Religious and moral duties.
Flie from al euil thinges, 4. as ambition, presumption, scandal, pusillanimitie, lying, and babling. 16. Husbandrie of the ground, 21. a good wife, and good seruantes are to be cherised, 25. kepe children in discipline. 29. Honour parents, and elders, 36. & pittie the poore. 40. Memorie of the last thinges preserueth from sinne.
1Do no evils, and no evils shall lay hold of thee.Non fare il male, e il male non verrà sopra di te.DOE not euils, and they shal nor apprehend thee.Noli facere mala, et non te apprehendent: 2Depart from the unjust, and evils shall depart from thee.Partiti dall'uom perverso, e sarai lungi dal male.Depart from the wicked, & euil shal fayle from thee.discede ab iniquo, et deficient mala abs te. 3My son, sow not evils in the furrows of injustice, and thou shalt not reap them sevenfold.Figliuolo, non seminare cattiva semenza ne' solchi dell'ingiustizia, e non avrai da mieterne il settuplo.Sonne, sow not euils in the furrowes of iustice, & thou shalt not reape them seuenfold.Fili, non semines mala in sulcis injustitiæ, / et non metes ea in septuplum. 4Seek not of the Lord a preeminence, nor of the king the seat of honour.Non chiedere al Signore di esser condottiere di altri, né al re un posto di onore.Seeke not of the lord chiefe principalitie, nor of the king the chayre of honour.Noli quærere a Domino ducatum, / neque a rege cathedram honoris. 5Justify not thyself before God, for he knoweth the heart: and desire not to appear wise before the king.Non ti spacciare per giusto dinanzi a Dio; perocché egli è conoscitore de' cuori, e non allettare di comparire sapiente dinanzi al re.Iustifie not thyself before God, because he is the knower of the hart: and before the king desire not to seme wise.Non te justifices ante Deum, / quoniam agnitor cordis ipse est: / et penes regem noli velle videri sapiens. 6Seek not to be made a judge, unless thou have strength enough to extirpate iniquities: lest thou fear the person of the powerful, and lay a stumblingblock for thy integrity.Non cercare di essere fatto pudice; se non hai petto da farti largo a traverso dell'iniquità: affinchè non avvenga, che tu temendo la faccia di un potente, abbi da esporre alle cadute la tua equità.Seeke not to be made a iudge, vnles thou be able by power to breake iniquities: lest perhaps thou feare the face of the mightie, and put a scandal in thyne equitie.Noli quærere fieri judex, / nisi valeas virtute irrumpere iniquitates: / ne forte extimescas faciem potentis, / et ponas scandalum in æquitate tua. 7Offend not against the multitude of a city, neither cast thyself in upon the people,Guardati dall'offendere la moltitudine della città; e non ti gettare in mezzo al popolo.Sinne not against the multitude of a citie, neither thrust thyself into the people,Non pecces in multitudinem civitatis, / nec te immittas in populum: 8Nor bind sin to sin: for even in one thou shalt not be unpunished.Non congiungere peccato con peccato: perocché nemmen per un solo non sarai esente da pena.nor binde together duble sinnes: for neither in one shalt thou be free from punishment.neque alliges duplicia peccata, / nec enim in uno eris immunis.
9Be not fainthearted in thy mind:Guardati dall'aver un cuor pusillanime:Be not fayntharted in thy minde:Noli esse pusillanimis in animo tuo: 10Neglect not to pray, and to give alms.Non trascurar l'orazione, e il far limosina.despise not to pray, and to geue almes.exorare et facere eleemosynam ne despicias. 11Say not: God will have respect to the multitude of my gifts, and when I offer to the most high God, he will accept my offerings.Non dire: Iddio avrà riguardo a' molti miei doni, e quand'io offerirò i miei doni all'Altissimo, ei gli accetterà.Say not: In the multitude of my giftes God wil haue respect, and when I offer to God most high, he wil receiue my giftes.Ne dicas: In multitudine munerum meorum respiciet Deus, / et offerente me Deo altissimo, munera mea suscipiet. 12Laugh no man to scorn in the bitterness of his soul: for there is one that humbleth and exalteth, God who seeth all.Non ti burlare di un uomo, che ha il cuore afflitto; perocché quegli, che umilia, ed esalta, egli è Dio, che tutto vede.Laugh not a man to scorne in the bitternes of his soule: for there is that humbleth and exalteth, God the ouerseer of al.Non irrideas hominem in amaritudine animæ: / est enim qui humiliat et exaltat circumspector Deus. 13Devise not a lie against thy brother: neither do the like against thy friend.Non inventar menzogne contro del tuo fratello; e noi fare similmente contro l'amico.Plowe not a lie agaynst thy brother: neither doe thou likewise agaynst thy frend.Noli amare mendacium adversus fratrem tuum, / neque in amicum similiter facias. 14Be not willing to make any manner of lie: for the custom thereof is not good.Guardati dal proferire alcuna menzogna; perché l'avvezzarsi a ciò non è cosa buona.Be not willing to make any lie: for the custome therof is not good.Noli velle mentiri omne mendacium: / assiduitas enim illius non est bona. 15Be not full of words in a multitude of ancients, and repeat not the word in thy prayer.Non essere verboso nella adunanza de' seniori; e non ripeter parola nella tua orazione.Be not ful of wordes in a multitude of ancients, and iterate not a word in thy speach.Noli verbosus esse in multitudine presbyterorum, / et non iteres verbum in oratione tua. 16Hate not laborious works, nor husbandry ordained by the most High.Non odiare le opere di fatica, né l'agricoltura istituita dall'Altissimo.Hate not laborious workes, and husbandrie created of the Highest.Non oderis laboriosa opera, / et rusticationem creatam ab Altissimo. 17Number not thyself among the multitude of the disorderly.Non ti associare alla turba degli indisciplinati.Counte not thy selfe in the multitude of men without discipline.Non te reputes in multitudine indisciplinatorum.
18Remember wrath, for it will not tarry long.Ricorditi dell'ira, la quale non sarà lenta.Be mindeful of wrath, because it wil not slacke.Memento iræ, quoniam non tardabit. 19Humble thy spirit very much: for the vengeance on the flesh of the ungodly is fire and worms.Umilia grandemente il tuo spirito: perocché il fuoco, e il verme puniranno la carne dell'empio.Humble thy spirit very much: because the vengeance of the flesh of the impious, is fyre and the worme.Humilia valde spiritum tuum, / quoniam vindicta carnis impii ignis et vermis. 20Do not transgress against thy friend deferring money, nor despise thy dear brother for the sake of gold.Non venir in rottura coll'amico, che tarda a renderti del denaro; e non disprezzare un fratello carissimo in confronto dell'oro.Doe not preuaricate against thy frend differring money, nor despise thy dearest brother for gold.Noli prævaricari in amicum pecuniam differentem, / neque fratrem carissimum auro spreveris. 21Depart not from a wise and good wife, whom thou hast gotten in the fear of the Lord: for the grace of her modesty is above gold.Non ti separar da una donna giudiziosa, e dabbene, la quale nel timor del Signore ti toccò in sorte; perocché la grazia della sua verecondia val più che l'oro.Depart not from a wise and good woman, which thou hast gotten in the feare of our Lord: for the grace of her bashfulnes is aboue gold.Noli discedere a muliere sensata et bona, / quam sortitus es in timore Domini: / gratia enim verecundiæ illius super aurum. 22Hurt not the servant that worketh faithfully, nor the hired man that giveth thee his life.Non maltrattare il tuo servo, che opera con fedeltà; né il mercenario, che consuma per te la sua vita.Hurt not the seruant that worketh in truth, nor the hyred man that geueth his soule.Non lædas servum in veritate operantem, / neque mercenarium dantem animam suam. 23Let a wise servant be dear to thee as thy own soul, defraud him not of liberty, nor leave him needy.Il servo sensato sia amato da te, come l'anima tua, non gli negare la sua libertà, e nol lasciare in miseria.Let a wise seruant be beloued of thee as thy soule, defraude him not of libertie, nor leaue him needie.Servus sensatus sit tibi dilectus quasi anima tua: / non defraudes illum libertate, / neque inopem derelinquas illum. 24Hast thou cattle? have an eye to them: and if they be for thy profit, keep them with thee.Hai tu de' bestiami? va a visitarli; e se sono utili, restino presso di te.Hast thou cattel? looke wel to them: and if they be profitable, let them continew with thee.Pecora tibi sunt, attende illis: / et si sunt utilia, perseverent apud te. 25Hast thou children? instruct them, and bow down their neck from their childhood.Hai tu de' figliuoli? istruiscili, e domali dalla loro puerizia.Hast thou children? instruct them, & bowe them from their childehood.Filii tibi sunt ? erudi illos, / et curva illos a pueritia illorum.
26Hast thou daughters? have a care of their body, and shew not thy countenance gay towards them.Hai tu delle figliuole? custodisci la loro verginità, e non mostrar ad esse il viso ridente.Hast thou daughters? keepe their bodie, and shew not thy countenance merrie towards them.Filiæ tibi sunt ? serva corpus illarum, / et non ostendas hilarem faciem tuam ad illas. 27Marry thy daughter well, and thou shalt do a great work, and give her to a wise man.Da a marito la figliuola, ed hai fatto un'opera grande; ma dalla ad un uomo sensato.Bestow thy daughter, and thou shalt doe a great worke, and geue her to a wise man.Trade filiam, et grande opus feceris: / et homini sensato da illam. 28If thou hast a wife according to thy soul, cast her not off: and to her that is hateful, trust not thyself. With thy whole heart,Se tu hai una moglie secondo cuor tuo, non la mandar via; e non darti ad una, che sia odiosa.If thou haue a wife according to thy soule, cast her not of: and to her that is hateful commit not thyself. With thy whole hartMulier si est tibi secundum animam tuam, non projicias illam: / et odibili non credas te. / In toto corde tuo 29Honour thy father, and forget not the groanings of thy mother:Con tutto il cuor tuo onora il padre tuo; e non ti scordare de' gemiti di tua madre.honour thy father, and forget not the gronings of thy mother:honora patrem tuum, / et gemitus matris tuæ ne obliviscaris: 30Remember that thou hadst not been born but through them: and make a return to them as they have done for thee.Ricordati, che senza di essi tu non saresti nato; e rendi ad essi secondo quello, che han fatto per te.remember that thou hadst not bene borne but by them: and recompence them, as they also thee.memento quoniam nisi per illos natus non fuisses: / et retribue illis, quomodo et illi tibi. 31With all thy soul fear the Lord, and reverence his priests.Temi il Signore con tutta l'anima tua, e onora i suoi sacerdoti.In al thy soule feare our Lord, and sanctifie his priestes.In tota anima tua time Dominum, / et sacerdotes illius sanctifica. 32With all thy strength love him that made thee: and forsake not his ministers.Con tutte le tue forze ama colui, che ti ha creato: e non abbandonare i suoi ministri.With al thy strength loue him that made thee: & forsake not his ministers.In omni virtute tua dilige eum qui te fecit, / et ministros ejus ne derelinquas. 33Honour God with all thy soul and give honour to the priests, and purify thyself with thy arms.Onora il Signore con tutta l'anima tua, e rispetta i sacerdoti; e mondati offerendo le spalle (delle ostie).Honour God with al thy soule, and honour the priestes, and purge thyself with the armes.Honora Deum ex tota anima tua, / et honorifica sacerdotes, / et propurga te cum brachiis.
34Give them their portion, as it is commanded thee, of the firstfruits and of purifications: and for thy negligences purify thyself with a few.Da ad essi la parte delle primizie, e (delle ostie) di espiazione, come fu a te comandato; e mondati dalla tua negligenza colle poche (vittime).Geue them the portion, as it is commanded thee, of the first fruites and purgation: and of thy negligence purge thy self with few.Da illis partem, sicut mandatum est tibi, primitiarum et purgationis, / et de negligentia tua purga te cum paucis. 35Offer to the Lord the gift of thy shoulders, and the sacrifice of sanctification, and the firstfruits of the holy things:Offerirai in dono al Signore le spalle delle tue vittime, e il sagrifizio di santificazione, e le primizie delle cose sante:The gift of thyne armes and the sacrifice of sanctification thou shalt offer to our Lord, and the first of holie thinges:Datum brachiorum tuorum, / et sacrificium sanctificationis offeres Domino, / et initia sanctorum. 36And stretch out thy hand to the poor, that thy expiation and thy blessing may be perfected.E stendi al povero la tua mano (affinchè sia perfetta la tua propiziazione, e la tua benedizione).and to the poore stretch out thyne hand, that thy propitiation may be perfected, and thy blessing.Et pauperi porrige manum tuam, / ut perficiatur propitiatio et benedictio tua. 37A gift hath grace in the sight of all the living, and restrain not grace from the dead.La beneficenza è gradita a tutti i viventi; e tu non negarla nemmeno ai morti.The grace of a gift is in the sight of al the liuing, and from the dead stay nor grace. Want not in consolationGratia dati in conspectu omnis viventis, / et mortuo non prohibeas gratiam. 38Be not wanting in comforting them that weep, and walk with them that mourn.Non mancare di porgere consolazione a chi piange; e tieni compagnia agli afflitti.to them that weepe, and walke with them that moorne.Non desis plorantibus in consolatione, / et cum lugentibus ambula. 39Be not slow to visit the sick: for by these things thou shalt be confirmed in love.Non ti paia greve il visitare il malato; perocché per tali mezzi ti fonderai nella carità.Be not loth to visite the sicke: for by these thinges thou shalt be confirmed in loue.Non te pigeat visitare infirmum: / ex his enim in dilectione firmaberis. 40In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin.In tutte le tue azioni ricordati del tuo ultimo fine, e non peccherai in eterno.In al thy workes remember thy later ends, and thou wilt not sinne for euer.In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, / et in æternum non peccabis.
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Calmet
Evils. Greek, "injustice." Evil communications corrupt good manners, (Haydock) or the punishment of sin follows its commission. (Calmet)
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Haydock
Not. Greek, "not in." (Haydock)
Calmet
Seven-fold: more abundantly, Osee 10:11., Job 4:5., and Galatians 6:7. (Calmet)
Worthington
The wicked shall receive the fruit of their wickedness. (Worthington)
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Haydock
God. Greek, "the Lord, and affect not wisdom (sophizou) before the king." (Haydock)
Curt. vi
Of ourselves we are despicable; and kings love not those whose superior talents seem to eclipse their own. David's valour excited the hatred of Saul, and Alexander "was indignant that Antipater (his general; Haydock) had conquered, thinking his own glory was diminished by that which another acquired." (Curt. vi.)
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Calmet
Integrity. A judge is exposed to many dangers, 2 Paralipomenon 19:6. (Calmet)
Plato
"He must be prudent and firm." (Plato, 2 Republic)
St. Chrysostom
What will become of those who push themselves forward? (St. Chrysostom, hom. xxxiv. in Hebrews xiii.)
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To sin. Correct not thy severity by too great indulgence, nor entangle thyself with the sins of othres, as with a chain, Isaias 5:18.
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Mind. If thou hast committed a fault, despair not, but pray, (ver. 10.) avoiding presumption, ver. 14.
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Soul. Whether the person have incurred a fault or not, we ought to shew pity, reflecting on our own frailty, 1 Corinthians 10:12.
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Devise. Literally, "plough." But Hebrew Charasch, means also to machinate.
Calmet
Brother. We cannot hence infer, with Grotius, that the Jews allowed themselves to deceive strangers. (Calmet)
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Calmet
Good, but very pernicious, (Matthew 5:37., and Apocalypse 21:8.; St. Augustine, Mend.) though some have thought that lies might be told to prevent evil. (Origen, etc.) (Calmet)
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Challoner
Repeat not. Make not much babbling by repetition of words, but aim more at fervour of heart. (Challoner)
Haydock
A supplication ought to be drawn up in a concise manner. (Haydock)
Judges and orators should speak with due reserve. Prayer must be unceasing: yet many words must not be used to inform God of our wants. Our Saviour seems to allude to this text, Matthew 6:7.
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High. Genesis 2:15., and 3:18. The patriarchs and the most famous Roman generals followed this employment.
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Calmet
On the flesh, is not in Greek. Christ appears to have had this passage in view, Mark 9:44. Many suppose that both allude to the fire which burnt dead bodies, etc., in the vale of Hinnon. But all allow that the inextinguishable flames of hell are meant. Whether the fire and worms be corporeal or not has been questioned: the Greek Fathers, and the Church of Florence, generally maintain the negative, and the Latins assert it on better grounds. St. Thomas Aquinas adopts the opinion of many of the Fathers, who explain the worm to denote the remorse of conscience. Yet many take it to be a worm, though not like those with which we are acquainted. Horreo vermem mendacem et mortem vivacem. (St. Bernard, cons. v.) See St. Jerome; Isaias lxvi.; Cornelius a Lapide; St. Gregory, Dial. 4:29.; St. Augustine, City of God 20:10.; St. Ambrose vii. in Luke xiv.) (Calmet)
Worthington
Fire and the worm of conscience are both eternal. (Worthington)
The punishment at least is such, and more intense than we can conceive.
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Calmet
Wife. The virtuous never approved of divorcing any but the incorrigible. (Calmet, Dis.)
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Man. The Jews in general embraced the married state in their youth. St. Paul prefers virginity, 1 Corinthians 7:8.
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Hateful. To marry such a one would be an occasion of divorce, which is always odious.
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Groanings, in child-bed, and (Calmet) during thy infancy. (Menochius) (Job 4:4.)
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Haydock
Priests. Greek, "priest, and give him the portion which is enjoined thee, the first-fruit, and for negligence, and the gift of the shoulders, and the," etc., ver. 35. (Haydock)
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Sa
Few offerings, if thou be poor. (Sa)
Be alone with the priest when thou dost confess, and imitate the small number.
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Poor. They and Levites are always to be invited, Deuteronomy 12:19., and 14:26.
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Worthington
Dead: detained in purgatory. (Worthington)
Challoner
And restrain not grace from the dead. Withhold not from them the benefit of alms, prayers, and sacrifices. Such was the doctrine and practice of the Church of God, even in the time of the Old Testament. And the same has always been continued from the days of the apostles in the Church of the New Testament. (Challoner)
St. Augustine
Meat was also placed on the tombs of the deceased, for the benefit of the poor, Tobias 4:18. (St. Augustine, Confessions 6:2.)
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Haydock
Walk. Greek, "mourn." (Haydock)
Calmet
It was customary to join those who mourned for the dead, and to offer them meat, and endeavour to comfort them. (Calmet, Diss.)
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Love, being approved both by God and man.
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Haydock
End. Greek, "things;" death, judgment, and either hell or heaven. (Haydock)
Worthington
This consideration is a powerful preservative against sin. (Worthington)
Calmet
For who would dare to offend his judge, if he believed that the next moment he would be arraigned before his dreadful tribunal? (Calmet)
St. Jerome
"We die daily," etc. (St. Jerome, ad Heliod.)
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Repeat not, etc.... Make not much babbling by repetition of words: but aim more at fervour of heart.
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Thy arms.... That is, with all thy power: or else by arms (brachiis) are here signified the right shoulders of the victims, which by the law fell to the priests. See ver. 35.
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And restrain not grace from the dead.... That is, withhold not from them the benefit of alms, prayers, and sacrifices. Such was the doctrine and practice of the church of God even in the time of the Old Testament. And the same has always been continued from the days of the apostles in the church of the New Testament.
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what soeuer anie soweth that he shal reape, and the wicked shal eate the fruites of his owne workes
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Concordance Iob. 9.
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Concordance Psal. 142
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Concordance Eccle. 7.
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Great prudence and sortitude are required in al Iudges spiritual and temporal.
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In hel are two punishments: fire burning, and the worme of conscience vering the soule, & both are eternal.
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Leuit. ••.
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T•b. •.
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Concordance Deut. 1•.
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Leuit. •.
Num ••.
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VVorkes of mercie are also profitable to the dead, as prayer, almes, and sacrifice for soules in purgatorie.
Concordance Rom 1•, v. 15.
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A most especial preseruatiue from sinne.
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St Athanasius of Alexandria † AD 373 Apology to the Emperor. (Apologia Ad Constantium.) 2
… Which if you will vouchsafe to hear, I am confident that in this matter also you will condemn those reckless men, who have no fear of that God, who has commanded us not to speak falsely before the king
St Athanasius of Alexandria † AD 373 Persecution at Alexandria 1
Wherefore when Diogenes came, and Syrianus laid in wait for us, both he and we and the people demanded to see the Emperor’s letters, supposing that, as it is written, ‘Let not a falsehood be spoken before the king
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St John Chrysostom † AD 407 Homilies on Titus 2
For if he has undertaken the office of a Teacher, and is not able to combat these enemies, and to stop their mouths who are so shameless, he will become in each case the cause of their destination who perish. And if some one has thus advised, “Seek not to be a judge, unless thou canst take away iniquity” (
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St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 City of God 14.8
… And how is this, unless because the will is in this place used strictly, and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary phraseology would not have allowed the saying, “Be unwilling to make any manner of lie,”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 On Lying 34
34. For what is written in another place, “Wish not to use every lie;”
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Pope St Gregory I the Great † AD 604 The Book of Pastoral Rule 3.30
… because in withholding purity of life from his weeping he makes even his very tears filthy before the eyes of God . Hence again it is written, Repeat not a word in thy prayer (
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St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews 3.54
… “And in simplicity of heart seek Him.” Also in the same: “He who walketh with simplicity, walketh trustfully.” Also in the same: “Seek not things higher than thyself, and look not into things stronger than thyself.” Also in Solomon: “Be not excessively righteous, and do not reason more than is required.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 City of God 21.9
… and I think that Scripture is silent regarding the spiritual pain of the damned, because, though not expressed, it is necessarily understood that in a body thus tormented the soul also is tortured with a fruitless repentance. For we read in the ancient Scriptures, “The vengeance of the flesh of the ungodly is fire and worms.”
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St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter 65
… “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us?” and, “There is no man that sinneth not;” and again, “There is not on the earth a righteous man, who doeth good and sinneth not”
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St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 On Christian Doctrine 3.17
… and if he has determined to keep his virgin unmarried, he tries to put a figurative interpretation on the passage where it is said, “Marry thy daughter, and so shall thou have performed a weighty matter.”
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St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 The Epistles of Cyprian 64.2
2. Moreover also Solomon, established in the Holy Spirit, testifies and teaches what is the priestly authority and power, saying, “Fear the Lord with all thy soul, and reverence His priests;”
Early Popes (Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals) The Epistles of Pope Fabian 2.2
… Give him his portion, as it is commanded thee, of the first-fruits; and purge thyself concerning negligence with a few things. Thou shalt offer the gift of thy shoulders, and the sacrifice of sanctification, and the first-fruits of the holy things to the Lord. And stretch thine hand unto the poor, that thine atonement and blessing may be perfected.”
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St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 The Epistles of Cyprian 64.2
2. Moreover also Solomon, established in the Holy Spirit, testifies and teaches what is the priestly authority and power, saying, “Fear the Lord with all thy soul, and reverence His priests;” and again, “Honour God with all thy soul, and honour His priests.”
St John Chrysostom † AD 407 Homilies on 2 Timothy 2
… viii. 7 .) Therefore insult is their gain, honor their burden. What I say, therefore, is for your sakes, not for theirs. He that honors the Priest, will honor God also; and he who has learnt to despise the Priest, will in process of time insult God. “He that receiveth you,” He saith, “receiveth Me.” ( Matt. x. 40 .) “Hold my priests in honor” (
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St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 127.6
… “whosoever doth not bear His cross daily and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Ages before, the Holy Spirit had said by the prophet: “for thy sake are we killed all the day long: we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” Many generations afterwards the words were spoken: “remember the end and thou shalt never do amiss,”
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St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews 3.110
In Solomon, in Ecclesiasticus: “Be not slack to visit the sick man; for from these things thou shalt be strengthened in love.”
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St John Chrysostom † AD 407 The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Gospel of St. John 39
… x. 5 ,) and then assigning the reason the Psalmist hath added, “He putteth Thy judgments far away out of his sight”;) so he that always retains this fear will walk soberly. “Remember,” saith one, “thy last things, and thou shalt never do amiss.” (
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1. DO NOT DO EVIL, AND EVIL SHALL NOT SEIZE THEE. — "Evil," namely, as the Greek Complutensian adds, evils, although the Roman edition reads it in the singular: and evil shall not seize thee. There lies hidden metonymically in the word evil; for first it takes evil of guilt, namely sins; afterwards evil of punishment, which is born from evils of guilt as it were an effect and offspring; as if to say, Do you wish to escape evils of punishment? do not do evils of guilt. Thus we say to a thief: do you wish to escape the gallows? avoid theft. And: "If there were no sins, there would be no scourges." The Syriac: Do not do what is evil, and evil shall not find thee; Vatable: Do nothing evil, lest evil befall thee; others: Do not do evil, and evil shall not seize thee. For evil, or malice, has its own kingdom and dominion over all who do evil, upon whom therefore it sends its own evils of punishment and scourges, as it were its own lictors and torturers. For evil is so sharp and harmful that, if you touch it, you are immediately seized and afflicted by it; just as those who touch or tread upon the points of needles or nails are immediately wounded by them springing forth. Such is the point of a needle—evil and sin. This is what the Comic poet says: Wrong pursues the guilty head. And: Rarely does tardy punishment desert the wicked man who goes before. Sin therefore is as it were pitch, glue, thistles and thorns: which if you touch, you are immediately seized by them, pricked and defiled. Whence that saying: "He that touches pitch shall be defiled by it." Understand "evil" both of the present life, such as poverty, sickness, persecutions, infamy, death, etc.; and of the future in hell: for often God does not punish sinners in this life, that He may punish them more severely in the future, where "there comes to the wretched death without death, an end without end, defect without defect; because death lives, and the end always begins, and defect knows not how to cease," says Blessed Peter Damian to Bianca, chapter xii. St. Augustine gives the reason in epistle 49 to Deogratias: "The will," he says, "is punished, which wished to have eternal enjoyment of sin; and therefore it shall find eternal severity of vengeance." See St. Gregory in the Morals, book ix, chapter xxxix, on those words of Job, chapter x: "Where there is no order, but eternal horror dwells."
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2. DEPART FROM THE UNJUST, AND EVILS SHALL FAIL THEE. — There is here a twofold sense. The former, as if to say, Depart from the unjust man, and you shall depart from injustice and malice, because the unjust lead their companions to their iniquities. Thus the Arabic: Do not mingle, it says, with the unjust; remove yourself from him, and it shall be removed from you. It gives a way of avoiding sins, namely by avoiding evil company and wicked companions; for nothing is more pernicious than these. Whence St. Augustine, seduced by companions to steal apples, exclaims in book III of the Confessions, chapter ix: "O friendship too hostile, an unsearchable seduction of the mind, etc., when it is said: Let us go, let us do it; and it is shameful not to be shameless!" For wicked companions are like a scorpion, which, as Pliny testifies in book xi, chapter xxv, pours forth venom like milk; for like milk it penetrates the innermost parts, and infects with poison, and thus kills. For thus companions with their blandishments penetrate the heart of a man, and defile it with their wicked counsels and kill it. Hence also those who give poison to enemies mix it with milk or wine, both that they may conceal the crime, and that the poison with the milk may penetrate the innermost parts, and seek and kill the heart. Wicked companions do the like, while they introduce their wickedness with blandishments, that more sweetly they may pervade and destroy the whole soul. The latter, as if to say, Depart from the unjust thing, namely from guilt or sin; and evils of punishment shall likewise depart from you. The Syriac favors the latter sense: Depart from evil, and it shall remove itself from you; as if it said the same thing as verse 1, but in other words. The Greek favors the former: Recede from the unjust, and sin shall decline from you. For sin, although metonymically it signifies the punishment owed to sin, yet properly denotes the guilt of sin. Moreover the Complutensian reads τὸ ἁμαρτία, that is sin, although the Roman edition omits the same; thus they have: Depart from the unjust, and it shall decline from you. Where τὸ unjust can be taken both masculine of the unjust man, and neuter of the unjust thing. If you take it of the man, the sense will be, as if to say, Depart from the unjust man, and injustice likewise with him shall depart from you; if you take it of the thing, the sense will be, as if to say, Depart from the unjust thing, namely from injustice, and it shall likewise depart from you, so that it touch you not, neither its guilt, nor its punishment. And thus the Greek reading, equally as the Syriac, shall favor the latter sense, which better corresponds to the preceding and following verse; for it follows:
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3. SON, DO NOT SOW EVIL IN THE FURROWS OF INJUSTICE, AND DO NOT REAP IT SEVENFOLD. — In Greek: Do not sow evil seeds in the furrows of injustice, and do not reap it sevenfold; in Syriac: Do not sow upon the cultivation of sin, do not reap it sevenfold; Vatablus: Son, do not commit the seed to the furrows of injustice, lest you make a harvest seven times greater from it. To sow in the furrows of injustice is to sow in the field furrowed and ploughed by injustice, namely, to sow the seed of injustice; for in the field of injustice nothing is sown except the seed of injustice. Our field is our heart, our mind, our will; in these we draw furrows of justice or injustice, when we impress upon them good or evil habits and inclinations; in these we sow, when we cast into them good or evil thoughts, volitions, intentions, desires, and purposes. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not make furrows of injustice in your field, that is, in your heart, that is, inclinations toward injustice; nor sow in them seeds of injustice, namely wicked thoughts and schemes. It alludes to Hosea x, verse 11: "Ephraim is a heifer taught to love threshing, etc. Judas shall plough, Jacob shall break his furrows. Sow for yourselves in justice, and reap in the mouth of mercy, break up your fallow ground, etc. You have ploughed impiety, you have reaped iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of lies." See what I have said at length on this matter there. AND DO NOT REAP IT SEVENFOLD. — It alludes to that concerning the murder of Cain: "Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for Cain," Genesis iv, 24; where the Septuagint translates it, seven-fold vengeance shall be exacted; Aquila, sevenfold. Where Procopius says: "The number seven," he says, "denotes the perfection of punishment," according to that Psalm lxxviii, 12: "Render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom;" and Psalm xxx, 24: "He will repay abundantly those who act with pride;" and Leviticus xxvi, 28: "I will chastise you seven," that is, many, "times;" and Job v, 19: "In six troubles he shall deliver thee, and in the seventh," that is, the supreme and most severe, "evil shall not touch thee." Now this passage can be understood in two ways, namely concerning a twofold harvest: first, concerning the harvest of guilt, as if to say: One injustice begets seven others, like the Hydra: so fertile is malice, that like tares it sows itself, and from one seven, that is, many others, spring forth; second, concerning the harvest of punishment, as if to say: You will not be punished most severely. For one injustice is punished with seven, that is, many and abundant punishments, not that it is punished more severely than it deserves (for God punishes short of what is deserved), but because its malice is so great that one punishment cannot equally satisfy for it; for mortal sin, even a single one, because it offends God and is a crime of lèse-majesté divine, is so grave and enormous that it cannot be equalled by any punishments of this life, but deserves all the torments and fires of hell, and those eternal. Every guilt therefore has sevenfold punishment, both because in this age it is chastised by God with many punishments; and because in the future it must endure the totality of all punishments. For the punishment of hell, even a single one, takes the place of all the punishments of this life; just as one happiness of eternal glory takes the place of all the delights of this life, just as the manna contained every flavour and every sweetness of taste. This sense is more worthy and more genuine than the former, both because the harvest of guilt is the abundance of punishments; and because the discourse has proceeded concerning the harvest of punishments; and because it alludes to the sevenfold punishment of Cain, and to that in Hosea x, 4: "Bitterness of judgment shall spring up as weeds upon the furrows of the field;" for the bitterness of judgment is the bitterness of torment, which the wicked furrows germinate in the field of injustice. Hugo the Younger enumerates the seven plagues of sin thus individually: The punishments of sin, he says, are three in the soul, namely pain, wrath and darkness; but in the body there are four, namely from the four elements: for the impious shall be punished by the earth on the day of judgment, by absorbing them; by water, by freezing; by air, or wind, by driving them from punishment to punishment; by fire, by burning. Sin therefore is a seven-headed Hydra: for it bears seven heads, both of capital sins and of punishments, as I have said. For the Poets feigned the Hydra to be a serpent of many heads in the Lernean marsh, of which when some were cut off, just as many immediately grew back; wherefore it was slain and burned by Hercules with arrows and fire. The fable arose from this, that Moreover, this sevenfold punishment is not sevenfold with respect to the malice and demerit of the fault, for with respect to that it is simple and less than simple, as I have already shown; but it is sevenfold with respect to the pleasure which the sinner perceives in sinning: for this pleasure is brief and slight; but the punishments following upon it are sevenfold, that is, manifold. Truly Job cap. xx, 5: "The praise (that is, the jubilation, song, exultation) of the wicked is brief, and the joy of the hypocrite is like a point." This point can be understood both of a line and of time, namely a moment. St. Gregory there understands it of a point of a line: "At a point, he says, the stylus, as soon as it is placed, is lifted; nor is there any delay in drawing it along to express a line; thus the hypocrite loses the joys of the present life as soon as he touches them." He touches them, therefore, as a globe or sphere touches the earth at a point. Again, as St. Bonaventure says, just as a point, being indivisible, has no length, nor breadth, nor height, nor depth: so the pleasure and glory of the wicked has no length, because it lasts for a brief time, and as it were for a moment only; nor breadth, because it is narrow and slight; nor height, because it is not heavenly, but earthly and vile; nor depth, because it does not penetrate the depths of the heart, nor satisfy it. On the other hand, the punishment of the hypocrite is very long, because it is eternal; very broad, because it occupies all the senses, members, powers of soul and body; very high, because it deprives him of God, heaven, eternal happiness; very deep, because it torments the innermost part of the soul, and casts it down into the deepest place of hell. Whence the Septuagint translates: The joy of the wicked is great ruin; and the gladness of the iniquitous is perdition. To which words St. Chrysostom aptly applies: "If their joy, he says, is great ruin, and their gladness perdition, what shall we say is destruction itself? Tell me, I pray, what is sorrow, what is anguish of mind?"
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4. SEEK NOT FROM THE LORD (thus the Greek, Roman and Syriac; therefore some read it wrongly, from man) A DUKEDOM (that is, a principality; for a prince is the leader of a people, because he is bound to lead and govern them), NOR FROM THE KING A SEAT OF HONOR,—that is, an honorable one, such as that of a Bishop, teacher, judge, or prince, as the sons of Zebedee asked of Christ to sit at his right hand and left in his kingdom, Matt. xx. The Syriac: Seek not from God a principality, and from the king an honorific gift; Vatablus: Seek not a principality from the Lord, nor from the king a magnificent seat. The reason is, first, because to seek these things is the vice of ambition and pride; second, because those who covet these things are subject to the envy, detraction and calumnies of many: whence they are cast down from them, indeed they are cast into great calamities; third, because where there is honor there is also burden, for example in the episcopacy there is the burden and care of souls subject to him, concerning which God will demand a strict account from the Bishop. Therefore he admonishes us not to seek after a principality, whether secular or ecclesiastical, especially the Episcopacy, to which is annexed the seat of teaching. Whence St. James, deterring the faithful from the same ambition, cap. iii, 1: "Be not, he says, many masters, my brethren, knowing that you shall receive the greater judgment; for in many things we all offend." See the sayings there, and I Tim. cap. iii, 1. Most true is that saying of St. Bernard, lib. III De Consid.: "The ambition of the ambitious is a cross." Artemidorus in Onirocrit. lib. II, cap. xxxi, says that a dream of reigning portends death to the sick, but to the healthy the loss of relatives: "To seem to reign to oneself, he says, predicts death to the sick; but to the healthy it portends the loss and separation of all relatives and companions: for kingship is unsociable." You might call this a dream of a dream; yet it often happens thus. For Joseph, dreaming that he was a prince, lost the favor, liberty, and almost the life of his brothers, Gen. xxxvii, and seq. An illustrious example of this matter is St. Cyprian lib. IV, epist. 3 to Antonius, who sets forth St. Cornelius the Pontiff and Martyr, of whom he writes thus: "He neither wished for nor sought the Episcopacy, etc.; but quiet and modest, and such as those are accustomed to be who are divinely chosen for this place, out of shame for his virginal conscience, and out of the humility of his innate and guarded modesty, not as some used force to become Bishop; but he himself suffered force, so that he was compelled to accept the Episcopacy." The same philosophers thought and advised. Ovid, lib. III De Trist.: Believe me, he who has hidden well has lived well, and within his fortune each one ought to remain. Horace lib. II Carm., ode 10: Often the great pine is tossed by the winds, and lofty towers fall with heavier ruin, and lightning strikes the highest mountains. Again Ovid: Live without envy, and pass inglorious and gentle years, and join to yourself friends who are your equals. Boethius, lib. II De Consol., meter 4: Remember to fix your humble home on sure stone. Although the wind mixing ruin thunders and mingles the seas, you enclosed in quiet, happy in the strength of a rampart, will lead a serene life, laughing at the rages of the sky. Finally it is a symbol of Pythagoras: "Abstain from beans, that is, avoid the administration of the state. For formerly magistrates were created by votes cast with beans," says Plutarch lib. de Liberis educ. Cyril presents this teaching in a festive fable of the ape and the fox, as if to be seen with the eyes, lib. II Apologorum moralium, cap. vi, which has the title: Against the proud who wish to be equal to God. "The ape, he says, seeing an agile sailor ascending the mast swiftly, when she strove to imitate him, the raven, observing this, said to her: Stay in your place, dearest, lest, elevated to a foreign region, you perish by a heavy fall of your body. But she, spurning his words, ascended, and immediately, by the sight of the great depth, confused by the imagination of a weak brain, rushed headlong, and with her neck broken could never thereafter lift up her face. Finally, when she saw the king sitting on his throne, she began to desire the same, and in his absence sat on the throne as if another prince. Seeing this, the little fox came to the throne, and greeting the sophistic king as a provident servant, ironically demanded a command. To which the ape said: I command only this, that you behold my glory with joy. But she: I advise you rather to descend from here as quickly as possible. When she neglected this, thirsting for vain likeness, she was immediately cast down from there to be torn by canine teeth. Then coming to herself in pain: Woe is me, she said, because I spurned the counsels of the wise! I did not know that where there is no counsel, there is no safety. When the fox heard this, she approached and said: From now on indeed I see you restored to sense by vexation." Then she will press upon her with another and clearer reason, by which she demonstrates to her her own foulness and foolishness: "But why, when the nature of Adam has subjected all other animals to you, do you alone, refusing the common yoke, strive to be equal to him? But she answered: An innate desire moves me to this; am I not formed more conformably to the human body than all brutes? Then the fox, arguing, says: Although certainly according to form you are more conformed to man than all others, yet because this likeness is perverted in you, hence your form is found more deformed. For what is fouler than a snub nose? or more deformed than a hand with fingers?"
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5. DO NOT JUSTIFY YOURSELF (that is, as if defending and showing yourself to be just, so that you wish to excuse all your deeds before God) BEFORE GOD, BECAUSE HE HIMSELF IS THE KNOWER OF THE HEART, AND BEFORE THE KING DO NOT WISH TO APPEAR WISE. — The Syriac: Do not justify your soul before God, and before the king do not be foolish, because the proud are fools, and the pride by which you wish to appear wise before the king is foolishness. The Greek as well as the Syriac do not have "because he himself is the knower of the heart"; but rather, "do not present yourself as just before the Lord, because he himself has fully known the heart of each one; nor display wisdom before the king." He gives the reason why principality should not be sought from God, nor a seat of honor from the king: namely, because if you seek principality from God, you ought Moreover, kings give a seat of honor to no one except the wise. If therefore you sell and display your wisdom to the king in order to obtain a seat, the king through himself and his counselors, by proposing to you most difficult questions, will be able to expose your ignorance and present it to others for ridicule. Again, even if you are wise, nevertheless it is vicious and ambitious that you wish to appear wise; and although you may hide and dissemble this wound of your ambition, the king nevertheless and the courtiers, accustomed to such things, will keenly scent it, reject it and laugh at it, as if at a fool, as the Syriac translates. From this gather these axioms: Let he who is chosen as prince be just before the Lord. And he who wishes to obtain a seat from the king must be wise: otherwise he will both sin, and bring infamy upon himself, and expose himself to many dangers. For when a fool is promoted to a higher rank, he demonstrates his foolishness, which was previously unknown, all the more through foolish acts. "Just as a monkey the higher it climbs, the more it displays its shame," says Lyra. To this pertains the fable of the peacock and the jackdaw in Aesop: "When the birds held an assembly to create a king, the peacock sought the kingdom, saying that he was worthy of it before all others on account of his exceptional beauty. When he seemed about to carry the votes of all: Yet this king, said the jackdaw, if perchance a quarrel arose and we had the eagle as an enemy, what aid or help could he provide?" The moral: "In choosing a king, the goods of the soul are to be regarded more than those of the body." Therefore the first reason why you ought not wish to appear wise before the king is the disgrace of ambition and arrogance, which all, but especially kings, abominate. For just as, according to Aristotle in book IX of the History of Animals, chapter xliv, and Pliny in book X, chapter xxi, lions hate fire and smoke, so also kings hate ostentation and boasting: for they know this to be great vanity and falsehood. For just as wood that gives much smoke produces little heat and fire, because the matter that should turn into fire goes into smoke: so almost those who boast greatly can do the least: "The wise" indeed "hide wisdom," Proverbs x, 14. Second, because kings fear a wise man, especially a foreigner, lest he betray, disturb, or overthrow the kingdom. Thus Saul persecuted David because of the slaying of Goliath, when it was cried out to him: "Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands"; for he feared lest he take the kingdom from him. And the princes of King Achis accused David, fleeing from Saul, of treason: wherefore David, feigning himself foolish, escaped the danger of death, I Kings xxi, 11. Third, because kings wish to appear to all wiser, stronger, more excellent, and wish all things to be attributed to themselves: wherefore they think it detracts from their honor and glory if they see or hear anyone wiser or more excellent than themselves. Thus Philip of Macedon, says Demosthenes, "wished all his noble deeds to be seen as his own; and he was more indignant at generals and prefects who had accomplished something successfully and praiseworthily than at those who had acted unsuccessfully and cowardly." Following his father Philip, his son Alexander "indeed wished enemies to be conquered, but was indignant that Antipater had conquered: considering whatever fell to another's glory as taken from his own," says Curtius, book VI. It is noteworthy what Xenophon writes in Book IV of the Cyropaedia concerning Gobrias going hunting with the king of the Assyrians: "A bear, he says, when it presented itself, while both pursued it, the king, having sent a javelin, missed with his shot; but Gobrias, brandishing his spear, laid low the bear. The king took this matter badly and with displeasure, and harbored envy in secret. And a lion was also set upon them, which the king pursued there with an ineffectual attempt, and the same Gobrias dispatched. This king, muttering to himself, etc., having seized a lance from his attendant, pierced Gobrias through the breast, and thus deprived of life the young man whose prowess he had borne with grievous eyes." We have seen similar examples in this age. Whoever therefore deals with kings, let him deal with them modestly and reverently, let him yield all things to them, let him not display wisdom and gifts, but rather conceal and hide them: thus he will retain the life and favor of the king. Furthermore, this principle applies especially to the display of wisdom in governing. For if anyone should wish to teach kings this, or to censure and correct their manner of ruling, he will certainly be beaten. Even wise men sin in this respect, who pluck at the deeds of kings, blame them, and brand them with the mark of imprudence, when they do not know their secrets and all the circumstances of the matter; which if they knew, they would not disapprove of them, but rather approve. I remember Alexander Farnese, the renowned prince of Parma,
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6. DO NOT SEEK TO BECOME A JUDGE, UNLESS YOU ARE ABLE BY VIRTUE TO BREAK THROUGH (that is, to break through, to shatter, to scatter: for in Greek it is ἐξᾶραι, that is, to remove, to overthrow, to uproot) INIQUITIES. — St. Augustine in the Mirror reads: "Do not seek to become a judge, if you are not able by virtue to break through iniquities." For great is often the force of iniquity, which must be overthrown by the greater force of judgment and equity. The Greek and Roman versions: Do not seek to become a judge, lest perhaps you are not able to remove iniquities. And thus St. Jerome reads it, in chapter III of Isaiah, explaining verse 6: "Be thou our prince; but this ruin is under thy hand. He shall answer: I am not a healer; do not make me a prince of the people." The Syriac: Do not seek to become a judge, unless you have the power to destroy iniquity; the Zurich version: Strive not to become a judge, lest you be unable to be equal to unjust deeds, namely, either in punishing others, or in bearing those committed by yourself, as Vatable says. Now Rabanus explains it thus, as if to say: If you wish to become a judge, first break in yourself all iniquities: "Because," he says, "he who is burdened by the weight of his own faults ought not to wish to become a judge of others' faults." But others commonly understand these things concerning the faults of others, not one's own. For in a judge there is required not only wisdom and justice, but also virtue, that is, fortitude and power, both internal and external, such as the favor of citizens and powerful friends, to break through and shatter any iniquities whatsoever, even of the powerful and princes, so that he may purge the city and province of crimes. For this is the principal duty of a judge and prince, who is the judge of judges. Indeed, the iniquities of the people surround and bind the judge like chains; therefore he needs great virtue to break them asunder. For this is good, both for the commonwealth and for the individual acting unjustly. For, as Boethius says, in book IV of the Consolation: "The wicked who are punished are happier than the unpunished," because their punishment is a great good, both by reason of justice, which it repairs; and because it removes the scandal given by them, and preserves from the future. Most excellently Bede in the Sentences: "Laws," he says, "are worth as much as kings wish (or will wish) them to be. What cannot be healed gently must be cut away with cunning." The same thing St. Gregory of Nazianzus sanctions in the Sentences: "Whoever," he says, "you have undertaken to guard the laws, drive out all fear from your mind. For everyone to whom the custody of laws is entrusted ought to be free from fear." As a symbol of this matter, Samuel in the banquet reserved for Saul from the victim the shoulder, as it were for the future king and judge of the people, I Kings ix, 24; Saul, I say, who surpassed all others in stature from the shoulder and upward. For Saul is chosen as king, who excels in shoulder and arm, namely, in virtue and strength of mind, to break through iniquities; for the arm, or shoulder, is a symbol of strength and fortitude, and therefore was deliberately reserved both for the king and for the priest, Exodus xxix, verse 27, namely, to signify the virtue of Kings and Prelates for strenuously fulfilling their duty and bearing the burden of the people; for, as Nazianzus says in the Distichs: "As the rustling of leaves frightens hares, so the shadows of things frighten the timid and cowardly." Whence St. Ambrose, book IV, epistle 29 to Florianus: "Beware of honors," he says, "which you cannot hold without fault." Indeed, Seneca also, in the book On Tranquility, chapter iv: "For some," he says, "modesty is poorly suited to civil affairs, which desire a firm countenance. For these, quiet is more useful to business." The same in the Sentences: "Whoever spares the wicked harms the good. To good justice, severity is next. As lightning falls to the danger of few, to the fear of many: so the punishments of great powers terrify more widely than they harm." And Plato, book II of the Laws: "A prince," he says, "and any magistrate ought to be prudent and brave: prudent, lest he depend on the judgment of an unskilled multitude; brave, so that he may steadfastly execute what is salutary." The same, in book VI: "A judge," he says, "in a certain way represents the person of God." Let him therefore imitate the equity and fortitude of God. Finally, the divine Isidore of Pelusium, book I, epistle 220: "The strength and firmness of empires," he says, "is the friendship of God. From which it follows that he who rules the empire robustly is a friend of God. For to me, Scripture says, thy friends are exceedingly honored, O God: their principality is exceedingly strengthened. Wherefore if you strive to be a friend of God, rule robustly, that is, giving justice not by bribes, nor by friendship, but by dignity and merit." On this matter St. Bernard, admonishing Pope Eugenius, in book III of On Consideration, chapter v: "The faults of inferiors," he says, "are to be referred to none more than to idle and negligent rulers." And further down: "Impunity is the offspring of negligence, the mother of insolence, the root of shamelessness, the nurse of transgressions." And in book IV, chapter vi: "Let another dispense other things; you provide for discipline; entrust that to the name. If speech more insolent or appearance more unseemly should sound or appear before you, let your hand be upon such things, you avenge your injury. Impunity begets boldness, boldness excess." And in chapter vi, he says, "The Pontiff ought to be the rod of the powerful, the hammer of tyrants, the father of kings, the God of Pharaoh. And he adds: "Where malice is joined with power, BE NOT AFRAID OF THE FACE OF A POWERFUL MAN, AND PUT NOT A STUMBLING BLOCK IN YOUR EQUITY. — Thus the Roman and Greek texts. Therefore Rabanus, Lyra, Hugh, Dionysius, Jansenius wrongly read in agility instead of in equity, which Lyra thus expounds, as if to say: Do not offend others through your agility, that is, lightness and inconstancy. But Jansenius, as if to say: "Do not put a stumbling block," that is, an obstacle in agility, that is, dexterity, so that, namely, for fear you do not dare to use your accustomed dexterity and promptitude in defending innocent oppressed persons: for action makes one agile, motion makes one vigorous, spirit makes one strong, body makes one robust, says Cornelius Fronto. In this sense St. Augustine in the Mirror reads in agility; wrongly Abulensis in chapter xx of Judges, Question xxvi, reads in your malice; the Syriac: Be not afraid of the face of the rich, and make not a stain in your fear; the Zurich: Be not afraid of the face of a powerful man, and put not an obstacle to your integrity; others: And put a stumbling block in your right path, by which, namely, you were walking straight by the way of justice. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Be not afraid (for this is the Greek εὐλαβηθῇς) and fear the face of a powerful man, and through this reverence and fear put a stumbling block to yourself, that is, an occasion of falling and collapsing in your equity, or in your right path, so that, namely, in the right path of justice, in which you were accustomed to walk, through fear you fall, and deflect from rectitude and justice, and do not dare to pronounce or execute a right and just sentence, but rather condemn the poor in favor of the powerful, or permit them to be oppressed by the powerful: for this will be a stumbling block and ruin to you, both as a fault of injustice and as a punishment and vengeance, whether decreed by law or by God. An example is in King Ahab, who, because he spared the impious Benhadad, whom he had captured in war, heard from God: "Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man worthy of death, thy life shall be for his life, and thy people for his people," III Kings xx, 42. So also Saul, sparing the impious Agag, king of Amalec, paid for this excessive clemency with death, I Kings xv. Wherefore wisely Totila, king of the Goths, when asked to pardon a certain rape committed against a virgin, answered: "It is the same character to bind oneself to crime and to prevent the punishments of crimes; but altogether, either this punishment must be given, or the commonwealth of the Goths must perish." Thus Sigonius in On the Western Empire. For just as if foundations are not laid equally, the house resting upon them gapes, breaks and falls: so also if judgments are not equal, the commonwealth falls; for its basis and foundation is justice. Note: Scandal in Greek from σκάζω, that is, I deflect, I incline, I limp, is called the peg which is set up in traps to hold back the bait, which the mouse, entering and striking it, overturns in sudden ruin; hence σκάνδαλον is called an obstacle, a stumbling block, a bar, and whatever brings about the cause of falling and ruin, such as here reverence and fear. Thus Pollux, and St. Jerome Against Pelagius: "Scolon," he says, "and scandal among the Greeks received their name from offense and ruin." It is therefore the part of a wise man to know himself and his own passions and infirmities, and to beware lest he give them occasion to fall into sin, for example: He who reveres and fears some person excessively, and has experienced that from this fear he has fallen into some sin, let him beware of dealing with such a person, who is accustomed to instill this fear in him: he who feels himself driven by excessive love of some thing or person, let him flee its presence, lest, enticed by its present appearance, he be snatched away and fall into it: he who knows himself prone to wine and gluttony, let him flee banquets and feasts. This is the prudence of the cautious and the holy, by which, foreseeing with foresight the dangers that will befall them, they guard against them and fortify themselves against them. Apply the same to any state, office and institute. Hence secondly, some here understand scandal not as passive, as already mentioned, but as active, that is to say: Lest through fear of favoring the powerful, your equity become iniquity, and thus you give scandal to others: for all are scandalized when they hear a judge favoring a powerful wrongdoer, and therefore adjudging the case to him and condemning the poor innocent man. For just as in an eclipse the blemish of the failing sun is noticed by all: so also the blemish and defect of an unjust judge, who is as it were the sun of justice, is observed and condemned by all. This one therefore is similar to the heliotrope, which turns itself toward the sun, and with it rotates and bends; and to chaff, which is seized by the wind and tossed about; and to the crescent moon, which exhibits itself with an unequal face: for it shows us horns, but to the heavenly beings a full orb. Thus also the judge gives more than is due to the powerful, less than is due to the powerless. This is respect of persons condemned by divine and human law, whereby the powerful is regarded more than the poor, and power more than innocence and justice; this is the scandal which draws some to sorrow, others to the imitation of wickedness. For, as St. Chrysostom says in homily 1 on the words of the Apostle: "Just as in a body, when some member is corrupted, there is not great damage; but when the eyes are injured or the head is crushed, the whole body is rendered useless: so also he who is placed in some high position as it were a mirror of virtue with great brightness, admired by all, when he falls, brings about great ruin and loss, not only because he fell from on high, but because he is a matter of scandal to many others who look to him." Hence in the scandal of Beelphegor God says to Moses, Numbers 25:4: "Take all the princes of the people, and hang them up against the sun in gibbets, that my wrath may be turned away from Israel." But if the Roman people should perhaps ask me why I do not enjoy the same freedom in judgments as in porticoes; nor follow or flee what he himself loves or hates—Once what the fox, cautious in sickness, answered to the lion, I will relate: Because the footprints terrify me, all pointing toward you, none backward—You are a beast of many heads. To this are added three interpretations of Paul of Palacio: The first is, lest you sin through favor of the people, as Absalom through the favor of the people drove his father David from the kingdom, 2 Kings 15; the second, lest you sin to please the people, as Saul sinned through the people by not killing Amalec, as God had commanded him, 1 Kings, chapter 15; the third, that is to say: O judge, O prince, if you must sin, do not sin publicly: do not teach your subjects to sin, do not set yourself as an example of sin to the people: for that sin is twofold, that is, manifold and grave; and if a simple sin is not free from punishments, how will one so grave be exempt? O how gravely Jeroboam sinned, who was a cause of sin to Israel! Therefore, let not the judge or prince (for it is of these that he speaks) sin before the multitude and people. If he wishes to act, let him enter a cave with Saul, where he may leave the burden of his belly; and let him not even trust himself there: for David the witness is present. Let the prince be admonished that his sins are public; for, as a Bishop who lays on hands hastily shares in the sins of the ordained: so he who sins before the people shares in the sins which the people will commit by his example. This is Palacio.
7:7
This sentence can be explained in three ways. First, lest "in the multitude" be taken, by Hebraism and Graecism (whereby εἰς is often put for ἐν), to mean "in a multitude," and forbids anyone to accommodate himself to the multitude of the common people and the crowd of the populace, especially when it is in tumult and resists the magistrate, or attempts to break or hinder the judge's sentence: which often happens when citizens attempt to snatch away their relatives or dear ones, though guilty, justly condemned to death or other punishment; or when the common people strive to abolish useful laws sanctioned by the magistrate, because they feel them burdensome, so that here is another reason why no one ought to seek the office of judge, namely lest fear, just as it impelled him to yield to the powerful, so compel him to yield also to the crowd of the people: for great is the force of the populace gathered together, in tumult and raging. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not sin in and with the multitude of the city and the common people sinning, and therefore do not throw yourself into the tumultuous or sinning people, lest you be snatched away by it as by a swift torrent into crime; but rather keep yourself at home, or withdraw, until that tumult or fervor of the people passes and is calmed. For the latter part of this verse seems to aim at the same thing as the former part aims at. The Syriac favors this sense: Do not condemn your soul (or yourself) in the assembly of the city, and do not expose your soul to its judgments. And the Greek, which for "do not throw yourself into the people" have: καὶ μὴ καταβάλῃς σεαυτόν ἐν ὄχλῳ, that is, and do not let go, or hurl, or destroy, oppress, lose, or kill yourself (for all these things does καταβάλλω signify) in the crowd, or into the crowd of the tumultuous people. And the Zurich version: Do not permit yourself to be abjectly given over to the common people. Second, another sense is, as if to say: Do not become a judge or prince, lest you expose yourself to the danger of offending the multitude and people, who, as they are easily irritated, so are they difficult to appease, and often they despoil of life and goods those by whom they are offended. He says therefore, says Jansenius: Do not sin in, that is, against the multitude of the city, by doing it injury; nor do you rashly throw yourself and hurl yourself into the people, either to govern it, or rather to settle the quarrels and contentions stirred up by the people: for both are dangerous, namely lest you be torn apart by the raging people: and the former is also a grave sin, and the graver the more it is committed against the whole people. Thus it must be said that two precepts are given here: the first, that one not sin against the people; the second, that one not meddle in its quarrels. This sense agrees better with the Latin Vulgate version. Thus against the people of Israel asking that the burdens imposed by Solomon be lightened, the foolish Rehoboam sinned, saying: "My little finger is thicker than the back of my father, etc. My father beat you with whips; but I will beat you with scorpions," III Kings xii, 11: and therefore, despoiled of the kingdom of Israel by the people, he ruled only over the tribe of Judah with Benjamin. Third, the easiest and plainest sense will be, if you take sin here not theologically, but civilly and politically, for offense, as if to say: Do not sin, that is, do not offend the multitude of the city, either
7:8
First, as if to say: Do not become a judge or prince, lest you double your sins: for besides your own, others will be imputed to you, namely those of the people, either because you gave them a bad example, or because you neglected to correct them (as you were bound to do by your office). Second, as if to say: Do not sin against the multitude of the people, because these "sins," inasmuch as they are committed against many, are "double," that is, manifold. Third and genuinely, as if to say: If once you have sinned against the multitude, or against justice and equity, do not repeat this sin, and by heaping sins upon sins, bind them together as it were in a bundle, thinking: I have already sinned, I have already lost God's grace; I will therefore give myself over to vices and pleasures. Let it suffice to have sinned once, let it suffice to have inflicted one wound upon yourself, do not add wound to wound, blow to blow. One blow can easily be healed: many are often lethal and incurable. This sense is demanded by the Greek: Do not bind sin twice; the Syriac: Do not repeat sins, because in the former ones you are not justified; Vatable: Beware lest you double the sin. For from repeated sins, as from multiplied and twisted threads, a thick rope is made, which cannot be broken, according to that: "The wicked man is bound with the cords of his own sins," Proverbs iii, 22; and: "Woe to you that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as with the rope of a cart!" Isaiah v, 18. See the remarks there. He adds the reason: "For you will not be immune in one," namely, from deserved chastisement and punishment. Vatable: Since you will not escape even one unpunished, as if to say: If you double the guilt, you double the punishment for yourself: so that your punishment be simple, let your guilt also be simple: Wherefore in chapter xxi, 1: "My son," he says, "if you have sinned, do not add again."
7:9
This verse depends on the preceding one, as if to say: If you have sinned, do not be faint-hearted, so as to repeat it and heap sins upon sins; do not despair or distrust concerning forgiveness, but beseech God for it, and do not neglect to appease Him with almsdeeds. For prayer lifts and removes both faint-heartedness and sins, according to that of St. James, chapter v, 13: "Is any one of you sad? Let him pray." See the remarks there. Following Sirach, Cato in the Distichs thus ordains: In adverse circumstances do not abandon your spirit: retain hope; hope alone does not abandon man even in death. The Greek Seventy join exhortation with faint-heartedness; for thus they have it: Do not be faint-hearted in your prayer, and do not despise almsdeeds. For one must pray with great confidence of obtaining what we ask: and this confidence is as it were the soul and sinew of prayer, which gives it strength and efficacy. But the sense comes to the same thing. St. Bernard most excellently teaches that a faint-hearted spirit, on account of the remembrance of sins or sufferings, is unfit for the praise and jubilation of God, and therefore ought to pray that God may lift it up to that very thing. For thus he says in sermon 9 on the Canticles: "What faint-hearted and weak-faithed mind is constrained by the meagerness of its own affairs, and is not able on account of poverty to offer itself to attending to divine praises, or to those things which produce praises by beholding benefits. And if at any time it certainly strives to rise up, immediately, urged by the cares of domestic necessities pressing upon it, it is called back to its own affairs, and is compelled to be confined in hope by its own neediness." The Syriac agrees with the Greek: Do not be saddened (for sadness is the companion, and now the daughter, now the mother of faint-heartedness) in the words of your prayer, and do not delay from almsdeeds; the Zurich version: Do not be remiss in spirit in making prayers; Vatable: Do not lose heart in your prayers; or: So that you pray less, do not lose heart in spirit; nor neglect to show yourself merciful to the poor; Vatable: Do not omit to distribute to the poor, according to that admonition of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, chapter IV, 24: "Redeem your sins with almsdeeds, and your iniquities with the mercies of the poor." See the remarks there. To this pertains the illustrious saying of the Arabs, Centuria 1, number 79 and 80: "He who works good shall not be deprived of his reward. The liberal man is a neighbor of God, a neighbor of men, a neighbor of paradise, remote from the fire of hell." Origen reads and understands it somewhat differently in homily 1 on Ezekiel, namely thus: "Son, do not be faint-hearted in the discipline of God," which he explains by adding: "Nor failing when corrected by Him." Palacius takes this more generally, as if to say: If evils press upon you, especially the threats of the powerful, so that you would yield to them, do not lose heart; but pray and do almsdeeds. This is the sum of the whole of life: Pray to God, love your neighbor. These are the most important things in any law. These call forth all good things, and repel all evil things. These are the laws by which all mortals will be examined on the day of judgment. Thus also some others refer this above to verse 6: "Do not seek to become a judge," as if to say: Do not aspire to become a judge; but nevertheless, if against your will you are compelled, or have been made a judge, do not be faint-hearted, so as to fear the faces of the powerful; but with great and lofty spirit resist them, and render a just sentence for equity and for the oppressed poor. Imitate David saying Psalm c, 8: "In the morning (that is, speedily, quickly) I would destroy all the sinners of the earth, that I might cut off Modestly, under Basil the Great: You are indeed an ant, though you roar like a lion. For there is a kind of lions in Pseudocasia, which are called ants, says Strabo book XVI. Let the judge and any wise man imitate St. Basil; for if he shows himself constant in maintaining justice and virtue, the powerful will humble themselves like ants: but if he fears them, they will rise up against him, like lions.
7:11
In the preceding verse he forbade distrust in prayer; here he forbids the contrary presumption, as if to say: Do not be faint-hearted in prayer, so as to distrust that you will obtain what you ask; but neither be presumptuous, so as to heap sin upon sin, saying that you will expiate all these things through sacrifices. For the sacrifices of the old law were not propitiatory and did not expiate sins from the work worked (ex opere operato), but only from the work of the worker (ex opere operantis), namely from the devotion and contrition of the one offering. But the Eucharistic sacrifice of the new law, although it has power from the work worked, nevertheless in order to expiate guilt, it likewise requires the work of the worker, namely the contrition of the penitent. He says this against the common multitude of sinners of ancient times (and equally of modern times), who thought that all sins were expiated through sacrifices, even if someone persevered in the will and intention, indeed in the very act of sin. Whence the Greek and Syriac immediately subjoin this sentence to verse 8, in this manner: "Neither bind double sins, etc., neither say: In the multitude of my gifts God will regard me," as if to say: Do not double, triple and quadruple your sins by this presumption, that you offer victims for them, to which God looking upon will forgive them. Furthermore, the remedy for mockery is compunction, by which someone, thinking of his own sins and the final judgment, does not regard the sins of others. Hear St. Antiochus, homily 48: "He who mourns his own sins has no place left to mock another or to bespatter him with ridicule and to exacerbate a brother." Hear indeed what the Paroemiast says: "Do not mock
7:12
The Syriac: Do not mock men whose palates are bitter (of the heart, and consequently of the mouth, that is, who are sad and sorrowful; for to these, as if with an infected palate, all things seem insipid and tasteless), because there is one who exalts and one who humbles; Vatablus: Do not mock a man laboring under bitterness of soul: for there is one who depresses and the same one who exalts—God the observer, as if to say: Do not mock the afflicted, mindful of human fortune and lot, which God balances and sways at his nod, so that now he prospers the wretched, now he afflicts the happy, according to that saying of Isocrates to Dæmonicus: "Reproach no one for calamity; for fortune is common, and the future is not seen," as if to say: Man does not know what will happen to him. The mind of men knows not fate and future lot. Secondly, more strictly and rather, as if to say: Do not mock the wretched, because God is accustomed to cast down the proud, especially those who mock the wretched, to afflict them and to expose them to the same mockery, according to the law of retaliation: "With what measure you have measured, it shall be measured to you again." Wherefore when Francis, king of France, captured by Charles V, had inscribed on the wall of his chamber: "Today for me, tomorrow for you," mindful of human fortune and change, Charles subscribed: "I am a man; I think nothing human alien to me." Excellently Pliny, book XVI, chapter 15: "As in the nature of things," he says, "those which flourish most splendidly wither most swiftly, as roses, lilies, violets, while others endure: so in the life of men, those things which are most flourishing turn most quickly to the opposite," namely happiness to unhappiness, health to sickness, strength to weakness, favor to hatred, honor to contempt, friends to enemies, life to death. Wherefore the Chaldean kings, as Herodotus testifies in book I, carried a scepter in which a rose or similar flower was carved: but a rose, because it is cold, resists drunkenness. Therefore in the scepter, which intoxicates and maddens men with pride, they carved a rose, which, although it is most beautiful, nevertheless withers suddenly, so that those thinking in like manner that their scepters would soon be corrupted, might put aside pride and put on modesty. "For all" indeed "power is brief in life," as we shall hear in chapter 10, verse 11. Add: the wretched are accustomed, if mocked, to groan to God; but God hears their groaning and avenges: for the misery of the wretched calls for mercy, not laughter. This is what the Psalmist prays, Psalm 68: "Add iniquity upon their iniquity." Why? "Because whom thou hast smitten, they have persecuted, and upon the sorrow of my wounds they have added."
7:13
Some ignorant persons, not understanding what "to plow a lie" means, corrected "plow" to "love," which error has consequently crept into the Complutensian edition and many other codices. For the Greek and Roman texts constantly read "plow." Now "to plow a lie" is to fabricate, construct, and adorn a lie and calumny. Whence the Syriac translator renders it: Do not think evil against thy brother, and likewise against thy neighbor; Vatablus: Do not devise against thy brother a lie, nor construct the same against thy friend; the Arabic: Do not impute to thy brother's word a mark of evil, nor to thy friend. The reason for this phrase is that the Hebrew חרש charas (whence the Latin aras) signifies to plow and to fabricate. The Greek and Latin interpreter wished to imitate this, and therefore takes charas, that is, to plow, for to fabricate; whence that passage in Psalm 128:3: "Upon my back the sinners have wrought;" others translate: "Upon my back the ploughmen have ploughed." For thus the Jews ploughed the back of Christ, and the persecutors ploughed the backs of the Martyrs with scourges and claws, as if they had drawn furrows in them by ploughing. It alludes to Hosea 10:13: "You have ploughed impiety, you have reaped iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of lies." Where the reason for this metaphor is opened, namely that, just as the ploughman ploughs the earth and sows seed in it, so that he may reap a harvest like the seed: so he who constructs iniquity and lies shall reap lies and false fruits, as I have said there. Thus Samson, proposing a riddle to the Philistines, when they had sought its solution from his wife Dalila and had uttered it, said: "If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle." Where "to plow" is taken for to investigate, to devise, to search out; "heifer" for a girl or bride, on account of her youthful wantonness, imprudence and inconstancy: for he persists in the metaphor of ploughing: for formerly, as also now, they ploughed with heifers, that is, cows and oxen; for just as the ploughman by digging as it were searches and investigates the earth: so he who investigates or devises some secret, by his art and industry meditating searches and investigates it. The fabricator of lies does the same, of whom this discourse is: which is the third reason and analogy of this phrase. Again it alludes to Proverbs 3:29: "Devise not evil against thy friend, when he hath confidence in thee;" where for "devise," the Hebrew is the verb חרש charas already mentioned. Whence the Septuagint translates, do not fabricate. He names brother and friend, because malice toward them is the more inhuman, the greater the kinship and connection, and thence the trust, and consequently the greater the perfidy. Whence Clement of Alexandria, in book VI of the Stromata, after the beginning, celebrates that saying of Alcmaeon: "It is easier to beware of an enemy than of a friend." And that of Sophocles: "What greater wound than a wicked friend?" St. Maximus, in his sermon On Friendship, relates that Antigonus daily sacrificing prayed to the gods that they would protect him from false friends; and when asked why he so earnestly requested this, he answered: "Because enemies, when I know them, I beware of." Note here a beautiful metaphor, by which the tongue speaking is said to plow. For first, just as the ploughman by ploughing exercises the earth: so the tongue-user by speaking exercises the tongue. Second, just as the ploughman with his plough cuts up the clods: so the talkative tongue cuts up the fame of others. Third, just as the ploughman by ploughing furrows the field: so the tongue furrows the air, the palate, the lips and the teeth. Fourth, just as the ploughman ploughs in a field, either pure or thorny: so the field of the tongue, pure, in which it ploughs rightly, is truth; thorny, in which it ploughs wrongly, is falsehood. Fifth, just as the ploughman from a pure field gathers a pure harvest, from a thorny field a thorny one: so he who ploughs with his tongue in the field of truth gathers true fruits from it; but he who ploughs in the field of falsehood reaps and gathers false and lying fruits.
7:14
In the preceding verse he forbade lying against a brother and friend: lest anyone from this should gather that any other sort of lie is permitted, here he prohibits every lie altogether. Plato erred in teaching, in the book On the Republic, that lying is indeed evil in itself; yet it is sometimes useful to avoid a greater evil, just as we use poisons in theriac: therefore one should use lying as if it were hellebore. Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Cassian, Bede and others followed Plato, whom I cited on Exodus 1, 19. Against these St. Augustine wrote a book On Lying and a book Against Lying. But Ecclesiasticus also condemns them in this place. They responded secondly that Ecclesiasticus says, "Be unwilling to lie," as if it prohibits only every lie which someone puts forth willingly and voluntarily; not, however, that which someone unwillingly pronounces for a greater good. St. Augustine refutes this, and says that Ecclesiasticus adds the word "willing," so that we may know that not only a lie uttered by mouth, but also the will to utter it is evil and a sin. Jansenius adds that "willing" is added so that, since through human weakness it either cannot happen at all, or scarcely, that someone never lies—"for if anyone offend not in word, the same is a perfect man," James III, verse 2—at least let him beware lest he affect lying and deliberately lie with purpose. Whence follows: "For the assiduity of it is not good," that is, it is very evil. It is a meiosis: for less is said, and more is signified. In Greek, not toward good, namely it tends and yields; the Syriac, because its end was not good; Vatablus, for its practice never profits; others, its continuation does not aim at good, as if to say: No lie at all is to be desired; but if a lie should ever slip from us, one must beware of its assiduity; for this thing is most evil. The sense therefore of the whole sentence is, as if to say: Be unwilling to lie at all, that is, any lie; because from one you will come to a second, third and fourth, and finally to assiduity, or the habit of lying, which is most evil: for this will cause you to lie also to the harm and ruin of another, which is grave and deadly calumny. Wherefore, do not say: I lie only jokingly or officiously, to benefit others, or to entertain them: because from the assiduity of lying and the fluency of the tongue Morally, see here how great is the dignity of truth, so much so that every lie, even the smallest, is a sin, because it is contrary to truth. The saying of the Arabs is famous, Century 1, number 72 and 73: "Truth is magnificence, lying is baseness; truth is health, lying is infirmity. Wherefore the mouth is the prison of the tongue." And Century 2, number 39: "Let truthful speech be the light of all your deeds." And number 48: "Abandon lying, where you see that it will profit you: for it will harm you. It is also yours to cling to truth, where you see that it will harm you, because it will profit you." And number 48: "He who is known for truthfulness, his lie is received; and he who is known for mendacity, his truth is not received." For opinion has such power that we believe even when he lies who is accustomed to speak truth; but to him who lies more often, even when he speaks truth, faith is not given. Indeed, even Plato, in book II of the Laws: "It is most shameful," he says, "for a magistrate or prince (and likewise for a citizen) to lie with that very mouth with which he invokes God." The reason a priori is that God is truth, and that essential and uncreated: therefore as much as you approach truth, or recede from it, so much do you approach God, or recede from him: for God loves the truthful as his like, hates the liars as his unlike. Wherefore Pythagoras held that "truth is to be revered after God, as that which makes men nearest to God," as St. Jerome testifies in the book Against Rufinus. Hence God loves Christ infinitely, because he himself is the Word of the Father adequate and most true. To Christ therefore, God's Word, the truthful are associated; for Christ's voice is: "Let your speech be: yes, yes; no, no; but that which is more than these, is of the evil one," Matthew V, 37. He himself finally died for truth, namely that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. Thus also the Martyrs preferred to lose life rather than faith and truth. Finally St. John, Apocalypse xxi, 8: "To all liars," he says, "their part shall be in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." For, as St. Basil says in epistle 75: "Lying is the offspring of the devil."
7:15
namely, by which you pray and beseech God; for this is what the Greek προσευχή signifies. He forbade lying; now he forbids verbosity and garrulousness, as it were a straight path to lying; for those who are verbose easily fall into lying from the abundance and fluency of their tongue. Moreover, this verbosity is more serious and unseemly, both "in a multitude of presbyters," that is, of elders: for it befits these to speak, but young men to hear them modestly and reverently and to be silent, as he will more fully ordain in chapter xxxii, verses 9 and following, especially because elders, being wise and experienced, can easily rebuke the verbose for lapses of memory, error, or lying; and also in prayer before God: for God is not moved by words, but by the affections of humility, reverence, devotion, desire, and love. What is forbidden here, therefore, is not a lengthy verbal prayer, but irreverent tautology and verbose repetition of speech, which the Jews and Pharisees used, thinking that like Cicero they would persuade God by smooth speech and eloquence to grant their requests. Whence to be verbose, in Greek is βαττολογεῖν, that is, to chatter, to trifle, to talk nonsense, to utter anything whatever, having no regard for place, time, and persons. The Syriac takes it for feigning and simulating; for it renders: Do not hide your soul (in feigned and simulated words) in the assembly of princes, and do not vary the words of your prayer; Vatablus: In the council of elders be not verbose, nor repeat your words in your prayer. This is what Christ ordains in Matthew vi, 7: "And when you are praying, speak not much, as the heathens do; for they think that in their much speaking they may be heard," namely on account of their much speaking, in Greek βαττολογίαν; and battologia is trifling, and a futile profusion and repetition of words. For the heathens thought that by this rhetoric of theirs they could stir up, soothe, and bend the gods. Against them Christ teaches that the essence, efficacy, and power of prayer lies, not in the words of the mouth, but in the conversation of the mind with God, whose cause and as it were soul is desire, and a pious affection of the heart; which, however, he does not deny can be expressed and fostered by words, both so that we may praise God outwardly equally with mouth and tongue, and so that by the voice the affection of the mind may be sharpened, aroused, and continued. Therefore, when Ecclesiasticus says: "Do not repeat the word in your prayer," understand it as if from infidelity, as though it were necessary to repeat words so that God might hear them; or lest you rashly and without fruit repeat them. For otherwise the Church repeats Verses and Antiphons, first from an abundance of devotion, and to arouse the spirit and prayer, secondly, to refresh the minds of those praying; thirdly, for better harmony; fourthly, because mystically these Responsories signify that good works ought often to be repeated. Thus Amalarius in the Antiphonary, chapter IV, Turrecremata treats in tract. 66 on the Rule of St. Benedict, and Suarez lib. IV On Vocal Prayer, chapter II. Again our Emmanuel Sa thus expounds: "Do not repeat the word in your prayer," as if to say: While you pray, be attentive, lest from distraction you repeat words; for this is unseemly and irreverent before God. Let the scrupulous note this, who from fear of distraction repeatedly repeat the words of prayer, in which they err: both because this fear in the scrupulous is vain and vicious; and because this repetition is irreverent; and because by this means they nourish and increase their fears and scruples; and because by pronouncing the words they have satisfied the obligation of prayer, and even if they had been distracted in it, this distraction in them is often involuntary, and therefore free from sin; but if it had been voluntary in some way, and therefore some sin, that sin is to be blotted out not by repetition of words, but by contrition. To this pertains the exposition of Hugh and Dionysius: The sense, they say, is, as if to say: Let your prayer be so devout and attentive that you have no scruple or doubt whether you have uttered the words rightly or attentively, and therefore wish to repeat them; but conscious of your devotion and attention, proceed boldly to what follows. Mystically St. Gregory, part III of the Pastoral, Admonition 31, refers this to those who relapse into sins which they have lamented: "A pig," he says, "when washed in a mud wallow, becomes filthier. And he who laments his sin committed, yet does not abandon it, etc., makes even his very tears filthy before the eyes of God. Hence it is written: Do not repeat the word in your prayer; by which saying he by no means forbids us to seek pardon often, but to repeat sins. As if he said openly: When you have wept over your evil deeds, by no means do again what you then bewail again in your prayers." Thus also St. Chrysostom, vol. I, homily on that passage of Psalm LXXXIV, Be not angry with us forever: "What is it," he says, "not to repeat the word in prayer? For who does not repeat? Or perhaps this is to be understood of what you say to God: I have sinned? Do not repeat the deed; because when you repeat, that is, when you return to sin, you repeat the prayer. Therefore it is to be chosen by the wise to acknowledge sin and to grieve always. Past, ancient, evilly committed deeds, evilly thought, most evilly delighted in, inordinately spoken should remain daily in the mind, and always a man The Syriac favors this sense: Do not vary the words of your prayer.
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In Greek: Do not hate laborious work and agriculture created by the Most High. In Syriac this sentence is lacking. Vatablus: Do not pursue laborious work with hatred, nor agriculture instituted by the Most High. The conjunction "and" is exegetical and emphatic, that is to say, Do not hate laborious work, which agriculture especially is. Thus Christ says in Mark, chapter 16, verse 7: "Tell the disciples, and (that is, especially) Peter," as if to the chief and prince of all. He commends love of labor and agriculture for five reasons. First, because labor excludes idleness, which is the source and origin of all evils: therefore as many evils as you will bear from sloth, so many goods and more will you obtain from labor. For this reason nature gave man two hands, that he might labor with them constantly. Second, because "man is born to labor, and a bird to flight," says Job, chapter 5, verse 7. Hence a certain learned Rabbi said: "Love work, and hate a doctorate," that is to say, Be concerned with the thing and the work itself, not with an empty name and title. The reason which Solomon gives in Proverbs, chapter 14, verse 23: "In every work there shall be abundance; but where there are many words, there is often want," that is to say, Abundance of things is produced by laboring, not by idling and chattering. Hebrew: In every labor there shall be increase, but the word of the lips tends to want; Septuagint: In every diligent work there shall be abundance, but the sweet and painless in idleness shall be in want; Chaldean: In everything that makes you diligent, there shall be profit for you, and superfluous lips shall be in want. Maximus, sermon 32, celebrates Democritus who, when asked by what the industrious differed from the idle, answered: "By that by which the impious differ from the pious, namely by good hope." For those who exercise their body with labors hope for rich rewards of their labors; but the idle always behold present poverty. Wherefore the Emperor Severus gave a tribune the motto, Let us labor; the Emperor Pertinax, Let us fight, says Spartianus. Let the faithful say the same to himself; for, as Job says, chapter 7, verse 1: "The life of man upon earth is a warfare, and his days are like the days of a hireling." It is memorable what we read in Roman history, that Scipio Nasica, seeking the aedileship, was rejected from it because, touching the hardened hand of his competitor from agriculture, he asked ironically whether his hands Third, because labor invigorates and strengthens both body and mind. It is a maxim of the Hebrews: "In whatever anyone labors, from that he shall bear fruit," namely industrious men always gather the fruit of their labor; for, as shadow follows the body, so utility accompanies the labor of mind or body. Therefore, if you seek profit and strength, do not flee labor; if you wish to eat the kernel from the nut, break the nut. Wherefore Aristotle, in book 1 of the Economics, says agriculture is the best of all arts, because it is according to nature, and seeks sustenance not by fighting or trading, as soldiers and merchants do, but by laboring from the earth, which is the mother of all. And Virgil, book 2 of the Georgics: O too fortunate farmers, if they knew their blessings, to whom the most just earth pours forth easy sustenance far from discordant arms. And further down: But secure peace, and a life that knows not deceit, rich in various goods, etc., through them Justice, departing from the earth, made her final footprints. For agriculture is "the most innocent of all arts," says St. Augustine. See more in Cato and Columella, preface to On Agriculture; Pliny, book 18, chapter 5; Xenophon in the Economics; Varro, book 1, chapter 2; Stobaeus, sermon 54, and others. Fourth, because labor excludes vices and implants virtues, namely innocence, patience, fortitude, as is evident in farmers. Again, labor produces heroic deeds. Thus St. Dominic Loricatus, when asked how he had come to such great rigor of life (for besides constant vigils and fasts, he beat himself daily with scourges through the entire psalter), answered: "Labor begets labor, vigils beget vigils." For, as the Arabs say: "Taste, and you will be fed," that is, taste labor, and it itself will call you to appetite for it; "approach the fat, and you will grow fat." It is commonly said: "Fate helps the striving, and the Thunderer the one who strives. The reward of the precept is the precept," that is, he who labors to observe one precept, God grants him as it were as a reward, so that he can also observe others. Thus Pythagoras, in Stobaeus, sermon 27, exhorted his followers "to choose for themselves the best manner of living; for although it would be most laborious, yet by habit it would become pleasant." Fifth, because agriculture was instituted by God and entrusted to man in the state of innocence, Genesis 2, 15: "And the Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it and to keep it." Again, immediately after sin God imposed this penance on man: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," Genesis 3.
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In Greek, sinners, that is, those who fear not God, nor foresee and fear His vengeance. But you who are faithful and wise,
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Vatablus: Do not join yourself to the multitude of the wicked; but remember that vengeance will not delay. The Syriac translates the first part differently; for it has thus: Do not love your soul (yourself) before the man who is with you; remember that wrath does not pass away. Receive this with a grain of salt, namely, as if to say, Do not so love yourself that you despise your neighbor before yourself, despoil him, oppress him; otherwise indeed the order of charity demands that we love ourselves more than others. Whence it follows:
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He explains the wrath of God, which the preceding verse said would not be delayed, through fire and worm, so that by consideration and fear of it we might humble ourselves and flee from pride, for which this fire and worm are prepared by God. Whence the Greeks transpose these, and thus arrange them: Humble your soul exceedingly. Remember that wrath will not delay, for the vengeance of the wicked is fire and worm. St. Ephrem, in his tract On the Fear of God, reads thus: "Do not be proud, nor enlarge yourself; but humble yourself: for the punishment of the wicked is fire and worm." But he adds and interweaves certain things paraphrastically, as it seems, for the sake of explanation. The Syriac again goes another way: Humble your spirit very very much, for the end of all men is on high, as if to say, Because the end of men is high, namely, heavenly glory, to which humility leads, as being that which alone exalts. Excellently St. Bernard in his work On the Interior House, chapter twenty-eight: "He who displeases himself," he says, "pleases God; and he who is vile to himself is dear to God." The Arabic: Humble your soul very very much, for the last state of men is into dust and corruption. Note the word exceedingly, as if to say, Humble and depress yourself under God and the Angels, under men, under all creatures even down to hell, as Father Francis Borgia placed himself at the feet of Judas the traitor, indeed under Lucifer and demons; because you have sinned more often, more gravely and more persistently than they: for a single mortal sin is the greatest evil that can be or be imagined in the world; it itself therefore is the utmost vileness to be overturned into hell, so that it may be punished there by fire and worm, especially the sin of pride. Humble yourself therefore, and acknowledge yourself a worm, and say with Christ: "I am a worm, and not a man," so that you may escape the worms of hell. Whence St. Bernard in his Formula of Honest Life: "Keep these three things always in mind," he says, "What were you, what are you, and what will you be? What were you, because foul seed. What are you, because a vessel of filth. What will you be, because food of worms. Similarly imagine the punishments of those who are in hell, and that they never end, and that for so small a pleasure they suffer such great evils." Mystically, our rustic labor is the cultivation of the soul, both our own and that of others. For our field, committed to us by God for cultivation, is the soul, according to that word of St. Paul in I Corinthians III, 9: "You are God's husbandry." And verse 6: "I have planted, Apollo watered; but God gave the increase." For this field all labors are to be undertaken cheerfully, and all pains to be borne, as St. Paul and the other Apostles undertook and bore them, on account of the hope of a great and eternal harvest in heavenly glory, according to that of Psalm cxxv, 6: "Going they went and wept, casting their seeds: but coming they shall come with rejoicing, carrying their sheaves." "Therefore," says St. Ambrose, book VIII on Luke, chapter sixteen, "let us thus exercise and cultivate our field, constituted in this office of cultivation, so that in that upper Jerusalem, where true observance of the law is celebrated, we may have fine flour from our sheaves, which blessed are those who shall be able to gather, so that coming they may come in rejoicing bearing their sheaves." St. Vincent Ferrer, the apostle of his age, in his tract On Spiritual Life, simply, but piously and forcefully thus writes and prescribes. "Whoever wishes to flee the snares and temptations of the devil, let him feel about himself as about one dead body, full of worms and foul-smelling, and as about one corpse, which one disdains to see and behold, indeed over which one closes one's nostrils because of its most foul odor and stench, and from which one turns one's face so as not to see such and such an abomination. Thus it is necessary, dearest, Furthermore, weigh the words very very much, as if to say, Some humility is not enough, but very great humility is required; for no one humbles himself sufficiently unless he humbles himself "even unto death, the death of the cross" with Christ. See St. Ephrem, tract On the Fear of God, who has much on these matters. See also St. Basil, book On True Integrity of Virginity, who writes so elegantly on these matters that he was called by Photius "the Attic Bee," that is, the Athenian bee, because just as the bee from flowers, so from all authors he drew and composed sweet doctrine. St. Vincent Ferrer, the apostle of his age, in his tract On Spiritual Life, simply, but piously and forcefully thus writes and prescribes. "Whoever wishes to flee the snares and temptations of the devil, let him feel about himself as about one dead body, full of worms and foul-smelling, and as about one corpse, which one disdains to see and behold, indeed over which one closes one's nostrils because of its most foul odor and stench, and from which one turns one's face so as not to see such and such an abomination. Thus it is necessary, dearest, Secondly, "very much" (to valde), says Dionysius, signifies that we have many reasons and goads for humbling ourselves: the first is consideration of sins committed; the second, our own frailty; the third, the imperfection of nature: for man is the lowest in the series of rational creatures, nor can anything lower be created, as some think; the fourth, the filth and putrefaction of the body; the fifth, comparison with the Saints and the Blessed; the sixth, because he has nothing from himself, nor anything that is his own: the seventh, consideration of divine judgment; the eighth, consideration of divine majesty; the ninth, the punishment of pride, which Sirach here assigns fire and worm, and this fittingly. For, as Pliny says in book XI, chapter XXXII: "Worms are born in wood, wherever there is excessive moisture, and they corrode the wood." He adds, in chapter XXXVII, "no species of worm has eyes." Thus the proud man has no eyes by which he might know himself and his own misery; but like Tiresias, blind, he thinks himself to be what he is not, because he is filled with excessive self-love moisture, and as it were with dropsy; but this pride will corrode and destroy him. Thirdly, "very much" (to valde) signifies that there are various degrees and acts of humility, through which one of humble mind ought to descend, so that he may grow in humility. St. Benedict assigns these degrees in his Rule: The first, he says, is fear of the Lord; the second, resignation; the third, obedience; the fourth, obedience even in difficult things; the fifth, to reveal evils and other things to one's Superior; the sixth, to esteem oneself unworthy of all things; the seventh, to consider oneself sincerely inferior to all; the eighth, to observe common practices, not to be singular; the ninth, to be silent until asked; the tenth, not to be quick to laughter; the eleventh, to speak little and reasonably with modesty; the twelfth, to show humility in heart and body. Furthermore, receive the acts of humility in this order. The first act, contempt of self; the second, to think oneself unfit for all things; the third, not to wish to be esteemed; the fourth, to wish to be held vile; the fifth, to grieve at being made much of; the sixth, comparing oneself with others, to reckon oneself inferior; the seventh, to resign oneself entirely; the eighth, to subject oneself to all men for God's sake; the ninth, to embrace what is more humble. Receive another series of them: first, to say nothing by which one might obtain praise; second, not to rejoice when praised; third, not to do anything out of respect for human opinion; fourth, not to excuse oneself; fifth, to drive away vain thoughts; sixth, to consider all superior to oneself; seventh, to receive well the occasions of humility. Furthermore, Cassian assigns signs of humility: first, to be mortified; second, to reveal all things to one's Superior; third, to do all things by his judgment; fourth, obedience in all things and gentleness; fifth, not to inflict harm, and to bear what is inflicted; BECAUSE THE VENGEANCE OF THE FLESH OF THE IMPIOUS IS FIRE AND WORM. The Zurich Bible: Because fire and worm are punishments of the flesh of the impious, that is to say, Because the impious proudly and delicately clothe, nourish, and exalt their flesh, therefore it will be punished with fire and worm. To humility he joins the flesh, and threatens the pains of the flesh, fire and worm, that is to say, Unless you humble yourself, but wish to be proud, by just divine judgment you will fall into lust and the vices of the flesh: for when the spirit is humbled, the flesh is also humbled; but when the spirit is proud, the flesh also becomes proud and wanton; and therefore Cassian, St. Gregory and others assign humility as the best remedy for chastity. Sirach is echoed by R. Levitas in Pirke Avoth, chapter IV: "Walk, he says, very bent and with downcast spirit: for the expectation of every man is worms." Now there is a threefold interpretation here: first, some take the worm, like the fire, not as proper, but as metaphorical; second, others take fire as proper, but the worm as metaphorical, namely the remorse of conscience; third, others most fittingly understand both the worm and the fire as proper and real. It is asked therefore first, whether the fire of hell, by which demons and the damned are tormented, is true and corporeal, or rather figurative and spiritual? Origen holds it to be figurative and spiritual in homily 13 on Exodus, where he says that the fire of Gehenna differs in nature itself from our fire; yet it is endowed with the power of burning. And in book XXI of the Periarchen, chapter XI, he asserts that this fire is kindled by the very sins in the souls of the impious, just as fever is kindled by the abundance and conflict of humors in human bodies. And in homily 9 On Various Passages in Matthew (although some deny it to be Origen's), he teaches that this fire, like the worm, is metaphorical. St. Jerome agrees, in chapter LXVI of Isaiah: "The fire, he says, which shall not be extinguished, is understood by most to be the conscience of sinners, which torments those constituted in punishments." Which Calvin eagerly seizes upon and follows, while saying that the damned in hell are tormented by no other fire or punishment than that they apprehend God to be angry and offended against them on account of their crimes: for this apprehension, he says, torments them like fire. But truly fire and combustion are one thing, apprehension and imagination another. But St. Ambrose speaks plainly, book VII on Luke, chapter XIV: "Therefore, he says, neither is there some corporeal gnashing of teeth, nor some perpetual fire of corporeal flames, nor is there a corporeal worm; but these things are so, because just as from much indigestion both fevers and worms are born: so if someone does not digest his sins, as it were by some intervening sobriety of abstinence, but by mixing sins with sins, as it were contracts some indigestion of old and recent offenses, he is burned by his own fire, and is consumed by his own worms." But with a few things interposed: "The fire, he says, is that which sadness over offenses generates: the worm is that because the irrational sins of the soul prick the mind and sense of the guilty party, and as it were gnaw at the bowels of conscience." Nor does St. Augustine seem to shrink greatly from this opinion, book XXI of the City of God, chapter X. For when he was dealing with the story of the rich man and Lazarus: "It could be answered fittingly, he says, that such was that flame as were the eyes which he lifted up, and by which he saw Lazarus; such as the tongue, to which he desired a small amount of moisture to be poured in; such as the finger of Lazarus, by which he asked this to be done to him: yet the souls were there without bodies. Thus therefore both that flame which burned and that drop which he asked for are incorporeal, such as are also seen by those sleeping, or in ecstasy perceiving incorporeal things, yet having the likeness of bodies." But Gregory, book XV of the Morals, chapter XIX, or otherwise XVII: "But on the contrary, he says, the fire of Gehenna, since it is incorporeal, and burns the reprobates cast into it corporeally, is not kindled by human effort, nor is it nourished by wood, but created once it endures inextinguishable, and needs no kindling, and lacks no burning." Finally Damascene, book IV On the Faith, final chapter: "Sinners shall be delivered, he says, into eternal fire, not material, such as is with us, but such as God knows." Finally Nyssenus, in the book On the Soul and Resurrection, takes this fire as mystical and metaphorical, so that it is nothing other than the pain of lost blessedness: "Deprivation, he says, of those things which appear good, exists as a flame burning through the soul, desiring some drop from the sea of goods, in which the Saints abound and overflow, and consolation, and not obtaining it." And reasons can be brought forward: the first, because it acts upon incorporeal demons: therefore it must itself be incorporeal; for a body cannot act upon a spirit; the second, because the Greeks in the Council of Florence held that in Purgatory there is no true fire by which souls are purged; yet the Latins reproved them. Therefore the same must be said of the fire of hell; for theologians commonly hold that the fire of Purgatory and hell is the same. But I say, it is certain that in hell there is true and corporeal fire, by which both demons and the damned are tormented— Secondly, because it is the common sense of the Church and the faithful that the damned in hell are tormented by fire, which they understand the fire of Gehenna, inculcated by Scripture, to be true and proper, not metaphorical. Third, because the sense of the Greek and Latin Fathers is the same. St. Cyprian in his Praise of Martyrdom says: "Gehenna," he says, "with great lamentation and groaning of those weeping, torturing with flames through the dreadful night of thick darkness, always fierce fires of the smoking furnace breathes forth." Clement of Alexandria, book V of the Stromata, says that the impious are punished by ἐκπυρώσει, that is, by burning and inflammation. The same thing is asserted by St. Justin, in his book of Exhortation to the Gentiles. Nazianzenus, however, in his oration on Holy Baptism, compares the fire of Gehenna with the fire of Sodom. St. Chrysostom, homily 44 and 55 on Matthew, and homily on the Rewards of the Saints: "Into a river," he says, "and sea of fire they will be thrust, an impassable sea, and by its magnitude most bitter; in which fiery waves rise up like mountains." The same, homily 13 on the epistle to the Romans, and homily 4 on the epistle to the Ephesians: "Consider what the evils of the other life will be that are to come, deprivation of the kingdom of heaven, pain burned in by Gehenna, perpetual chains, outer darkness, a poisonous worm, gnashing of teeth, pressure and narrowness, a fiery river, furnaces never to be extinguished." St. Basil in Psalm XXVIII says "that fire retains the power of burning, yet is destitute of light." The same doctrine is taught by St. Jerome in chapter X of St. Matthew; Isidore, in his book on the Highest Good, chapter XXI, and expressly St. Augustine, book XXI of the City of God chapter X, On Faith and Works, chapter XV, and often elsewhere. And St. Gregory, book IV of the Dialogues, chapter XLIX, Fourth, the Scholastic Doctors teach the same thing with one voice in IV, distinction XLIV and XLIX, and I part., Question LXIV, article 3 and 4. Finally, unless this fire is established as corporeal, it is most difficult to conceive and explain what is to be understood by the name of the fire of Gehenna, and what that spiritual and metaphorical fire might be. I respond to the arguments of the contrary opinion. Although Origen can be excused in the way that others are, nevertheless I do not labor much over him, both because he had several other errors, and because he is accustomed to be a symbolic interpreter of Holy Scripture, and therefore, as St. Jerome testifies, he was ill-regarded, as one who would destroy the literal sense in order to establish his symbolic concepts. St. Jerome speaks from the opinion of Origen and similar ones, not from his own, as is evident to one who considers the words cited. St. Ambrose and St. Damascene say that the fire of Hell is not material and corporeal, not absolutely, but in respect to our fire; because, namely, it is far more subtle, sharper, more burning and more penetrating than ours. Again, because its mode of acting is not corporeal, but spiritual and divine. For that fire acts as it were an instrument of divine power upon the spirits themselves, namely, upon demons and souls. Thus the Fathers sometimes say that Angels are corporeal, not in themselves, but if they are compared with God, who is the purest and most exalted spirit. For they are as far distant from the purity of God as bodies are from the purity of Angels, and far more. Finally, fire is said not to be material, because it does not need constant new matter by which to be nourished, nor does it consume the bodies which it burns, as ours does, nor does it shine, nor can it be extinguished. Thus Clichtovaeus and St. Thomas interpret Damascene in IV, distinction XXIV, Question III, article 2, to 1. In St. Gregory, for "the fire of Gehenna, since it is incorporeal," it should be corrected to "since it is corporeal;" for it follows, "and it burns the reprobates cast into it corporeally," as Bellarmine rightly noted in book II On Purgatory, chapter XI: for he opposes the fire of Gehenna to our fire, in that ours, since it is corporeal, must be continually nourished by new fuel applied; that one, however, although it is likewise corporeal, must not be nourished, but once created from the beginning endures inextinguishable. For, in book IV of the Dialogues chapter XXIX, he expressly teaches that the fire of Gehenna is corporeal. St. Augustine in the place cited does not speak of the fire of the damned in Gehenna, but only of the story of the Rich Man in Luke chapter XVI, and he says that that, as it were a vision, is narrated parabolically, because it names a finger, a tongue, a drop, etc., which the soul of the Rich Man and Lazarus lacked; and consequently the fire, which is named there, was not real, but imaginary, such as is exhibited to the Prophet in a vision, because the tongue of the Rich Man is said to be tormented by this fire. Since therefore I respond to the first argument, that this fire acts upon spirits not naturally, but supernaturally, as it were an instrument of the omnipotence of God. "For why," says St. Augustine in book XXI, chapter X, "should we not say, although in wonderful, yet in true ways, that even incorporeal spirits can be afflicted by the penalty of corporeal fire, if the spirits of men, even themselves truly incorporeal, and now were able to be enclosed in corporeal members, then will they be able to be bound insolubly by the chains of their bodies?" To the second point: It is more certain that the fire of hell is true fire than that the fire of Purgatory is true fire, for the reasons already stated. Again, it is certain that the fire of Purgatory is true fire, as the Latin Church holds. However, the Latins did not wish to contend with the Greeks in the Council of Florence on this matter, because this very thing is not of faith; it sufficed for the Latins that the Greeks confess that Purgatory exists, and that souls are punished and purified in it. For they had other matters of greater importance pertaining to faith to discuss with the Greeks and to persuade them about. Wherefore in the final session it is defined that Purgatory exists, with no mention of fire made. Morally, learn here how atrocious is the punishment of the damned, namely burning, and burning internal and eternal, and this justly and deservedly. If you ask why God torments the damned with fire rather than with some other punishment, I answer first, because fire most excellently corresponds to and is fitting for the fire of concupiscence, by which they burned, and to which sinners indulged themselves in this life, and this signifies the vengeance of the flesh; for in the flesh resides the stimulus of concupiscence. Whence St. Paul, Galatians chapter V, verses 17, 19, and elsewhere, calls the vices and works of the flesh the vices and works of concupiscence. Memorable and horrible is the judgment of St. Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, concerning the vice of the flesh and lust: "Except for little children," he says, "among adults few are saved on account of the vice of the flesh." If therefore almost the whole world burns with this hellish fire, what wonder if the damned are also tormented with fire in hell? Secondly, because fire is most severe, and has the greatest power of acting and afflicting bodies, and through bodies the souls informing them. Again, there is great analogy and affinity of the soul with fire; for among the elements and bodies, fire is most spiritual, whence it approaches the soul most closely: hence also in Hebrew אִישׁ isch, that is, man animated, is said to be as it were אֵשׁ esch, that is, fire, as Eusebius says in book XI of the Preparation, chapter II. Thirdly, fittingly the pride of spirits, namely of demons and souls, is punished with a body, namely fire, so that those who wished to exalt themselves above God may be subjected to corporeal fire as it were to a torturer. This is what Sirach says here: "Humble thy spirit exceedingly, because the vengeance of the flesh of the wicked is fire and worm." This humiliation of proud spirits is represented by fire itself; for, since its nature demands that it be in the high and highest place of the world, in order to punish the pride of demons and men, it is depressed to the lowest center of hell; and just as it is violently detained there, so also are the spirits whom it punishes. Fourthly, since the fire of hell is incorruptible, it is a fitting symbol and instrument of the punishment of the damned, inasmuch as that punishment is eternal and will endure forever. Again, this fire is a symbol of the empyrean heaven, from which demons fell; for the empyrean is named from πύρ, that is, fire, as it were fiery, because bright as fire; but without the heat and burning which is in the fire of hell: wherefore in the empyrean the flame of fire is interrupted, as St. Basil says on Psalm XXVIII. Fire therefore recalls to demons the empyrean heaven from which they fell, and thus torments them, while they see the empyrean changed into the fire of hell for themselves. Fifthly, fire most excellently of all expresses the burning of divine fury against the damned. Moreover, just as naturally we feel pain in the soul when the body is tormented by fire; for this torment passes from the body to the soul cohering with it and informing it: so supernaturally God by divine power through fire effects in the separated soul such pain and torment as naturally exists in the soul joined to the body on account of mutual sympathy. Finally, that the fire of hell is sulphurous is clear from Psalm X: "He shall rain snares upon sinners, fire and brimstone," etc. Isaiah XXX: "The blast of the Lord like a stream of brimstone kindling it." The same is taught by St. John, Apocalypse chapter XIV, 20 and 21. The same is confirmed from the fact that Sodom and the neighboring cities were overthrown by sulphurous fire, Genesis chapter XIX, of which St. Jude says that they "sustaining the punishment of eternal fire, were made an example" to the world, clearly indicating that sulphurous fire is eternal; for he speaks of a punishment which was conspicuous to the whole world, which was not eternal; but the sulphurous fire, whose punishment they sustained, is eternal, although not the same nu- Just as therefore mortal sin, for example lust, drunkenness, pride is the greatest of evils in the nature of guilt and offense against God: so the fire of hell is the greatest of evils in the nature of punishment and vengeance. And this first, because this fire is sulphurous and internal. Secondly, because it is the most burning, the most severe and the most efficacious. Thirdly, because it burns not only bodies, but also souls immediately: for in this life the power of fire upon the soul is refracted through the body, so that it reaches the soul only refracted and as it were diminished: but in hell the fire burns the very souls and demons intimately in themselves; and the soul is more sensitive than the body; indeed all the power of sensation arises and resides in the soul. Fourthly, because the fire will torment the damned not only by its heat, but also by its darkness and smoke and sulphurous stench. Fifthly, because this fire is eternal, so that it cannot be extinguished, indeed cannot even be diminished. "Remember this," says St. Augustine, sermon 181 On the Seasons, chapter XVIII, "and set against that fire of hell, with its flames, the flames of lust and desire that now torment you. This fire, which is in the present life, consumes all that it receives; but that fire, those whom it has received, it always torments, and keeps the objects of its punishment always whole. For this reason indeed it is called inextinguishable, not only because it itself is not extinguished, but because it does not extinguish or destroy those whom it has received. But the power of this punishment and that fire no voice will be able to explain, no discourse will be able to set forth, etc. Where the smoke of their torments shall ascend for ever and ever," Apocalypse XIV, 11. Alas, wretched and foolish mortals, who, infatuated with the small pleasures of the flesh, as if drunk and out of your minds, forgetful of God and heaven, oblivious of eternity, as if in jest you plunge yourselves into the abyss of all miseries, into the immense ocean of eternity, into the eternal fires of hell! What is it, O immortal God, eternity of fires, eternal in flam- It is asked secondly, whether in hell there are true worms, or only metaphorical ones? Many hold that they are only metaphorical, namely the remorse and anguish of conscience barking and constantly objecting to the damned: Why did you fornicate? why did you get drunk? why did you not foresee these torments? why did you squander God, heaven, happiness for such vile food? why did you bring upon yourself these eternal fires of hell for so brief and meager a pleasure? how easily you would have avoided them, if you had thought of these things more often! Now you will suffer your foolishness, your madness, and lament eternally, but late and uselessly in repentance. It is done, I have perished, I am damned, I shall burn eternally. O wretched me! O mad me! O most miserable and desperate of all creatures! Thus they understand this worm, on account of the sorrow and grief which, as a worm arises from the putrefaction of sin, St. Ambrose, book VII on Luke, chapter XIV, whose words I recited a little before; St. Jerome on chapter LXVI of Isaiah; St. Thomas in IV, distinction L, Question II, article 3, to 1 and 2, and there Dominicus Soto, and many others, and our Lessius, book XIII, On the Divine Attributes, chapter XXIV, number 159. But St. Augustine, book XXI On the City of God, chapters IX and X; St. Basil on Psalm XXXIII; Prosper, book III On the Contemplative Life, chapter XII; St. Anselm in the Elucidarium; St. Chrysostom, Theophylactus, Cyril, Hugh of St. Victor and others, whom I cited on Isaiah LXVI, 23, hold that this worm is proper, You will say first: "the flesh" is not in the Greek. I answer, "the flesh" is in all the Latin texts. That it was once also in the Greek is gathered from the fact that St. Augustine reads it; who however does not usually use St. Jerome's version, which is the vulgate, as it had not yet been received, but another older one. You will say secondly: It is not said "worm of the flesh," but "vengeance of the flesh fire and worm," so that the sense is, as if to say, Vengeance of carnal works, or vengeance of the flesh, that is of concupiscence, both of the body and of the mind, to which the impious have indulged, will be fire and worm gnawing the soul, and consequently also affecting the flesh badly. Or "vengeance of the flesh," that is, of the soul once joined to the flesh and devoted to it, will be worm and fire. Thus St. Thomas in the place cited. But these do not satisfy; for it is said "worm vengeance of the flesh," because it will avenge and punish the flesh on account of sins committed in it, just as fire will also punish and burn the same flesh, not through the soul, but through itself and immediately. Otherwise indeed it would have omitted "the flesh," and would have said simply: "Vengeance of the impious fire and worm;" especially because it does not properly treat of lust, which is in the flesh; but of pride, which is in the mind. For it says: "Humble your spirit exceedingly, because vengeance of the flesh of the impious, fire and worm." Finally this same thing is clearly explained in Judith chapter XVI, 21; where it is said: "He will give fire and worm into their flesh, that they may be burned and feel it even unto eternity." I have confirmed this same thing with more arguments on Isaiah chapter LXVI, 23. Tropologically, this worm is the remorse of conscience already mentioned, concerning which St. Bernard in book V of his work On Consideration says: "This is the worm which does not die from the memory of things past. It ceases not to gnaw the conscience, and being fed on food truly indestructible, it perpetuates life. I shudder at the biting worm and living death. I shudder to fall into the hands of death living, and of life dying. This second death, which never wholly kills, but always kills." Pathetically, St. Ephrem, in his tract On Renunciation and the Various Punishments of Hell, toward the end of volume I, represents this worm, namely the lamentation and wailing of the damned, where among other things he says: "Then most bitterly weeping and wailing they shall say: O how did we pass our time in negligence and torpor? O how were we deceived? O how, hearing the divine Scripture and mocking ourselves, did we mock it? There God spoke to us through the Scriptures, and we did not attend; here we now cry out, and He turns His face from us. What shall the ends of the world profit us? Where is the father who begot us? Where is the mother who bore us? Where are our sons? Where are our friends? Where are riches? Where are substance and possessions? Where are crowds? Where are feasts? Where are the various and untimely pursuits? Where
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He proceeds in fitting order from care of himself to care of a friend, who is another self. Now first, Lyran thus expounds it, as if to say: Do not break the ancient pledge of friendship with a friend, if he delays repaying you money lent. For friendship is much more precious than money, as Aristotle teaches in book VIII of the Ethics. Moreover, a greater good ought not to be despised for a lesser, but rather the reverse. Thus also Rabanus, Palacius and others commonly. Yet while this sense agrees with the Latin version, it does not agree with the Greek. For the Greek διαφόρου, which our translator renders as "differs," does not signify one who delays, lingers, or defers payment of a debt, but something far different. Second, Jansenius from manuscripts reads: Do not deal treacherously with a friend over money differing, that is, over money that differs, that is, over money that is excellent or varied and abundant: for the Greek διαφόρου signifies something excellent and outstanding. Yet while this sense agrees with the Greek, it does not agree with the Latin: for in Latin "differing" does not signify something excellent and outstanding, but something other and diverse. Add that his reading differs from the common reading of printed Bibles. Third, others, as is noted in the margin of the Ordinary Gloss, read: Do not deal treacherously with a friend over money differing, namely, who differs and disagrees with you in the matter of money, either because he does not have as much as you, but is poorer than you; or because the money which you demand from him as owed to you, or which you urgently request to be given freely or lent, he denies, or delays to pay. Yet almost all codices read, "money (not money) differing;" to which reading the sense already assigned does not fit. Fourth therefore and genuinely, to differentem here is the same as to divertentem, turning aside elsewhere and distracting. For this is properly what differre means, namely to carry into diverse parts, says Donatus, to carry away and transfer elsewhere, likewise to disturb. Thus Plautus in the Rope says: "We with our boat the storm dex-
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From a friend he passes to a wife as one most closely joined to a man, and says: Just as a friend is not to be abandoned, nor exchanged for gold: so neither is a wife, in whom he requires four conditions: first, that she be sensible, that is, wise-hearted and prudent; second, that she be good, that is, not vicious, nor stiff-necked or malicious, but of good and suitable character; third, that she be modest, and from this humble toward her husband, and chaste toward others; fourth, that she have the fear of God: for the wife whom you have obtained in the fear of God, pertains as much to the wife as to the husband, as if to say: Whom fearing God you have obtained from him, and you yourself fearing God, by reason of the fear of God, according to that in chapter XXVI, 3: "A good woman is a good portion, in the portion of those fearing God she shall be given to a man for good deeds," as Sara was given to Tobias, Rebecca to Isaac, Abigail to David. The Greek texts in this place concisely have: Do not depart from a wise and good woman; for her grace is above gold; the Syriac: Do not exchange a good woman and beautiful in appearance for pearls; the Zurich: Beware of departing from a wife wise and good, if you have obtained one according to the religion of the Lord; for her beauty is more excellent than gold; or, as others have it, for her grace surpasses gold. Formerly it was permitted to the Jews to give wives a bill of divorce; therefore the Wise Man admonishes here, that they not give it to wives, if they have found them wise, good and chaste. In the new law divorce has been abolished: yet in certain cases separation of bed is permitted; but Sirach here persuades that it not be done easily, indeed, if the wife be sensible and upright, it is not permitted to do it. The reason a priori is, that a sensible woman sensibly governs children and household, and thus enriches it with peace and all good things, and gives sensible counsel to her husband. Whence God said to Abraham: "All things whatsoever Sara shall say to you, hear her voice," Genesis chapter XXI, 12. Such things St. Cecilia gave to Valerianus, Clotildis to Clo- The reason is, because a friend of this translation of his can bring forth just causes, and various ones at that, such as that he promised her to another, or that another is more worthy, or that he thinks to dedicate her to God and pious things, etc. But even if he cannot put forward any just cause, except that it seems to him he ought to do so, and thus it pleases him, nevertheless for this reason the former friendship with you is not to be broken, because this is more valuable than all money. For, as Cicero says in On Friendship: "A friend is the best and most beautiful possession." The Syriac favors this sense: Do not exchange a friend for (that is, in place of) money, and a brother, who is to you (in place of) gold of Ophir. And the Greek, μὴ ἀλλάξῃς φίλον ἕνεκεν διαφόρου κατὰ μηδὲ ἕν, that is, do not exchange a friend on account of something different according to nothing, namely because something differs from you and diverts, and turns elsewhere. For διαφόρου, the Complutensian, Roman and others read contrarily ἀδιαφόρου, that is indifferent. Whence some translate: Do not exchange a good friend for something indifferent, that is, for adiaphora, namely goods of fortune, which are intermediate between virtue and vice, neither good nor evil, and therefore to be esteemed lightly; because just as we can use them for virtue, so we can abuse the same for vice. Whence the Zurich translates: Never exchange a friend for a common thing, nor a sincere brother for Ophirian gold, as if to say: Gold and money as vile things despise in comparison with friendship: do not on account of them dissolve friendship, because if your friend were in need, you would give him your things: esteem yourself as having already given, or as about to give. This is what we shall hear in chapter XXIX, 13: "Lose money on account of a brother and friend." And Solomon in Proverbs XII, 26: "He who neglects loss on account of a friend, is just." Neither a Brother (whether by nature, namely a brother german; or by friendship, namely a friend who is as a brother) most dear shall you despise for gold. Suppose on account of gold, which he himself demands from you, or diverts from you, or delays to give or pay. In Greek and Sy-
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From the wife he descends to the servant. For "do not harm," in Greek it is μὴ κακώσῃς, that is, do not afflict, do not treat badly, do not afflict with evil words or blows "a servant in truth," that is, truly, faithfully, and from the heart, not falsely and for show, working for you; "nor a hireling giving his soul," that is, one who does not spare himself and labor, but expends all the forces of his soul and body to the work of the master from whom he is hired, so that he appears to be breathing out his soul from effort, striving and sweat. In a servant therefore he requires faithfulness, in a hireling diligence. Whence the Syriac: Do not afflict a servant who serves in truth; nor a hireling who labors, giving his soul (that is, himself); the Zurich Bible: Do not treat badly a servant working faithfully, nor a hireling giving himself wholly to you; Antonius in the Melissa, sermon 29, reads: "Do not treat badly a servant doing true work." To this pertains that saying of Seneca, book I On Clemency, chapter XVIII: "To command servants moderately is praiseworthy; and in regard to a slave it must be considered, not how much it can suffer with impunity, but how much the nature of equity and goodness permits, which commands sparing even captives and those obtained by purchase." St. Paul gives the reason, Ephesians VI, 9: "And you, masters, he says, do the same to them (servants), putting away threats; knowing that both their and your Master is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with him." See the sayings there. Marcus Crassus gave an economic reason, who held slaves liberally, indeed taught: "Because, he says, slaves are animate instruments of domestic property." Aristotle felt the same in the Economics.
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In Greek: A servant συνετόν, that is prudent, sensible, let your soul love, do not defraud him of liberty; the Syriac: Your servant, supply, if he be yours, love him as your soul; and do not prohibit him from liberty, that is, do not deny him liberty; the Arabic: Do not harm a servant acting faithfully, nor a hireling laboring, vexing his soul. Love a wise servant according to the love of your soul (that is, as you love yourself), and do not prohibit him from liberty; Antonius in the Melissa, sermon 23: "Love a prudent servant from the heart." The Greek therefore teaches two things to be provided to a prudent servant by his master, namely, first, love from the heart; second, liberty; the Latin adds a third, that he not be sent away destitute, according to that in Deuteronomy XV, 13: "Whom you shall have given liberty, you shall not send away empty; but you shall give him provisions for the journey." Moreover he says: "Do not defraud him of liberty," when, namely, either he can and wishes to redeem himself by price, or the time of servitude prescribed by law or otherwise expires, as it was granted to the Hebrews to serve only six years, but in the seventh year to go out free, Exodus XXI, 2. Again in the jubilee all servants ought to be sent away free, Leviticus chapter XXV, 41. Otherwise to give a sensible servant liberty is a matter of counsel, not of precept; for his prudence and virtue merit rather to act freely than to serve, rather to command others than to obey. It is different with bad and senseless servants: for them servitude is more useful than liberty. Moreover many formerly adopted servants as sons on account of their faithfulness and services to them, and thus gave them both liberty and inheritance, and some think that Sirach here hints at and recommends this. Thus Plato, Dialogue IV on the Republic, says that adoption takes away servitude, and Plutarch in the Politics advises that freedmen be adopted, so that servants might learn to obey their master at a nod with the hope of similar adoption. For this reason even now the Turks adopt servants obedient to them as sons; indeed some Spanish people, if a son is lacking, adopt a most dutiful servant as a son. Solomon hints that the Hebrews did the same, Proverbs XVII, 2: "A wise servant, he says, shall rule over foolish sons, and shall divide the inheritance among brothers;" and thus some think that Solomon adopted Jeroboam for himself on account of his strength, who then becoming more insolent snatched the kingdom of ten tribes from Rehoboam and arrogated it to himself. "P. Catinius Philotimus, says Pliny, book VII, chapter XXXVI, loved his patron so much that, being appointed heir to all his goods, he threw himself on his funeral pyre." Thus also servants among the Gauls were cremated on the same pyre as their masters, as Caesar testifies, book VI of the Gallic War. Whence Pomponius Mela, treating of the same, book III, chapter II, says: "There were, he says, those who would willingly throw themselves on the pyres of their masters, as if about to live together." Note: The Wise One so commends servants and handmaids to the master, both because it is the duty of the master to have particular care of his house and household: for this is required by economic justice and the order of charity; and because this very thing redounds to the honor and advantage of the master: for if servants are treated kindly by the master, they are well. Moreover perfection compares riches to virtues, especially because it draws his mind away from desire for earthly things, so that, content with things necessary for the use of life (which are very few), he neither seeks nor desires the rest. But he is rich who desires nothing, who lives pleasantly content with his own.
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In Greek ἐπισκέπτου αὐτά, that is, inspect, attend to, visit, care for them; do not believe that they are managed in all respects by servants: but you yourself visit them sometimes, to see whether they are treated and fed properly by the servants. "For the eye of the Lord fattens the horse; even if they are useful, let them remain with you." But if they are useless, sell them, reject them, or kill and slaughter them for the food and use of the household. The Syriac: Do you have a beast of burden? test it; and if it is true (that is, sound and perfect in every way), keep it. From the care of servants he descends to the care of beasts, which likewise serve the master; whence beasts are called from helping. Moreover, he commends their care for three reasons: the first is, because it is the duty of the master to care not only for himself, but also for the whole household, to which beasts belong. Again, the kindness and beneficence of the master ought to extend not only to men, but also to beasts; for just as the vice of cruelty is to overwhelm beasts with excessive labor, or to deny them their due food: so likewise the virtue of clemency is to be kind to beasts, and to provide for them with fodder, watering, and other comforts at fixed hours, according to that in Proverbs XII, 10: "The just knoweth the souls of his beasts; but the bowels of the wicked are cruel." On which words St. Chrysostom, homily 29 on the Epistle to the Romans: "For the souls of the Saints, he says, are exceedingly gentle, and lovers of men, not only toward their own, but also toward strangers; so that they extend this gentleness of theirs even to brute animals. For this reason the Wise man said: The just hath mercy on the souls of his beasts; if therefore on beasts, much more on men." Second, because the master in caring for beasts cares for himself, namely for his possessions, by which he feeds himself and his household: wherefore masters are foolish and unjust to themselves who are cruel, who by their avarice or cruelty so burden their horses, oxen, and asses that they collapse; so beat them that they lacerate them; so sparingly feed them that they fail in strength: for these men deprive themselves of great profit, which they would gain from them, if they treated them rightly. Third, because inhumanity and cruelty to beasts is a sign and beginning of cruelty to men. Wherefore from histories it is clear that those who were cruel to men were also savage to beasts. Thus Nero, cruel, delighted in the slaughter and butchery of animals, and even with his own hand often slew them, and this was his recreation and pleasure. Domitian, cruel, spent many hours a day in the catching and killing of flies; for he would pierce them with a golden stylus, so as to leave none alive; whence the proverb: "Not even a fly." Wherefore Oppian, in book II of On Hunting, forbids excessive hunts to kings, and gives the reason: "Lest, delighted in the slaughter of animals, they also think of the mutual destruction of men." Xenophon also teaches that Cyrus and the Persians accustomed themselves to war and the slaughter of men through hunting and the killing of animals. For this reason God commanded the Jews to show humanity to beasts, for example, not to plow with an ox and an ass together, because the ass is unequal to the ox, and is burdened more than is right in the same yoke with the ox; not to take the nests of birds and capture the mother together with the young; not to muzzle the ox treading out the grain: that on the seventh day, namely the Sabbath, they should let all beasts rest. "So that, says Tertullian, lib. II Against Marcion, cap. XVII, humanity practiced beforehand in cattle and beasts, might be learned for the relief of men," so that the stubborn Jews might learn to be humane to men, who were compelled by God to be humane to beasts. Tropologically, beasts are rude and dull men, as if to say: If you have men of small brain and mind committed to you, have compassion on their dullness and weakness; nor let it weary you to instruct and form them in Christian doctrine and life, even if you seem to make little progress, mindful of this: A drop wears away a stone, not by force, but by falling often; Thus a man becomes learned, not by force, but by studying often. Thus we read that St. Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, when he was a boy, was so dull in mind that he understood nothing; wherefore, thinking of abandoning his studies, when he stood sad beside a well, observing the furrows which the frequent drawing of buckets had made in the hard stone, he reasoned thus with himself: If repetition and frequency of drawing can excavate stones, surely frequency of studying will be able to polish my mind, dull and hard though it be. Wherefore, taking heart again, constantly applying himself to studies, he became so learned a man that Spain in that age saw none more learned than he; indeed, gymnasiums, academies, and learned men are indebted to him, as they were his disciples, followers, and rivals. Thus his Life relates. Let those who catechize and teach rustics, Indians, Kaffirs, slaves, to whom nature seems to have given only half a mind, as Aristotle says, note and imitate this. Symbolically, beasts are the animal appetites, senses, and sensations of man; for in these we agree with beasts, and we are animals, and we live animalistically. These must be watched over, so that they are useful, and serve reason and mind, as it were their master and lord: if they resist and rebel against him, they must be rejected and mortified according to that: "If you live according to the flesh, you shall die; but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live," Rom. VIII, 13.
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In Greek παίδευσον, that is, instruct, chastise, form. The Syriac: Do you have sons? Correct them, and take wives for them in their adolescence, lest they run about to harlots. The word instruct properly regards the intellect, the word bend regards the affection; for both must be directed and formed in children and youths, lest they either remain rude and unteachable, or inflexible and untamed: for ignorance is congenital to children in the intellect, this must be removed by instruction; in the affection pride and concupiscence, these must be bent and chastised by mortification, according to that in Proverbs XIII, verse 24: "He that spareth the rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes." Bend therefore their neck, that they may learn to humble themselves and obey, that they may learn to break their own appetites and concupiscences, that they may flee allurements and softness. Indeed Fabius, book I of the Institutes, chapter III: "Soft," he says, "education breaks the powers of mind and body." And Plutarch, in the book On the Education of Children: "I have seen," he says, "fathers to whom excessive love was the cause that they did not love." These imitate apes, which embrace their young so tightly that they sometimes kill them, as Pliny testifies, book VIII, chapter LIV. Harsh was that education of sons, of which Virgil speaks in the Aeneid, book IX: We carry the newborn to the rivers first, And harden them with cruel frost and waves. See more on this matter in Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus; Seneca, book II On Anger, chapter XXII; Alexander ab Alexandro, book II of Genial Days, chapter XXV. Prudently St. Chrysostom, homily 9 on I Timothy, admonishes parents "to permit nothing to their sons from those things which are harmfully pleasant." For, as Clement rightly admonishes, book I On the Pedagogue, chapter VII: "The vine grows wild unless it is pruned; so also man." Piously and wisely St. Jerome, epistle 7 to Laeta, teaches in detail how to instruct his little daughter Paula: "After," he says, "you have weaned her with Isaac, and clothed her with Samuel, give this most precious gem to the chamber of Mary, and place her in the cradle of Jesus crying. Let her be nourished in a monastery, let her be among the choirs of virgins; let her not learn to swear; let her think lying a sacrilege; let her know not the world; let her live as an angel; let her be in the flesh, without the flesh; let her think all mankind like herself." Similar things St. Chrysostom advises, homily 21 on the epistle to the Ephesians: "Have you borne a child?" he says, "imitate Anna. Learn what she did: soon she withdrew him, and offered him in the temple. Who among you would not wish in countless ways that his son become Samuel rather than king of the whole world?"
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Whole, untouched, chaste and pure. For in this consists all the beauty and dignity of a daughter, especially because her sex and age are fragile, and prone to vice, and many lie in wait for her. You will do this if you keep her at home, if you keep her away from young men, from banquets, from dances, from spectacles that are scarcely honorable: for thus Dina suffered vice, because she curiously looked upon the Shechemites, Genesis XXXIV. If she always has you or her mother as guide and companion, if the maidservants and servants are modest, if no conversation AND DO NOT SHOW A CHEERFUL FACE TO THEM. Then so that by the severity of your countenance you may restrain and check their wantonness, levity, freedom, boldness; then so that you may instill in them the same shame and fear of you, lest they dare to offend you; then lest from the father's caresses toward them they learn to be affected toward men, and become more free and shameless toward them, says Jansenius. For, as Solomon says: "Better is anger than laughter, because by the sadness of the countenance the mind of the offender is corrected," Ecclesiastes VII, 4. On which words St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: "Prudent anger, he says, is to be preferred to laughter: for by a severe countenance of the face the soul is composed to what is right and honorable; and indeed the souls of the wise are contracted by sadness, but the souls of the foolish are spread out and lifted up by joy." And Isidore of Pelusium: "By the sadness, he says, which appears in the face, the heart is admonished of its duty," especially the heart of a woman, which is held to duty more by fear than by love. It is enough for daughters to have the love and familiarity of mothers: let them not therefore also seek the more indulgent affection of fathers. Let them believe from the father's more severe countenance that men are severe, lest they be easily captivated by their love. St. Bernard, book IV On Consideration, chapter VI: "Do you have daughters? Do not show a cheerful face to them. Yet I do not advise you austerity, but gravity. That drives away the weaker; this restrains the lighter. That, if present, makes one hateful; this, if absent, makes one contemptible: in all things however moderation is better. I would wish neither more severely nor more loosely. What is more pleasing than this moderation, so that you are neither burdensome from severity, nor contemptible from familiarity? etc. That is the more fitting demeanor, if you are indeed severe in deed, serene in countenance, serious in word." Clement of Alexandria, book I Paedagogus, chapter IX, citing these words, And do not show a cheerful face to them: "Those who speak for favor, he says, love little; but those who are harsh for utility, they benefit the future age: the Lord did not regard present will, but future delight." This wise admonition the Bride kept, who, although she was beautiful, yet showed herself black to her companions, Canticles I, 5. Which words St. Bernard explaining, sermon 28 in Canticles: "So that, he says, to those remiss, soft, and fleeing discipline, she might exhibit not the brightness of serenity, but the darkness of severity." She imitated her Spouse, of whom David says, Psalm CXVII: "The Lord hath chastened me with chastisement, and hath not delivered me to death." On which words Clement of Alexandria, book I Paedagogus, chapter VII: "To be chastened by the Lord, he says, and to be instructed as by a pedagogue, is to be freed from death." A lioness, as Philostratus testifies in book VII, in order to be tamed, is not to be won over too gently, otherwise she becomes unruly and fierce; so also a woman, especially a daughter, whom Cato called an untamed animal. Pearls grow in shells, not in calm weather, but in troubled sky, as Dioscorides and natural philosophers teach; if therefore you wish your daughter to be a pearl, that is, pure and a virgin, show her a severe countenance, according to that of Job XXIX, 24: "When I laughed at them, they believed not." "Saffron, says Pliny in book XXI, chapter VI, delights to be trampled and worn by the foot, and thrives better by being destroyed." So also the saffron-colored integrity of daughters. To this pertains that of St. Gregory, book XX Moral, chapter II: "He who presides ought both to be feared while smiling, and to be loved while angry; so that excessive cheerfulness does not make him vile, nor immoderate severity hateful." Tropologically, or symbolically, the daughters of God are holy souls; their God preserves the body, that is, the integrity of all virtues, and therefore shows them not a cheerful, but a severe countenance, while he afflicts them with various tribulations. Whence St. Gregory, book X Moral, chapter XVII, applies to them that of Job chapter XII, A lamp despised in the thoughts of the rich: "The just, he says, are said to be both a lamp and despised. A lamp, because it shines within; and despised, because it does not shine without. Within the flame of charity burns, without no glory of beauty shines forth. Therefore it shines and is despised, which burning with virtues is esteemed abject." Then he shows that such a lamp was Christ and Paul, and adds: "But a despised lamp, which on earth endures mockeries, shines more brightly from heaven through judgment. Whence it is aptly subjoined: Prepared for the time appointed."
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Tigurina: Give your daughter in marriage, and you will have accomplished a great work. Great, because difficult, and equally as useful, both for you, for your daughter, and for the commonwealth. For you, because by its great care, and the troubles and dangers of suitors, you free and relieve yourself: whence the Syrian translates: Make your daughter go out, and violence will depart; for your daughter, because you consult her chastity, and place her in an honorable state throughout her whole life; for the commonwealth, because her marriage will give offspring, which by number, duties and merits will increase the commonwealth. This counsel agrees with the age of Sirach, in which celibacy was not in use, but was rather a disgrace. But Christ gave a more divine counsel, when He persuaded virginity and celibacy. Hear the Apostle, I Corinthians VII, 8: "I say to the unmarried and to widows: It is good for them if they so remain, as I also do." He gives the reason in verse 34: "The unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of the world, how she may please her husband." For this reason so many convents of virgins have been erected, to which enclosure has been strictly prescribed by the Canons and the Council of Trent. For women need either a wall or a husband. Give your daughter therefore to a man, unless she wishes to be joined to a better man, namely Christ, in monastic life. Ben-Sira agrees with Sirach in the Alphabet, at the letter Mem: "The waters of a woman, who is a young virgin, are sweet, and increase strength (he alludes to that in Proverbs V, verse 15: Drink water from your own cistern, that is, enjoy your wife); but the waters of an old woman are bitter as wormwood, and weaken strength, like a cistern which had waters, which the wind drawing up absorbed," that is to say, An old woman is worn out, exhausted, barren and sterile, and therefore ungrateful and insipid. For this reason St. Ignatius, cited by Anthony in the Melissa, lib. I, cap. XIV: "Young people," he says, "should contract marriages, before they become entangled in mercenary loves." Indeed, Plutarch in the Laconic customs relates that Lycurgus prescribed a certain time in which girls should marry and young men should take wives. Asked why? He answered: "So that offspring born from adults and parents of perfect age may be strong and vigorous." For from premature marriage the bodies of those who beget are harmed, and offspring is born weak. Finally, young parents lack among their children the authority which age brings. AND TO A SENSIBLE MAN (Greek συνετῷ, that is prudent, intelligent; Syrian, wise; Tigurina, discreet) GIVE HER. — Greek, δώρησαι, that is give, that is give, hand over even without a dowry. That saying of Themistocles is well known, who gave his daughter to a man of slender fortune, but wise: "I prefer a man to money, rather than money to a man in need." Many make a grave error in this matter, who, while seeking husbands for their daughters, seek the wealthy and noble, and do not much care whether they are prudent and wise, or foolish; whence we see many unhappy and sorrowful marriages of daughters with husbands. Democritus said, "he who has obtained a good son-in-law has found a son; but he who has obtained a bad one has at the same time lost a daughter," as Stobaeus testifies, serm. 68. Most wise and most happy are those who procure for their daughters husbands who are wise, as much as wealthy and noble; as Naomi procured for her daughter-in-law Ruth a husband in Boaz, distinguished equally in wealth and in prudence and probity. Moreover, civil and canonical laws define a marriageable woman, and one mature for matrimony, at the twelfth year of age, but a man at the fourteenth year; yet they do not advise that, once this is completed, matrimony be immediately contracted. They left only this written, that a daughter can contract marriage without consulting her father, if her father has delayed her marriage.
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Such, namely, as your soul desires, which should indeed be easy-mannered and of suitable character, and which agrees equally with your wishes as with your nature and affections. Do not cast her away — do not give her a bill of divorce permitted and lawful in the old law. And do not entrust yourself to her if she is hateful (on account of stubbornness, talkativeness and depravity of character). — In Greek, μὴ ἐκδῶς σεαυτόν, that is, do not hand over or give yourself, namely, in marriage, says Jansenius. But it is already presupposed that she is a wife, whom therefore he does not advise to be immediately cast off, but that the husband should not entrust himself and his secrets to her. For a husband hands over or gives himself to his wife when he trusts and commits himself entirely to her, and when he pours all his affairs into her lap, as Samson poured himself into the lap of Delilah, and therefore was betrayed by her, captured by the Philistines and blinded. And Amphiaraus, revealing his hiding places to his wife Eriphyle, was by her sold and betrayed for the price of a golden necklace, as Statius testifies, Hyginus cap. LXXIII. Whence Dionysius, for "do not entrust yourself," reads, "do not reveal your secrets;" for a woman cannot keep silent and preserve secrets. Whence Cleobulus: "With your wife," he says, "do not contend, nor trust her too much." And Cato said he repented of three things; the third was that he ever entrusted a secret to a woman. This is what Micah says, cap. VII, vers. 5: "From her that sleepeth in thy bosom keep the doors of thy mouth." Hence the Syriac version translates: You have a wife, do not put her away; and if she is wicked, do not trust her; Vatablus: You have obtained a wife to your liking, do not repudiate her; nor permit yourself to the hateful one. Siracides returns to vers. 21: "Do not depart from a wise and good woman," and commends and inculcates that as of great importance in the family for peace, harmony and virtue. Palacius understands by woman a wife; by the hateful one, a concubine, as if to say: Do not cast away your wife, and cleave to a concubine, and entrust yourself to her, because this one is hateful, both because she is the cause of hatred and quarrels between husband and wife; and because you will soon come to hate her, when you see your wealth drained by her: for formerly polygamy was lawful, and a concubine was called a secondary wife, such as Hagar was to Abraham, and Bala and Zelpha to Jacob. But nothing compels the hateful one to be restricted to a concubine. For to any wife, if she be hateful, he advises that she should not be trusted. Note τὸ according to the soul. For by that he signifies that each man should choose a wife who is pleasant in character, and who has sympathy with her husband, and agrees in manners. For the life of a husband is tedious, if he must constantly associate with a wife of disposition and temperament contrary to his own, for example, if the husband is of sanguine temperament and jovial, he must perpetually deal with a wife sad, gloomy, melancholic. Again, that saying of Pittacus is well-known, found in Laertius, lib. I, cap. V: "Take a wife equal to yourself." Cleobulus gives the reason, found in Stobaeus, serm. 3 On Temperance: "For if you marry from a superior family," he says, "you will acquire not relatives, but masters." Chilon, in Stobaeus, serm. 38, said that daughters should be married off "virgins in age, but matrons in prudence." He also held that a humble wife should be married with modest dowry, lest you bring a mistress rather than a spouse into your house; for a girl comes sufficiently dowered who brings chastity and honest morals with her. For this reason the Lacedaemonians ordained that virgins should go to marriage without a dowry, as Laertius testifies, lib. I, cap. IV, so that each young man, looking to the girl's character, might make his choice from virtue and disposition agreeing with him.
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Whom she endured in conceiving you, carrying in the womb, nursing, swaddling, etc. Thus the Latin, Roman, Greek and Syriac versions connect these; wherefore Jansenius and others wrongly connect τὸ with the whole heart to the preceding verse. He commands therefore to the son: "In," that is, from, "thy whole heart honour," in Greek δόξασον, that is, glorify, "thy father;" Zurich version: Magnify thy father with thy whole mind, and do not forget the sorrows of thy mother. Tobias, dying, taught his son the same thing, saying cap. IV: "Thou shalt have honour to thy mother all the days of thy life. For thou must be mindful what and how great dangers she suffered for thee in her womb." Moreover, the groans of the mother are greater, by which she groans for her son lost through crimes, that he may return to the way of virtue and divine grace, such were the groans of St. Monica for St. Augustine, which he himself recounts in lib. Confessions.
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Some codices omit τὸ natus, and read more significantly, unless through them you would not have been, that is to say, Without parents you would not have been in the nature of things, you would have been non-being, you would have been nothing; for everything that you are, you have from your parents. The Greek texts have it somewhat differently: Remember that through them you were born; and what will you repay them as they have repaid you? that is to say, You cannot render them an equal return. "For indeed, to gods, parents and teachers an equivalent return cannot be made." Our Latin version is more forceful, with which the Syriac agrees: Remember because unless they themselves you would not be; and who will repay those who brought you up? For although parents properly give only It appears that Ecclesiasticus in this place follows the opinion of those Philosophers and Theologians who hold that an individual, namely this offspring, is determined by secondary causes, for example, why this offspring is born, not another, the cause being the parents, who at this place and time generating determine the generation to this begotten one naturally; for supernaturally God can make it so that the same son is born from another. This opinion appears to be followed by St. Thomas, who holds that the cause of individuation is matter signed, or affected by these circumstances and accidents. Gabriel Vasquez holds the same in III part., Quaest. XIX, disp. 74, art. 4, cap. VII, and proves it by three arguments: first, because God is a universal and indeterminate cause, which is determined to this or that species (much more to this or that individual) by secondary causes; second, because acts of free will are determined by free will, not by God: otherwise if they were predetermined by God, they would not be free; third, because unless the effect were determined by a secondary cause, the same thing in number could be reproduced naturally: for if that in itself is indeterminate, equally as its effect, there does not appear a reason why it could not reproduce the same; whence it would follow that the resurrection of bodies is natural, when it is certain that it is supernatural. St. Chrysostom favors this, homil. 5 on Penance, where he asks why God did not immediately remove Esau, whom he hated, from the midst; and he answers that the cause was, so that Job would be born from him, who otherwise would not have been born: "If he had been cut off, he says, perhaps the world would have lost the greatest fruit of justice. And what kind? hear. Esau begot Raguel, Raguel Sara, Sara Job. See what a flower of patience would have languished, if God preventing had exacted punishment from the root." The same is clear concerning many Saints, whose nativity their parents obtained by their prayers and merits. Finally, God did not decree that these or those sons be born, except because he foresaw that parents would generate them on such a day or hour. For an effect is not foreseen except from a foreseen cause. I except Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and perhaps some Saints. The contrary is taught by P. Suarez in III part., disp. 10, sect. V, and more clearly in Metaphys. tom. I, disp. 26, sect. V, num. 27, P. Salazar, tractat. De Concept. cap. XXIV, num. 24, 30 and following. For they hold that According to this opinion, which certainly has great difficulties, this passage of Ecclesiasticus is to be explained thus: "Remember because unless through them you would not have been born," namely, because God ultimately predetermined that you would be born from them alone, not from others: but this ultimate decree of God being posited, it was impossible for you to be born from others, because you cannot be born except as God willed and decreed. Indeed P. Fonseca, lib. V Metaphys. cap. II, Quaest. XIV, sect. III, asserts that it comes to the same thing, to say that this effect is this in number rather than that, because it was produced by this agent in number, and from this matter in number, and in this number or moment of time, as if someone should say, because the divine will determined to this effect in number natural in this number and time, its natural causes. Moreover Scotus in II, dist. 20, Quaest. II, holds the opinion that in the state of innocence (had Adam persisted in it) there would have been the same number of men as are now predestined, and neither more nor fewer (for there would have been no reprobate then), and therefore those predestined who are now born from the reprobate would then have been born from the predestined. His reasoning is: Because, he says, predestination was made before the foreseen original sin, and before the foreseen generations of all future men; which Suarez also teaches in lib. I De Praedestinat. cap. XII. St. Gregory favors this, lib. IV Moral. cap. XXVI, or XXVIII, when he says: "If the first parent were corrupted by no rottenness of sin, he would by no means beget from himself children of hell; but those who are now to be saved through redemption would alone be born chosen from him." But St. Gregory could be explained as speaking of election in general, not in the individual, that is to say: If Adam had persisted, only the elect would be born from him; but those would then have been elect through God's election alone, whereas now all the elect are through the redemption of Christ. However, whatever be the mind of St. Gregory, commonly other theologians teach with St. Augustine that election was made after the foreseen original sin, because it was made from the merits of Christ, which presuppose this sin. Whence throughout St. Augustine teaches that the election of the Saints was made from the mass infected and corrupted by original sin. Again, predestination presupposes a subject, namely a man, already predestined to be in the nature of things, or to be in the future. For he who is not Morally, learn here how much we ought to love and revere parents, and especially God the Father of all. Whence Diogenes to someone who despised his father: "Are you not ashamed," he says, "to despise him to whom you owe the very fact that you please yourself?" thus Laertius lib. VI. And Plato to a similar person: "Will you not cease," he says, "to despise him on account of whose grace you wish to be wiser?" thus Maximus serm. 33. But concerning God, Moses says to Israel: "Is not he thy father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee?" Deut. XXXII, vers. 6.
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In Greek εὐλαβοῦ, that is, revere, venerate, worship. The Syriac: Fear God with all thy heart, and honor his priests. Fear of God in Scripture is the same as worship, reverence and veneration of God; for we ought to venerate, worship and love God with our whole soul. The reason is, because God is the soul of the soul. Just as therefore the whole body belongs to the soul, so the whole soul ought to belong to God. The soul, says Aristotle in book II of De Anima, is the cause of the living body in a threefold kind of cause, namely formal, efficient and final; likewise God is also to the soul itself. Again, God is the soul, that is, the life, of the soul, not only natural through creation, but also supernatural through grace. "Because," says St. Augustine in tract. 10 on John, "his life (of the soul) is God, just as when it is in the body, it bestows upon it vigor, beauty, mobility, the functions of members: so when his life God is in it, he bestows upon it wisdom, justice, charity." The same, in the book On the Knowledge of True Life cap. XXXI: "God is the life of the soul, just as the soul itself is the life of the body. But just as the body is dead when it does not have a soul: so the soul is dead when it lacks God." Add to this that the soul, and any created thing whatsoever, depends upon and is sustained by God more than by itself. For God by his continual influx gives it its being, and thus perpetually as it were creates it; and if God were to withdraw his influx, it would immediately fall back into its nothingness, from which it was created by God. Wherefore the whole soul ought to love God more than itself, because God is a greater good to it than it is to itself. Moreover, the soul is the form of forms, or the form of forms, says Aristotle in book III of De Anima, both because the soul is the noblest of all forms; and because it itself receives all the forms of all intelligible and knowable things. The soul What is commanded here, and for what reasons, I have taught at length in Deuteronomy VI, 5. To which add Richard of St. Victor, in the tract On the Degrees of Charity, who assigns seven degrees of the love of God: "The first is," he says, "that love be inseparable, so that the soul with the Apostle may say: Who shall separate me from the charity of Christ? the second, that it be insatiable: for fire never says: It is enough; and those who are inflamed with it never seem to themselves to have done anything, and they call themselves unprofitable servants; the third, that it be unconquerable. For love is strong as death, and many waters could not extinguish charity; the fourth, that it be delightful, and the soul inflamed with this love may say: The king hath brought me into his chambers, I remembered God, and was delighted; the fifth, that it wound the soul with burning desires and many, by which it wishes that all serve it, and strives to draw all to him; the sixth, that it always thirst for God, always have him present, that every creature recall to it the memory of him; the seventh, that it desire to be joined and to be with Christ, not impelled by weariness of life, but by charity, whoever shall have been inflamed by it." Let us therefore cry out again and again with the Psalmist Psalm XVII, 1: "I will love thee, O Lord, my strength; O Lord, my firmament and my refuge, and my deliverer. Who is like to the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, and looketh down on the low things in heaven and in earth? What have I in heaven? and besides thee what do I desire upon earth? Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me bless his holy name. Be thou exalted above the heavens, O God, and thy glory over all the earth." Again, virtue, says Aristotle in book I of De Coelo, text 1, cap. XVI, and from him our Alvarez de Paz, lib. III De Vita spirit., part II, cap. XXI, "is that
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For "virtue" in Greek is δυνάμει, that is, power, possibility; Vatablus, "with all force," and, that is, therefore, so that namely you may show that you love God with all your virtue and force, sanctify his priests; the Syriac: "Honor your Creator with all your heart." He cites Deuteronomy, chapter VI, 5, according to the Septuagint: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength;" where for strength, in Hebrew it is "with all thy very much;" the Septuagint, "with all your virtue;" which St. Luke, chapter X, 27, translates, "with all thy strength and with all thy mind;" Vatablus, "for all your manly power," that is, from all your faculty and possibility, from all your worth and vigor, most strongly and most powerfully, and as if it could be, excessively (for this is what the Hebrew מאד meod signifies), love God, according to that Psalm CXVIII: "Thou hast commanded thy commandments to be kept exceedingly." St. Bernard, sermon 29 in the Canticles: "Not to be drawn away, he says, by blandishments, nor seduced by deceits, nor broken by injuries, to love with whole heart, whole soul, whole virtue is this." The reason is, because God is all good, indeed an immense ocean of all goods; therefore he is to be desired and loved with all forces. Furthermore, what he adds: "Sanctify his priests," this is, hold them holy, as holy ones, that is, consecrated to God, honor them, help them, sustain them; in Greek, admire them, as if to say, So great is the excellence of priests and priesthood, consecration and holiness, that all ought to admire it, and by admiring venerate and revere it. Hence let priests learn to live a life worthy of priesthood, so that they may be heavenly men, Angels of God, miracles of the earth: "Let them live as divinities, let them speak as oracles;" so that in speech equally as in life they may be admirable, and stir up admiration of themselves in the laity. St. Ignatius gives the reason, epistle 10 to the Smyrnaeans: "Priesthood, he says, is the apex of all the goods which are in the world; whoever acts against it does not bring ignominy upon a man, but upon God." And St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 21: "The priest, he says, is going to be with the order and company of Angels, who will celebrate God with the Archangels, who will send sacrifices to the sacred altar, and at the same time will exercise priesthood with Christ; who will restore the work of creation, and will set the image before the Creator, and will act as maker in the heavenly world; and what is greater, I will say, will be God, and will make others gods." Wherefore Christ also honored the Mosaic priests, when he sent the lepers healed by him to them, saying: "Go, show yourselves to the priests." But he wished to be honored by kings, when he called the three Magi, led by a star, to himself to be adored in Bethlehem, so that he might show that priesthood is more excellent than kingship. For "purple makes emperors, not priests," says St. Ambrose in Theodoret, book V of the History, chapter VII; and Philo, book III On the Life of Moses: "The mitre, he says, is placed on the head in place of a diadem, because as long as the priest performs his honor and ministry, he is not only more eminent than private men, but also than all kings;" and St. Chrysostom, homily 4 on the words of Isaiah, I saw the Lord: "To the king, he says, bodies are entrusted, to the priest souls. The king remits the blemishes of bodies, but the priest remits the blemishes of sins. He compels, this one exhorts; he by necessity, this one by counsel; he has sensible weapons, this one spiritual weapons; he wages war with barbarians, for this one war is against demons; this is a greater principality, therefore the king bows his head to the hand of the priest, and everywhere in the old Scripture priests anointed kings." Wherefore fire sent by God upon Nadab and Abihu the priests, because they had offered strange fire, indeed consumed and killed them; but their garments, as being priestly, he did not dare to touch, so that by this miracle he might sanctify the dignity of priesthood, Leviticus X. Therefore virtue is, if we attend to its original meaning, the striving and effort and impulse of a thing, all that the one acting can do, and striving toward the highest and most excellent for itself. Wherefore then do we love God with all virtue, when we stir up the will so that with all effort it loves God, and we raise up other forces or powers, so that not sluggishly, not carelessly, but strenuously and diligently they may be directed to the service and will of God." Whence St. Thomas, Opuscule 61, chapter XXIII, expressing this sense thus says: "You love the Lord, not only by force, but also by virtue, when by loving and laboring you experience the highest power; and if in this highest and ultimate end you were always to continue the act of love, then not only by virtue, but also by your whole virtue would you love. But because in mortal life it is not possible for anyone to apply the highest effort in all his good acts, it must be considered how this teaching is accommodated to the life of the just pilgrims, so that they may be able to observe it in some way, and to love God with their whole virtue. Those indeed are said to love by virtue who are loving lovers of God, who love God fervently, and who carefully and strenuously avoid every defect and imperfection (as much as they can), and diligently, carefully and earnestly exercise the works of virtue pertaining to their state and duty. For some (as Bernard, sermon 3 On Pentecost, most excellently noted) receive the Holy Spirit, the spirit of charity unto salvation; For, as St. Chrysostom says, sermon 6 On the Passion of the Lord: "Love is proved by adversities, affection is weighed by perils, love is examined by sufferings, perfect charity is shown by death. Rightly therefore Bernard the supreme degree of love, which he reserves for the heavenly homeland, namely when man loves himself purely for God's sake, and loses himself in a certain way, as if he were not, and entirely does not feel himself, and is emptied and annulled by himself, he dares to grant to the Martyrs alone in this life with certain reason. Do we think (he says) that the holy Martyrs obtained this grace, or at least in part, while still constituted in those yet victorious bodies? Great indeed was the force of love that had seized those souls inwardly, which were able thus to expose their bodies to wild beasts, and to despise torments." Furthermore St. Thomas, opuscule 61 On the Love of God, chapter XXIII, distinguishes virtue from fortitude somewhat more subtly: "That virtue is the highest effort of our powers to act, but fortitude is the highest effort to endure." To which St. Augustine agrees, book I On the Morals of the Church, chapter XXII: "Love," he says, "which ought to be inflamed with all holiness toward God, is called temperate in not desiring these things, strong in losing them." And below: "Nothing is so hard and iron-like that it is not overcome by the fire of love. When the soul rushes with it toward God, it will fly free and wonderfully above all torture on the most beautiful and perfect wings, by which chaste love is supported toward God's embrace." And in book I On the Morals of the Manichees, chapter XV, he says, "fortitude is love easily enduring all things for God's sake. Wherefore to love with all virtue is to love God in such a way that one neither yields to temptations, nor succumbs in tribulations and threats, whether from the demon or from men; as happened to David, accepting another's wife against right and law, to Peter denying, to the disciples fleeing; and it happened to many others, who believe with living faith for a time, and in the time of temptation fall away. Of this love with all fortitude Paul makes mention, when he proclaimed the strength and firmness of his love: Who, he says, shall separate us from the charity of Christ? tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? and immediately: I am sure that neither death, nor life," etc. Rom. VIII. Such love had the Bride saying Cant. VIII: "Strong is love as death, hard as hell is jealousy." St. Catherine of Siena wrote at the instinct of the Holy Spirit a brief dialogue, but succulent and golden, On Consummated Perfection, in which she teaches that perfection is situated in the continual and full conformity of our will with the divine; and this conformity is made through the love of God from the whole heart and whole virtue, which requires three things, and God thus describes them to her: "First, that you remove your will from all earthly and carnal love and affection entirely, separate it, purify it, so that in this life you love nothing transitory, nothing perishable, nothing temporal except for my sake, yourself for my sake, and your neighbor for my sake. Because divine love cannot endure the fellowship of earthly affection, or any other love whatsoever. Whence as much as you infect it with the contagion of earthly things, so much do you sin in my love, and lose from your perfection. For the mind to be pure and holy, it is necessary to despise all things which the body feels. Make it therefore that nothing of those things which have proceeded from my goodness for your use hinders you from loving me; but let all things help, kindle, inflame. Because in creating them I granted them to you, so that knowing my generosity more widely from them, you might pursue me also with more abundant love." "Secondly, that you direct all your thoughts, acts and works to my honor and glory alone, and always being most zealous for my praise alone, you labor in prayers, words and examples, and in whatever way you can, so that not only you yourself be thus, but all others together with you be affected in the same way, and that all may know me, love me, worship me; and this pleases me more than the first, because it more fully fulfills my will. Thirdly, what remains, if you shall have attained it, know that nothing will be lacking to you, and that you will have obtained consummate integrity. But that is this, that with the highest desire you seek, strive and labor to arrive at this disposition of mind, so that you are thus joined to me, and your will (which is most perfect) is thus similar and conformed to mine, so that you will not only evil, but also good which I myself do not will, and that whatever happens, and from wherever it happens in this misery of life, whether in spiritual or temporal things, your peace be not broken in the least, and the quiet of your mind be not disturbed; but with unshaken faith you always hold that I your God love you more than you love yourself, and that I have the most diligent care of you, and much more diligent than you. The more you thus commit and give yourself to me, the more helping you, I shall always be present to you, and you yourself will more clearly know and more abundantly feel around you my most sweet charity. But this perfection cannot be reached except through stable constancy and absolute denial of your own will." And below: "If therefore you wish to arrive at this, you must persevere in the highest humility, and from true and intimate knowledge of your misery and need— And after some things: "These things truly, collected in mind and meditation through firm faith, you will know that tribulations, temptations, difficulties, pains, infirmities and all adversities come about through my governance for no other reason than for your utility and salvation, so that through those things which appear to you as evils, you may be corrected from depravity, and be led to virtue, by which one goes to the true and highest good unknown to you. You will know moreover, this light of faith having illuminated it, that I your God am able, know, and will your good more than you, and that you can neither do, nor know, nor will it without my grace." By this means the Saints become perfect, easy, joyful and unperturbed in any circumstances. "For they perceive with clear and most purified eye of mind, that I the highest Governor of the Universe administering all things with wonderful wisdom, charity and order, can bring forth nothing but good, and that I provide for you and your affairs better and more usefully than you yourselves by yourselves know, are able and will; and thus in all things which happen and which you sustain (whatever they may be), considering me the author, and not your neighbor, with firm purpose, they are so strengthened by a certain invincible and impregnable patience, that they not only bear them with equanimity, but willingly and joyfully, tasting in all things, whether they happen intrinsically or extrinsically, the ineffable sweetness of my charity. Which is to feel of me in goodness, in all (I say) tribulations and difficulties to attend, believe and with joyful and grateful mind to meditate, that I dispose all things gently, and all things come forth from the deep fountain of my love. And of this ultimate consideration and most holy composition, the greatest good is corrupted, hindered and destroyed by nothing other than your own will and love of yourselves, which if they were taken from you, hell would also be taken from you: then that which is prepared for the cursed with eternal torment of mind and body; then that which is prepared for the cursed with eternal torment of mind and body; then that which in mortal life you sustain with manifold agitation of mind, and various tumult of cares, indeed with error." Furthermore, those dedicated to the ascetic life and contemplation love God with all their strength in such a way that not only individual Such therefore as insatiably desire God, sigh and pant after Him continually, and say: If the whole world were mine, full of holy Angels, I would resign all to Thee with my whole heart, O Lord, because Thou art my love; if I had the affection of all mortals, the whole spirit of Angels and Saints, I would embrace Thee with it, I would live in Thee, be moved in Thee and exist in Thee. Would that I could bear all the sufferings of the wretched, that all might know Thee, worship Thee, love Thee. For all pain is brief and light to him whom Thy love inebriates and transforms. "O sea of holy love and sweetness, my God, come and give Thyself to my soul. Grant that with a whole heart, full of desire, and with burning affection I may continually aspire to Thee, breathe most sweetly in Thee, prefer Thee to every creature, renounce for Thee every transitory delight, O my true and supreme exultation. Feed me, O Lord, Thy hungry beggar, with the continual influx of Thy divinity: this I ask, this I desire, that vehement love may penetrate me wholly, shake me, and transform me into itself. Grant, most merciful Redeemer, that I may be wholly inflamed with love of Thee, wholly fail from myself, delight in Thee alone, know and feel Thee only. O superabundant abyss of divinity, draw and immerse me in Thee, so snatch away the whole affection of my heart and so apply it, that it may be utterly lifeless to all other things." These and more things Blessed Ludovic Blosius in his Aspirations. See St. Bernard, sermon 1 and following in the Canticles, Bonaventure in the Journey of the Mind, and Father Alvarez de Paz, book III already cited. AND HIS MINISTERS (in Greek λειτουργούς, that is sacred ministers, namely priests and Levites, who perform sacred things and offer to God the holy liturgy of sacrifice) do not abandon, but sustain and support them with firstfruits, tithes, and offerings, so that they may be able to minister to God and perform the liturgy.
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33. Honor (Syrian, praise) God with thy whole soul. — Three things are owed to God: first, fear as to God, of which he spoke in verse 31; second, love as to a father, of which he spoke in verse 32; third, honor as to the supreme Lord of all, of which he treats in this place. "A son," says Malachi chapter 1, verse 6, "honoreth his father, and a servant his master; if then I am a Father, where is my honor? and if I am a Lord, where is my fear?" Add: And if I am all good, where is my love? AND HONOR (Greek δόξασον, that is, glorify; Zurich version, magnify) the priests. — Honor in Scripture comprises three things, namely, veneration, obedience, sustenance. Whence we are commanded to render these three things to parents, if they be in need, since we are commanded to honor them. The same we owe to priests. Moreover, honor due to a priest is more august and divine, because he himself is God's vicar, mediator and interpreter among men. This is signified by the Greek glorify. Thus Alexander the Great adored Jaddus the high priest, or rather God in the high priest. See Josephus, Antiquities XII, viii. Thus Constantine the Great honored the priests and bishops of the Council of Nicaea. "This was signified," says Eusebius, book III, On the Life of Constantine, "by downcast eyes, a blush on the face, a becoming gait, by the gentleness of his manners mixed with imperial clemency, etc.; and having placed a modest seat, he did not sit until the Bishops gave their assent." And further: "He honored each of them with magnificent gifts according to his dignity." He adds that Constantine refused to look at infamous pamphlets against certain Bishops brought to him, but immediately ordered them to be burned in the flames. Thus the Emperor Theodosius honored St. Ambrose, so that when commanded to withdraw from the temple's inner sanctum he immediately obeyed, and humbly accepted the penance for the slaughter of the Thessalonians imposed upon him by him. Thus Charlemagne honored the Roman Pontiffs, so that at their summons he journeyed to Rome four times, and the City— Basil, Emperor of Constantinople, in his Exhortation to his son Leo (found in volume V of the Library of the Holy Fathers), chapter III: "With the highest honor," he says, "treat thy mother the Church, who nursed thee in the Holy Spirit, and placed upon thy head, to the praise of God through Christ, the crown of empire, etc. Honor therefore the Church of God, that thou in turn mayest be held in honor by God: and revere her priests as spiritual fathers and intercessors for us before God. For the honor which is shown to priests is referred to God. And just as it is right for thee to hold thy ministers in honor for thy sake: so also it is holy to magnify the priests of God for God's sake, and to hold them in esteem. But as the honor which is shown to them pertains to God: so their contumely and contempt provokes his wrath far more gravely." AND PURGE THYSELF WITH THY ARMS. — This sentence is already wanting in the Greek and Syrian texts. Five manuscript codices read: And defend thyself with thy arms, and therefore Jansenius judges it should be read thus, as if to say: Defend and protect the priests of God with thy arms and weapons, O layman. But in the old law the priests defended themselves with their own arms, nor did they desire foreign arms, as Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers were priests, and at the same time leaders of war and avengers of the people. Again, all the printed codices with Rabanus (who reads, purge) read, and purge thyself with thy arms, which can be understood in two ways. First, as if to say: By offerings of thy arms, that is, which thou offerest with thy arms and hands, and which thou hast obtained by the labor of thy arms (for the arm is the symbol of labor, says Pierius, book XXXV), purge and expiate thy sins. Thus Rabanus, Palacius and Lyra. Second, as if to say: Purge thy sins by offering the right arm, that is, the right shoulders of the victims to the priest. For these with the breast from the victim were owed to the priest in the sacrifice of peace, by the law of Leviticus VII, 32; and these in Hebrew are called שוק ימין scoc iamin, by the Septuagint βραχίονα δεξιόν, that is, right arm, as is clear from Leviticus chapter VII, verse 33, and chapter VIII, 25, and chapter IX, 21. For although the sacrifice of peace did not primarily purge sins, but was only offered for peace, that is, for the safety and welfare of the house or commonwealth, yet it was also offered secondarily for the expiation of sins: for we cannot have peace and safety from God unless we have his grace; and we cannot have grace unless we are purged and expiated from sins. Tropologically, "purge thyself with thy arms," as if to say: Expiate sins not only in heart and mouth, but also in deed; not only by confession, but also by satisfaction, exercising with thy arms works of penance and charity. The symbol of this is found in nature: for physicians relate that from the heart a branch of the greater artery extends to the left arm; by which nature tacitly admonishes us that we should extend the love enclosed in the heart into the arms, that is, into works, according to that word of the Bridegroom to the Bride, Canticles chapter VIII, verse 6: "Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm," that is, the love with which thou lovest me in thy heart, exercise outwardly through thy arms, and bring it forth in works. Thus St. Gregory and Theodoret there.
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34. GIVE THEM A PORTION, AS IT WAS COMMANDED THEE, OF THE FIRSTFRUITS (that is to say, Give them the firstfruits, which are a portion or share due to the priests by the law; understand the tithes under the firstfruits) and of purification, — that is, the tithes, says Lyra. But truly the tithes were not purifying of sin, but were due for the sustenance of the Levites. Better does Jansenius understand by purification the victims for the purification of the leper, of the menstruating woman, or of one unclean for another reason, prescribed by the old law. Thirdly, fittingly the portion of purification is the share of victims, which the law ordained to be offered for the purification of sin. Where note: Sin in Levit. VII, 1 and following, is distinguished from transgression, and other victims are prescribed for the expiation of transgression: for sin in Hebrew חטאת chattat, in Greek ἁμαρτία, was called a crime knowingly and deliberately committed; but transgression in Hebrew אשם ascham, in Greek πλημμέλεια, was called a crime committed unknowingly through forgetfulness or inadvertence. He says therefore: "Give them the portion of purification," that is, give them the victims for the purification of sin sanctioned in Leviticus. AND OF THY NEGLIGENCE (in Greek, περὶ πλημμελείας, that is, of transgression committed unknowingly) purge thyself with few. — Which can be understood in two ways. First, that is to say, employ few associates or witnesses, when thou offerest a victim for the purification of thy transgression, both that thou mayest consult thy reputation and modesty: for in the sacrifice there ought to be a confession of the transgression, and that particular, as I have shown in Num. v, 7; and also that thou mayest be an example to others, lest thou scandalize them by the confession of thy transgression, and invite them to imitate it. Secondly, that is to say, purge thyself with few victims and expenses, if thou art poor, and dost not have many and great things to offer. Thus Emmanuel Sa. Whence Rabanus: "He shows," he says, "that an oblation, which is offered to God from a humble mind and pure love, although it be small in quantity, purges the negligences of many sins, concerning which it is written: Charity covereth a multitude of sins," I Pet. IV, 8. And Jansenius: "It is signified," he says, "that if anyone cannot offer the sacrifice of the rich, let him at least offer those few and small things, which are required of the poor."
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35. THE GIFT OF YOUR ARMS, AND YOU SHALL OFFER A SACRIFICE OF SANCTIFICATION TO THE LORD, AND THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE HOLY THINGS. — The Greek is concise here, as is customary. Therefore these two verses, namely 34 and 35, are thus to be understood: "A sacrifice of sanctification," first, with Dionysius the Carthusian, can be understood as a holocaust; for this was entirely holy, that is, consecrated and offered to God, because the whole was burned in honor of God, so that, just as the preceding verse commanded sacrifices for sin to be given, and here through "the gift of your arms" commanded sacrifices of peace to be given: so through a holy victim he commands a holocaust to be given: for this was a threefold victim, and a threefold sacrifice prescribed to the Jews, Leviticus I, II and III. Second, Jansenius through "a sacrifice of sanctification" understands the sacrifice which the Nazarites offered for their singular sanctification, Numbers VI. For a Nazarite in Hebrew is the same as one separated, holy, consecrated to God, because by cutting his hair, abstaining from wine and strong drink, he wholly dedicated himself as it were to God. For many of the more religious Jews made this vow, and to this Sirach tacitly exhorts here, that those already zealous for sanctity should make the vow of Religion. Third, through "a sacrifice of sanctification" can be understood a votive sacrifice, or one offered from a vow, which, namely, you have vowed and sanctified to the Lord; for a vow, because voluntary and dedicated to God, is called and is a sanctification sanctifying the one who vows, especially a vow of cherem or anathema, by which a thing promised to God by vow ought to die, either naturally or civilly, and thus be as it were immolated to God, as I said in Leviticus XXVII. Fourth, the Zurich Bible translates it as lustral sacrifices, by which, namely, one was cleansed from legal uncleanness, and was legally sanctified, concerning which Numbers XIX. Fifth, Lyra understands it as sacrifices of peace, so that the Septuagint renders "the gift of your arms," that is of weapons, through "a sacrifice of sanctification." But these two last interpretations seem less suitable and more tepid. AND THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE HOLY THINGS. — In Greek, and the firstfruits of the holy things. "Of the holy things" is neuter, not masculine, that is to say, of holy things. What are these? First, Vatable translates it as holy firstfruits; therefore every firstfruit, because holy, is to be understood in this sense here. But he sanctified these in the preceding verse. Second, Lyra: "the firstfruits of the holy things," he says, that is, the sanctifications of men are firstfruits, tithes, and other things which have been mentioned, as if he recapitulates all things already said in this single word, and comprehends them summarily. To this is added the interpretation of Dionysius the Carthusian: "The firstfruits of the holy things," he says, are the principal things which are sanctified, that is, consecrated to God; for the Greek ἀρχή (whence ἀπαρχαί, that is, firstfruits or beginnings) signifies both beginning and principal thing. For God had commanded the principal and better things to be offered to him. Third, more genuinely Jansenius, distinguishing these from the preceding: "the firstfruits of the holy things," he says, is called that portion of the tithes which the Levites ought to pay to the priests from all the tithes received, namely the tithe of the tithes, which before all things and from the best was to be rendered, and therefore is called "the firstfruits of the holy things." For firstfruits are called holy, because consecrated and owed to God by law, Numbers XVIII. But in this way Sirach would be speaking to the Levites alone. Fourth, therefore, add that "the beginnings of the holy things" comprise any tithes whatsoever, especially the first, which the Jews were bound by the law of Numbers XVIII to pay annually to the Levites, and through them to the priests; for the Levites paid a tithe of the tithe to these, as I have already said. For the Jews were prescribed three kinds of tithes by the law. The first were of all fruits, flocks and herds, which were given entirely to the Levites. The second were those which the Jews separated from the nine remaining parts, so that going to the tabernacle they might feast there with the Levites and priests from them. The third were those which were separated every three years and given to the poor, widows, orphans and Levites in the manner of almsgiving, concerning all of which I have spoken in Deuteronomy XIV, 22. The first and common tithes, therefore, are called "the beginnings of the holy things," because they were the firstfruits of the other tithes, namely the second and third; for all tithes were holy, because they were sanctified by the law and offered to the Lord: the first, therefore, were "the beginnings of the holy things." Again, any tithes whatsoever, even the second and third, can be called "the beginnings of the holy things," because they themselves were sanctified to God, and through them all other goods, of which these were tithes, were reckoned as it were by their part and firstfruits to be offered and sanctified to God. Moreover, the second tithe were "the beginnings of the holy things," because they were tithes of things already offered and sanctified to God by the first tithes; thus also the third were "the beginnings of the holy things," because they were tithes of things which by the first and second tithes were as it were offered and dedicated to God. Whence it pertains to the third that which follows: "And stretch out thy hand to the poor, that thy expiation and blessing may be perfected." Therefore here Sirach comprises four kinds of things owed to the priest, namely first, firstfruits; second, sacrifices and victims; third, the sacrifice of sanctification, that is, vows; fourth, the beginnings of the holy things, that is, tithes. Fifth, most clearly and most aptly, by the beginnings, or firstfruits of the holy things, you should understand gifts and offerings for the temple, namely for its maintenance, ornament, vessels, furnishings, loaves, oil, etc. For the Sanctuary, or in the plural Holy Things (on account of its eminent holiness) is called the tabernacle, or temple. Again, the Hebrews call beginnings, or firstfruits, every offering and every gift which is offered to God; just as therefore in the preceding verse he ordained firstfruits (under which he also understands tithes) owed to priests by the law, so here he ordained firstfruits, that is, offerings to be made for the fabric and temple, just as the Canons in the new law prescribe that the offerings of the faithful be applied not only to priests, but also to the fabric of temples. Mystically, Rabanus refers all these things to almsgiving: for thus he reads and connects: "Give the gift of thy arms, and offer the sacrifice of sanctification, the beginnings of the holy things, and stretch out thy hand to the poor," etc., as if to say, Almsgiving, which is given to the poor, is "the gift of thy arms," because it is given with strong and liberal arms; it is the same as "the sacrifice of sanctification": a sacrifice, because it is given in honor of God; of sanctification, because it sanctifies the giver, or disposes him to sanctity: and therefore it is called "the beginnings of the holy things," as it were the beginning of holiness and justification. Mystically, again, some accommodate this to Religious. For these, not satisfied with external works designated by the goods of the arms, add internal works of contemplation and reading, and on the altar of the heart consume a holocaust of sanctification, that is, themselves, in the fire of charity.
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36. AND STRETCH OUT THY HAND TO THE POOR, THAT THY EXPIATION AND BLESSING MAY BE PERFECTED. — The word expiation is not in the Greek, nor in the Syriac, which has thus: Stretch out also thy hand to the poor, that thy blessings may be fulfilled. Blessing, in Greek εὐλογία, signifies beneficence, liberality, generous giving. Whence the Zurich version, or rather Vatable, translates: That thy munificence and expiation may be full, as if to say, It is not enough to be beneficent toward priests, because this is owed by every right; but, that beneficence may be full, it is necessary to extend it to the poor: for that is pure, and is done purely from the love of God, since no recompense is hoped for from the poor. Hence God claims the poor for himself: "To thee," says the Psalmist, "the poor is left, thou shalt be a helper to the orphan," Psalm IX, 34. Whence by this beneficence toward the poor, the almsgiver draws down upon himself a vicarious blessing and beneficence of God, even in temporal things, according to that: "He that soweth in blessings, shall also reap blessings." See the following in II Corinthians IX, 6. Wherefore our author rightly added the word expiation: for almsgiving makes God propitious to us and expiates sins, Daniel IV, 24.
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37. GRACE IS GIVEN (correct with the Romans, given) IN THE SIGHT OF ALL LIVING, — that is to say, A gift, or favor pleasing, is given to all the living. The Syriac: For mercy is in the eyes of all creatures, that is to say. All love it. "For where the eye is, there also is love; where the hand, there also is sorrow;" Zurich: Generosity is pleasing to all the living, and is not to be withheld even from the dead; others: A gift has favor with all the living. Wherefore Dionysius wrongly connects and explains these with the preceding verse thus, that is to say, That thy blessing may be perfected, to be conferred upon thee on the day of judgment, in the sight of all living, the grace of giving, that is, on account of alms given to the poor. AND TO THE DEAD (Syriac, to the dead) DO NOT WITHHOLD GRACE. — Others, to the dead do not deny kindness, or benefit. For manifold things are owed to the dead. First, the funeral and burial, in which Tobias is wonderfully praised. Hence also the Canons ordain that for a tomb and place of burial it is not lawful to exact a price, but that it should be granted freely. Hear the Council of Tribur, canon 16, which is cited in 13, Question II, chapter XIV: "In the Ecclesiastical [book]," it says, "it is written: Do not withhold grace from the dead, knowing that we shall all die. And: All things that are born of the earth shall return to the earth. Why dost thou sell earth to earth? Remember that thou art earth, and unto earth thou shalt return (And elsewhere it is said of man: Thou treadest earth, thou bearest earth, and unto earth thou shalt return, thou who art taken from earth). And: Because death shall be there, and it draweth nigh; and if it tarry, remember that the earth is not man's, but the Lord's is the earth and the fullness thereof. If thou sellest earth, thou art held guilty by invasion of the Lord's property. Thou hast received freely from God, give freely for him. Wherefore it is forbidden to all Christians altogether to sell earth to the dead, and to deny them due burial." The second and principal grace, or benefit to be shown to the dead, is prayer, sacrifices and suffrages for their salvation, that they may be freed from the pains of Purgatory, and be granted the vision of God and heaven, as Judas Maccabeus did, II Maccabees XII, 43. Whence after he commanded alms to be given to the living, lest anyone exclude the dead from it, he adds that it should also be done for these, especially because alms which are made to the living for the salvation of these dead are likewise alms, and that with greater fruit and advantage. The third grace is, that their memory and monuments be preserved, and their fame and honor defended: likewise that their sons, daughters, wives and grandsons be helped, nourished, protected. See St. Augustine, book On Care for the Dead, where, chapter IX, he refutes the Poets and Gentiles, who thought that souls like shades wandered about, and could not cross the river of hell, so long as bodies remained unburied. See the same, book IX of the Confessions, chapter XII, concerning the burial of St. Monica his mother, and St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter VII; St. Cyprian, book I, epistle 9 to the Furnians; St. Ambrose, book On Tobias, chapter I; St. Chrysostom, homily 69 to the People; Nazianzen, oration on Caesarius. How great was the care of the Gentiles for burial, see in Alexander ab Alexandro, book III of Genial Days, chapter III, and there Tiraquellus.
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38. DO NOT FAIL THOSE WHO WEEP (on account of the death of parents, or some other calamity) in consolation, and WALK WITH THOSE WHO MOURN, — mourning with those who mourn, as the Zurich version translates it, and weeping with those who weep, as Paul admonishes in Rom. XII, 15. The Syriac: Neither delay (tarry, linger) from the house of the weeper, and be mourning with all who grieve. For it is not enough to console those who weep with words; but it is necessary also to mourn and weep with them. For by this communion of grief the pain is alleviated, because it is divided among others, and is as it were sustained by them. Thus Job did, saying in cap. XXX, 25: "I wept over him that was afflicted, and my soul had compassion on the poor." This therefore is the first reason why pain is relieved by compassion: namely, because the one who has compassion opens the heart of the afflicted, which is closed and oppressed by sorrow, and causes the pain to flow out and be drawn into himself. Whence St. Ambrose in lib. III of the Offices, cap. ult.: "The consolation," he says, "of this life is, that you have someone to whom you may open your breast, that you may place before you a faithful man, who may rejoice with you in prosperity, have compassion with you in sadness, exhort you in persecutions, etc., who may restrain you exulting in joys, may raise you up mourning in sorrows." The second is, that the one who has compassion with the afflicted, and therefore lacking in counsel, suggests sound counsels for mitigating the pain, which the pain of the sufferer does not allow him to find in himself. Whence Prov. XXVII, 9, it is said: "With ointment and divers odours the heart is delighted, and the soul is sweetened with the good counsels of a friend;" the Septuagint: "But the soul is broken by calamities." Whence also that saying of the Philosopher: "Speech is a physician to the ailing mind." The third is, that the compassionate love and affection is as much a good as the pain itself of the sufferer is an evil: wherefore placed in the balance it counterweighs it, and consoles and gladdens the sufferer as much as the pain afflicts and torments him. Again, the one who has compassion gives to the sufferer as it were a part of his own heart: wherefore the sufferer, strengthened as it were with a double heart, namely both his own and that of his friend, bears the pain more lightly. Thus St. Gregory, lib. XX of the Morals, XXVI, on that passage of Job XXX, I wept over him that was afflicted: "Giving outward things," he says, "one provides something outside himself. But he who gives weeping and compassion to his neighbor has given him something also of himself." He then adds a new reason: "For this reason we say compassion more than a gift: because anyone often gives something even who does not have compassion; but he who truly has compassion never denies what he sees is necessary to his neighbor." The fourth is, that the sufferer is as it were submerged in a sea of bitterness, from which he cannot emerge by himself: the one who has compassion therefore, exhibiting to him the affection of compassion, as it were gives him a hand by which he may draw him out; just as fishermen offer bait to a fish, that they may draw it out of the sea. For affection is as it were bait, by which the sufferer is enticed, and thus is lifted up with him to strength and hope of better fortune. Thus St. Gregory in lib. III of the Morals, cap. X: "The order," he says, "of consolation is, that, when we wish to suspend some afflicted person from sorrow, we strive first to accord our mourning with his grief. He who does not accord with sorrow cannot console the sorrowful; because in that very thing in which he differs from the affliction of sadness, he is received less by him from whom he is separated in quality of mind. The mind therefore must first be softened, that it may suit the afflicted, suiting it may adhere, adhering may draw. For iron is not joined to iron, unless both are first liquefied by the burning of fire; and the hard does not adhere to the soft, unless first its hardness is tempered to become soft, so that it becomes as it were that very thing which is cured that it may hold. Thus neither do we raise up the fallen, unless we incline ourselves from the rigidity of our state. The friends therefore of blessed Job, that they might suspend the afflicted from sorrow, necessarily took care to grieve together." Our tears therefore wipe away and dry the tears of those who weep; just as dusty rain, which stirs up dust, dries it, does not moisten it.
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39. BE NOT UNWILLING TO VISIT THE SICK: FOR BY THESE THINGS THOU SHALT BE CONFIRMED IN LOVE. — The Greek: Be not sluggish (and thus St. Cyprian reads it in book III of his Testimonies) to visit the sick: for by these things thou art loved; the Syriac: And let it not weary thee to visit the infirm, because for these things thou art loved; the Zurich version: Do not hesitate to visit the sick; for thou shalt gather grace from it. For the Greek ὀκνεῖν signifies to be sluggish, to be weary, to be burdened, to hesitate, to delay, to neglect, to fear, to be slow, to do with difficulty and reluctance, to omit. Whence ὄκνος is hesitation, sloth, sluggishness, slowness, doubt, fear. For these affections are connected, and one is born from another and accompanies it. Hence that fabled sluggish Ocnus in Ovid. For since diseases and the diseased bring nothing cheerful, but all sadness, and even death itself and its representation, hence arises weariness and sluggishness in visiting them. He commands therefore that this weariness be overcome by the fervor of charity, as our holy Father Ignatius did at Paris, summoned by a sick man, though one distrusted by him, to Rouen. For in the first three leagues he felt such heaviness injected into him by the demon that it seemed to him he had feet of lead; but bearing and overcoming this steadfastly, he dispersed it so thoroughly that he completed the rest of the journey running like a deer, abounding in divine consolations, as Ribadeneira relates in book V of his Life, chapter II. A sign therefore of languishing and failing love is to visit the infirm reluctantly and sluggishly. Whence in the Council of Toledo, canon 2, which is cited in distinction XXV, canon One, among other venial sins to be expiated by the fire of Purgatory, these are placed: "As often as he speaks more than is fitting, does more than is expedient: as often as he exasperates the poor asking importunately: as often as he has sought out those placed in prison too slowly, and has visited the infirm too slowly." Again, the Septuagint by visiting means not only to go to and see, but also to console, to advise, to do good, and to help with every assistance. Finally, from these, namely, from all the things already mentioned, such as giving alms, The reason a priori is that to visit the sick from charity is an act of charity: but acts increase and strengthen the habit: if anyone visits the sick not properly from the motive of charity, but of mercy, or of another virtue, even thus charity is strengthened. For all virtues are connected among themselves, and their bond is charity: wherefore charity is nourished, increased and strengthened through the acts of other virtues, especially of mercy and piety. It seems, says Dionysius, the interpreter read in the Greek ἀγαπήσεις, actively, that is, thou shalt love, thou shalt cherish; that is, thou shalt grow and be confirmed in love and affection: for a continued act is signified, not an inchoate one. Now they read it passively, ἀγαπηθήσῃ, that is, thou art loved: to which also our Latin version can be adapted, "thou shalt be confirmed in love," if thou take love not active but passive, as if to say, By these things thou shalt increase thy love, thou shalt make thyself to be loved more by God and men, and in turn thou shalt love them more actively, both because love provokes love, for love is the magnet of love; and because God pours into those whom he loves more, greater grace and love by which in turn they love and cherish him more. For the love of God is efficacious, and produces its reciprocal love. In sum, the full sense will be, reconciling all versions, if thou understand love both active and passive, as if to say, By these offices of piety thou shalt grow in love, and therefore in turn thou shalt be loved more by God and men. Thus Dionysius. But it seems to me very probable that Sirach the elder, who wrote this book in Hebrew, wrote at this place תאהב taohab, which is the future of the hophal conjugation, that is, thou shalt be placed and confirmed in love. For hophal has a twofold passive signification: for it corresponds to the hiphil conjugation, which is twofold active. Therefore אהב ahab, just as in hiphil it signifies, he made to love, so in hophal it signifies, he was made to love, or he was confirmed in love. Whence tachab, which is the future hophal, signifies thou shalt be confirmed in love. Hence it becomes probable that our Latin version was translated immediately from the Hebrew. The younger Sirach wished to imitate the same in the Greek: and so by τὸ ἀγαπηθήσῃ he wished to signify not a simple passive, namely, thou art loved; but a double one, namely, thou shalt be incited to love, and in it thou shalt be confirmed: for thus the Latin translator rendered it, and this is what the Hebrew taohab signifies. Therefore ἀγαπηθήσῃ is the same as ἐν ἀγάπῃ τεθήσῃ, that is, thou shalt be placed in love: and perhaps thus Sirach translated it, or ἐν ἀγάπῃ σνωσθήσῃ, that is, thou shalt be confirmed in love. Thus St. Augustine expounds it— Morally, learn here how useful and holy it is to visit the sick. For whatever is done to the sick, Christ esteems as done to himself. Whence on the day of judgment he will say to the elect: "I was sick, and you visited me," Matt. cap. XXV, 36. Whoever therefore visits the sick, visits Christ. Wherefore St. Bonaventure in the Goad of Divine Love, cap. 1: "Why, he says, O soul, are you anxious all day long after Christ? I will show you whom your soul loves. Surely he lies in the infirmary, and there he is distressed, there he is tormented. Run, and minister to him, sympathize with him in his sickness." Thus he himself in simple but fervent style. St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 27 On Care for the Poor: "Help the poor, he says, provide clothing, apply medicine, bind up the wound, inquire about their misfortune, have prayer for their patience (for these things, and indeed all help, which is given either in deed or in word, includes visiting the sick). Be of good courage, approach. You will in no way be weakened by this; you will in no way contract vice, even if men who are excessively soft and delicate think this, deceived by empty reasoning, or rather use this as a pretext either for their own softness and idleness, or for their impiety." The same Nazianzen, oration 20, wonderfully praises St. Basil, because he built a hospital at Caesarea, helped the sick with every assistance, and even kissed their wounds, contemplating Christ in them: "Wherefore, he says, not even did the generous man, born of generous parents, and most illustrious in the splendor of his name, hesitate to apply his lips to the sick." I have recounted more heroic examples of this heroic deed, such as St. Gallicanus, the Empress Placidia, Radegund, Eustachius, St. Mary of Oignies, etc., in the notes on Isaiah XXXVIII, at the end of the chapter, and James I, 27. How the sick should be consoled and admonished, see in St. Gregory in the third part of the Pastoral, Admonition 13. The same St. Gregory, lib. XX Moral. XXVI, subtly teaches how the one visiting the sick is strengthened in charity: because, namely, from charity the sick man transfers the pains of the afflicted into himself through compassion, which is a remarkable act of charity. "He, he says, gives perfectly, who along with what he offers in affliction, also takes upon himself the mind of the afflicted; so that he first transfers into himself the passion of the one suffering, and then against his pain runs to help through ministry." He illustrates this by the example of Christ: "Who, although he could have helped us even without dying, nevertheless wished to help men by dying, because, namely, he would love less unless he also took upon himself our wounds; nor would he show us the force of his love unless he himself bore for a time what he took from us." The same, homily 39 in the Gospel, recounts an illustrious example. Martyrius the monk, he says, Moreover the last four things are: death, judgment, hell, and heavenly glory — both eternal. Whoever is not moved by these is a beast or a stone, not a man; he is steel, he is flint. Sirach here delivers a certain rule which directs, orders and sanctifies all our actions, namely this:
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Wherefore St. Isidore, at the end of his Chronicle: "In all," he says, "thy works remember thy last things. For when each one departs from the world, then for him the consummation of the world is." And Nazianzen in his Sentences: "Place death," he says, "as if present always before thine eyes; thus it will come to pass that when thou must encounter it, thou wilt be superior to it." Wherefore St. Isidore, at the end of his Chronicle: "In all," he says, "thy works remember thy last things. For when each one departs from the world, then for him the consummation of the world is." And Nazianzen in his Sentences: "Place death," he says, "as if present always before thine eyes; thus it will come to pass that when thou must encounter it, thou wilt be superior to it." St. Bernard gives the reason, sermon 2 on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul: "My son," says the Wise Man, "remember thy last things, and thou shalt not sin; namely, because this thought especially makes one fearful, fear drives out sin, admits not negligence. Now our last things are death, judgment, hell. What is more horrible than death? what more terrible than judgment? for hell nothing more intolerable can be conceived. What will he fear, if one does not tremble at these things, does not shudder, is not shaken with fear? In all thy works remember thy last things: the horror of death, the dreadful separation of judgment, the fear of burning hell do not suffer to be removed from the eyes of thy heart. Fear, O man, that in death thou art to be separated from all the goods of this body, and so sweet a bond of flesh and soul is to be cut by most bitter divorce. Fear that in the terrible judgment thou art to be presented to Him into whose hands it is dreadful to fall; and with Him examining, to whom nothing is hidden, if indeed iniquity be found in thee, thou art to be alienated from the whole of rest and glory, and separated from the number of the Blessed. Fear that in hell thou art to be exposed to eternal and immense torments, in the lot of the devil and his angels, in the eternal fire which is prepared for them. How terrible in expectation is the last day, my son, remember thy last things." And a little further on: "Whence comes this dissimulation to us, my brethren? whence this so pernicious lukewarmness? whence this accursed security? Why do we wretched ones deceive ourselves? Perhaps we have already become rich; perhaps we already reign. Do not those horrible spirits besiege the door of our house? Do not those ghostly faces await our departure? What will be that fear, O my soul, when, leaving behind all those whose presence is so pleasant to thee, whose aspect is so grateful, whose very familiarity is so intimate, thou alone entering an unknown region, seest rushing upon thee in crowds those most terrible monsters? Who will meet thee in that extremity of need? who will protect thee from those roaring and prepared for food? who will console thee? who will lead thee? My little children, let us remember these last things of ours, lest we sin." The same he repeats in the sermon On the beginnings, middles and last things, where he also adds: "For in death thou shalt carry away nothing great, nothing small of the goods of this world with thee; in judgment it will be possible neither to deceive nor to resist; in hell there is no This therefore was the sense, this the stimulus of virtue of all the Doctors and Saints. Hear St. Augustine, book II on Genesis against the Manichees, chapter XXVIII: Nothing, he says, so recalls men from sin as the thought of impending death: for then an account of the life lived before will have to be rendered to the most just judge. And sermon 3 On the Innocents: "If men would constantly think upon the day of their death, they would restrain their soul from all covetousness or malice." Which same thing is affirmed more truly of the memory of judgment and eternal punishments; thus indeed says Basil in Psalm XXXIII: "If ever thou feelest thyself provoked to any sin, recall to mind that dreadful judgment of Christ, tolerable to no mortal, and hold back thy soul with this as with a bridle." And St. Ambrose to a fallen virgin, chapter VIII: "If sinners could perceive in mind what judgment impends over the world, the human sense would not be scattered by worldly vanity, if it were not weighed down by infidelity." Now how much force the punishments of hell have in turning the soul away from all wickedness, Prosper has taught most clearly in book III of his Work on the Contemplative Life, chapter XI: "To think what an evil it is to be excluded from that joy of divine contemplation, to be deprived of the most blessed society of all the Saints, to become an exile from the heavenly homeland, to die to the blessed life, to live in eternal death, to be cast forever into eternal fire with the devil and his angels, where there is the second death, damnation, exile, the torment of life, not to feel in that fire what illuminates, to feel what torments, to endure the terrible crashes of overflowing fire, to be blinded in the eyes by the blind darkness of the smoking abyss, to be immersed in the surging depths of Gehenna, to be torn apart forever by the most voracious worms, and never to end. To think these things and many similar ones is nothing other than to give repudiation to all vices, and to restrain all the blandishments of the flesh." Hear St. Basil addressing his spiritual son: "Always," he says, "let the last day be before your eyes. When you rise at dawn, doubt whether you will reach evening; and when you have laid your limbs in bed to rest, do not trust in the coming of light, so that you may more easily restrain yourself from all vices. Always let your heart meditate on heavenly promises: transfer all earthly things which you possess into heavenly dwellings." Again, St. Augustine or whoever is the author of the Mirror of Sinners, volume IX, chapter III: "It is the part of the wise," he says, "not so much to foresee the beginning of any matter, as to provide for its end and outcome. He is proved to be blessed who thinks about punishment before punishment, so that afterwards he may escape the danger of punishment." And chapter V: "Would that you were wise and understood the things of the world; and provided for the things of hell! Surely you would fear God, desire heavenly things, despise the world, and abhor hell. In that hour of yours, so much to be feared, who of your friends, who of your relatives will come After man the worm, after the worm stench and horror: Thus every man is turned into non-man. St. Marcella did this, concerning whom St. Jerome in her Epitaph, epistle 16 to Principia her daughter: "For many years," he says, "she spent her life in such a way that she saw herself as an old woman before she remembered having been a young girl, praising that Platonic saying, that Philosophy is a meditation on death; whence also our Apostle, in 1 Corinthians XV: Daily, he says, I die for your salvation. And the Lord: Unless anyone takes up his cross daily, and follows me, he cannot be my disciple. And long before through the Prophet the Holy Spirit: For your sake we are put to death all day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. And after many ages that saying: Always remember the day of death, and you will never sin. And the most eloquent precept of the Satirist: Live mindful of death, the hour flees; what I speak, comes from there. Thus therefore she spent her life and lived, so that she always believed herself to be about to die; thus she clothed herself, so that she remembered the tomb, offering herself a reasonable sacrifice, living, pleasing to God." The same in the Epitaph of Nepotian to Heliodorus: "The opinion of Plato," he says, "is that the whole life of the wise is a meditation on death. Philosophers praise this, and carry it even to heaven; but much more strongly the Apostle: Daily, he says, I die by your glory; for it is one thing to strive, another to act: another thing to live about to die, another to die about to live. He is about to die from glory, he dies for glory. We therefore ought also in mind to premeditate what we shall be at some time, and that whether we will or not, it cannot be far off: for if we exceeded nine hundred years of life, as the human race lived before the flood, and Methuselah's times were given to us, yet nothing would be the past length, which has ceased to be: for indeed between him who lived ten years, and him who lived a thousand, after the same end of life has come, and the irrefusable necessity of death, all the time passed is the same, except that the old man departs more burdened with the weight of sins. The best days of wretched mortals of life flee first, diseases come on, and sad old age, and labor, and the harshness of cruel death snatches away. He adds the example of Xerxes: "That most powerful king Xerxes, who overturned mountains and built roads across seas, when from a lofty place he beheld an infinite multitude of men and an innumerable army, is said to have wept, because after a hundred years none of those whom he then beheld would remain. O if we could ascend to such a vantage point, from which we might see the whole earth beneath our feet! then I would show you the ruins of the entire world: nations clashing with nations and kingdoms with kingdoms: some being tortured, others being slain: some being swallowed by the waves, others being dragged into servitude: here weddings, there lamentation: those being born, these dying: some abounding in delights, others begging: and not only the army of Xerxes, but all the men of the whole world who now live, will perish in a short space of time. Speech is overcome by the magnitude of the matter, and everything we say is less than the reality. Let us therefore return to ourselves, and as if descending from heaven, let us for a moment behold our own affairs. Do you feel, I beseech you, when you became an infant, when a boy, when a young man, when of robust age, when an old man? We die daily, we are changed daily; and yet we believe ourselves to be eternal. This very thing which I say, which is written, which I read, which I correct, is taken from my life: as many points as the notary makes, so many losses of my time are there. We write and rewrite: let letters cross the seas, and as the keel cuts the furrow, through each wave the moments of our age are diminished. We have only this gain, that we are joined to Christ through love of Him." That great Simeon Stylites left behind in writing only one discourse, whose title is: On Always Keeping in Mind One's Departure, in which he graphically depicts the anguish of a sinful soul dying, when it is surrounded by demons so that they may snatch it away into Tartarus; and on the other hand the joy of a holy soul, when it is led by Angels into paradise. It is extant in the Library of the Holy Fathers, in the Appendix. Moreover, this Simeon taught the people from his column twice daily; but his entire teaching and preaching was about the last things, "commanding them to look up to heaven and to fly away, and to depart from the earth, and to grasp by vision the kingdom that is awaited, and to fear the threats of hell, and to despise earthly things, and to await future things," as Theodoret says in the History of the Fathers, chapter XXVI. He taught this same thing in deed, namely by continuous standing and prayer, more than by voice and preaching; for he stood continually looking up to heaven, and beseeching God as if eager to fly away to Him. St. Anselm, in his fifth letter to Burgundius and Richera, his wife: "Place," he says, "before your eyes daily your end: think most intently whose they will be and what profit to you will be those things which will remain after you. Think, where you will go, what you will carry with you, what there, which you have sent before you, you will find. Certainly you will not carry with you, nor will you find there anything other than your merits, whether good or evil." And soon after: "Think on these things, discuss these things among yourselves day and night, in secret and in public, let these be your conversations with one another, my lord, my friend. What are we doing, why do we delay, our last day is near. How do we spend our life? How do we make satisfaction to God for our sins? Let us prepare ourselves as if... Do you wish an example more pathetic and vivid? Take this: St. John the Almsgiver, so that he might always remember the last things, had a tomb built for himself, but left it unfinished, and appointed a monitor, who on feast days would say to him before all: "Your monument to this very day remains unfinished, lord: command therefore that it be completed; for it is uncertain by what door the thief will enter," namely death. This thought spurred him on to such great almsgiving. Thus Leontius in his Life. Theodosius the coenobarch did the same, whose Life is extant in Surius on the eleventh of January. St. Rembert, Archbishop of Bremen, as his Life relates, used to say that the first definition of Philosophy is meditation on death. This therefore he continually premeditated, and prepared himself for it, so that he might fulfill that saying of the Wise Man: "Remember thy last things, and thou shalt never sin." For where there is no fear of death, there is dissolution of life; where there is dissolution of life, there is abundance of sins; and where this is, there is perdition of the soul. For fear always amends, takes away security, begets solicitude, casts down pride, nourishes humility, increases charity and multiplies virtues. The saying of St. Jerome is celebrated: "He easily despises all things, who always thinks that he is about to die." And that one: "Whether I eat, or drink, or study, or do anything else, always that last trumpet sounds in my ears: Arise, ye dead, come to judgment." Our Blessed Francis of Borgia used to say that the exercise of a good man, especially of a Religious, is to prepare himself for death throughout every 24 hours; and that he himself was then rightly constituted when he could say daily with St. Paul: "I die daily." Thus Ribadeneira in his Life of him, book IV, chapter V. Finally, St. Job, chapter XIV, 14: "All the days," he says, "in which I now serve, I wait until my change come." The same was the sense of the Gentiles. St. Maximus, sermon 36, relates that Musonius, when asked who would best close his final day, answered: "He who has always proposed to himself that the last day of life is at hand." Plato, as I have already said, held that "the whole life of the wise is a meditation on death." Among the Egyptians at solemn banquets, each person, showing a wooden corpse fashioned as close as possible to a real one to each of the guests, would say: "Looking upon this, drink and enjoy yourself, such you will be after death;" although for what purpose they did this is ambiguous. Herodotus is witness, book II. Aristippus, growing pale in a storm at sea, when it had subsided, as someone was taunting him: "Why do you Philosophers, who preach that death is not to be feared, grow pale in danger, while we unlearned do not fear?" Aristippus answered: "Because the care and fear for the soul of Aristippus is not the same as for you." Gellius adds that he said: I fear for the soul of Aristippus, you do not fear for the soul of a worthless fellow. Thus Laertius, book II, chapter VIII. Secundus the Philosopher, as witness the same Laertius, when asked by the Emperor Hadrian what death was, answered: "Death is eternal sleep, dissolution of bodies, the terror of the rich, the desire of the poor, an inevitable event, an uncertain journey, the thief of man, the father of dreams, the flight of life, the departure of the living, the dissolution of all things." Finally, Seneca in the Proverbs: "Every day," he says, "ought to be arranged as if it were the last."
Machine translation from the Latin, not reviewed.
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PUSILLANIMITY. - Etymologically (animus pusillus) it denotes a weak mind, a small spirit; it is used at times in a good moral sense (Is. 35:4; 1 Thess. 5:14); but generally it is used in a pejorative moral sense (Ps. 54:9; Sir. 7:9; Lk. 12:28; Col. 3:21), and it may be defined as: the disposition of spirit of one who withdraws from the duty and the sacrifice of confronting or pursuing something, because he judges …
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… Jehoshaphat attempted to renew (ibid. 22:49) — with its base at the port of Ezion-geber (v.) on the Gulf of Elath — to load various merchandise (ibid. 10:11) and especially gold, a typical product of the place (Isa. 13:12; Job 28:16; Ps. 45:10; 1 Chron. 29:4; Sir. 7:18; in Job 22:29, O. in the sense of "gold").
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Its proper material object is two acts that express love: respect (help in various needs: illnesses, destitution, moral sufferings and prayer [cf. Mt. 15, 4; Eccli. 7, 29 ff.]) and reverence (attestations of esteem, of veneration, of reverence).
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… 40:1-4; it proclaims blessed the one who comes to the aid of the poor (cf., for example, Ps. 111:5-9; Prov. 14:21; 22:9); it affirms that almsgiving obtains all graces, not excluding the remission of sins (cf., for example, Tob. 4:7-9; 12:9; Sir. 3:33; 7:36; Dan. 4:24); it is preferable to fasts and even to sacrifices themselves (cf., for example, Is. 1:11-17; 58:5-7). Indeed the Old Testament also establishes certain concrete forms of …
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · Vulgata Clementina · original Douay-Rheims (Douay 1609-10), transcription by EEBO-TCP (CC0) · La Sacra Bibbia, tradotta dalla Volgata da Antonio Martini (1769-1781) (LaParola (laparola.net), Martini OSIS text, Public domain (LaParola's electronic edition marks it 'Dominio pubblico')). Public domain.