Book of Rules 3

It is divine authority that no one could ever be justified by the works of the law. By the same authority it is most firmly established that there have not been lacking those who did the law and were justified. It is written: “Whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are in the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be made subject to God. Because no flesh is justified by the law in his sight; for through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Again: “Sin will not have dominion over you; for you are not under law.” Again: “We too believe in Christ, that we may be justified by faith and not by the works of the law.” Again: “For if a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise might be given by faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe.” But someone will say: from Christ onwards the law does not justify, yet in its own time it did justify. Against him stands the authority of the apostle Peter, who, when the Gentiles were being forced by brothers under the yoke of the law, said: “Why do you tempt the Lord, wishing to put a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” And the apostle Paul: “When we were in the flesh,” he says, “the passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” And on the other side the same Apostle says: “As to the righteousness that is from the law, I lived blameless.” And if the authority of so great an apostle were lacking, what could be said against the testimony of the Lord, who says: “Behold, truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit”? And even if the Lord had not deigned to bear this testimony, who would be so sacrilegious, who so puffed up with the swelling of stupidity, as to say that Moses and the prophets, or all the saints, did not do righteousness or were not justified? since Scripture says of Zechariah and his wife: “They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of God blameless.” And the Lord did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. But how could the law justify from sin, which was given for this: “The law came in alongside, so that sin might be multiplied”? But this we must know and hold: that the seed of Abraham has never at all been cut off, from Isaac to this day; the seed of Abraham, however, not carnal but spiritual, which is not from the law but from the promise. For the other seed is carnal, which is from the law, from Mount Sinai, which is Hagar, bearing children into slavery. He indeed who was born of the slave woman was born according to the flesh; but he who was born of the free woman, by promise. That there is no seed of Abraham except what is from faith, the Apostle says: “You know, then, that those who are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham.” And again: “But you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.” So the seed of Abraham is not from the law but from the promise, which passes on continually from Isaac. And if it is established that the seed of Abraham is what is from faith, it is established that it was never from the law. For it could not be both from the law and from faith. For law and faith are different things, since the law is not of faith but of works, as it is written: “The law is not of faith, but whoever does them will live by them.” So Abraham always had sons by faith, never by the law. “For the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he should be heir of the world, was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise made void. For the law works wrath.” If, then, neither the faith nor the promise of Abraham can be destroyed, it has remained continually from its beginning; nor, when the law was given, was it hindered from the begetting of sons of Abraham according to the promise of faith. For the Apostle says that the law given four hundred and thirty years later did not harm or destroy the promise: “For if it is from the law, it is no longer from promise; but God granted it to Abraham through promise.” And in another place: “Is the law then against the promises of God? Far from it.” We see that the law does not pertain to the promises, and that neither ever struck against the other, but each kept its own order. For as the law never harmed faith, so neither did faith destroy the law, as it is written: “Do we then destroy the law through faith? Far from it; but we establish the law,” that is, we make it firm; for they make each other firm. So the sons of Abraham are not from the law but from faith through the promise. But we must ask how those who are denied to have been able to be justified by the works of the law, set in the law and doing the law, were justified. We must ask further why, after the promise of faith, which can in no way be destroyed, the law was given, which is not of faith, by whose works no one would be justified; because “as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written: Cursed is he who does not continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.” The Apostle, then, foreseeing this question, since he asserts that the sons of Abraham were always by the gift of God through faith, not through the law of deeds, answered himself in the person of another, saying: “What then is the law of deeds?” That is: if the sons are from faith, why was the law of deeds given, when the promise was enough for begetting sons of Abraham, and they were to be nourished by faith? Because “the righteous lives by faith.” For before he had asked himself, “What then is the law of deeds?”, he had already said how those should live who could not be justified, in this way: “Now that no one is justified before God by the law is plain; but the righteous lives by faith.” He shows besides that it was said through the prophet, “He lives by faith,” so that it might be made plain how those should live who could not do the law. But what “the righteous lives by faith” means is less clear. For no righteous man set in the law could live unless he had done the works of the law, and all the works; otherwise he would be cursed. God gave the law and said: “You shall not covet.” At once, taking occasion, sin worked all covetousness through the commandment. For the passions of sins, which are through the law, must work in the members of one who is in the law. That is why it was given: that sin might abound, because the power of sin is the law. Sold under sin, he no longer does the good that he wills, but the evil that he does not will; for he consents to the law according to the inner man. But he is overcome by another law, of the members, and dragged captive, and he could never be set free except by grace alone through faith. And it is a great crime of faithlessness not to have attended to the kind of arms by which the violence of sin might be overcome; and on the contrary, it belongs to a magnificent faith to have sought it and seen it. So that mind is sacrilegious, and thinks ill of God, which, when it saw that the law could in no way be done by human power and was ready to take vengeance, did not understand that there is some remedy of life; nor that it could not be that the good God, who knew that the law could not be done, should not have left another approach to life, and should have shut the ways of life on every side against men whom he had made for life. This faith did not bear, did not admit. But when it was pressed by the weakness of the flesh and the power of sin, God gave light. Knowing the Lord to be good and just, and that he had not shut the bowels of his mercy against the works of his hands, it understood that there is a road to life, and saw the remedy for doing the law. For when God said, “You shall not covet,” he did not lay bare how this could come about, but said truly and decisively, “You shall not covet,” because he left this to be found. For if he had commanded that the accomplishment be asked of him, he would have destroyed both law and faith. For why would he give a law, if he promised the law of deeds in all things? Or what would be left to faith, if he forestalled faith by promising help? But now, for the good of faith, he gave the law, a minister of death, so that the lovers of life might see life by faith, and the righteous might live by faith, who believed that the work of the law could be done not by their own power but by the gift of God. For the law cannot be done by the flesh; and when it is not done, it punishes. What hope, then, has man of doing the law and escaping death, except the help and mercy of God, which faith finds? “The flesh is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God is in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.” He shows that the Spirit of God and of Christ is the same. He shows besides that whoever has had the Spirit of God is not in the flesh. If, then, the Spirit of God and of Christ is one, the prophets and saints, because they had the Spirit of God, had the Spirit of Christ. If they had the Spirit of God, they were not in the flesh, and they did the law: because the flesh is hostile to God and not subject to his law. So whoever fled to God received the Spirit of God; having received him, the flesh was put to death; and when it was put to death, he could do the law as a spiritual man, freed from the law, because it is not laid down for the righteous. And again: “If you are led by the Spirit of God, you are not under law.” Hence it is plain that our fathers, who had the Spirit of God, were not under law. For as long as anyone is in the flesh, that is, does not have the Spirit of God, the law rules over him. But if he gives himself up to grace, he dies to the law, and the Spirit does the law in him, the flesh being dead, which cannot be subject to the law of God. For what was done then is done now too: for it is not because we are not under law that that prohibition of covetousness has ceased, rather than been increased; but we run together into grace revealed, through faith, taught by the Lord to ask for the work of the law from his mercy and to say: “Your will be done,” and, “Deliver us from evil.” But they were driven into grace not yet revealed through the same faith by fear of death, which they saw threatened with a sword made ready by the law as its minister. The law was given until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and to preach faith. Before that, the law drove men into faith; as if without the law faith could not be pressed out to seek the grace of God, because sin would not have power. But once the law was given, the passions which are through the law were at work in our members, urging into sin, so that even by necessity they might be urged into faith, which would implore the grace of God for help in endurance. We suffered the custody of a prison, the law threatening death and surrounding us on every side with an insurmountable wall, in whose circuit there was only one door, grace. Over this door faith presided as keeper, so that no one might escape that prison except one to whom faith had opened; and whoever did not knock at this door would die within the enclosure of the law. We suffered the law as a tutor, to compel us to be zealous for faith, to compel us into Christ. For the Apostle says that the law was given for this, that by its custody it might shut us up into faith, inasmuch as it was to be revealed in Christ, who is the end of the law, by whom all have lived who sought the faith of the grace of God. “Before faith came,” he says, “we were kept under the law, shut up into the faith that was to be revealed. So the law was our tutor in Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The law, I say, was the revealer of faith. But someone will say: if the law was given for the benefit of faith, why not from the origin of the seed of Abraham, since that was continual? Truly it was continual. Continual too was faith, as mother of the sons of Abraham; continual too the law, through the knowledge of good and evil. But after the promise of the sons of Abraham, when they had multiplied according to the flesh, the seed of Abraham that is not of faith also had to be multiplied. This multiplication could not happen without the help of a multiplied law, so that the multitude might be led, even by necessity, into a faith not yet revealed, as has already been said. So by the providence of God, for the increasing and governing of the seed of Abraham, so that by the severity and fear of the law many might be compelled into faith and the seed be supported until the revelation of faith: “The law came in alongside, so that sin might be multiplied.” “Where,” he says, “sin was multiplied, grace superabounded.” He did not say “was born,” but “superabounded.” For from the beginning it was given to those fleeing the burdens and dominion of the law. It abounded when the law was multiplied; but it superabounded over all flesh when it was revealed in Christ, who, coming to restore what is in heaven and what is on earth, preached faith to those who are near and those who are far, that is, to the sinners of Israel and to the Gentiles. For the righteous of Israel were called from faith into the same faith. For the same Spirit, the same faith, the same grace has always been given through Christ. Coming, he bestowed its fullness on every nation, removing the veil of the law; and these differed from those to come in measure, not in kind. For the seed of Abraham never existed otherwise. And if anyone was justified apart from faith, he was not a son of Abraham. For he cannot be called a son of Abraham if he was justified by the law and not, like Abraham, by faith. For the Apostle teaches that the church passed from the same image of grace and spirit into the same, saying: “But we all, beholding the glory of God with unveiled face, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory.” He says that there was glory before the Lord’s passion too, and denies that it could be brought out, that is, expressed, produced, effected, by the law. Hence it is plain that it was from faith. “Where then,” he says, “is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.” “For what does Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” We have passed to glory from the same glory, which was not from the law. If it was from works, he has glory, but not before God. For it is impossible without the grace of God to have any glory. For glory is one, and has always been of one kind. For no one has conquered except one for whom God has conquered, which is not from the law but is his who has done it. But in faith God makes our adversary weak. Therefore, “let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” For if that we conquer is not ours, it is not from works but from faith. So there is nothing for us to boast of from ourselves. “For we have nothing that we have not received.” If we are, we are from God, “so that the greatness of the power may be of God and not from us.” All our work is faith; and as great as it has been, so much God works in us. Solomon boasts in this, that a man’s continence was not from man but from the gift of God: “When I knew,” he says, “that I could not otherwise be continent unless God gave it, and this itself was of wisdom, to know whose gift this was, I went to the Lord and besought him.” The judgment of Solomon must be believed: that all were justified not by works but by the grace of God, who knew that the work of the law must be fulfilled by God, so that they might be able to boast. But the Apostle says: “So that no flesh may boast in the sight of God.” The wicked by all means, because they did not know God; the righteous, because they are not their own work but God’s. “God chose,” he says, “the useless and the despised, the things that are not, so that the things that are might be brought to nothing, so that no flesh might boast in the sight of God. But from him you are in Christ Jesus, who was made for you wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; so that, as it is written: Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” And again: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone boast; for we are his workmanship, created in Christ.” So no flesh can ever be justified by the law, that is, by works, so that every righteous man might have glory from God. There is another reason that no one may boast in the sight of God: for God so works for his own that there is something he forgives them. “For no one is clean from filth, not even if his life is of one day.” And David says: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living will be justified in your sight.” And Solomon at the dedication of the temple: “There is no man,” he says, “who has not sinned.” And again: “Against you alone have I sinned.” “For who will boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who will boast that he is clean from sin?” It was too little to speak of a chaste heart, that is, from thoughts, unless also no one should boast that he is clean from sin. Every victory is granted not by works but by the compassion of God, as it is written: “Who crowns you with compassion and mercy.” And the mother of the martyrs says thus to her son: “That in that mercy I may receive you back with your brothers.” The righteous fulfilled the will of God by desire and effort, they who strive and long to serve God, yet not in the law. If the law had justified, all the righteous would be of one merit, because it demands equal observance from all; otherwise the curse would work. But if they were of unequal merit, did not each receive as much of the grace of the merciful God as he believed would be given him, being transformed from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of God, that is, from the same into the same? For it is the same thing that faith was given after Christ as that the Holy Spirit was, although all the prophets and righteous always lived by the same Spirit. For they could not live otherwise than by the Spirit of faith. For as many as were under the law were killed, because “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” And yet the Lord says of the same Spirit: “Unless I go away, he will not come,” though he had already given the same Spirit to the apostles. But the Apostle says that the same Spirit was among the ancients: “Having the same Spirit of faith, as it is written: I believed, therefore I have spoken.” He said that the one who said, “I believed, therefore I have spoken,” had the same Spirit of faith; and he confirms it, saying: “And we believe, and therefore we also speak.” By saying “we too,” he shows that they also believed by the same Spirit of faith. Hence it is plain that the righteous always had these things, not from the law but from the Spirit of faith. Whatever came through the Lord is the fullness, of which a part came through the same. As a little child, though he has nothing less than a man, is yet not a man, and through the growth not of new members but of the same, the fullness of the body comes into him, so that he is perfect, yet the same who was a little child. Truly, the Holy Spirit was not in all before the Lord’s passion, but in those who believed through him when he was present, so that, when he had conquered and accomplished all things, they might be sealed and perfected. For the righteous whom he found here had the Holy Spirit, like Simeon and Nathanael, and Zechariah, and Elizabeth, and Anna the widow, daughter of Phanuel. The promise is separated from the law; and since it is different, it cannot be mixed with it. A condition does not weaken a promise; but we are forced to speak of things that we cannot hear without the fire of grief. For some, who do not know the firmness of the promises and the transgression that is from the law, say that God indeed promised all the nations to Abraham, but with free will preserved, if they kept the law. And though it profits to lay open the dangers of the ignorance of some, for the salvation of the righteous, yet when we speak of God almighty we ought to moderate what is to be said, lest, considering what should be kept silent, we mention it, and from our mouth things are heard though they are another’s. So, speaking with trembling, let us leave his own dangers to each to consider. It is plain that God foreknew whether those whom he promised to Abraham would be such from free will, or would not be. It is one of two: if they would be, the question is ended; if they would not be, a faithful God would not promise. Or if it was established with God that he would give those promised only if those promised were willing, he would surely have said so, lest Abraham, his servant and believer, who believed that what he promised he was able also to do, be mocked. But that is a promise which incurs no condition; otherwise neither is the promise firm nor the faith whole. For what will remain stable in God’s promise or in Abraham’s faith, if what was promised and believed depended on the choice of those who were promised? Then God both promised what was another’s, and Abraham believed incautiously. Why too was the promise itself afterwards made a debt, when God said: “In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have heard my voice and have not spared your beloved son for my sake”? And not to speak of those to whom it is easy to make a clamour of calumny about free will even against Abraham’s merit, even after the death of Abraham himself God confirms that he is his debtor, and that for his sake he will do what he promised to his son, saying: “I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and to your seed I will give this land, and I will establish my oath which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give to you and to your seed all the nations of the earth, because Abraham your father heard my voice.” See, the debt to Abraham is confirmed. For he could not lose after death, through free will, what he had earned while alive; but suppose the nations had refused to believe. What will Abraham do, to whom it is owed? How will he receive the debt owed for his faith and his testing, of which he was sure that God was the debtor? If it had been said to him, “I will give what I promised and repay what I swore, if the nations are willing,” he would not believe, but would wait for chance. If a condition is needed, it must be with the worker, not with the wage. For the worker can be willing or unwilling to receive, but the wage cannot be paid or not paid. For all the nations were given to Abraham as the wage of faith, as God says: “Your wage is great.” For he did not promise if they would be, but because they would be. For it was not because of the faith of Abraham that it pleased God that all the nations would be saved, which he possessed not only before the faith of Abraham but before the foundation of the world. But he sought a faithful man to whom to give it, from whom would come one for whom he had decreed it would be. So Abraham did not merit that there should be those who were to be, whom God had chosen and foreseen would be conformed to the image of his Son. For in Genesis Scripture testifies that all the nations were promised to Abraham from the foreknowledge of God, saying: “But Abraham will surely become a great and numerous nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. For he knew that Abraham would command his sons and his house after him to keep the ways of the Lord, to do righteousness and judgment, so that God may bring upon Abraham all that he has spoken to him.” But we also find conditions, such as: “If you hear me and are willing.” Where is the foreknowledge of God, where the firmness of the promise in conditions of this kind? The Apostle also said that the promise was given from faith and not from the law for this reason, that the promise might be firm. “The law,” he says, “works wrath; for where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore it is from faith, that the promise may be firm by grace to all the seed.” Rightly, “that the promise may be firm.” For he added: by a condition it is not firm. For it is quite foolish to believe that what is said to the twofold body fits the whole body. Far be it that God should say “If you hear me” to those whom he knew would hear, whom before he made them he knew would persevere in the image of God, whom he also promised. A condition, that is, the law, is given only to the ungodly and sinners: so that they may either flee to grace or be punished more justly if they have made it void. Why the law for the righteous, for whom the law is not laid down, who with God’s favour do the law without the law, who serve, who live after the image and likeness of God and Christ, who are good willingly? For one who is under the law through fear of death is not such; he is not merciful, he is not the image of God. The law displeases him; but he fears it as avenger, and he cannot fulfil it, because he thinks it must be done not from desire but from necessity. He must be handed over to his own will, so that his will may surely receive its reward, because he did not join his soul to the will of God. What God willed displeases him. For he is bad in will who is good by necessity. The law is a hindrance to the deed, not to the will. He is not joined to God who would follow evil if there were no punishment for evil. Nor does he do the will of God who groans that he does not do his own. He is not merciful who fears to be cruel. He is under the law; he is a slave. He does not hate theft, but fears the penalty. And he who is carnal, under the power of sin, not having the Spirit of God, must steal, persuaded and conquered. But he who loves the good is the image of God, lives by the Lord’s faith, and is an heir; he is no longer the son of the slave woman, who received the law in fear, but of the free woman, like Isaac, who did not receive the spirit of slavery in fear but of the adoption of sons, crying, Abba, Father. He who loves God does not fear him as a slave. It is written: for servile fear goes with hatred of discipline, but sons’ fear with honour of the father. It is one thing to fear from the law, another from reverence for the dread majesty of God. Such are like their Father who is in heaven: reminded and taught, they love good and hate evil. They are without law, they are free, they are the ones promised: “If you hear me” is not said to them, for he can hear: will it fit one whom God has not yet foreseen as going to hear? And the righteous indeed, whom God foreknew, are in this law. “If you hear me” is said to them too, but for another reason: not because they can fail to hear, but so that they may always be anxious for their salvation and certain of their outcome. For no one is secure that he is of the number of the foreknown, as the Apostle says: “Lest I myself be rejected.” So for them this law is not a worker of wrath but an exercise of faith, by which they may continually seek the grace of God with labour, so that what God foresaw in them may be accomplished, and they may have been destined to life from free will. Otherwise it is impossible not to hear for one whom God foresaw, promised, and swore would hear. But to which part the law properly fits, though it is given to one body, the Lord declares in the Gospel, saying to the apostles: “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. I do not speak of you all: I know whom I have chosen.” Great is the brevity of one who shows one body and separates it. For if he had said, “I do not speak of you all,” or “I do not speak of all,” he would not show one body. But now, “I do not speak of all”: he shows that even if not of all, yet he spoke of them. As someone might say, “I did not speak of the whole of you”: for two bodies are mixed as one, and in common the one body is praised or rebuked. As in Exodus, when some, against the prohibition, went out on the Sabbath to gather manna, God said to Moses: “How long will you refuse to hear my law?” though Moses always heard. What do we say of that law which seems openly opposed to the promise? It is written in Isaiah: “If you had heard me, Israel, your number would be as the sand of the sea.” See, Israel is rebuked because by its own fault it did not become as the sand of the sea. It remains to understand that if it never hears, it will always be small. And where is the firmness of the promises? But this happens because we want to understand before we believe, and to subject faith to reason. But if we believe that it happens in every way as God swore, faith will give reason. How faithless it is to seek by reason! and we understand that the firmness of the promises is greater than we think their weakness. For this saying, “If Israel had heard,” is a reminder of the justice of God and a confirmation of the promises, that by the dispensation of God some are made for death, some for life. Therefore he said to those present, “If you had heard me,” so that it might be made plain that those whom he promised would be as the sand, he promised because he foresaw they would hear. For before the Lord Christ, when this was said, was the seed of Abraham ever as the sand of the sea? This is easy to prove. First, because he promised this multitude in Christ: “Not to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, which is Christ.” Then, because he promised all the nations, which could not happen before Christ. And if before the Lord the number of the sons of Israel was as the sand of the sea, it was with false brothers, who are not sons of Abraham. For not because all are from Abraham are all sons of Abraham, nor because they are Israel are all Israel. So the Apostle, when he wished himself accursed for Israel, to whom belonged the adoption of sons and the covenants, shows that they were not sons of Abraham of the kind meant, but grieves from the affection of fleshly kinship that they were not of that number; not that the promise of God had failed, saying: “But it is not that the word of God has failed. For not all who are from Israel are Israel, nor because they are the seed of Abraham are they all sons; but in Isaac your seed will be called: that is, it is not the sons of the flesh who are sons of God, but the sons of the promise are reckoned as seed.” So in the ancient multitude there was no seed of Abraham except those who, like Isaac, were sons of faith and promise. He brings in this example too: “If the number of the sons of Israel is as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved,” that is, a small part. And: “Unless the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we would have been like Sodom.” That very remnant was the seed of Abraham, so that the whole of Judaea should not be like Sodom. Again, when he was asserting that God never abandoned his inheritance, but that, as at the Lord’s coming a part of Israel was saved, so it had always been: “What,” he says, “does the divine answer say? I have left for myself seven thousand living men who have not bowed the knee before Baal. So now a remnant has been saved according to election.” By saying “so now, at this time,” he shows that before too it happened so in Israel, that a remnant, that is, a small part, was saved. But if neither faith nor reason persuades faith that it was said to one who had been promised, “If you had heard me, Israel, your number would be as the sand of the sea,” then also Jacob, who was given before he was born, was afterwards rejected by free will. As Hosea says: “The judgment of the Lord against Judah, to punish Jacob according to his ways, and according to his pursuits he will repay him; for in the womb he supplanted his brother, and in his labours he prevailed with God, and he prevailed with the angel, he became strong.” But if it is established that in Jacob he fulfilled the beloved, the one who prevailed with God in his labours and the supplanter are not the same, but two in one body. For it is a figure of the twofold seed of Abraham, that is, of two peoples struggling in the one womb of mother church. One is beloved according to election from foreknowledge; the other is wicked by the election of his own will. Jacob and Esau are in one body, from one seed. But that two were plainly begotten is a showing of two peoples. And lest anyone think that the two peoples would be so plainly separated, it was shown that both would be in one body in Jacob, who was both called beloved and portrayed as the supplanter of his brother. So in the two the quantity of separation was expressed, not its quality. Moreover, both who were separated were shown as going to be in one before they were divided. And Isaac says: “Your brother came with deceit and took your blessing.” Unless the speech is mystical, briefly showing two in one body, is it not against reason that he received the blessing deceitfully against his neighbour, when Scripture says: “He who has not sworn deceitfully to his neighbour, he will receive blessing from the Lord”? But Jacob, that is, the church, never came to the blessing without deceit accompanying him, that is, false brothers. But not because innocence and deceit come together to the blessing are they blessed together: because let him who can receive it, receive it, and one seed yields according to the quality of the soil. Nor is it contrary that he seems to have supplanted the evil one of the brothers, for he did not say, “In the womb he supplanted Esau,” but “his brother.” Esau is everywhere a sign and a name of the wicked; Jacob of both: for this reason, that the evil part pretends to be Jacob, and without doubt under one name; but the good part cannot pretend to be Esau. That name belongs to the wicked alone; this one is twofold. Moreover, as to free will, neither is all the seed of Jacob good nor all that of Esau evil, but from each come both. From Abraham the seed was shown twofold in this way. One was born of the slave woman as a figure, so that it might be shown that slaves too would come from Abraham, and he departed with his mother. But after he departed, he was found in the seed of the other, which is from the free woman, which is from Israel, who received the law on Mount Sinai, which is Hagar, bearing into slavery. There, in the same people, like Isaac, from the free woman, sons of promise, that is, many holy and faithful, were begotten. So, the figures of Israel and Esau being separated from the believers, the whole afterwards came forth in one people. There from the origin were both covenants, Hagar and Isaac; but for a time the one lay hidden, and lies hidden, under the name of the other, because even with the new revealed the old does not cease to beget. So he did not say “Hagar, who bore into slavery.” But both must grow together until the harvest. As, then, under the profession of the Old Testament there lay hidden the New, that is, grace, which like Isaac would beget sons of promise from the free woman, which was revealed in Christ, so now too, while the new prevails, there is no lack of sons of slavery, Hagar begetting, which will be revealed in Christ. The Apostle confirms that this goes on now among brothers as it went on then among those, saying: “But you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted the spiritual, so it is now.” And he necessarily added: “But what does Scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman will not be heir with the son of the free woman.” And what he said, “as then he persecuted, so now,” is not empty. For the Apostle interpreted “persecuted”; for Scripture says: “Ishmael was playing with Isaac.” Did the brothers who preached circumcision to the Galatians pursue them openly, and not by play, that is, without any sign of persecution? So as he called the persecutor from the kind of playing, so too these, who would separate the sons of God from Christ as if for a common good, that is, the discipline of the law, and fight for sons for their mother Hagar. For there is no other reason why the sons of the devil creep in to spy out our freedom, and pretend to be brothers, and play in our paradise as if sons of God, than that they may boast of the subjugated freedom of the sons of God: they who will bear judgment, whoever they may be, who have persecuted every saint, who killed the prophets, who always resisted the Holy Spirit; enemies of the cross of Christ, denying Christ in the flesh while they hate his members; the body of sin, sons of destruction, the ministry of crime, who come according to the working of Satan in all power, with signs and wonders, spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places: whom the Lord Christ, whom they persecute in the flesh, will kill with the spirit of his mouth and destroy by the manifestation of his coming. For it is the time that these things should be said not in mysteries but openly, since the departure is imminent, which is the revelation of the man of sin, as Lot departs from Sodom.