Book of Rules

I thought it necessary, before all the other things that seem right to me, to write a little book of Rules, and to fashion, as it were, keys and lamps for the laws of the hidden things. For there are certain mystical rules which hold the recesses of the whole law and make the treasures of the truth invisible to some. If the reasoning of these rules is received without envy, as we share it, whatever is shut will be opened, and whatever is obscure will be made clear, so that one who walks through the whole forest of prophecy, guided by these rules as by paths of light, may be defended from error. These are the rules: 1. On the Lord and his body. 2. On the twofold body of the Lord. 3. On the promises and the law. 4. On species and genus. 5. On times. 6. On recapitulation. 7. On the devil and his body.

Scripture speaks of the Lord and of his body, that is, the church; reason alone distinguishes them, by persuading what fits each, or rather, because the force of truth is so great, by compelling it. Elsewhere one person is addressed whom the different offices of the two show to be twofold. So through Isaiah: “He,” it says, “bears our sins and grieves for us, and he was wounded because of our crimes. God handed him over for our sins,” and so on, which the mouth of the whole church celebrates as fitting the Lord. But it goes on and says of the same: “And God wills to cleanse him from the stroke, and God wills to take away from his pain, to show him light, and to form him with understanding.” Does he wish to show light and to form with understanding the one whom he handed over for our sins, since he himself is the light and wisdom of God, and not rather his body? So it is plain that only by reason can it be seen when the passage moves from the head to the body. Daniel too says that a stone cut from the mountain struck the body of the kingdoms of the world and ground it to dust, meaning the Lord; but that his body became a mountain and filled the whole earth. For it is not, as some say, to the insult of the kingdom of God and of Christ’s unconquered inheritance (which I do not say without grief), that the Lord occupied the whole world by power and not by the fullness of his body. For they say that the world was filled by that mountain in the sense that a Christian may offer sacrifice in every place, which before was permitted only in Zion. If this is so, there was no need to say that a mountain was made from the stone and began to fill the world by growth. For our Lord Christ had this glory before the foundation of the world; and since that man was the Son of God, he did not receive all power in heaven and on earth gradually, like the stone, but at one time. But the stone became a mountain by growth, and by growing covered the whole earth. If it had filled the whole earth by power, not by body, it would not be compared with a stone. For power is an intangible thing, but a stone is a tangible body. Nor is it shown by reason alone that the body, not the head, grows; it is also confirmed by apostolic authority: “That you may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, built up and joined together through every joint of supply, according to the measure of each part, makes the growth of the body for its own building up.” And again: “You do not hold the head, from which the whole body, built up and supplied through joints and bands, grows with the growth of God.” So it is not the head, which is the same from its origin, but the body that grows from the head. Let us return to our purpose. It is written of the Lord and of his body, and what fits each must be distinguished by reason: “He has commanded his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways; they will bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon. Because he has hoped in me, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he has known my name. He called upon me, and I will hear him; I am with him in tribulation; I will deliver him and glorify him. With length of days I will fill him, and I will show him my salvation.” Does God show his salvation to the same one whose service he commanded to his angels, and not to his body? Again: “As on a bridegroom he set a mitre on me, and as a bride he adorned me with ornament.” He spoke of one body of both sexes, of bridegroom and bride; but what fits the Lord and what the church is known by reason. And the same Lord says in the Apocalypse: “I am the bridegroom and the bride.” And again: “They went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride.” And again, what is to be distinguished by reason for head and body is declared through Isaiah: “Thus says the Lord to Christ my Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may obey him.” It goes on and says what fits only the body: “And I will give you hidden treasures, and I will open invisible ones to you, that you may know that I am the Lord who calls your name, the God of Israel, for the sake of Jacob my servant and Israel my chosen.” For because of the covenant that he made with the fathers, so that he may be known, God opens to the body of Christ invisible treasures, which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man, not even of the stopped-up man who is not in the body of Christ; but to the church God has revealed these things through the Holy Spirit, though this belongs to the grace of God. Yet when reason is applied, they are sometimes seen more easily. There are other passages in which reason of this kind is less clear, because the saying fits rightly either the Lord or his body. These, therefore, can be seen only by the greater grace of God. So in the Gospel: “From now on,” he says, “you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God and coming on the clouds of heaven.” In another place he says that they will not see him coming on the clouds of heaven except on the last day only, when all the tribes of the earth mourn: “And then they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.” Both must happen. But first is the coming of the body, that is, of the church, coming continually in the same invisible glory; then of the head, that is, of the Lord in manifest glory. For if he had said, “From now on you will see him coming,” it would have to be understood of the coming of the body alone; if, however, “you will see,” of the coming of the head. But now he says, “From now on you will see him coming,” since he comes continually in his body, by birth and by the glory of like sufferings. For if those who are reborn are made members of Christ, and the members make the body, it is Christ who comes, since birth is a coming, as it is written: “He enlightens every man coming into this world.” And again: “A generation goes, and a generation comes.” And again: “As you have heard that Antichrist is coming.” Again, of the same body: “For if he who comes preaches another Christ.” Hence the Lord, when he was asked about the sign of his coming, began to speak of that coming of his which can be imitated by the hostile body with signs and wonders: “Beware,” he said, “that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name,” that is, in the name of my body. But at the last coming of the Lord, that is, the consummation of his whole coming, no one, as some think, would die. But so that these things may be said more fully, let us leave them to their own order. Nor will it be absurd that we wish the whole body to be understood from one, as the Son of Man means the church; since the church, that is, the sons of God gathered into one body, are called the Son of God, called one man, called even God, as through the Apostle: “Above all that is called God or that is worshipped.” What is called God is the church; what is worshipped is the supreme God: “so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God,” that is, that he is the church. As if he said: “He sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is the temple of God”; or: “He sits in God, showing himself that he is God.” But, as we know, Daniel wished to obscure this understanding no less, concerning the last king: “Against the Lord,” he says, “his place will be glorified”: that is, made glorious; as if he had set up the church in the place of the church, in the holy place, the abomination of desolation, against God, that is, against the church. And the Lord calls the whole people bride and sister; and the Apostle calls it a holy virgin, and the opposing body the man of sin. And David calls the whole, Christ, the church: “Showing mercy to his Christ, David, and to his seed for ever.” And the apostle Paul calls the body of Christ Christ: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of one body, though many, are one body, so also Christ,” that is, the body of Christ, which is the church. Again: “I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I fill up what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ,” that is, of the church. For nothing was lacking to the sufferings of Christ, since it is enough for the disciple to be like his master. So, then, we shall take the coming of Christ according to the passages. Likewise in Exodus we learn that all the sons of God are one son, and all the firstborn of the Egyptians are a firstborn, as God says: “You shall say to Pharaoh: Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you: Let my people go, that they may serve me. But you would not let them go. Therefore behold, I will kill your firstborn son.” And David calls the vine of the Lord one son, saying: “God of hosts, turn; look down from heaven and see, and visit this vine, and perfect it, which your right hand has planted, and upon the son of man whom you have strengthened for yourself.” And the Apostle calls Son of God the one who has been mingled with the Son of God: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord.” If he had said, “concerning his Son, as by the resurrection of the dead,” he would have shown one Son; but now he says, “concerning his Son … by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord.” But he shows more openly who was made Son of God by the resurrection of Christ: “concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God.” For our Lord was not predestined Son of God, since he is God and coequal with the Father, who from the time he was created, is this. But he to whom he says at the baptism, according to Luke, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”: he who, of the seed of David, was mingled with the princely Spirit and was himself made Son of God by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ: that is, when the seed of David rises in Christ; not he of whom David himself says: “Thus says the Lord to my Lord.” So the two have become one flesh: the Word was made flesh, and the flesh God; because we are born not of blood but of God. The Apostle says: “The two will be in one flesh. This mystery is great; but I say, in Christ and in the church.” For God promised one seed to Abraham, so that however many were mingled with Christ might be one in Christ, as the Apostle says: “You are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are one in Christ Jesus, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.” But there is a difference between “you are one thing” and “you are one man.” Whenever one is mingled with another by will, they are one thing; as the Lord says: “I and the Father are one.” But whenever they are mingled bodily too, and two are made solid into one flesh, they are one body. So in his head he is the Son of God; and God in his body is the Son of Man, who comes daily by being born and grows into the holy temple of God. For the temple is twofold. One part of it, though it is built with great stones, is destroyed, and not one stone will be left upon another in it. Its continual coming we must beware of, until the church departs from its midst.

The rule of the twofold body of the Lord is much more necessary, and must be examined by us the more carefully, and kept before our eyes through all the Scriptures. For as, as was said above, the passage from the head to the body is seen by reason alone, so the return from part of the body to part, from right to left or from left to right, is clear in the heading mentioned above. For when he says to one body, “I will open invisible treasures to you, that you may know that I am God, and I will take you up,” he added: “But you have not known me, for I am God, and there is no other God besides me, and you did not know me.” Although he addresses one body, does “I will open invisible treasures to you, that you may know that I am God, for the sake of my servant Jacob” fit one mind together with “And you have not known me”? In the same passage: and Jacob did not receive what God promised. Or do “You have not known me” and “You did not know me” fit one mind? For “you did not know” is said only to one who already knows; but “you have not known” is said to one who, though he was called to know, and visibly belongs to the same body, and draws near to God with his lips, is yet separated in heart. To this one he says, “But you have not known me.” Again: “I will lead the blind into a way that they did not know, and they will tread paths that they had not known; and I will make darkness light for them, and crooked things straight. These words I will do, and I will not forsake them. But they have turned back.” Are those whom he said he will not forsake the same who turned back, and not a part of them? Again the Lord says to Jacob: “Do not fear, for I am with you. From the east I will bring your seed, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Give; and to the south, Do not hold back. Bring my sons from a far land, and my daughters from the end of the earth, and all on whom my name is called. For I prepared him for my glory, and I formed him and made him; and I brought out a blind people, and their eyes are likewise blind, and they have deaf ears.” Are those whom he prepared for his glory the same who are blind and deaf? Again: “Your fathers first, their princes committed crime against me, and your princes defiled my holy things, and I gave Jacob to perish and Israel to a curse. Now hear me, Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen.” He shows that he gave to perish the Jacob, and to a curse the Israel, whom he had not chosen. Again: “I have formed you, my servant; you are mine, Israel; do not forget me. For behold, I have blotted out your crimes like a cloud and your sins like a rain cloud. Turn to me, and I will redeem you.” Does he remind the very one whose sins he blotted out, to whom he says, “You are mine,” and not to forget him, and say to him, “Turn to me”? Or are anyone’s sins blotted out before he turns? Again: “I know that being rejected you will be rejected: for the sake of my name I will show you my dignity and bring my glorious things upon you.” Does he show his dignity to one rejected, and bring his glorious things upon him? Again: “Not an elder, not an angel, but he himself considered them because he loved them and would spare them. He himself redeemed them, and took them up, and exalted them all the days of the age. But they were rebellious and provoked the Holy Spirit.” Those whom he exalted all the days of the age, at what time were they rebellious or did they provoke the Holy Spirit? Again God openly promises to one body both firmness and destruction, saying: “Jerusalem, a rich city, tents that will not be moved, nor will the stakes of your tent be shaken for ever, nor its cords be broken.” And he added: “Your cords are broken, because the mast of your ship did not hold firm; your sails have sagged, and it will not raise the signal until it is handed over to destruction.” Again he shows briefly the twofold body of Christ: “I am dark and beautiful.” For far be it that the church, which has no spot or wrinkle, which the Lord cleansed by his blood, should be dark in any part, except in the left part, through which the name of God is blasphemed among the nations; otherwise it is wholly beautiful, as he says: “You are wholly beautiful, my love, and there is no blemish in you.” For he says for what reason it is dark and beautiful: “as the tents of Kedar and the skins of Solomon.” He shows two tents, the royal and the servile. Yet both are the seed of Abraham; for Kedar is the son of Ishmael. Indeed in another place the church groans at its long dwelling with this Kedar, that is, with the slave from Abraham, saying: “Woe is me, that my sojourning has been prolonged: I have dwelt with the tents of Kedar; my soul has long been a sojourner. With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause.” But I cannot say that the tent of Kedar is outside the church. For he himself says, “the tent of Kedar and of Solomon”: hence, “I am dark,” it says, “and beautiful.” For the church is not dark in those who are outside. By this mystery the Lord in the Apocalypse speaks of seven angels, that is, the sevenfold church, and shows them now as holy and keepers of the commandments, now the same as guilty of many crimes and needing repentance. And in the Gospel he shows one body of overseers of different merit, saying: “Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, finds so doing.” And of the same: “But if that wicked servant …,” whom the Lord divides into two parts. I ask: will he divide or split the whole? Indeed, not the whole: he will put a part of him with the hypocrites. For he shows the body in one. So this body must be understood through all the Scriptures, wherever God says that Israel will perish for its desert, or that his inheritance is accursed. For the Apostle argues at length, especially in Romans, that whatever is said of the whole body must be understood of a part. “To Israel,” he says, “he says: All day long I have stretched out my hands to a contradicting people.” And to show that it was said of a part: “I say,” he says, “has God rejected his people? Far from it. For I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” And after he had taught how this way of speaking was to be understood, he showed by the same kind of speech that one body is both good and bad, saying: “According to the gospel they are enemies for your sake; but according to election they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.” Are the same beloved who are enemies, or can both fit in one case? So the Lord in all the Scriptures. He testifies that one body of the seed of Abraham grows and flourishes and perishes among all the nations.

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.

We speak of species and genus, not according to the rhetorical power of human wisdom, by which he who was able beyond all others did not speak, lest he make the cross of Christ void if it had needed, like falsehood, the help and ornament of speech; but we speak according to the mysteries of heavenly wisdom under the teaching of the Holy Spirit. He, having set faith as the price of the truth of the mystery, narrated hiding the genus in the species: as in the old Jerusalem he took up the whole church that is now throughout the world, or in one member the whole body, as in Solomon. But this is no less hidden than the rest, which are concealed not only by the species of the word but also by a manifold narrative. Therefore, having asked the help of God’s grace, we must labour so that the spirit may multiply the entrances of reading, and so that the subtle speech which, to hinder understanding, inserts the genus into the species or the species into the genus, may easily be seen to be genus or species. For while it narrates the species, it passes into the genus in such a way that the passage does not at once appear clearly; but in passing it sets down words that fit both, until gradually it exceeds the measure of the species, and the passage becomes clear when what began from the species fits only the genus; and in the same way it leaves the genus, returning to the species. Sometimes, however, it returns from species to genus not in the way described. Sometimes it passes in the way described and returns plainly with a like variety of order: it ends the narrative either from species into genus or from genus into species. Sometimes it goes back from this to that more than once; and the whole narrative neither exceeds the species nor passes over the genus, fitting both. This variety of transfer and order demands faith, which seeks the grace of God. So the Lord speaks through Ezekiel, and joins to the kings of those who had been captured and scattered from Jerusalem the coming of the nations, and in the land which our fathers possessed he expresses the world. For the seven nations promised to Abraham are a figure of all the nations. “The word of the Lord came to me,” it says, “saying: Son of man, the house of Israel dwelt in the land and defiled it by their way and by their idols and sins; their way before my face became like the uncleanness of a menstruous woman. And I poured out my wrath upon them, and scattered them among the nations into which they went, and they defiled my holy name there, when they themselves said: These are the people of the Lord, and they have gone out of your land. And I spared them for the sake of your holy name, which the house of Israel defiled among the nations into which they went there. Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord: I do not do this for you, house of Israel, but for the sake of the holy name which you defiled among the nations in whose midst you went.” There it begins to join the genus: “And I will sanctify my name, that great holy name which has been defiled among the nations, which you defiled in their midst; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, when I am sanctified in you before their eyes; and I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all lands, and bring you into your land.” It plainly exceeds the species: “And I will sprinkle you with clean water, and you will be cleansed from all your idols, and I will cleanse you; and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my Spirit within you, and make you walk in my statutes and keep my judgments and do them. And you will dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you will be my people, and I will be your God; and I will cleanse you from all your uncleannesses.” It touches the species, yet without leaving the genus: “And I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring famine upon you; and I will multiply the fruit of the tree and what grows in the field, so that you will no longer receive the reproach of famine among the nations. And you will remember your evil ways and your thoughts that were not good, and you will loathe them before their face for your iniquities and their abominations. Not for your sake do I do this, says the Lord; be it known to you; be ashamed and turn from your ways, house of Israel. Thus says Adonai the Lord: On the day when I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will also make the cities to be inhabited; and the land of Judah, which had been laid waste by wars, will be tilled, because it was desolate in the sight of everyone who passed by. And they will say: That land which had been desolate has become like a garden of delights, and the cities that were deserted and desolate and demolished are fortified and inhabited. And the nations that are left round about you will know that I am the Lord: I have built up what was demolished and planted what was desolate; for I the Lord have spoken and done it.” The Apostle too interprets the entering of the nations as promised in the entry of Jacob, saying: “Until the fullness of the nations comes in, and so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: The deliverer will come from Zion and will take away ungodliness from Jacob.” And by the same kind of speech he returns to the species, saying: “According to the gospel they are enemies for your sake.” Likewise in Ezekiel he begins from the species, in a way that fits the genus too, and ends in the genus alone, showing that the land of the fathers is the possession of the world: “Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will take the whole house of Israel from the midst of the nations into which they went there, and I will gather them from all who are round about them, and bring them into the land of Israel; and one prince will be over them. And they will no longer be two nations, nor be divided any more into two kingdoms, lest they still be defiled by their idols. And I will deliver them from all their iniquities by which they sinned in them, and I will cleanse them, and they will be my people, and I the Lord will be their God.” It plainly passes into the genus: “And my servant David will be prince in their midst, one shepherd of all, who will walk in my commandments and keep my judgments and do them; and they will dwell in their land, which I gave to my servant Jacob, where their fathers dwelt; and they themselves will dwell in it, and David my servant their prince for ever. And I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will put my holy things in their midst for ever, and my dwelling will be among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them, while the holy things are in their midst, says the Lord.” Thus there he inserts the coming of the nations into the departure from the dispersion of Israel. It is shown that the desert was a figure of the people of the desert, in which the church now is; and that the same wicked, although they are called back with the people of God from the nations into the land of Israel, yet are not in the land. “As I live, says the Lord, if I answer you, and if this comes up into your heart, it will not be as you say: We will be like the nations and like the tribes of the earth, to serve wood and stones. As I live, says the Lord, with a strong hand and a raised arm and with wrath poured out I will reign over you; and I will bring you out from the peoples and receive you from the regions in which you are scattered, with a strong hand and a raised arm and with wrath poured out; and I will bring you into the desert of the peoples, and I will plead with you face to face. As I pleaded with your fathers in the desert of the land of Egypt, so I will judge you, says the Lord; and I will bring you under my rod, and bring you in by number; and I will pick out from you the ungodly and the deserters; for I will bring them out from their sojourning, and they will not enter the land of Israel; and you will know that I am the Lord.” Likewise to that captivity of the mountains of Israel God promises fruitfulness and the multiplication of peoples to the end: “Because,” it says, “they have given your land to themselves as a possession with joy, dishonouring souls, and have laid it waste for plunder: therefore prophesy over the land of Israel, and say to the mountains and the hills, to the streams and the groves: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I have spoken in my zeal and in my wrath, because you bear the reproach of the nations. Behold, I will lift up my hand against the nations that are round about you; they will receive their own reproach. But you, mountains of Israel, my people, who are about to come, will eat your grapes and your fruit. For behold, I am for you, and you will be tilled and sown; and I will multiply upon you the whole house of Israel to the end, and the cities will be inhabited, and what was desolate will be built.” Likewise there, as if in the last resurrection, the first is signified: “He spoke to me,” it says, “saying: Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say: Our bones are dried up, our hope has perished, we have breathed our last. Therefore prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will open your tombs and bring you out of your tombs, and bring you into the land of Israel; and you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring my people out of the tombs; and I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live; and I will set you upon your land, and you will know that I am the Lord.” Is it plain that we shall know the Lord when we have risen, and not now, when we rise through baptism? Or will the dead be able to say, “Our bones are dried up,” so that we may rightly believe this was promised to the dead? For God has opened what the mystery is, lest it come into doubt; for we believe that no Christian doubts the last resurrection of the flesh. And the Lord according to John shows these resurrections, saying: “Truly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but passes from death to life. Truly I tell you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself; and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” He joins the last resurrection: “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” First he said: the dead who hear will live; second: all who are in the tombs will come out. Likewise, that the whole body is signified in one man, God promises David in the book of Kings, saying of Solomon: “I will raise up his kingdom; he will build me a house.” These things fit; but it exceeds the species, saying: “And I will establish his throne for ever.” Likewise for both: “I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. And if his injustice comes, I will rebuke him with the rod of men and with the strokes of the sons of men; but my mercy I will not take away from him, as I took it from those whom I removed from my sight; and his house will be made faithful.” Again it exceeds the species: “and his kingdom for ever in my sight, and his throne will be established for ever.” But what seems, in the exceeding of the species, to promise the throne of Christ for ever, promises the throne of the son of man, and so of the body of Christ, that is, of the church. For it was not for the sake of David that God promised that Christ would reign, to whom before the foundation of the world he promised this glory. And through Isaiah God says thus to Christ: “This will be a great thing for you, that you should be called my servant, and raise up the tribes of Jacob, and turn back the dispersion of Israel. Behold, I have set you as a covenant of the race, as a light of the nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.” What greater thing for the Son of God than to be called “my servant,” and to turn back the dispersion of Israel, or that through him Israel itself, and heaven and earth, and the things in them visible and invisible, were made? But he said it was a great thing for him who was mingled with the Son of God from the seed of David. For every promise to Abraham and David is this: that their seed should be shown mercy by him to whom all things belong, and should be co-heir for ever; not that Christ, who was made king of all by the Father, should reign for their sake. What do we say of Solomon? Is he with God, or was he rejected after his idolatry? If we say he is with God, we shall promise impunity to the worshippers of idols. For Scripture does not say that Solomon repented or recovered wisdom. But if we say he was rejected, the voice of God meets us, which says that not even the earthly kingdom would be taken from Solomon, for David’s sake, as it is written in the book of Kings: “I will surely tear the kingdom from your hand and give it to your servant. But in your days I will not do it, for the sake of David your father; from the hand of your son I will take it. Yet I will not take the whole kingdom; I will give one sceptre to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen.” For what does it profit David, if for his sake his son obtained the kingdom of earth, only to lose that of heaven? From which it is plain that Solomon is with God, from whom the kingdom of earth was not taken because of David, as he had said: “I will rebuke his sins with the rod of men, but my mercy I will not take away from him.” But if he was neither rejected nor do worshippers of idols possess the kingdom of God, it is plain that Solomon was a figure of the twofold church, whose breadth of heart and wisdom were like the sand of the sea, and his idolatry horrible. “I will surely tear,” he says, “your kingdom from your hand; but in your days I will not do it; from the hand of your son I will take it.” “I will surely tear” belongs to continual action, as “blessing I will bless, and multiplying I will multiply your seed.” For he shows that Solomon will always be in his son, that is, in his descendants; from whom, in the times after Solomon, God does not take away the kingdom, according to the promises to the fathers, but corrects it for ever, so as to take it away continually according to the idolatry of Solomon persevering in his sin. Otherwise, how does he tear or not tear from the hand of Solomon, if Solomon is not now in his sons, good or bad? But what he says, “Yet I do not take the whole kingdom,” returns to the species, beginning another figure in Solomon’s son and servant. In Joshua son of Nun too the Lord speaks thus, showing that a body would be in one man, but in this place only the evil: “The people has sinned,” he says, “and transgressed the covenant that I made with them; they have stolen from the devoted things and put it among their goods”; though Achar of the tribe of Judah alone had done it. Understanding that this body would always exist, Joshua said, as he was killing him: “May God destroy you, as also today.” But this is much more necessary to know: that absolutely all the cities of Israel and of the nations, or the provinces which Scripture addresses, or in which it reports something done, are a figure of the church: some of the evil part only, some of the good, some of both. And if there are some things that seem to fit even the nations who are outside, yet the whole adverse body is addressed in the part that is within, as in captive Israel a return to God is promised to the nations. For it is impossible for the law to speak to one who is not in the law, to speak of him, yet not to him; and if anywhere, without this occasion, it addresses foreigners not specifically in Israel, they must by all means be believed to be within; since, even if what was prophesied happened specifically, it is still the church. In short, the proper sense does not fit all the species. For Damascus and Tyre and Soor and many others still exist, which God had said would be utterly removed and not restored. But that the church is addressed in foreign cities is plain in Ezekiel, who, when the Lord told him to foretell destruction on Teman, which is Esau, and on Dagon, which is the idol of the Philistines, understood that it was a parable against Jerusalem and the temple. “The word of the Lord came to me,” he says, “saying: Son of man, set your face against Teman, look toward Dagon, prophesy against the high forest of the Negeb: Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will kindle a fire in you, and it will devour every green tree and every dry tree in you. The kindled flame will not be quenched, and every face from the east to the north will be burned in it, so that all flesh may know that I the Lord have kindled it; it will not be quenched any more. And I said: No, Lord; they say to me: Is not this a parable that is being spoken? And the word of the Lord came to me,” he says, “saying: Therefore, son of man, prophesy and set your face toward Jerusalem, looking at their holy places, and prophesy against the land of Israel. Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will draw my sword from its sheath and destroy from you the enemy and the unjust. So my sword will go out from its sheath against all flesh from the east to the north, and all flesh will know that I am the Lord, who have drawn my sword from its sheath; it will not go back again.” “Set your face,” he says, “against Teman, and look toward Dagon.” And he interpreted it, saying: “Set your face toward Jerusalem, and look at their holy places.” And he points it against all Jerusalem, saying: “I will destroy from you the enemy and the unjust.” So he says it will happen generally: “So my sword will go out against all flesh from the east to the north.” He shows that in Jerusalem are Teman, which God kills there, and Dagon, and all the abominations of the nations, Solomon son of David working in his sons; by whom too the temples of God were plainly thrown down and demolished, and, spiritually burned, cast into the brook, that is, the world, by Josiah, who is born son of David, so that the altar in Bethel might be broken, as it is written: “Altar, altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a son will be born of the house of David, Josiah by name.” Nineveh, a city of foreigners, is a figure of the twofold church. But since it would take long to follow the order of the readings in interpreting, it will be enough to speak of what cannot fit the species. “Nineveh,” it says, “was a great city”: so much so that, though it was hostile to God, as the metropolis of the Assyrians, which both destroyed Samaria and always oppressed all Judaea, yet, as a figure of the church, at the preaching of Jonah, that is, of Christ, it was wholly set free. The same Nineveh is described by the following prophet as wholly to perish, to which the Lord, preaching, says: “It is the sign of Jonah in the belly of the whale.” And so that the prophet himself might show that that city is not the specific one, he inserts some things that exceed the measure of the species: “There was no end,” he says, “to its nations,” though it was a city of one nation. And again: “You have multiplied your trading above the stars of heaven,” that is, the church. And again: “On whom has not your wickedness always come?” Could the wickedness of one city have come upon every man, or always, except that of the city which Cain founded with his brother’s blood in the name of his son, that is, of his posterity? The prophet teaches still more plainly that Nineveh is the church: “And he will stretch out his hand toward the north” (that is, the people estranged from the sun, against the south) “and destroy the Assyrian.” And this: “Nineveh, a desolation without water in the desert; and flocks will feed in its midst, all the beasts of the earth, and chameleons, and he-goats will lie in its panelled ceilings, and beasts will give voice in its ditches, and ravens in its gates, because the cedar is its height: the scornful city that dwells in hope, which says in its heart: I am, and there is none after me.” And further: “How has it become a desolation, a pasture of beasts? Everyone who passes by it will hiss and shake his hands. O illustrious and redeemed city, the dove that heard the voice, did not receive discipline, did not trust in the Lord, and did not draw near to its Lord. Its princes in it are like roaring lions; its judges like wolves of Arabia, leaving nothing in the morning. Its prophets are lifted up in spirit, scornful men; its priests profane the holy things and do violence to the law; but the Lord is just in its midst and will not do injustice.” Egypt likewise is twofold. “Behold,” it says, “the Lord sits upon a light cloud and comes into Egypt.” The cloud is the spiritual body after baptism and the glory of the Son of Man; for the first coming of the Lord is of one coming continually in his body, as he says: “From now on you will see him coming on the clouds of heaven.” “And the works of the hands of Egypt will be shattered before his face, and their heart will be weakened in them; and Egyptians will rise against Egyptians, and a man will fight his brother and a man his neighbour, and city will fight against city, and nation will rise against nation,” that is, Egypt against Egypt, “and law against law,” namely by difference of meaning under one law; “and the spirit of the Egyptians will be troubled within them, and I will scatter their thoughts.” And after mixing now species with genus, now genus with species, he added, saying: “On that day there will be an altar of the Lord in the region of the Egyptians, and pillars to the Lord at its borders; and it will be a sign for ever to the Lord in the region of the Egyptians.” He did not say: there may be an altar at the borders of Egypt for ever; but: there will be. Ezekiel shows more plainly that the whole world is Egypt, saying: “O the day! for the day of the Lord is near, a day of cloud; it will be the end of the nations; and a sword will come upon the Egyptians.” And he joins the species: “And there will be tumult in Ethiopia, and the wounded will fall in Egypt, and its foundations will fall, the Persians and Cretans and Lydians and all the mixed peoples; and the sons of my covenant will fall by the sword in it with them.” This happened when after the destruction they went down into Egypt and were killed there by Nebuchadnezzar according to the prophecy of Jeremiah. But it will also happen generally on the last day, when the sons of the covenant fall with the Egyptians, living in the manner of the Egyptians. Likewise through Ezekiel God threatens the king of the Egyptians and his multitude, because they were terrible to the saints, though reckoned among the circumcised: which fits only those who flatter themselves with circumcision, that is, with the sacraments. “Because therefore he gave his terror upon the land of life, Pharaoh will sleep in the midst of the uncircumcised, wounded by the sword, and all his multitude with him, says the Lord.” And there from genus to species: “Thus says the Lord: I will throw you down upon the land of many peoples, and draw you out with my hook, and stretch you out upon the plains; and I will set upon you all the birds of heaven, and I will fill all the beasts of the whole earth; and I will put your flesh upon the mountains, and fill the hills with your blood; and the land will be watered with what comes out of you; with your multitude on the mountains I will fill the brambles from you; and I will cover the heaven when you are extinguished, and darken its stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All that shine with light in heaven will be darkened, and I will put darkness upon your land, says the Lord.” He joins the species: “And I will provoke the heart of many peoples, when I lead your captivity among the nations, into a land you did not know.” It exceeds the species: “And many nations will be grieved over you, and their kings will be stupefied with alienation of mind, when my sword flies over their faces; in their midst it will be for ruin from the day of your ruin.” It returns to the species: “For thus says the Lord: The sword of the king of Babylon has come upon you, with the swords of giants, and I will cast down your strength, pestilences from the nations all of them; and they will pay back the insult of Egypt, and all its strength will be crushed.” Into the genus: “And I will destroy all the cattle beside much water, and the foot of man will not trouble it any more, nor the hoof of cattle tread it. Then their waters will rest, and their rivers will run like oil, says the Lord.” Species: “And I will give Egypt to destruction, and the land with its fullness will be made desolate, and I will scatter all who dwell in it.” Genus: “And they will know that I am the Lord.” “I will cover,” he says, “the heaven when you are extinguished, and darken its stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All that shine with light in heaven will be darkened over you, and I will put darkness upon your land.” At the Lord’s passion there was darkness not in the land of Egypt only, but in the whole world. Nor, when Egypt was captured, were the nations stupefied, expecting their own ruin from the day of its ruin. For of Soor too it is written thus: “Thus says the Lord to Soor: Will not the islands be shaken at the day of your ruin, at the groaning of the wounded, while they are slain by the sword in your midst? And all the princes of the sea will come down from their seats, and take off their mitres and the garments of their gold; they will strip themselves in stupor of mind; they will be stupefied and will fear at your destruction, and groan over you, and take up a lament and say to you: How is that renowned city destroyed from the sea, which gave its terror to all who dwell in it? And the islands will fear from the day of your ruin. At the cry of your voice your pilots will fear with fear, and all your oarsmen will leave the ships, and the passengers and the pilots of the sea will stand upon the land, and wail over you with their voice, and cry bitterly over you, and put earth on their heads, and spread ashes, and take up over you a lament of sons, the lament of Soor: How much reward have you found from the sea? You have satisfied nations with your multitude, and by your trade you enriched all the kings of the earth. But now you are grieved in the sea; your trade is in the depth of the water, and all your company in your midst. All your oarsmen have fallen; all who dwell in the islands are grieved over you, and their oarsmen are stupefied with alienation of mind, and their faces weep over you. Their merchants from among the nations will hiss at you; you have become destruction; you will be no more for ever, says the Lord.” Do the things that are said fit one island, or could it alone enrich all the kings of the earth? But we leave some things to suitable places, in which, though they are said briefly, they can be seen. Tyre is twofold, as is said through Isaiah, who after many things of species and genus added this too, saying: “After seventy years Tyre will be like the song of a harlot. Take a lyre, a corner-harp, harlot city, forgotten; play the lyre well, sing many songs, that you may be remembered. And after seventy years God will visit Tyre, and it will be restored again to its former state.” Is it credible that all the kingdoms of the earth came to Tyre for the sake of trade? And if they come, what use was it to foretell to Tyre a future commerce with all the kingdoms of the earth, if Tyre is not the church, in which all the business of the earth is eternal life? For it goes on and shows what its business is, saying: “And its trade and its wages will be holy to the Lord. For it will not be gathered for them, but for those who dwell in the sight of the Lord. All its trade is to eat and drink and be filled, as a sign of remembrance in the sight of the Lord.” If, then, its trade is holy to the Lord, how can it belong to all kingdoms, unless this Tyre is everywhere? For it goes on and openly shows what Tyre is, saying: “Behold, the Lord will corrupt the world and lay it waste, and strip its face; he will scatter those who dwell in it, and the people will be as the priest.” Is it of that world whose trade is holy to the Lord? “And the servant as the master, and the maid as the mistress, and the buyer as the seller, and the debtor as the creditor, and the lender as the borrower: for the earth will be corrupted with corruption and laid waste with wasting; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things. The earth mourned, the world was bowed down, the high ones of the earth mourned. And the earth committed crime because of those who dwell in it, for they transgressed the law and changed the ordinances of the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse has devoured the earth, because those who dwell in it have sinned. Therefore those who dwell in the earth will be needy.” Can those be needy whose trade in all the kingdoms of the earth is to eat and drink and be filled, not for a time but as a sign of remembrance in the sight of the Lord? “And few men will be left. The vine will mourn, the wine will mourn; all whose soul rejoices will groan. The joy of the tambourine will cease”: when the shamelessness and riches of the ungodly cease. Will the voice of the lyre of the saints cease? “They are confounded; they did not drink wine; the wine has become bitter to those who drink it. Every city is deserted; all will shut, that they may not enter; howl, you diviners; everywhere all the joy of the earth will cease, and cities will be left deserted, and houses abandoned will perish.” “All these things will be in the land in the midst of the nations.” If every city is deserted, what are the nations in whose midst these things are done? Even if some of these things seem to happen obscurely, yet all are spiritual. He calls every city deserted, spiritually dead: but of that harlot Tyre, not of the one whose trade is holy throughout the world. But in Jerusalem few men will be left, the state of those who perish being certainly preserved. Few will be left of those whom he calls spiritually dead: those who have lived again through remembrance, whom the churchman has not killed, as we read in many places. But since our purpose must be fulfilled, we are content with two examples. God threatens fire from the fire of Israel to the king of the Assyrians, that is, to the adverse body, and says to the Syrian, or to the stubble, that after a little they will be fire. “The Lord of hosts,” it says, “will send into your honour dishonour, and into your glory a burning fire; and the light of Israel will burn, and it will be a fire to you, and it will sanctify it in a burning flame” (namely the light of Israel), “and it will devour the forest like hay. In that day the mountains will burn, and they will flee over the precipices, like one who flees from a burning flame; and those who are left of them will be counted, and a child will write them down.” “Those who are left,” he says, “of them.” For can the fire that burns fail to burn? But those of the burned who have survived will be made fire. In Zechariah we read that those whom the church has not killed return, because they are converted to it; but that the others are spiritually killed by torments. For he plucks out the eyes of those who stand, and makes their flesh waste away: “He will dwell in Israel confidently,” it says, “and this will be the slaughter with which God will strike the peoples, as many as fought against Israel. Their flesh will waste away while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will melt from their sockets, and their tongue will waste away in their mouth. And on that day there will be a great estrangement upon them, and each will take the hand of his neighbour, and his hand will be filled with the hand of his neighbour” (that is, the blind leading the blind). “And Judah will fight in Jerusalem, and will gather the men of all peoples, and gold and silver and clothing in very great abundance. And this will be the slaughter of the horses and mules, camels and asses, and all the cattle that are in those camps, according to this slaughter. And whoever are left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year by year to worship the King, the Lord God almighty, to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles.” Elam belongs to the foreigners. Here he joins the general to the specific, and shows that it is twofold. “Thus says the Lord: I will break the bow of Nair, in Elam their sovereignty.” And it exceeds the species: “I will bring upon it,” he says, “the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and there will be no nation that does not come there to drive out Elam.” It returns to the species: “And I will terrify them before their enemies who seek their lives, and I will bring them upon them according to the wrath of my indignation, and I will send my sword after them until it consumes them.” It joins the genus: “And I will set my seat in Elam, and destroy from there the king and the mighty. In the last days I will turn back the captivity of Elam for ever, says the Lord.” Must it be believed that there was no nation that did not come to fight against Elam, or that the seat of the Lord is there, whose captivity he turns back, unless it is a figure of the church? But some species are of the left only, like Sodom, as it is written: “Hear the word of the Lord, princes of Sodom”; and the city which is called spiritually Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord too was crucified. From this Sodom Lot will go out, which is the departure, so that the man of sin may be revealed. Babylon, the city opposed to Jerusalem, is the whole world in its part, which is in … Israel. These things are addressed: “The vision,” it says, “against Babylon”; and it says that the holy soldiers of God will come against the whole world: “Lift up a signal and exult over them, do not fear; exhort them; open the hands of the rulers: for behold, I command. They are sanctified, and the giants are called; they come to appease my wrath, rejoicing and at the same time doing injury. The voice of many nations on the mountains, like that of many nations; the voice of kings and of gathered nations, when the nation and king of the Medes overthrows Babylon.” For it goes on and says who these kings are and what Babylon is: “The God of hosts has commanded a warlike nation to come from afar, from the uttermost foundation of heaven. God and his warriors have corrupted the whole world. Howl, for the day of the Lord is near, and destruction from God will be present. Therefore all hands will be loosened, and every soul of man will tremble. The envoys of the woman in labour will be troubled, and the surrounding walls; they will be terrified one at another, and their faces will be changed like flame. For behold, the incurable day of the Lord comes, of indignation and wrath, to make the world desolate and to destroy sinners from it.” He speaks of the day of the Lord from the time when he suffered, from which the world is spiritually killed, the army of God killing it, while the wicked do not see its light, as if they are being kept, saying: “For the star of the outer heaven and all its lights will give light and grow dark, and its light will not remain. And I will inflict evils on the dead of the earth, and on the unjust their sins; and I will destroy the injury of the wicked, and humble the injury of the proud.” “And those who are left” (that is, those whom the soldiers mentioned above have not killed) “will be more honoured than gold that has not touched fire, and a man will be more honoured than a sapphire stone. For heaven will be indignant, and the earth will be shaken from its foundations, because of the rousing of the wrath of God on the day when his indignation is present.” He joins the species: “And he who is left will be like a fleeing roe and like a straying sheep, and there will be none to gather them, so that a man may turn to his people and hasten to come to his tribe. For whoever falls will be overcome; and whoever are gathered will fall by the sword; and their daughters will fall before their eyes, and they will plunder their houses and have their wives. Behold, I stir up the Medes against you, who do not count money, nor do they need gold.” He subtly inserts the genus: for when you are …, there is no need of gold and silver, except for the churchman, who enjoys life spiritually. “They will shatter the fattened youths, and they will have no pity on your sons, and their eyes will not spare your grandsons.” All these are written spiritually, as of the same Babylon: “Happy is he who will prevail, and dash his little ones against the rock.” For he did not call the king of the Medes happy, because he prevailed against Babylon, and not the churchmen, who prevail and dash the sons of Babylon against the rock of stumbling. And he prevails, as it is written: “He who now prevails, let him hold on, until he is taken out of the midst.” And after many things of species and genus, at the close of the prophecy he openly shows that all are Babylon, and that he destroys them in his land and on his mountains, that is, in the church. “Thus says the Lord: I will make Babylon a desert, so that hedgehogs will dwell in it, and it will come to nothing; and I will make it a pit of mud for destruction. Thus says the Lord of hosts, saying: As I have said, so it will be; and as I have planned, so it will stand: that I will destroy the Assyrians in my land and on my mountains, and they will be trodden down, and their yoke will be taken from them, and the glory will be taken from their shoulders. This is the plan which the Lord has planned for the whole world, and this the hand raised over all the nations of the world. For what the holy God has planned, who will scatter, and his strong hand who will turn back?” And whenever, after the destruction, he threatens that the ruins of the city will be a dwelling of beasts, he means that unclean spirits will dwell in men whom the Holy Spirit has deserted. For the slain inhabitants cannot feel this injury or the ruin. “The words,” says Amos, “which he saw concerning Jerusalem,” and he began: “For three impieties of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away from it, because they sawed with iron saws women with child.” And again: “For three impieties of Idumaea, and for four, I will not turn away from it, because it pursued its brother with the sword.” And he addresses many other cities of foreigners in the figure of the church. Wherever he names Idumaea, Teman, Bozrah, Seir, he means evil brothers; for they are the possessions of Esau. By iron saws he means hard and harsh men who saw through the churches in labour. Likewise Jeremiah testifies that all the nations under heaven drink the wrath of God in the city of God and are struck there, saying: “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Take the cup of unmixed wine from my hand, and you will make all the nations to whom I send you drink; and they will vomit and go mad before the sword which I send among them. And I took the cup from the hand of the Lord, and made the nations drink to which the Lord sent me: Jerusalem itself and the cities of Judah, and its kings and its princes, that they might be made a desolation and a waste and a hissing; and Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants, and his mighty men, and all his people, and all his mixed peoples; and all the kings of the foreigners, Ashkelon and Gaza and Ekron and those over against Azotus; and Idumaea and Moab and the sons of Ammon; and the king of Tyre and the king of Sidon, and the kings beyond the sea; and Dedan and Teman and Bozrah, and all who cut the corners of their hair; and all the mixed peoples who dwell in the desert; and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of the Persians, and all the kings from the east, far and near, each to his brother, and all the kingdoms of the earth that are on the face of the earth. And you will say to them: Thus says the Lord almighty: Drink and be drunk and vomit, and you will fall and rise before the sword which I send among you. And to those who refused to take the cup so as to drink, you will say: Thus says the Lord: You shall surely drink; for in the city in which my name is called, upon it I begin to afflict you, and you will not be cleansed with cleansing, for I call down a sword upon the inhabitants of the earth.” “You will make drink,” he says, “Jerusalem, the cities of Judah, and its kings and princes.” Then he says, “and all the kingdoms of the earth that are on the face of the earth,” to show that from the specific Jerusalem he passed to the general, in which are all the nations of the earth, whom God strikes there; as he also interpreted, saying: “For in the city in which my name is called, in it I begin to afflict you, and you will not be cleansed with cleansing.” Did Jeremiah, while he was in the body, who never went out of the prison of Judaea except when dragged into Egypt, plainly give this drink, unmixed wine poured into the cup, to all the nations under heaven? Or does he now prophesy through the church? But if then too and now the place is in the church, it is plain that all the nations to whom that Jeremiah speaks are also addressed in their principal part. For whatever Satan has that is highest, whatever weighty, whatever on the right in his body, he has mixed with the heavenly things, as is the custom of those at war, to set the strong against the strong. Hence the Apostle says that the saints’ fight is not against humanity, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

The measure of times in the Scriptures is frequently mystical, by the trope synecdoche, or in numbers, which are set down in many ways and are to be understood according to the place. Synecdoche is either the whole from the part or the part from the whole. By this trope Israel served four hundred years in Egypt. For God says to Abraham: “Know for certain that your seed will be a sojourner in a land not its own, and they will rule over them and afflict them four hundred years.” But the Scripture of Exodus says that they were four hundred and thirty years in Egypt. Did they not serve all the time? We must ask, then, from what time; and this is easy to find. For Scripture says that the people did not serve until after the death of Joseph and of all his brothers and of all that generation. “The sons of Israel grew and multiplied, and … and prevailed, and the land multiplied them. But another king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph, and said to his nation: Behold, the nation of the sons of Israel is a great multitude and stronger than we. Come, then, let us circumvent them.” If the people began to serve after the death of Joseph, and from the four hundred and thirty years in which they stayed in Egypt we subtract the eighty years of Joseph’s rule (for he ruled from thirty years of age to a hundred and ten), the years of Israel’s slavery that remain will be three hundred and forty, which God called four hundred. If Israel served the whole time of its sojourning, it is more than God said; if from the death of Joseph, according to the faith of holy Scripture, it is less. So it is plain that the hundred is the part for the whole. For after three hundred years, a part of the rest is a hundred years; therefore he said four hundred years. So too in every sum of time: as, for instance, after nine days, or after nine months, the first day of the tenth month is the tenth; as it is written: “In my mother’s womb I was formed as flesh, ten months curdled in blood.” And as in the first part of any time there is the time, so in the last hour the whole day may be: the remainder of a thousand years is a thousand years. Six days are the age of the world, that is, six thousand years. In the remainder of the sixth day, that is, of the thousand years, the Lord was born, suffered, and rose. Likewise the remainder of the thousand years is called the thousand years of the first resurrection. For as the remainder of the sixth day of the week, that is, three hours, is a whole day, one of the three of the Lord’s burial, so the remainder of the greater sixth day, in which the church rose, is a whole day, a thousand years. For by this trope the three days and three nights stand. The twenty-four hours of night and day are one time, and nights are not added to days except for a definite reason. Otherwise we speak of days alone, as the Apostle is said to have stayed with Peter fifteen days. Was there need to say, so many days and nights? For so it is written: “Evening and morning, one day.” But if night and day are one time, the last hour of the day holds both the whole day and the night that has passed; likewise the last hour of the night holds the whole day and the night to come. For an hour is a part of both times. The hour in which the Lord was buried is a part of the sixth day of the week with its night that had passed; and the hour of the night in which he rose is part of the day that was at hand. Otherwise, if neither in the present day is the past night, nor in the present night the day of the morrow, the Lord rose not by day but by night, since the day is from the rising of the sun, as it is written: “The greater light for the beginning of the day.” But the Lord rose before sunrise. For Mark says, “as the sun was rising”: not risen, but rising, that is, going toward its rising; and Luke, “at dawn.” But so that there should be no doubt about this expression, other evangelists testify openly that it was night. For Matthew says that the women came to the tomb by night and saw the Lord; and John, “while it was still dark.” But if the Lord rose before the sun, that is, before the beginning of the day, that night was part of the dawning day. This also fits the works of God, that the day is not darkened into night, but the night grows light into day. For the night itself is illuminated and becomes day: which is a figure of the things that were done in Christ. For God is he who said: “Light shines out of darkness in our hearts”; who illuminated the darkness, as it is written: “Your darkness will be as noonday.” And: “The night has passed, but the day has drawn near; let us walk decently as in the day.” For first is what is carnal, then what is spiritual. So the first and the last day are a part for the whole. Only the middle one was full, from evening to evening, according to the condition and the command, as he says to Moses: “From evening to evening you shall keep the day of the sabbaths.” But some say that we must count from the day, because the Lord said three days and nights, not three nights and days. But this is destroyed without long reasoning. For if the beginning of the burial is from the day, the end is in the night; but if it ended in the day, it began from the night. For if a day closes both ends, there will be one day more. They say besides that the past night cannot be in the day, nor the future day in the night; that three days and nights must be assigned separately, counting the first day, on which he was crucified; another, of the three hours restored; the third, of the Sabbath; the Lord’s day will be the fourth. But those who avoid this trap agree that we must count from the night, but say that the nights must be separated from the days, saying that the first night was in the three hours of the untimely darkness, the second the Sabbath night, the third the night of the dawning Lord’s day. The nights, indeed, are as it were three, but the days two: the first in the three hours after the darkness, the second the Sabbath. For one who proposes separate days cannot say that in the night in which he rose there was the day to come. But if he agrees to this, he must agree that in the remainder of the day of the sixth day of the week there was the past night. And if they were untimely darkness, yet the three hours of light were of the same day, and did not lose their order so as not to be part of their day and night. I pass over that the three hours of darkness could not be a night, because they were outside the order of God’s creation. For whatever is a sign does not disturb the rational course of the elements. For it is not because the sun and moon stood still in the days of Joshua, and in those of Hezekiah the sun alone went back, that anything of the course between sun and moon was cut short or taken away, or added to day or night, and a new reckoning of the times or of the new moon began from then, which God established in the sun and moon, to be for times, days, and years, as it is written in Genesis. Much more on that day was nothing disturbed, to which three hours of darkness were not added so as to make fifteen. For if we call the sun darkened and shown again a day, what name, what order do we give to that very day which is said to have been between the sixth day and the Sabbath, unless the Sabbath was twice and that week had eight days? Certainly, if the dispute can hardly be settled by reason, we prove in brief that the three hours of darkness do not belong to the Lord’s burial, because he was still alive. For he could not be in the heart of the earth except from the time he died and was buried, which happened in the three hours of the sixth day, before the twelfth hour. For after sunset the Jews were not allowed to bury, since the pure supper was the beginning of the Sabbath, as John says. There, then, because of the pure supper of the Jews, since the tomb was near, they laid Jesus. But days are put before nights in dignity, not in the order of their beginning; as all the firstborn are males, as it is said: “He begot sons and daughters, and died.” This would be against the law of nature, that all those had begotten males first. But for us the whole time is day. All things are new; the figures have passed. Among the legitimate numbers are seven, ten, and twelve. And the number is the same when it is multiplied, as seventy or seven hundred, or so many times by itself, as seven times seven or ten times ten. But they signify either perfection, or the whole from the part, or a simple sum. Perfection, as the seven spirits, the seven churches; or as he says: “Seven times a day I will praise you”; or: “He will receive seven times as much in this age.” Likewise ten, as another evangelist says: “He will receive a hundred times as much in this age.” And Daniel encompassed by the number ten the innumerable multitude of the angels and of heaven, or of the church, saying: “A thousand thousands appeared to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood round him.” And David: “The chariots of God,” he says, “are ten thousand times as many.” And of all time David says: “for a thousand ages.” Likewise by twelve it is said of the whole church: the hundred and forty-four thousand, and the twelve tribes, all the nations; as: “You will judge the twelve tribes of Israel.” The whole from the part: since the whole time is defined by legitimate numbers, as in the Apocalypse: “You will have affliction ten days,” when it means to the end. And that the seventy years in Babylon are the same time it is out of place to prove now. Besides the legitimate numbers, Scripture has frequently shortened any time into any number; as the time mentioned above is called an hour, when the Apostle says: “It is the last hour.” And a day, as: “Behold, now is the day of salvation.” And a year to be proclaimed, as through Isaiah: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” For not only that year was acceptable in which the Lord preached, but this too in which he preaches, as it is said: “In an acceptable time I have heard you”; and the Apostle interprets: “Behold, now is the acceptable time.” Finally he joined the end of this year, that is, of the judgment, saying: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of retribution.” And David: “You will bless,” he says, “the crown of the year of your goodness.” Sometimes an hour, a day, and months are a year, as in the Apocalypse: “Prepared for the hour and the day and the month and the year,” which is three and a half years. In the same place, months for years: “It was given to it to destroy men for five months.” Sometimes a day by the number ten is a hundred days, as in the Apocalypse: “A thousand two hundred and sixty days”: for a thousand two hundred and sixty times a hundred are a hundred and twenty-six thousand days, which are three hundred and fifty years, with months of thirty days. In the same place one month by the number ten is a hundred months, as: “They will trample the holy city for forty-two months.” For forty-two times a hundred are four thousand two hundred months, which are three hundred and fifty years. A time is either a year or a hundred years, as “a time, and times, and half a time,” which is either three and a half years or three hundred and fifty. Likewise one day is sometimes a hundred years, as is written of the church: “To lie in the city where their Lord too was crucified,” and “after three days and a half.” And: “The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” For he himself rose on the third day. A generation too is sometimes a hundred years, as the Lord says to Abraham: “In the fourth generation they will return here.” But in Exodus, it is said not of the time of slavery but of the whole sojourning: “In the fifth generation the people went up out of Egypt,” that is, after four hundred and fifty years. Likewise a generation is sometimes ten years, as Jeremiah says: “You will be in Babylon for seven generations.” That three is the same number as ten is found more fully in the Gospel. For Matthew says that the master’s property was entrusted to three servants, but Luke to ten; and he reduces the ten to three when he too says that the account was required of three. Sometimes one day is a thousand years, as it is written: “On the day you taste of the tree, you will surely die.” And the first seven days are seven thousand years. “In six days God worked, and rested from all his works on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it.” But the Lord says: “My Father is working until now.” For as he worked this world in six days, so he works the spiritual world, which is the church, through six thousand years, to cease on the seventh day, which he blessed and made for ever. That is why the Lord, among his other commandments, commanded nothing more often than that we should observe and love the day of the sabbaths. And whoever does the commandments of God loves the Sabbath of God, that is, the seventh day of eternal rest. Therefore God exhorts the people not to enter the gates of Jerusalem with a burden on the Sabbath day, and threatens the gates and those who go in and out by them, as he commands Jeremiah, saying: “Go, stand in the gates of the sons of your people, by which the kings of Judah go in and out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, and say to them: Hear the word of the Lord, you who enter these gates. Thus says the Lord: Guard your souls, and do not carry burdens on the Sabbath day, and do not go out by the gates of Jerusalem, and do not carry burdens out of your houses on the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers; and they did not hear with their ears, but hardened their necks more than their fathers, so as not to hear me or receive discipline. And if you hear me, says the Lord, so as not to bring burdens through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, so as not to do any of your work, and to sanctify the Sabbath day, then kings and princes will enter by the gates of this city, sitting on the throne of David, and riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah who dwell in Jerusalem. And this city will be inhabited for ever; and they will come from the cities of Judah, and from the cities round Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plain, and from the land toward the south, bringing whole burnt offerings and incense and manna and frankincense, bringing praise into the house of the Lord. But if you do not hear me, so as to sanctify the Sabbath day and not to carry burdens nor enter by the gates of Jerusalem, I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it will consume the houses of Jerusalem and will not be quenched.” It would have been enough to command briefly not to work on the Sabbath. Why: “Do not bring burdens through the gates of Jerusalem”? Or, if it was needed, he might have named a kind of work, that is, “Do not bring in through the gates.” For no one brought burdens into the city over the walls and roofs. Jerusalem is twofold, and its gates are twofold. Through the gates of hell one goes out of holy Jerusalem, and through the same one enters the accursed one. But those who enter through the gates enter the eternal Jerusalem, like kings in chariots and on horses, sitting on the throne of David, as through Isaiah: “The sons of sons from all the nations will bring a gift to God with horses and chariots, in the splendour of many, with canopies, into the holy city.” The gate of the holy city Jerusalem is Christ and his vicars, the keepers of the law, though they kill the prophets and stone those sent to them. The gate of the devil is the devil and his vicars, the false apostles, transgressors of the law, hiding the keys of the kingdom of heaven by a lofty sense. These are the gates which do not prevail over the church, which is founded upon the rock. For “the foundation of God stands,” as it is written: “God knows who are his.” But if anyone enters through the commandments of those who sit on the seat of Moses, he enters through Christ. For the commandments are his; he takes off the burden of his sins, and without him he does not enter into the rest of the Sabbath. But if anyone enters not through the commandments but through the deeds of those who sit on the seat of Moses, he is a son of hell even more than they. And while all are at rest who gathered before the Sabbath, he will be found with his burden on the Sabbath day, in which there is no manna to gather …. Because they will not hear the voice of the Son of God crying in the church and saying: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” These are the thieves who enter their Jerusalem not through the true door but through their own gates. And God will kindle a fire in the gates of Jerusalem, and it will burn its ways and will not be quenched. For the fire that burned the gates of the specific Jerusalem has been quenched. But the Apostle says that the Sabbath and the other commandments of the law are a figure of what is to come, thus: “Let no one, then, judge you in food and drink, or in respect of a festival day or new moon or sabbaths, which is a shadow of what is to come.” In many places different events of one time, described separately in the species, have made two times, as if following one another in order; but in the genus both events are in one time. So the fourteen years under Joseph, of plenty and of barrenness, are only seven years, that is, the whole time of the Lord’s passion, as a figure of which Joseph became lord of Egypt when he was thirty years old. So those that are for us seven years of plenty and fullness are the same as the other seven of barrenness and famine. For in this time the Lord threatens the rich with famine, but promises fullness to the poor. He promises that these goods and evils of a double time will be in one time. The Scripture of Exodus testifies that Israel was plainly free of all the plagues of Egypt, and had light during the three days of darkness: which is now done spiritually, as God afterwards threatened the same Pharaoh, saying: “I will put darkness upon your land.” Sometimes he divides one time into many parts, each of which is the whole time. So the year in which Noah was in the ark is divided into all the numbers. Whenever times are mentioned, however, the number four specially means the time from the Lord’s passion to the end. And it is four whenever it is either full or, after the third, a part of the fourth, as three hundred and forty, or three and a half. The others (for they are to be understood according to the places) are signs, not plain definitions. So the forty days of the flood are the whole time. For these are the forty years in Egypt and the forty years in the desert, and the forty days of fasting of the Lord and of Moses and of the church, in which the church fasts in the church, that is, abstains from the pleasures of the dead. The same forty days in which the church eats and drinks with the Lord after the resurrection are the forty years in which the church was eating and drinking under Solomon, in profound peace on every side, though the twofold Solomon oppressed them, as the same church says: “One father oppressed us.” For forty days the water stood at its height, and for as many it decreased, so that by these the decrease of the water too might be completed in the tenth month, that is, in a perfect time. But in the genus it is not so, that at one time it prevails and then decreases. For at the time when it grows strong carnally, at the same time it decreases spiritually, so that its very exaltation is its decrease, until the time is completed. So the world reigning is put under the feet of the church of the Son of Man. So the forty days in which he paid off the sins of Judah, and Israel’s hundred and forty-nine, are one and the same. And in the seventh month the ark rested: the same time. And the water decreased until the tenth month: the same time. He went out of the ark in the twelfth month. This is the year of freedom, the acceptable year of the Lord; when it is completed, the church will be shown to have passed through the flood of the world. Each part of this year is the same year: as if he said he went out of the ark on the fortieth day, or in the seventh or tenth month.

Recapitulations are these parts from the beginning to the end: as from Adam to Enoch, that is, to the translation of the church, are seven generations, which is the whole time. Again, from Adam to Noah, that is, to the restoration, ten generations, which is the whole time; and from Noah to Abraham ten generations. For the hundred years in which the ark was built are the whole time in which the church is built, and in that time, while all perish in the flood, it is steered. This we leave to the wise to investigate more fully, the way having been given. For lest the abundance of Scripture be interpreted, we did not think we should pursue each point and remove what might perhaps hinder this understanding, hastening elsewhere. Among the rules by which the Spirit has sealed the law, so that the way of light might be guarded, he keeps no small seal by recapitulation, with such subtlety that it seems a continuation of the narrative rather than a recapitulation. For sometimes he recapitulates thus: “Then,” “in that hour,” “on that day,” “at that time”; as the Lord speaks in the Gospel, saying: “On the day when Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will be on the day of the Son of Man, when he is revealed. In that hour, let him who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them; and likewise let him who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife.” Is it in that hour when the Lord is revealed at his coming that one ought not to turn back to what is his and remember Lot’s wife, and not before he is revealed? But the Lord commanded these things to be observed in the hour in which he will be revealed, not only so that, by hiding the truth, he might make it more welcome to those who seek, but also to show that that whole time is a day or an hour. So he commanded these things to be observed in the same hour, that is, time, but before he is revealed. In the same hour, indeed, but in what part of the hour is recognized by reason. Sometimes, however, they are not recapitulations of this kind, but likenesses of what is to come, as the Lord says: “When you see what was spoken through the prophet Daniel, then let those who are in Judaea flee to the mountains.” And he brings in the end. But what Daniel said is happening in Africa, and the end is not at the same time. But since, though not under that title, yet it is to come; therefore he said “then,” that is, when it has happened likewise throughout the world: which is the departure and the revelation of the man of sin. By this kind of speech the Spirit says in the Psalms: “When the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, we became as those consoled. Then our mouth was filled with joy, and our tongue with exultation. Then they will say among the nations: The Lord has done great things with them. The Lord has done great things with us; we have become glad.” But in saying, “When the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, then they said among the nations”: now he will turn it back, he says; then they will say among the nations. For we are the nations whose captivity he turns back. As a figure of them, we have the time, saying: “The Lord has done great things with them; the Lord has done great things with us.” So from the likeness he made his time and ours one and joined them, saying: “Then they will say among the nations,” that is, when he has done likewise to the nations. Nor do I think I should pass over the fact that the Spirit wished something to be understood without mysteries or allegory. In John: “Many false prophets have gone out into this world. By this know the Spirit of God: every spirit that dissolves Jesus and denies that he has come in the flesh is not from God, but this is of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he is coming, and now he is present in this world.” Does everyone who does not deny that Jesus has come in the flesh have the Spirit of God? But that this denial is in deed, not in word, and that each one must be understood not by his profession but by his fruits, he subtly warns throughout the whole letter, in which he wrote of nothing but good and bad fruits, by the same kind of speech, as he says: “By this we know him, if we keep his commandments. But he who says, I have known him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar.” Did he say that one who does not know God is to be understood as a brother by profession, and not by works? “And he who says that he loves God and hates his brother is a liar.” For if, as he says, he loves God, let him show it by works: let him cling to God, let him love God in his brother. If he believes Christ incarnate, let him stop hating the members of Christ. If he believes the Word made flesh, why does he persecute in the flesh the Word made flesh? Why does he persecute the Word in the flesh? Since the Lord said, “As long as you did it to one of the least of my brothers who believe in me, you did it to me,” let him not work evil in the flesh of Christ, that is, in his servants, since the Lord and the church are one flesh. And if he believes that the man is in that flesh, why does he not love him, or, what is crueller, why does he hate him? as it is written: “He who does not love his brother remains in death”; and: “He who hates his brother is a murderer.” Did he say that there is any other greater and clearer sign for recognizing the Antichrist than this, that he who denies him in the flesh also hates his brother? And what he says, “Whoever denies Christ in the flesh is not from God,” is like: “No one can say Lord Jesus except in the Holy Spirit”; though many say “Lord Jesus,” as he himself testifies: “Not all who say to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.” But in this place the Apostle said that no one can say Lord Jesus Christ except in the Holy Spirit according to conscience, according to the inner man, not according to profession alone, to show that those who say “Lord Jesus” have nothing less than those who are exalted with kinds of gifts; but that everyone who has believed the Lord Jesus, and has shown by works that he has believed, possesses one and the same Spirit. “No one,” he says, “can say Lord Jesus except in the Holy Spirit. But there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord.” To dissolve Jesus is not to do what one confesses that Jesus did, as the same Lord says: “Whoever dissolves one of the least of these commandments and so teaches men will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” And what “dissolves” means he discloses from what follows, saying: “But whoever does and so teaches.” That this denial, then, belongs to works and not to the voice, the apostle Paul also confirms, saying: “They profess to know the Lord, but deny him by their deeds.” And again: “Having the form of godliness, but denying its power.” In this sense he says that certain brothers preach Christ not in voice but in heart without holiness; for in voice they preach in a holy way. Indeed he agrees with their preaching and commands it to be heard, saying: “What does it matter, whether in pretext or in truth, Christ is proclaimed?” For the Antichrist preaches the Lord Christ not from desire but as a pretext. Tending elsewhere, he enters through the name of Christ, so as to pave his way, so as under the name of Christ to obey his belly, and to put on these things (it is shameful to say) the name of holiness and simplicity, asserting that the works of bedchambers, with signs and wonders, are Christ. These the Apostle warns us to avoid with wholesome caution, saying: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

Concerning the devil and his body, it can be seen briefly if what was said of the Lord and his body is observed here too. For the passage from the head to the body is recognized by the same reasoning, as is said through Isaiah of the king of Babylon: “How has Lucifer fallen from heaven, rising in the morning? He is crushed on the earth who was sent to all the nations. But you said in your mind: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my seat above the stars of God, I will sit on a high mountain above the high mountains in the north, I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High. But now you have gone down to the underworld, to the foundations of the earth; and those who see you will marvel at you and say: This is the man who stirs up the earth, shakes kings, who makes the whole world a desert. He destroyed the city and did not release those carried off. All the kings of the nations have slept in honour, each in his house. But you are cast out on the mountains like an abominated corpse, with all who have fallen in the deserts by the sword and gone down to the underworld. As a garment sprinkled with blood will not be clean, so neither will you be clean, because you have destroyed my land and killed my people. You will not be for ever, evil seed; prepare to kill your sons for the sin of your father, that they may not rise.” In the king of Babylon both all the kings and the whole people are signified; for the body is one. “How,” he says, “has Lucifer fallen from heaven, rising in the morning, broken on the earth, who is sent to all the nations? But you said in your mind: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my seat above the stars of God.” The devil promises himself this. For he does not hope to be able to ascend into heaven by holding on, he who was not strong enough to resist so as not to be cast down. Much less can a man hope for these things; and yet it calls him a man thus: “This is the man who stirs up the earth.” But besides this reason, that neither the devil nor man can hope to ascend into heaven and, sitting above the stars of God, become like God, Scripture itself warns that something else must be sought. For if he says he will set his seat in heaven and above the stars of God, how will he sit on a high mountain, or above the mountains in the north, or in the clouds, to be like the Most High? For the Most High does not have his seat in such things. By heaven it means the church, as we shall see as Scripture proceeds. From this heaven the morning star falls. For the morning star is twofold, as the Lord says in the Apocalypse of himself and of his body: “I am the root and the race of David, and the bright morning star, the bridegroom and the bride.” Likewise there: “To him who conquers I will give the morning star”: that is, that he may be a morning star like Christ, whom we have received. So a part of the morning star, that is, the opposing body, which is the devil, kings, and people, falls from heaven and is broken on the earth. By these rules Wisdom says: “Hear, then, you kings, and understand; learn, you judges of the ends of the earth; give ear, you who rule multitudes and pride yourselves on crowds of nations: for power was given you by the Lord and strength by the Most High, who will examine your works and search out your thoughts; because, though you were ministers of his kingdom, you did not judge rightly, nor keep the law.” The king of Babylon, then, is the whole body; but according to the places we understand to which part of the body it fits. “Lucifer has fallen from heaven” can fit the whole body. “I will ascend into heaven, I will set my seat above the stars of God” likewise fits the head too: the greater, who think they must lord it over the stars of God, that is, the saints, though the lesser among them will be lords, as it is written: “The greater will serve the lesser.” To this Esau, that is, to evil brothers, the Lord speaks thus through the prophet Obadiah: “Exalting his dwelling, saying in his heart: Who will bring me down to the ground? If you are exalted like an eagle and set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, says the Lord.” “I will sit on a high mountain above the high mountains, in the north; I will ascend above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” The high mountain is the proud people; the high mountains are the individuals who, united, make the mountain, that is, the body of the devil. For Scripture says there are many evil mountains: “The mountains will be carried into the heart of the sea.” Again: “The foundations of the mountains were troubled and shaken, because God was angry.” For the body of the Lord too, that is, the church, is called a mountain, and the individuals who are the church make mountains, as it is written: “But I have been set as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain, proclaiming his commands.” And again: “I will destroy the Assyrians in my land and on my mountains.” And again: “Let the mountains receive peace for the people, and the hills righteousness.” And again: “The mountains will leap like rams, and the hills like lambs of the flock.” God has his seat on Mount Zion and on the mountains of Israel and in his holy clouds, which is the church. It is written: “Let all the earth fear before the face of the Lord, for he rises from his holy clouds.” Again: “I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.” Again: “Cloud and darkness are round about him.” And that he dwells on Mount Zion he says thus: “You will know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.” And the devil too sits on a mountain, but on Seir, which is Esau, that is, of evil brothers: which mountain God rebukes through Ezekiel, and says he will make it desolate amid the joy of the whole earth, because it exercises enmity against Israel. He is the mountain; they are the mountains of the north. In these the devil sits, and lords it, as it were, over the clouds of heaven. Thus far he says he is like the Most High. There are two parts in the church, of the south and of the north, that is, the southern and the northern. In the southern part the Lord dwells. It is written: “Where do you pasture, where do you rest at noon?” But the devil is in the north, as God says to his people: “I will drive him from the north away from you, and I will expel him into a land without water,” that is, into his own; “and I will destroy his face into the first sea and his back into the last sea,” that is, into the first and last peoples. This world was made after the likeness of the church, in which the rising sun has its path only through the south, that is, the midday; and when it has run through the southern part, it goes invisibly, returning to its place. So too our Lord God Jesus Christ, the eternal Sun, runs through his own part, which is why he calls it the midday. But to the north, that is, to the opposing part, he does not rise, as the same say when they come to judgment: “The light of righteousness has not shone for us.” But for those who fear the Lord the Sun of righteousness rises, with healing in his wings, as it is written. But for the wicked, noon is night, as it is written: “While they wait for light, darkness has come upon them; they have walked in the gloom of night for brightness; they will grope like a blind man for the wall, and like one who has no eyes they will grope and fall at noon as at midnight.” Again: “The sun will set at noon, and the day of light will grow dark over the earth.” Again: “Therefore you will have night instead of vision and darkness instead of divination, and the sun will set over the prophets, and the day of light will grow dark over them.” To this people God threatens from the south, as through Ezekiel he rebukes Soor, saying: “The south wind has crushed you.” For he permits it to break, saying: “Arise, north wind, and come, south wind; blow upon your garden, and my ointments will flow.” For when the evil spirit rises, the Holy Spirit resists, who blows upon the Lord’s garden, and the ointments are drawn out, that is, the fragrance of sweetness is offered. And through Ezekiel God likewise says that from the remnant of the wicked people he will bring upon his people a part of the same people, which is the mystery of iniquity: “Behold, I am against you, Gog, prince of Meshech and Tubal; and I will gather you, and bring you, and set you from the farthest north, and bring you upon the mountain of Israel; and I will destroy the bow from your left hand and your arrows from your right hand, and cast you down upon the mountains of Israel.” This is done from the Lord’s passion until the church departs from the midst of the same mystery of iniquity; the church, which holds back, so that the ungodliness may be uncovered in its own time, as the Apostle says: “And now you know what holds him back, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of iniquity is already at work; only, he who now holds back holds back until he is taken out of the midst. And then the ungodly one will be revealed.” And in Jeremiah we read that the sinners of Israel are addressed in the north, the Lord saying: “Go and read these words toward the north, and say: Return to me, house of Israel, says the Lord.” But the south is the Lord’s part, as also it is written in Job: “From the southern part life will spring up there.” The north is the devil’s; and both parts are in the whole world. “I will ascend,” he says, “the clouds; I will be like the Most High. But now you will go down to the underworld, to the foundations of the earth. Those who see you will marvel at you and say: This is the man who stirs up the earth, shakes kings, who makes the whole world a desert.” Does “those who see you will marvel at you” fit the devil? Or the last king, when you go down to the underworld? For when he goes down to the underworld there will be no one to marvel, the world being ended. For they will not say: “This is the man who stirred up the earth and kings and made the whole world a desert,” but “stirs up,” and “shakes,” and “makes.” For he calls the whole body a man, both in kings and in peoples; and when God strikes a part of this proud man and casts it down to the underworld, we say: “This is the man who stirs up the earth, shakes kings,” namely the saints. “Who makes the whole world a desert”: this is the voice of those who mock, not of those who affirm, as in that place: “He who destroys the temple and raises it in three days.” For he said: “I will do mightily, and the wisdom of understanding; I will remove the boundaries of the nations and lay waste their strength, and shatter cities with their inhabitants; and I will take the whole world in my hand like a nest, and like abandoned eggs I will carry it off, and there will be none to escape me or to contradict me.” Is he able to fulfil these things that he promises himself? He makes the whole world a desert indeed, but his own world. And he destroyed the cities, surely of his own world. For the world is twofold, movable and immovable, as in Chronicles: “Let all the earth be shaken before the face of the Lord; for he has founded the world, which will not be shaken.” “And he did not release those carried off.” This can fit the species: that he gave no relief to the captives, but, thinking them seized from enemies, used his whole princely power against them. God rebukes this, saying: “I indeed was a little angry; but they added to the evils.” Yet these things were done and said as a figure of the general, and are fulfilled spiritually, when those who rule afflict, without regard for compassion and for the common condition, those subject to them by humility or for the sake of testing, or by desert; to whom power is not enough, but they scorn to use it moderately. This he blames, saying: “Pursuing retribution.” And again: “He stretched out his hand against him in retribution.” For it is too little that he is an enemy; he desires also to take vengeance on his subject, as it is written: “You goad all who are subject to you,” pretending to hate the Lord, the enemy and avenger, so that by vengeance, which God reserved to himself alone, he may usurp something of holiness. For it is written: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.” “All the kings of the earth have slept in honour, a man in his house.” He called the saints kings. For not all kings or private persons have slept in their house, as the saints in the house that they chose. “But you are cast out on the mountains like an abominated corpse, with all who have fallen pierced by the sword, and they go down to the underworld.” To the devil he says, “You are cast out on the mountains,” on which he sits. Indeed he did not say “dead,” but “like an abominated corpse.” For he still lives, though in his own he is slain by the sword and goes down to the underworld. For as the Lord said that whatever his own suffer he suffers, so the devil himself is trampled in his own; he himself, abominated, is broken, as it is written: “In the diminishing of the people is the crushing of the prince.” The devil is not separated from his man; nor can a man in whom the devil is not say: “I will be like the Most High.” Nor is the devil this man who stirs up the earth, unless he is in a man. As the Lord cannot be called man except in man, nor man except in Christ. But what fits whom must be observed according to the places. Again he addresses the body of the devil himself, saying: “As a garment sprinkled with blood is not clean, so neither will you be clean, because you have destroyed my land and killed my people. You will not be for ever, evil seed; prepare to kill your sons for the sins of your father, that they may not rise.” Here he shows that it does not fit the species. For the king of Babylon, who laid waste the Lord’s land and killed the people, that is, Nebuchadnezzar, died a cleansed man and lives for ever; he says to the body of each time to prepare those whom it has begotten to be killed for its sins by which he himself, who is addressed, was begotten. For the last king can have not sons, but brothers. Nor, when he goes down to the underworld, is he “like a corpse,” but a corpse. Through Ezekiel God rebukes the king of Tyre thus: “Because your heart is exalted, and you said: I am God, I have dwelt in the dwelling of God in the heart of the sea; but you are a man and not God, and you have set your heart as the heart of God. Are you wiser than Daniel? The wise have refuted you with your wisdom. Have you by your wisdom or your learning made strength for yourself, and gold and silver in your treasuries? Have you by your great learning and your trading multiplied your strength? Therefore thus says the Lord: Because you have set your heart as the heart of God, therefore behold, I bring upon you foreign plagues from the nations, and they will draw their swords against you and against the beauty of your learning, and they will wound your beauty to destruction, and bring you down, and you will die the death of the wounded in the heart of the sea. Will you say before those who kill you: I am God? But you are a man and not God. You will perish among the multitude of the uncircumcised, by the hands of foreigners; for I have spoken, says the Lord. You are the seal of the multitude and the crown of beauty; you were in the delights of the paradise of God, having every finest stone bound upon you: sardius, topaz, emerald, carbuncle, sapphire, jasper, silver and gold, ligure, agate, amethyst, chrysolite, beryl, and onyx; and you filled your treasuries and your storehouses with gold. With the cherubim I set you on the holy mountain of God; you were in the midst of the stones of fire; you walked without spot in your days, from the day you were created, until your iniquities were found in you. By the multitude of your trading you filled your storehouses with iniquity and sins; and you were wounded from the mountain of God. The cherub led you out from the midst of the stones of fire; your heart was exalted in your heart; your learning was corrupted with your beauty. Because of the multitude of your sins and the iniquity of your trading your holy places were defiled; I will bring out fire from your midst; it will devour you. And I will make you ashes in your land in the sight of all who see you, and all who knew you among the nations will be grieved over you. You have become destruction, and you will not be for ever.” “Because your heart is exalted,” he says, “and you said: I am God, I have dwelt in the dwelling of God in the heart of the sea”: this fits both the man who says, “I am Christ,” and the devil, who dwells in the heart of the sea, that is, of the people, as God sits in the heart of his saints. The people dwells in the heart of the sea, that is, in the pleasure or the depth of the world, as in another place God says to the same city: “You were filled and greatly honoured in the heart of the sea. In many waters your oarsmen brought you: the south wind crushed you in the heart of the sea of your strength.” “But you are a man and not God.” The devil too, in man, is called man, as the Lord said in the Gospel: “An enemy man has done this”; and he interpreted, saying: “He who sows them is the devil.” The man of the devil cannot be God. Therefore it fits both: “You are a man and not God. You have set your heart as the heart of God. Are you wiser than Daniel?” Daniel is the whole body of the church: because he cannot be wiser in sin in the affairs of life, as that one is wiser in his own than the sons of light. It can also fit the species, since Daniel specifically confounded the king of Babylon, as a figure: he who by the prophetic Spirit, with the majesty of the church, laid low the proud king to the confession of one God; who by the confession of his powers and by heavenly wisdom overthrew the superstitions of Babylon. “The wise have refuted you with your wisdom.” For not only Daniel was wise, but also the three youths, who confounded the king and all his kingdom with their very gods by asserting one Lord, the same God being present. The same, to this day, generally break up both the outward and the inward things of the same Babylon by the light of truth. “Have you by your knowledge or your wisdom made strength for yourself, and gold and silver in your treasuries? Have you by your great knowledge or by your trading multiplied your strength? And your heart has been exalted in your strength.” For the proud, ungrateful for the benefits of almighty God, think they can do something by their own strength and be enriched by wisdom, not knowing that it is written: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise.” And again: “Will the axe be magnified without the one who cuts with it?” “And riches are not to the prudent, nor favour to those who know.” For these things are not in our power, but are bestowed by God. “For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” And again: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.” “Therefore thus says the Lord: Because you have set your heart as the heart of God, therefore behold, I bring upon you foreigners, plagues from the nations, and they will draw their swords against you and against the beauty of your knowledge.” Though it can fit the species, that the kings of the world in their pride allow themselves to be called lords, yet this too fits the genus. For God frequently brings foreigners into the church and wounds many to death. But he also brings in many from the nations by a hidden persecution, by whom he may test his people and kill the wicked by those like them, as Mattathias did. “And they will wound your beauty to destruction.” For some they wound not to destruction but with hope of healing. “And they will bring you down,” that is, they will humble you; “and you will die the death of the wounded in the heart of the sea.” He would not say to one wounded, “You will die the death of the wounded,” unless it were that he is not openly wounded and dies, but he is the one in whom they are wounded. “Will you indeed say before those who kill you: I am God?” That is, will you terrify with titles of divine race those to whom you have been handed over, both spiritually and carnally? “But you are a man and not God; you will perish among the multitude of the uncircumcised by the hands of foreigners; for I have spoken, says the Lord.” Now he has disclosed in what way that one calls himself God, while he threatens that he will perish among the multitude of the uncircumcised by the hands of foreigners: which fits only one who seems to himself circumcised. For the king of Tyre could fear death alone: would he not have died at the hands of the circumcised or with them? “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, take up a lament over the prince of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord: You are the seal of likeness and the crown of beauty; you were in the paradise of God.” Was paradise made for the devil, so that he might be rebuked for losing paradise? It was man who was in the delights of paradise; he is the seal of likeness, who was made to the likeness of God. And he spoke of a seal for beauty, as through Haggai God promises the church, when the brothers of this people fight against one another, saying: “I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land, and overturn chariots and riders; and the horses and their riders will go down, each by the sword against his brother. On that day, says the Lord almighty, I will take you, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, my servant, and I will make you a seal, for I have chosen you, says the Lord almighty.” Zerubbabel is the whole body. For after that we nowhere read that any commotion came upon Zerubbabel. He is of the tribe of Judah, who under Darius was found worthy to build Jerusalem. He too, as a figure, founded the house of God and completed it, as the same Lord says: “The hands of Zerubbabel have founded this house, and his hands will complete it.” And what this seal and crown of beauty is, God promises to the church, saying: “The nations will see your righteousness, and kings your glory, and they will call you by your name, which the Lord has named. It will be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of your God. You too will not be called forsaken, and your land will not be called desert. Your name too will be called My will, and your land the world.” So man is the seal of likeness and the crown of beauty: of whom one part persists in that beauty of the divine likeness and in the delights of paradise, that is, of the church; but between the other part and the tree of life, lest it live for ever, a flaming sword turns. For Adam, as the Apostle says, is a shadow of what is to come. So too these brothers: he was divided into Cain and Abel. “Having every finest stone bound upon you: sardius, topaz, emerald, carbuncle, sapphire, jasper, silver and gold, ligure, agate, amethyst, chrysolite, beryl, and onyx; and you filled your treasuries and your storehouses in you with gold.” These things fit both the devil and man. For these twelve stones and the gold and silver and all the treasures cling to the devil as assigned to him. Indeed: “You have them bound upon you”; and again: “your storehouses in you.” As the body of the Lord is adorned by the saints, God promising and saying: “Lift up your eyes round about; see all your sons, they are gathered and have come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you will put them all on and lay them upon you like the ornament of a new bride; for your deserts and your ruins and what had fallen will now be too narrow for the inhabitants.” And in the Apocalypse the same city is built founded on twelve stones. “Every finest stone,” he says, and he counted twelve, to show perfection in the number twelve. For all things that God made are good; the devil changed their use, not their nature. And all men of excellent understanding and powerful mind are gold and silver and precious stones according to nature; but they will be his in whose service their nature enjoys its gifts. For “to whom one has sealed himself in obedience, he is the slave of him whom he obeys, whether of sin or of righteousness.” So it comes about that the devil too has gold and silver and precious stones: all of them not his by origin, but his by will. For in Job too it is written of the devil: “All the gold of the sea is under him.” And the Apostle says that there are some vessels of gold and silver for dishonour. For he did not, as some think, reject all the wooden and earthen ones, since some of them are for honour, as he himself says: “The potter of clay forms one for honour, another for dishonour.” And of wood, one is for preparation, another for sacrilege; of gold and silver, that is, of the great and illustrious, he spoke of the unclean. For in the Apocalypse too the harlot (that is, the opposing body) is adorned with purple, scarlet, gold and silver and precious stones, holding a golden cup in her hand full of the abominations and uncleannesses of the whole earth. These, then, are the ornaments of the devil, precious stones, by which he imitates the stones of fire; and man has in himself treasures both of crimes and of splendid things. For he is the bearer of his own, whom his possessions have bound like fetters. Besides those things which are put forth by both sexes of the devil’s body to be adorned, the heart is set even in those things which they have buried. “For where the treasure is, there will the heart of man be also.” For the old man and his land are one body, since he too is earth. Hence the Apostle defined not only what can be committed by the body, but also avarice, as a member of the one who possesses, saying: “Put to death, therefore, your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and avarice, which is the service of idols; because of which the wrath of God comes.” “From the day you were created, I set you with the cherubim on the holy mountain of God,” that is, in Christ, or in the church. “You were in the midst of the stones of fire,” that is, of holy men, who, united, make the mountain of God. For angels, being of another substance, cannot be called stones, because they have no body. “You walked without spot in your days, from the day you were created, until your iniquities were found in you, from the multitude of your trading.” That the stones are the church, Peter says thus: “See, brothers, like living stones you are built up into spiritual houses.” That this house is fiery, and that it burns the evil brothers, God says thus: “The house of Jacob will be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau stubble. They will blaze against them and devour them, and there will be no fire-bearer in the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken.” For when a man sins he is cast down from the mountain of God, and there will be no fire-bearer, the Spirit being lost, and he will be burned to ashes. “You sinned, and you were wounded from the mountain of God; and the cherub led you out from the midst of the stones of fire.” The cherub is the ministry of God, which has shut out all the wicked from the church, but spiritually. For he who does not have the wedding garment is shut out, in this world, from the midst of those reclining at table. Then he is sent into darkness, that is, into hardening, until he goes down into the eternal fire. For in the age to come no one will be mixed with the choir of the saints who is afterwards shut out. “Your heart was exalted in your beauty; your knowledge was corrupted in your beauty.” The knowledge of him is corrupted who was knowing and prudent, and through zeal for affected wisdom, concealing the truth, asserts a lie, as the Spirit says: “Though they knew the Lord, they did not glorify him as Lord or give thanks, but became futile in their thoughts, saying that they were wise.” The knowledge is corrupted of those who teach others and do not teach themselves. The beauty is corrupted that does not answer to its race by likeness of works. “Because of the multitude of your sins I cast you to the earth; before kings I gave you to be dishonoured.” The devil too is cast to the earth, that is, into man, and man from the height of the church into being trampled, as Jeremiah says: “He cast down the glory from heaven to earth.” “Before kings”: he means Christians, under whose feet the devil and his man are trampled. “Because of the multitude of your sins and the iniquity of your trading your holy places are defiled.” He seems to have reproached him with his principal title; in the body of the devil he speaks rather of trading and of treasures, spiritual forces of wickedness. For as the trading of spiritual righteousness is a treasure, as the Lord says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant”; and again: “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven”; again: “He gave his servants his property to trade with”; again: “The merchants of Carthage …”; again: “Its trading and its wages are holy to the Lord”; and the Apostle: “Godliness,” he says, “is great gain”: so spiritual wickedness is a trading that is a treasure of sins, as the Lord says: “The evil man brings forth evil things from the treasure of his heart”; and the Apostle: “You store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath.” “Because of the iniquity,” he says, “of your trading your holy places are defiled.” For whoever does not use the holiness of God rightly makes it his own, as God says of his sabbaths: “My soul hates your sabbaths.” “I will bring out fire from your midst; it will devour you.” The fire is the church; and when it has departed from the midst of the mystery of iniquity, then the Lord will rain fire from the Lord, from the church, as it is written: “The sun rose over the earth, and Lot entered Zoar; and the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” This is the fire of which he spoke above: “The house of Jacob a fire, but the house of Esau stubble. They will blaze against them and devour them, and there will be no fire-bearer in the house of Esau.” In Genesis again it is written: “When God destroyed all the cities round about, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when God overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt.” Did Lot not deserve to be set free by his own righteousness, that Scripture should say, “God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow”? Or did he dwell in cities and not in a city, that it should say “the cities in which he dwelt”? But it is a prophecy of the future departure. For God, remembering his promise to Abraham, cast Lot out of all the cities of Sodom, upon which fire will come from the fire of the church, which will be brought out from their midst. “And I will make you ashes in your land”: that is, in men, or the men themselves in their own land, who did not wish to be in the land of God. “In the sight of the men who see you,” that is, who understand. Can the devil be seen in a man? “And all who knew you among the nations will be grieved over you.” For when the Lord strikes or destroys the wicked, those who are used to being supported by their help are grieved, a part of their body being weakened. “You have become destruction, and you will not be for ever.”