of the fullness of Christ. For he knew that this sacrifice was acceptable to God, of which it is written: "Every male that opens the womb is the Lord's." And since it added, "Every male that opens the womb from the herds and from the flocks that are yours is the Lord's", let us consider it, so that it may have no obscurity.

He had spoken of the principal offspring, that is, those full and capable of reason; he added also those of the herds, that is, the remaining, as it were common, senses, which are compared to irrational beasts of burden. Yet when these are governed by some ruler, they are easily tamed, and are accustomed to carry out commands, to go under the yoke, and at the voice of the master to quicken their pace or stop or turn aside, or to perform with a kind of human service any duties of their work that are ordered. So strong is training that it overcomes nature. So those creatures that do not share our substance nevertheless recognize the command of our voice, and though they have no reason of their own nature, they take on the reason of our nature and acquire it as if poured into them. We see horses roused by the enthusiasm of the people, rejoicing in applause, delighted by the coaxing of their master. We see fierce lions change their natural savagery to the gentleness they are commanded, lay aside their rage and take on our ways; and though they are terrible themselves, they learn to fear. A dog is beaten so that the lion may be afraid; and he who is roused to rage by an injury to himself is restrained by another's and broken by another's example. How often, with prey ready and food at hand, do they prefer to endure hunger while they fear offending their master; how often, driven by sudden impulse, do they release on command jaws opened to bite! So while they obey our will they forget their own. Not so those wild beasts, or those herds of horses, or every kind of cattle that roam without any ruler and, left without the guidance of any tamer, grow savage. And so herdsmen, shepherds and other keepers are appointed as masters of the flocks, each shaping his duties according to the condition of the animals entrusted to him.

So there seems to be one kind of our senses that is tamed and gentle, another untamed, which, when the herdsman, the motion of the mind, is idle and slack, rushes off to the irrational pleasures of the body; and the gentle kind, which submits and subjects itself, as to a leader, to the moderation of the mind. Whatever of this nature is governed is male and perfect; but whatever rules without any leader by a kind of popular presumption, like a city deprived of the counsel of its king and its nobles, makes effeminate the whole state of its body and its manly vigour with a kind of womanish slackness. Of these is that law of the flesh which, fighting against the law of the apostle's mind, dragged him captive by a certain law of sin. And so, to be freed from that body of death, Paul placed all his hope not in his own virtue but in the grace of Christ. Hence it is clear that the motions which are according to the law of the mind proceed from divine favour, while the other senses proceed from the will of the body.

Those that are holy, then, are the firstlings of our senses; these others are, as it were, of the herd and of common baseness, which Moses seems to have signified to the Jews by various names. For that mystical threshing floor of the law also shows this, of which he says: "The first of your threshing floor and of your winepress you shall not make the last; you shall give me the firstborn of your sons." The holy motions of our senses, which are according to virtue, are themselves the first fruits of the spiritual threshing floor; that is why they are compared to a rural threshing floor, on which grain is winnowed. For as on this rural threshing floor wheat and barley are threshed and, by frequent winnowing, separated from the chaff, because the chaff and other refuse of the harvest are scattered elsewhere by the breath of a light breeze, while what is more solid falls back in the same place with the dust shaken off, so the solid and best of our thoughts provide pure and sincere nourishment of virtue, as it is written, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God"; but the useless and empty ones are scattered like smoke and mist, because "as smoke to the eyes, so is iniquity to those who use it". And rightly is iniquity compared to smoke, which covers the sight of the mind with a kind of worldly fog.

And so the Lord says: "When you have entered the land into which I am bringing you, and begin to eat of the bread of that land, you shall offer a separate offering to the Lord, the first fruits of your dough, a loaf; as an offering from the threshing floor, so you shall take away the first fruits of your mixtures and give them to the Lord." We are a mixture, composed of a certain blending of different elements, since cold is mixed with hot in us and moist with dry. This dough has many enticements of the flesh, very many pleasures; but these are not the firstling senses of this body. And since we consist of soul and body and spirit, the principal dough is that in which the Apostle wishes us to be sanctified, as he says: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept whole and blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." The first fruits of this dough are spiritual, that is, the discoveries and offspring of the senses that proceed from the vigour of the soul. But not all senses are firstlings, only those free from malice and wickedness and all error. There are also necessary pleasures of the body, such as sleeping, eating, drinking, walking, and other senses of this kind, but the first fruits are not in these. And so the Lord's sacrament is not in these, but in those where there is chastity, piety, faith and devotion. A clear and evident example of this is the offering of the patriarch Isaac, whom his father offered as a sacrifice, bent by no motion of human passion, offering God a pure victim, empty of fear and free of bodily desire, while the very love of the father gave way to the devotion of the one sacrificing.

Now let us consider what the force of first fruits is, and whether first fruits are reckoned by time or by holiness, that is, whether all firstborn have the sanctification of first fruits. For the first fruits of crops are holy according to the law, because in them is the best sacrifice of a prompt faith; but they become holy by devotion, not by time. It is not the yield that sanctifies but devotion. Indeed, where the yield is quick, if devotion delays, offence is incurred. So not all firstborn are holy, but all that are holy are also firstborn. Indeed Cain was firstborn but not holy. Israel too, God's people, is holy but not first in age; and yet it is called firstborn, as it is written in the prophets: "Israel is my firstborn." And Levi was holy but not firstborn, for he is read to be the third son of Leah; and yet the Levites, whose name is derived from him, were called firstborn. For it is written in Numbers: "Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the sons of Israel in place of every firstborn that opens the womb among the sons of Israel, and the Levites shall be mine; for every firstborn is mine. On the day I struck every firstborn of Egypt, I sanctified every firstborn of Israel." So the Levites were called firstborn, who certainly were set above the other sons of Israel by sanctification. In what sense they are firstborn, hear the Apostle saying: "But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, Jerusalem, which is in heaven, and to ten thousands of rejoicing angels, and to the churches of the firstborn, which are enrolled in heaven." He made four ranks: of Mount Zion, of the city Jerusalem, of the assembly of angels, of the churches of the firstborn. So the Lord God took the Levites from among the people of Israel, because he wanted them to share not in human cares but to be ministers of divine religion; and he made firstborn for himself those who open the spiritual womb. And so they were not from the womb of nature, like sinners of various crimes, but were chosen when worldly things had been stripped away. Hence they have no share in the possession of the people, nor are they counted in the midst of the people, because they possess the Word of God in their midst, as it is written in the Gospel: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them"; and elsewhere: "Among you stands one whom you do not know."

From this, then, we learn that above all faith should commend us to God. When we have faith, let us labour that our works may be perfect, since this is the full and perfect sacrifice, as the Lord himself teaches, saying of his gifts and offerings: "You shall take care to offer to me on my feast days, taking nothing away and not dividing, but offering what is full and whole and perfect." The Lord's feast day is where there is the grace of perfect virtues. These are perfect if the mind, victor over worldly cares and bodily enticement, shuts out the charms of pleasure, free from the world, given to God, diminishing nothing from the path of its straight intention, and not dividing the times of its affection now to luxury, now to labour. Only the wise man, then, celebrates this solemn feast, no one else; for it is hard to find a soul free from passions of this kind. Divide, then, according to reason, the governing and the obedient parts of the soul, and then you will find what is male and what female; for there is no virtue without labour, since labour is the progress of virtue. The very words of the law signify this too, which says: "Every one that opens the womb of an ass you shall exchange for a sheep"; for the law separated unclean animals from sacrifice and commanded clean ones to be offered in their place. So it commands the offspring of an ass, that is, an unclean one, to be exchanged for a sheep, which is clean and fit for sacrifice. This is according to the letter. But if anyone pursues the sense of the spiritual law more deeply, he will consider that the ass is a labouring animal, the sheep a fruitful one. So he says that labour must be exchanged for fruit, so that the end of one's work may be fruit; or certainly in this way: you shall commend all your labour, all your industry, with a pure and simple disposition.

"But if you do not exchange it," it says, "you shall redeem it." According to the letter, it is commanded that another animal be offered for the unclean one, or a price, so that nothing less or unclean may seem to be offered among the tithes of the crops. But the deeper understanding teaches that your soul must be freed, so as to cease from things that have no fruit; for one who redeems himself frees himself and is released from a kind of debt. Works must be left behind which cannot have true fruit and good progress, such as these worldly things, whose use cannot last long. In them a man is made naked and empty of the true, and, though it was sought with the greatest labour, it helps the soul not at all. For all things that bring slavery to the soul are useless, even if the result is not lacking. The victory of those who fight seems great, the glory of those who triumph; but we often see those who have won fall again under the uncertainties of wars and be handed over to the enemy by the outcome of a battle, and become more wretched by the very fact that they were victors before. You need, then, to direct your works to God and have his favour breathe upon you. The athlete himself, who contends by his own strength and not another's, believes that he undergoes doubtful chances each time he engages, and when he has reached the crown he understands that this glory of the world withers quicker than the leaves of the crown itself. The helmsman, when he has brought his ship into port, scarcely thinks an end has been put to his labour, and at once seeks the beginning of a new labour. The soul is released from the body, and after the end of this life it still hangs in the uncertainty of the judgment to come. So there is no end where an end is thought to be. Hence let us cling to our God with vows and a pure conscience and the spirit of charity, and win the divine favour for ourselves, praying that we may be released and stripped of worldly cares as from harsh and boorish masters and go out from worldly slavery, called into the freedom of heavenly knowledge, which is the true and only freedom.

And to support the precept of the law by an example: when the Egyptians oppressed the people of the Jews with various works, with mud and stone, the sons of Israel groaned and called down the Lord's mercy on themselves. And he said to Moses: "I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, how the Egyptians press them into slavery, and I have remembered my covenant. Go and say to the sons of Israel: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the power of the Egyptians and rescue you from their slavery, and I will free you with an uplifted arm and great judgment, and I will take you to myself as a people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who will bring you out from the power of the Egyptians and bring you into the land over which I stretched out my hand." See how the people of the Hebrews exchanged labour for fruit, so that those who worked in mud now worked for the hope of an eternal kingdom. So too the Lord in the Gospel, pitying the empty labour of the Gentile peoples, who made bricks for a muddy superstition and, given to bodily pleasure, could not build a solid wall of faith, said, as if to the offspring of an ass: "Come to me, all you who labour, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls." By this calling I seem to recognize more fully the words and mysteries of the law, since it taught that the ass should either be exchanged for a sheep or redeemed with money, so that we may not only exchange the ass's offspring for a sheep, that is, unclean things for clean, but also redeem it. This seems to be expressed thus: if first we wash away the defilements of our offences by the sacrifice of purification and the mystery of baptism, let us also redeem our crimes by good works and the price of faith and by mercy.

Our price is the blood of Christ. Hence the apostle Peter too says: "You were redeemed not with gold or silver, but with precious blood." And Paul says: "You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men." Hence it is not idly marvelled at in the Gospel that the Lord Jesus sat on the colt of an ass, because the Gentile people, which according to the law was held unclean, began to be Christ's offering. Hence it is also written of the Levites that they are the redemptions of the people, because by the holiness of their life and by prayer they lightened the sins of the people. In them the figure of the Lamb went before in mysteries, the true Levite who was to come, who by the passion of his own body would take away the sin of the world. "Levite" signifies "taken up for me", or "he himself light for me". He has the sign of perfect virtue, of health to be imparted to the people. He, then, who came, awaited for the salvation of all, was born for me from the virginal womb, was offered for me, tasted death for me, rose for me. In him the redemption of all men was taken up, the resurrection assumed. He is the true Levite, so that he might make us Levites to cling to God, to pour out continual prayers to him, to hope for salvation from him, to flee earthly business, to be counted in God's possession, as it is written: "Lord, possess us." For that alone is a possession which, liable to no storms, bears the fruits of perpetual grace. The Levite is the redeemer, because the wise man is the redemption of the foolish, who like a physician tends the sick mind of the foolish and sprinkles certain medicines of prudence on a more solid mind, imitating that physician who came from heaven to show men the ways of prudence and to reveal the paths of wisdom to little ones. For he saw that those who were labouring could not be saved without a remedy, and so he gave medicine to the sick; and so he brought the help of healing to all, so that whoever perishes may ascribe the causes of his death to himself, since he would not be cured when he had a remedy by which he could escape; and the mercy of Christ toward all may be proclaimed as manifest, because those who perish perish by their own negligence, while those who are saved are freed according to the judgment of Christ, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Indeed Sodom too, if it had had fifty righteous men, would not have been overthrown, and if it had had ten, it would have been redeemed; because the word of the forgiveness of sins strips the soul of slavery, and the fullness of perfect discipline does not allow the mind to be consumed by the devouring heat of lusts.

Yet it matters a great deal, and builds up moral feeling, if we take the number of the righteous simply as benefiting the salvation of peoples. It checks and cuts back envy, confounds wickedness, stirs up virtue, increases grace. For no one should envy another a praise that benefits himself; and every wicked man, while he accepts his redeemer, often imitates him, certainly reveres him, and often even loves him. And the righteous man himself, if he knows that he will benefit others, grows in zeal, and by that grace he binds peoples together and heaps up the love of citizens and the glory of cities. How blessed is the city that has very many righteous men; how celebrated on the lips of all; how it is blessed from every side, and its condition thought blessed and lasting! How I rejoice when I see some gentle and wise men live long, when I see chaste virgins and grave widows of great age, like a white-haired senate of the church, which by its very face and appearance of gravity shows something to revere, to imitate, by which to be coloured with every grace of character! For I do not rejoice for them, since many wearinesses of this world come upon one who lives long, but because they benefit many. Likewise, when someone of this kind dies, though laid to rest after a long old age, I am grieved, because the flock of the young is deprived of the wall of the old. Indeed this is the first sign of a city about to perish, or of evils threatening or of a fall to come: if the men of better counsel or the graver women die; this is the first gate opened to the evils that rush in. As, then, a whole city is strengthened and increased by an assembly of wise men, or shaken by their death, so a grave and, as it were, elderly speech full of prudence usually steadies and strengthens the soul of each. And if there is added the practice of much reading, a kind of senate of many precepts and counsels, it makes lasting the state of that city which is in the heart of each.

So Moses called the Levites the firstborn and the redeemers of the rest, because men of more mature and useful judgment offer to one a kind of old age of soul, and to another they bring redemption. Hence Moses also signified that the cities of the Levites in the Old Testament were redeeming cities, because one who takes refuge in that soul in which the Word of God dwells, a soul fortified and walled like a city, gains perpetual freedom for himself. For as in the cities of the Levites there was remission of penalties, so that if someone who had committed an involuntary killing of a man fled to them, no one was allowed to kill him as long as he stayed within the cities of the Levites, so one who repents of his own sin, which he committed either imprudently or unwillingly, if he clings to residence among the Levites and does not think he should withdraw from those teachers who dispense God's commands, the law itself frees from every penalty and punishment of the outrage committed.

Nor should you think it absurd that criminals live with the pious and the stained with the consecrated; for those who have been polluted by some contagion of offences need to be purified. And in a way the case comes together from opposite kinds. For as the Levite, having renounced worldly pleasures, is an exile from guilt, so the man guilty of blood is a fugitive from his homeland. But there is this difference: the one abandons his own by necessity, through fear of the law, while the minister of God renounces fellowship with human passions and gives up a kind of kinship with fleshly enticement for the sake of the pursuit of virtue. This too is not far from the truth: that the Levite also lays hands, as it were, on himself, so as to kill the pleasures of his body and bring about a kind of death of his flesh. Moses, for instance, killed an Egyptian and became a fugitive from the land of Egypt, to avoid the tyrant of that land. But he would not have killed that Egyptian man unless he had first killed in himself the Egyptian of spiritual wickedness and renounced the luxury of royal honours, "considering the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt". To fools it seems a reproach, but to us that reproach of the Lord's cross is the power and wisdom of God.

Add to this that there are in God two principal kinds of power, one by which he forgives, the other by which he punishes. Sins are forgiven through the Word of God, of whom the Levite is the interpreter and a kind of executor; they are forgiven through the office of the priest and the sacred ministry. They are also punished through men, such as judges, who use power for a time, as the Apostle teaches, saying: "Do you wish not to fear the authority? Do good and you will have praise from it; for it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword in vain; for it is God's minister, an avenger for wrath on him who has done evil." Sins are punished also through peoples, as we read, since the people of the Jews was often subdued by foreigners stirred up by God's command because of an offence against the divine majesty. Not even one who has unwillingly committed a homicide is outside this ministry, since the law says of him that "God delivered him into his hands". His hands, then, served divine vengeance as an instrument. So the Levite is the minister of forgiveness, while the slayer who killed, not by design but against his will, is the minister of divine vengeance. Notice this too: when the ungodly is killed, Christ is poured in, and where abomination is done away with, sanctification is gathered, because the Lord said:

"On the day on which I shall kill every firstborn of Egypt, I will sanctify for myself every firstborn of Israel." You will refer this not to one day of the affliction of Egypt but to all time. For when wickedness is renounced, virtue is at once taken on; for the departure of malice brings about the entrance of virtue, and by the same zeal by which crime is shut out, innocence is joined. You have this in the Gospel: when Satan thrust himself into the heart of Judas, Christ withdrew from him, and in the moment he received the one he lost the other. Indeed it is written thus: "And after the morsel Satan entered into him. So Jesus said to him: What you do, do quickly." What does this mean? That since Satan had entered into him, he himself should go away from Christ. So he is cast out and thrust away, because one who had begun to be with the devil could no longer be with the Lord Jesus; for there is no fellowship of Christ with Belial. Hence, expelled by command, he went away at once, as we read, the evangelist saying that "when he had received the morsel, he went out immediately; and it was night". Not only did he go out, but immediately, and by night. No wonder if he who was deserting Christ had the darkness of night. But as he, received by the devil, was shut out by Christ, so Zacchaeus, renouncing avarice, received Christ. And rightly, seeing his zeal, since he had climbed a tree to see Jesus passing by, the Lord says: "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down in haste and received him rejoicing. But in receiving Christ he shut out avarice, banished faithlessness, renounced frauds; for Christ does not enter except to shut out vices, since he does not live with errors. Indeed he cast the money-changers out of the temple because he himself wished to dwell there. Hence Zacchaeus, understanding that he could not receive Christ with his old disposition, ordered his former vices to leave his lodging so that Christ might enter. Rightly, then, when they grumbled that the Lord Jesus had turned aside to stay with a sinful man, he said to the Lord: "Behold, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by fraud, I restore it fourfold." In this he answered those who said that a sinner ought not to have given Christ lodging, that is: I am no longer a tax collector, no longer that Zacchaeus, no longer a robber, no longer a cheat. I give back what I took; I give back, I who used to take away. Now I give to the poor whom I used to strip; now I bestow my own, I who used to seize what belonged to others. Crimes fled after Christ entered; all the blindness of fleshly passions was dispelled when the light of eternal life was poured in.

We have spoken of the firstborn; let us speak also of the fat, of which David teaches enough, saying: "Let my soul be filled as with fat and fatness." And above he says: "And let your burnt offering be fat", teaching that a sacrifice is acceptable which is fat, which is sleek and fattened with a certain fodder of faith and devotion and a richer nourishment of the heavenly word. We often call a work "fat" when we mean it to be understood as dense and laborious, and a victim is called rich which is not thin and meagre. Hence we also rightly call a sacrifice fat which we wish to declare rich. And this too is proof: that fat cows were compared by prophetic interpretation to fruitful years.

Now let us consider what the Lord means when he says: "If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned; be still." This is a sign that God is not appeased by the gifts offered, but by the disposition of the one offering. Indeed Cain, the offerer of a condemned gift, understood, through his conscience of an insincere offering, that his sacrifice was not approved by God, and he became sad. For when the mind is conscious of what is right, it rejoices, and the spirit is filled with joy as by a kind of spiritual infusion when someone's pursuits or works are not disapproved by God. Cain's sadness, then, is the testimony of his conscience, the sign of his rejection. And although he offered a gift, yet because he did not divide it rightly and duly, he fell into guilt.

For there are four kinds by which sacrifices were commended: if they were new of the new, or roasted, or divided, or continual. New of the new at the first season of the year, which were valued in the form of the firstborn fruits; but now it has been revealed that they signify those who are renewed through the sacraments of baptism. For this is truly the sacrifice of first fruits, when each offers himself as a victim and begins with himself, so that afterwards he may be able to offer his gift. So the new faith of the renewed, strong, coming to maturity, gaining an increase of virtue, not slack, not weary, not withered by a kind of old age and sluggish in vigour, is fit for sacrifice: let it sprout with a green shoot of wisdom and come to maturity with the youthful fervour of divine knowledge, yet let it have the sap of the old teaching; for the teaching of the Old Testament must run together with that of the New, since it is written: "Eat the old of the old, and take away the old from before the new." Let the knowledge of the patriarchs be our food; let the mind feast on the oracles in the books of the prophets. With such fattening let the inner mind be fed; but now let it be no longer the appearance of the lamb but the truth of the body of Christ. Let not the shadow of the law dazzle the eyes, but let the grace of the Lord's passion openly, the splendour of the resurrection, illumine the sight of the mind.

"But if you offer a sacrifice of the firstlings of the sheep, roasted in the fire, roasted fat, you shall offer a sacrifice of first fruits", as it is written; this signifies that your faith should be proved as if by fire and be fervent with the Holy Spirit. Indeed Jacob cooked lentils and snatched from his brother the rights of the firstborn's blessing, which a solid faith would certainly obtain. So the one grew strong and lively, while the other, who did not know how to cook his food, wasted away, weary and failing. So let the virtue of your soul be burned by the word of the Lord as by fire. See Joseph burned, as it is written: "The word of the Lord burned him." Let your faith be parched like ears of the harvest; for they display the ripeness of their fruits when the summer season has parched them by the first advance of the sun. So the abundant word of the Scriptures strengthens the soul and colours it with a kind of warmth of spiritual grace; it also strengthens rational discoveries and dissolves all the force of irrational passions. And so Esau, the bonds of his virtue loosened, was dissolved; but those who, with loins girded, were commanded to eat the head of the lamb not raw nor boiled in water but roasted in fire, as you have in Exodus, crossed the seas on foot with a brave and faithful spirit. In the Gospel too the Lord Jesus ate roasted fish, as it is written, in whom the fullness of the Holy Spirit overflowed. And perhaps Esau failed because he desired food boiled in water, which Jacob gave to him, weak as he was, as something unsuited to himself.

An offering and a prayer should not be confused but distinguished by a fitting division. For in every confusion distinction is better, much more in prayer and offering, which become more obscure unless they have definite divisions. And so the law often commands that the limbs of the victim be divided and burnt offerings be offered, so that the sacrifice may be without admixture and covering, and bare; because our faith should burn bare and stripped of all wrappings, not clothed with wandering and deceitful opinions, but showing a pure and sincere simplicity of mind. Then let it be divided into fitting parts. For virtue is a genus which is divided into very many species; but the principal ones are four: prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice. Let your prayer, then, breathe of prudence toward the knowledge of God and the truth of the faith; let it breathe of temperance, which the Apostle thought should be required even of spouses, saying: "Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer." And the law commands that those who have been purified the day before and the day before that should approach the sacrifice. Let prayer hold fortitude, so that it may be interrupted by no fear and fail through no weariness; for then the effort to pray should be stronger, when we are pressed by adversities. Let prayer keep justice; had Judas held it, his prayer would not have become sin. For when should we abstain more from unjust works and pursuits than when we pray for God's justice? And so the Lord, so that justice might be dear to our hearts, said: "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This was lacking to Judas; for if it had been present, he would not have betrayed the Lord, nor given up his master. It was lacking also to the sacrifice of this Cain, who, had he held to justice, ought to have brought the Lord the first gifts, not the later ones. So division was lacking to him, and so the answer says: "If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned; be still." You see how great a fault it is: where division is lacking, the whole sacrifice is rejected.

It remains for us to speak of continual and constant prayer, that we ought to persist and be free for prayer. The Lord spent nights in prayer, not to benefit himself, but to teach us. For frequent prayer produces a certain discipline of praying, since use itself makes men teachable by God, and negligence unteachable. Exercise, then, is good. Indeed the strength of the body is increased by frequent exercise, but without exercise it decreases and slips away; for very many have dissolved even their natural strength by disuse of exercise. Likewise the fortitude of the soul is made solid by assiduous exercise, so that the very labour of discipline becomes not a burden but a habit. Let us bring our mind this food, which, ground by much meditation and polished, may strengthen the heart of man like that heavenly manna. Not idly have we received that it was ground and polished, because we ought to grind and polish the words of the heavenly Scriptures for a long time, turning them over with all our soul and heart, so that the sap of that spiritual food may spread into all the veins of the soul. So if faith grows as if coming to maturity, banishing the failing of an ageing devotion, and is fervent in spirit, and the measure of lawful division is kept with fitting distinction, and assiduity commends its grace, then that fat and, as it were, rich kind of prayer comes about, of which the prophet says: "You have anointed my head with oil." For as lambs grow fat with much milk, and as well-pastured sheep shine with fat, so the prayer of the faithful, fed with apostolic sap, grows fat.

If any of these things we have spoken of is lacking, the sacrifice is not approved. And so it was said to Cain: "If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly." For the world itself is read to have been made in distinct order, when before, part of it was unformed, since "the earth was invisible and unformed". Indeed light was made first, "and God called the light, and God separated between the light and the darkness, and the darkness was called night". And we read that each thing was made in order: heaven, earth, fruit-bearing trees, various animals. The lighter things, such as air and fire, were assigned to the higher places, and the heavier, that is, water and earth, to the lower. God certainly could have commanded all things to be made at once, but he preferred to keep a distinction, which we should imitate in all our affairs, and especially in the exchanges of thanks. In these it is not enough to give back what you received, but you must commend what you give back. For if someone pays a debt and in repaying does wrong to the creditor, it is surely more intolerable than not to have repaid what he owed. So it is not the amount of the payment that is considered, but the spirit, the quality and the disposition of the one who repays. Rightly, then, did he offer, since an offering is a mark of devotion and a sign of thanks; but he did not divide rightly, because before all he ought to have brought God the first fruits, so as to begin from the grace of the author. For this is the order of division: that first things go before second, not second before first, and heavenly things are preferred to earthly, not earthly to heavenly.

But because Cain confused this order, it is said to him: "You have sinned; be still." God teaches all things: first, that you should not sin, as he warned in Adam; second, if you have sinned, that you should be still, as you are taught in Cain. For we ought to blush and condemn sin, not defend it, since guilt is lessened by shame and heaped up by defence, and by silence we are corrected, by contention we slip further. Let there at least be shame where there is no acquittal. Hence that saying: "The righteous man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech." And again we read elsewhere, said by the Lord himself: "Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified." How great is the grace of shame, that modesty may keep the righteousness that the guilt of the fault has taken away! He says "be still" because you have nothing to excuse. The turning of the fault itself is toward you. For his brother is not handed over to him, but the error is ascribed to him, of which he is himself the author. "The crime," he says, "returns on you, which began from you." You have nothing for which you can blame necessity rather than your own mind.

"Your wickedness is turned back on you; you are its ruler." Well does he say, "You are its ruler." For impiety is a kind of mother of offences, and one who has committed graver sins easily slips into the rest. For how can one keep from wronging men who has violated divine things, and be good to men who has injured God? So the other vices follow the more savage guilt of crimes, since where the shameful things lean, there the rest incline. You, then, are the ruler of your work, you the leader of the crime. Error did not draw you unwilling or unaware; but guilty by your own will and by judgment, not by a slip, you committed the fraud by which you yourself convict yourself of guilt toward God.

Warned, then, to be still, he increases his insolence and sharpens his crime. What, then, does he mean by saying, "Let us go into the field", except that a place bare of growing things is chosen for the murder of a brother? For where should a brother be killed except where fruit was lacking? As if foreseeing so great a crime, nature had denied shoots to the place, because it was not fitting that the same ground should both receive, against nature, the contagion of a brother's blood and produce fruits according to nature. Rightly he himself says, "Let us go into the field"; he does not say, "Let us go into paradise", where fruits blossom, nor into any cultivated and fruitful place. The murderers themselves show that they cannot have the fruit of their crime, and that fruit does not remain with those who have lent their service to so great an impiety. For they flee the very kindness of the elements, like this Cain, who seems to have feared that a more generous yield of good soil might hinder his grim deed, and that by the habit of its generous fertility, by which it makes various offspring and fruits sprout, it might, even in the preparation of this crime, call back his brotherly affection by its silent appearance. The robber flees the day as a witness of his crime; the adulterer flees the light, blushing as at an accomplice; the murderer of his brother flees the fruitfulness of the earth. For how could he look on the companionship of common births who was slaughtering the companion of his own blood? Joseph is thrown into a dry pit; Amnon is killed inside a house. So nature imparted a just judgment by depriving of the endowment of her gift those places in which a brother's murder was to be, so as to show, by a kind of condemnation of innocent soil, how great would be the punishments of the guilty. Because of the crime of men, then, even the elements are condemned. Indeed David wished on the mountains on which Jonathan was slain with his father the penalty of perpetual barrenness, saying: "Mountains of Gilboa, let neither dew nor rain fall on you, mountains of death!"

Now let us consider why God asked Cain where his brother was, as if he did not know he had been killed. As regards God's knowledge, he convicts the one who denies and answers the denier as one who knows: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me." As regards the deeper reason, he admonishes sinners to repentance; for confession is a shortening of punishment. Hence in worldly courts those who deny are put on the rack and tortured, while some pity for the one who confesses touches the judge. There is a certain shame in sins, and it is a portion of repentance to confess the crime and not shift the blame but acknowledge it. The shame of the accused softens the judge, while the stubbornness of those who deny rouses him. God wants to call you to seek pardon; he wants indulgence to be hoped for from him; he wants it shown by your confession that he is not the author of wickedness. For those who refer their sin to some necessity of God's decree or work, as the pagans assert, seem to accuse the divine, as though his force were the cause of sin; for one who has killed compelled by some necessity kills, as it were, unwillingly. Things that are from us have no excuse, while things outside us are excusable. But how much graver than the sin itself is it to refer to God what you have done, and to shift the odium of your guilt onto the author not of the crime but of innocence!

But weigh the murderer's answer: "I do not know," he says; "am I my brother's keeper?" Although this speech shows defiance, yet it implies that, if he had considered his good brother, he should have been the keeper of family love. For whom should he have kept more than his brother? But how would he keep the duty of brotherhood who had not acknowledged the affection of kinship? Or how could it be that he would pay obedience to nature who showed no reverence to God? First he denies, as before one who does not know; he refuses the task of keeping his brother, as one without a share in nature; he avoids the judge, as one with free choice. Why do you wonder if he did not acknowledge family love who did not acknowledge the creator? And so you are taught by this course of the Scriptures that faith is the root of all virtues. Hence the Apostle too says that our foundation is Christ, and whatever you build on this foundation, this alone profits for the reward of your work and virtue.

Fittingly, then, the Lord answered him who denied so foolishly: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me"; that is: why do you not know where your brother is? You were alone with your two parents; among so few, your brother could not have escaped you. Or is it because your parents cannot be accusers? For I do not wish that the kinship which is the author of safety should become the author of danger, as though in you alone nature had lost its laws. Do you think, then, that the crime lies hidden because parents ought not to accuse? But your condemnation is all the greater. For if the dear names of kinship ought not to accuse, much more ought they not to kill. But if you refuse me as witness and flee me as judge, the voice of your brother's blood is a witness, which cries to me. It convicts you with greater authority than if your brother were alive. You were alone: who else could have killed him? If you accuse your parents, you prove yourself a kin-murderer. He could kill his brother who does not spare his parents; he could be a kin-murderer who wishes to prove himself born of kin-murderers. And well does it say: "The voice of the blood cries", not "your brother cries"; that is, even in death he keeps innocence and the grace of brotherhood. The brother does not accuse, lest he seem a kin-murderer himself; his voice does not accuse, nor his soul; but the voice of the blood accuses, which you yourself shed. So your own deed, not your brother, accuses you. At the same time the guilty man is deprived of complaint: one who confesses the crime by his own deed cannot complain of another's testimony. Speech is less than the deed. Yet the earth too, which received the blood, is a witness.

And well does it say: "The voice of your brother's blood cries from the earth"; it did not say, "cries from your brother's body", but "cries from the earth". Even if your brother spares you, the earth does not spare; if your brother is silent, the earth condemns. It is both witness and judge against you: a keener witness, since it is still wet with the blood of your murder; a harsher judge, since it was defiled by so great a crime, so that it opened its mouth and received your brother's blood from your hand. And indeed it opened its mouth as if to receive words of family love from the brothers, fearing nothing when it saw brothers, since it knew that the right of brotherhood is a spur to love, not hatred. For how could it suspect a brother's murder, when it had not yet seen a homicide? But you shed the blood, and, grieving at its contagion, "it will not increase," he says, "to give you its strength". How innocent a vengeance, that, though so gravely violated, it is content not to benefit you; let it not seek to harm!

It is no small doctrine that he says, "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me", because God hears his righteous even when dead, since they live to God. And rightly they are held as living, because, even if they have tasted the death of the body, they enjoy an incorporeal life and are illumined by the splendour of their merits; they enjoy also eternal light. So he hears even the blood of the righteous, but turns away from the prayers of the ungodly, since, even if they seem to live, they are more wretched than all the dead, carrying the flesh around like a tomb in which they have buried their unhappy soul. For what else is buried than the soul which rolls about in the ground and is shut in by the desires of earthly avarice and the other vices, so that it cannot breathe the air of heavenly grace? A sinner of this kind is cursed by the earth, which is the lowest and last part of the world. Above, surely, are heaven and what is in heaven: sun, moon and stars, thrones, dominions, principalities and powers, Cherubim and Seraphim. There is no doubt, then, that the higher things also have condemned the one whom the lower have condemned. For how is he acquitted by the pure and heavenly sentence there whom even the earth could not acquit? And so he is commanded to be "groaning and trembling upon the earth".

The reason is plain and general: for every wicked man, evils are both present and to come. Those present produce sadness, those to come fear; but present things trouble the wicked man more than future ones. Hence Cain said to the Lord: "My case is too great. If you abandon me today, I shall hide myself from your face." For nothing is graver than for one who wanders to be abandoned by God, so that he cannot call himself back. The death of a sinner brings an end to sinning, but a life left without divine guidance rushes headlong and slips into worse things. As when a shepherd leaves his flock the beasts attack, so when God abandons a man, the devil falls upon him. It is especially grave for the foolish to have no ruler. Wickedness creeps on, the wound grows, where medicine is lacking. He hides himself who wants to veil his fault and cover his sin. For one who does evil hates the light and seeks darkness as a hiding place for his offences; but the righteous man is accustomed not to hide himself from the Lord his God but rather to offer himself, saying:

"Here I am", the man who does not have a criminal conscience that fears to be caught. Rightly, then, the one with a guilty conscience hides himself and says: "Everyone who finds me will kill me." A man of narrow mind fears present death, neglects the everlasting, and does not dread the divine judgment; he begs only to escape the destruction of the body. But by whom did he fear to be killed, who had only his parents on earth? He could indeed fear the attacks of beasts, he who had violated the rights of the divine law, and he could not be sure of the other animals subject to man, he who had taught that a man could be killed; he could also fear his parents as kin-murderers, he who had taught that kin-murder could be committed; for parents too could learn from a son what descendants learned from a parent.

Now let us consider why God said, "Whoever kills Cain will pay sevenfold vengeance", and why a sign is put on him so that the murderer of his brother might not be killed, when no provision was made that the innocent should not be killed. Man is eighth: he has the rational part, by which he surpasses the rest; he has also the five senses of the body; he has the voice too; and he has the gift of begetting. These seven, unless they are ruled by that rational part, are subject to death. And so the fool has all his danger in these. One who has lost that rational part, then, will flatter himself in vain on the use of these seven fleshly gifts. All these are dissolved unless they are bound by certain reins of reason. So the death of reason produces the death of the irrational passions. But this is better: that the number seven is the number of rest and remission. So one who has not spared another sinner and has begrudged him the gift of the forgiveness of sins will snatch from himself the hope of forgiveness, and there will be vengeance on him in equal measure to the grace.

And that he put a sign on Cain, so that no one might kill him, he wished to turn the wanderer back and by his kindness to invite him to correction; for we usually entrust ourselves more easily to those whose favour we have. Yet he does not grant great things, but in that very act he punishes the imprudence of the foolish man, who, though liable to everlasting punishments, did not ask that his penalty be remitted but thought he should beg for the life of this body, in which there is more hardship than pleasure. For death is one, in the separation of soul and body and at the end of this life, and as soon as it comes it usually takes away all the pains of the body, not increases them. But the fears that often fall on the living in this life, the sorrows, pains, groans and various torments, the wounds of grievous illnesses and sicknesses, bring very many deaths on the human race, so that this death seems a remedy, not a punishment; for it is not destructive, since through it life is not taken away but transferred to better things. For if the guilty die, who would not call back their step from sins, even against their will they reach the end not of nature but of guilt, so that they may not sin more, for whom life is the interest that grows on offences.

But if they possess good hope, they must be believed to depart rather than to fail. Here the doctrine of the incorruption of the soul is inserted: that the soul itself is the true and blessed life, which each one with a good conscience lives much more purely and blessedly when our soul has laid aside the covering of this flesh and has been released from this bodily prison, flying back to that higher place from which, poured into our inner parts, it groaned in compassion with this body until it fulfilled the task of the helm entrusted to it, to rule and restrain the irrational motions of this flesh with rational guidance. That is why later the prophets went into captivity with the people of the Jews, so that the rest of the people of the saints, deprived of protection and bereft of counsel, might not undergo a heavier hardship, but rather, admonished by the frequent oracles of the prophets, might return with pious affection to the Lord their God, and not, worn down by the adversities of captivity, rush into the sin of faithlessness and despair of the remedy of everlasting salvation.

So in this place those are refuted who think that this life in this world is the only one, in which all things are full of falls, full of grief; and they are refuted by the simple course of events. For see: the righteous, innocent, pious man, incurring his brother's hatred for the grace of his devotion, was taken away by kin-murder while still unripe in age; and the unjust, criminal, ungodly man, polluted even by his brother's slaughter, led a long life, took a wife, left descendants, founded cities, and obtained this by divine permission. Does not the voice of God cry out plainly in these things? You err, you who think that all the grace of living is here. Do you not understand, do you not notice, that this old age is a veteran of miseries, and the advance of age is the pay of hardships, and that, as with Scylla, we are surrounded with the roar of daily shipwrecks, beaten by waves, living in rocky dwellings, and delighting in these, like that creature which is not so much eternal as an immortal evil? So for this Cain too the long life granted was a punishment, because he lived in fear and ran a long course with much fruitless labour; and no punishment is graver than that one should himself be the cause of greater punishments for himself. See, then, how perpetual is the life of the righteous and how the life of the wicked is nothing. The blood of the righteous cries even when he is dead, but the life of the sinner is hidden.

The third point is that, when the murder of a brother had been committed, that is, the chief of crimes, as soon as sin crept in, the law of divine gentleness also had to be put forward, lest, if vengeance had been taken on the guilty man at once, men too should keep no patience and moderation in judging, but at once hand the guilty over to punishment. The providence of the divine sentence is of this kind: to teach judges magnanimity and patience, so that no one may be hurried away too hastily by eagerness for vengeance and, by the very prematurity of deliberation, punish the innocent or make harsher the penalty of the ungrateful; and yet not to allow full indulgence in the case of one who had put on no repentance for his crime. For he drove him from his face and, disowned by his parents, banished him to a kind of exile of separate dwelling, because he had passed from human gentleness to the savagery of beasts. Yet he did not wish the homicide to be avenged by homicide, he who prefers the correction of the sinner to his death. Hence in Lamech vengeance is taken seventy times seven, because graver is the fault of one who did not correct himself even after another's condemnation. Cain had sinned earlier by a kind of unforeseeing impulse; Lamech certainly ought to have avoided what he had seen condemned in another. The sentence was due to its judge, lest anyone should think that the guilty might be struck down anywhere. And to come to the mystery: he ought not to kill one who had, up to the natural end of his death, a space for doing penance. He could have excused himself on the ground that he had redeemed himself even by a late act of repentance, had a premature penalty not snatched him away.