The happiness of the just: and the unhappiness of the wicked.
The iust contemned by the wicked, and proued by tentations are happie. 10. and the wicked vnhappie. 12. Chastitie shal be rewarded, & adulterous generations shal not prosper.
1But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them.Ma le anime de' giusti sono in mano di Dio, e non li toccherà il tormento di morte;BVT the soules of the iust are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shal not touch them.Justorum autem animæ in manu Dei sunt, / et non tangent illos tormentum mortis. 2In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure was taken for misery:Agli occhi degli stolti parve, ch'essi morissero, e la loro partenza fu stimata una sciagura,They semed in the eies of the vnwise to die: and their decease was counted affliction:Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori, / et æstimata est afflictio exitus illorum, 3And their going away from us, for utter destruction: but they are in peace.Ed estrema calamità l'andarsene lungi da noi; ma essi son nella pace.and that which with vs is the way, is destruction: but they are in peace.et quod a nobis est iter exterminium; / illi autem sunt in pace: 4And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality.E se nel cospetto degli uomini patiscono tormenti, la loro speranza è tutta per la immortalità.And though before men they suffered torments, their hope is ful of immortalitie.etsi coram hominibus tormenta passi sunt, / spes illorum immortalitate plena est. 5Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them, and found them worthy of himself.Per poche afflizioni, di molti beni saran messi a parte; perché Dio ha fatto saggio di essi, e gli ha trovati degni di se.Vexed in few thinges, in many they shal be wel disposed of: because God hath tempted them, and hath found them worthie of him selfe.In paucis vexati sunt, in multis bene disponentur, / quoniam Deus tentavit eos, / et invenit illos dignos se. 6As gold in the furnace, he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust, he hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them.Gli ha provati com'oro nella fornace, e gli ha ricevuti come vittima di olocausto e a suo tempo saran consolati.As gold in the furnace he hath proued them, and as an host of holocaust he hath receiued them, and in time there shal be respect of them.Tamquam aurum in fornace probavit illos, / et quasi holocausti hostiam accepit illos, / et in tempore erit respectus illorum. 7The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds.Risponderanno i giusti, e trascorreranno come scintille in un canneto:The iust shal shine, and as sparkes in a place of reedes they shal runne abrode.Fulgebunt justi / et tamquam scintillæ in arundineto discurrent.
8They shall judge nations, and rule over people, and their Lord shall reign for ever.Saranno giudici delle nazioni, e domineranno i popoli, e il Signore regnerà in essi eternamente.They shal iudge nations, & haue dominion ouer peoples, and their Lord shal reigne for euer.Judicabunt nationes, et dominabuntur populis, / et regnabit Dominus illorum in perpetuum. 9They that trust in him shall understand the truth: and they that are faithful in love, shall rest in him: for grace and peace are to his elect.Quelli, che in lui confidano, intenderanno la verità; e quelli, che son fedeli in amarlo, a lui saranno, ubbidienti; perocché il dono, e la pace ella è per gli eletti di Dio.They that trust in him, shal vnderstand truth: and the faithful in loue shal rest in him: because rest and peace is to his elect.Qui confidunt in illo intelligent veritatem, / et fideles in dilectione acquiescent illi, / quoniam donum et pax est electis ejus. 10But the wicked shall be punished according to their own devices: who have neglected the just, and have revolted from the Lord.Ma gli empj secondo i lor pensamenti avranno gastigo, perché disprezzarono il giusto, e si allontanarono dal Signore.But the impious according to the thinges which they haue thought, shal haue correption: which haue neglected the iust, & haue reuolted from our Lord.Impii autem secundum quæ cogitaverunt / correptionem habebunt: / qui neglexerunt justum, / et a Domino recesserunt. 11For he that rejecteth wisdom, and discipline, is unhappy: and their hope is vain, and their labours without fruit, and their works unprofitable.Imperocché disgraziato è colui, che rigetta la saggezza, e la disciplina, e vane sono le loro speranze, e senza frutto le loro fatiche, e inutili le opere loro.For he that reiecteth wisdom, and discipline, is vnhappie: and their hope is vaine, and labours without fruite and their workes vnprofitable.Sapientiam enim et disciplinam qui abjicit infelix est: / et vacua est spes illorum, / et labores sine fructu, / et inutilia opera eorum. 12Their wives are foolish, and their children wicked.Le loro mogli sono insensate, e pessimi i loro figliuoli.Their wiues are sensles, and their children most wicked.Mulieres eorum insensatæ sunt, / et nequissimi filii eorum. 13Their offspring is cursed, for happy is the barren: and the undefiled, that hath not known bed in sin, she shall have fruit in the visitation of holy souls.Maledetta è la loro stirpe. Ma felice quella, che non partorisce, ed è immacolata, la quale non sa, che sia talamo con delitto. Ella avrà sua mercede allorché saran visitate le anime sante.Cursed is their creature: because happie is the barren woman: and the vndefiled, which hath not knowen bed in sinne, she shal haue fruite in visitation of holie soules:Maledicta creatura eorum, quoniam felix est sterilis; / et incoinquinata, quæ nescivit thorum in delicto, / habebit fructum in respectione animarum sanctarum;
14And the eunuch, that hath not wrought iniquity with his hands, nor thought wicked things against God for the precious gift of faith shall be given to him, and a most acceptable lot in the temple of God.E similmente l'eunuco, il quale non ha commessa iniquità colle sue mani, e non ha pensato malamente contro Dio; perocché alla fede di lui sarà conceduto un dono insigne, e un grado sommamente desiderabile nel tempio di Dio.and the eunuch, that hath not wrought iniquitie with his hands, nor thought most wicked things against God: for the chosen gift of fayth shal be geuen to him, and a most acceptable lot in the temple of God.et spado qui non operatus est per manus suas iniquitatem, / nec cogitavit adversus Deum nequissima: / dabitur enim illi fidei donum electum, / et sors in templo Dei acceptissima. 15For the fruit of good labours is glorious, and the root of wisdom never faileth.Conciossiachè glorioso è il frutto de' buoni travaglj, e non deperisce la radice della sapienza.For of good labour there is glorious fruite, and the roote of wisdom which falleth not.Bonorum enim laborum gloriosus est fructus, / et quæ non concidat radix sapientiæ. 16But the children of adulterers shall not come to perfection, and the seed of the unlawful bed shall be rooted out.Ma i figliuoli degli adulteri non giungeranno a maturità, e la stirpe di un talamo iniquo sarà sterminata.But the children of adulterers shal be in consummation, and the sede of the vnlawful bed shal be destroyed.Filii autem adulterorum in inconsummatione erunt, / et ab iniquo thoro semen exterminabitur. 17And if they live long, they shall be nothing regarded, and their last old age shall be without honour.E quando abbiano lunga vita, saranno stimati un niente, e disonorata sarà l'ultima loro vecchiezza.And if certes they be of long life, they shal be reputed for nothing, & their last oldage shal be without honour.Et si quidem longæ vitæ erunt, in nihilum computabuntur, / et sine honore erit novissima senectus illorum: 18And if they die quickly, they shall have no hope, nor speech of comfort in the day of trial.E se morranno di buon'ora, non avranno speranza, né chi li consoli nel giorno, in cui saranno disaminati.And if they dye quickly they shal haue no hope, nor speach of comfort in the day of acknowledginget si celerius defuncti fuerint, non habebunt spem, / nec in die agnitionis allocutionem. 19For dreadful are the ends of a wicked race.Conciossiachè acerbissima è la fine della stirpe dei malvagi.For of a wicked nation the endes are cruelNationis enim iniquæ diræ sunt consummationes.
3:1
Calmet
Of death, is not in Septuagint. During life the just are protected by God, (Luke 12:7.) and still more in death. This passage is very applicable to martyrs. (Calmet)
Worthington
Temporal death is to the just the road to happiness, where they shall not incur damnation, or the torment of death. Though the martyrs seem to be utterly destroyed, they pass to joys eternal and unspeakable. (Worthington)
3:2
Calmet
Die. In this the wicked are not under a mistake; but they err when they suppose that the just shall be no more. If the hopes of the pious were confined to this world, they would be the most miserable of all, 1 Corinthians 15:19. (Calmet)
3:6
Holocaust. The sufferings (Menochius) which they have voluntarily endured, cause them to be pleasing to God. (Haydock) (Zacharias 13:9.)
Calmet
Time of judgment, or of death. (Calmet)
Septuagint, "at the time of their visitation, they shall shine, and," etc., ver. 7., and Matthew 13:43. (Haydock) (Zacharias 12:6.)
3:8
Worthington
Judge. All the just shall approve of God's condemning the wicked. (Worthington)
Calmet
They shall be invested with power, (Apocalypse 2:26., and Matthew 19:28.) which, like that of Christ, will be of a spiritual nature, (Haydock) and will appear most terrible at the last day, Matthew 28:18., and Apocalypse 19:6. (Calmet)
3:9
Haydock
Elect. Septuagint add, "and a visitation for his saints." Charity secures both faith and hope; which, without it, are unavailing to happiness. (Haydock)
Those who have the virtue of hope, will await the completion of God's promises.
3:12
Calmet
Foolish. Dissolute, as the sequel shews, Proverbs 9:13., and Romans 1:26. The family of the wicked imitate his conduct, and become his torment. (Calmet)
Worthington
This is often the case. In the moral sense, the sensuality and works of the impious are corrupt. (Worthington)
3:13
Menochius
Barren. The Jews deemed this a reproach. But it is better than to have children by a crime. (Menochius)
Fruit. Her good works shall serve instead of children for her glory, at the hour of death.
3:16
Haydock
Perfection. Literally, "shall be in consummation," or wholly destroyed. (Haydock)
They shall not come to age, or Septuagint, "initiated." The pagans excluded the base-born from their mysteries, as the Church does from holy orders; and experience shews, that the fruits of adultery are often miserable, (Calmet) and while they imitate their parents, they can have no hope, ver. 18.
3:18
Trial. Literally, "of knowing" (Haydock) the works of all. The crime of adulterers is not imputed to their offspring; and it sometimes happens, that the children of saints are cast away.
3:1
Temporal death of the iust, is the way to eternal life. vvhere damnation (called here the tormēt of death) shal not touch them.
3:2
For albelt Martyrs seme in the eyes of the vnwise to dye, or to be extinguished, they passe in dede into eternal, and vnspeakeable glorie.
Concordance Chap. 5. v. 4
3:7
Concordance Mat. 13. v. 43.
3:8
Al the iust shal approue Gods iudgmēt condemning the wicked.
3:12
Literally is vnderstood, that the wiues of adulterers, often become adultresses, & their children wicked. Morally, their sensualitie & al their vvorkes are wholly corrupted.
3:14
See. S. Ierom. in Isa. 56. v. 4.
3:1
St John Chrysostom † AD 407 The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom 28
Nor indeed is it possible for a soul, torn away from the body, to wander here any more. For “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God;”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Reply to Faustus the Manichæan 19.31
… "Enlighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death." Again, we read, "The souls of the righteous are in the hand of the Lord, and pain shall not touch them;" and immediately following: "They are in peace; and if they have suffered torture from men, their hope is full of immortality; and after a few trouble, they shall enjoy many rewards."
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Expositions on the Book of Psalms 88.4
… I prefer this interpretation to that which refers the words, “they are cut away from Thy hand,” to those who sleep in the tomb, whom God hath not yet remembered: since the righteous are among the latter, of whom, even though God hath not yet called them to the resurrection, it is said, that their “souls are in the hands of God,”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Expositions on the Book of Psalms 119.14
108. “My soul is alway in Thy hand” ( ver. 109 ). Some copies read, “in my hand:” but most, “in Thy hand;” and this latter is indeed easy. For “the souls of the righteous are in God’s hand:
St John of Damascus † AD 749 An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.15
These are made treasuries and pure habitations of God: For I will dwell in them, said God, and walk in them, and I will be their God . The divine Scripture likewise saith that the souls of the just are in God’s hand
3:4
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 The Epistles of Cyprian 80.2
… As gold in the furnace hath He tried them, and received them as a sacrifice of a burnt-offering, and in due time regard shall be had unto them. The righteous shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. They shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the people; and their Lord shall reign for ever.”
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus 12
… As gold in the furnace, He hath tried them; and as whole burnt-offerings of sacrifice, He hath received them, and in its season there will be respect of them. They will shine and run about as sparks in a place set with reeds. They shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the peoples; and their Lord shall reign for ever.”
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews 3.16
… As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a burnt-offering He received them. And in their time there shall be respect of them; they shall judge the nations, and shall rule over the people; and their Lord shall reign for ever.”
Pseudo-Cyprian On the Glory of Martyrdom 16
… “And though in the sight of men they have suffered torments, yet is their hope full of immortality; and being vexed in a few things, they shall be well rewarded in many things, because God has tried them, and has found them worthy of Himself, and has received them as a sacrifice of burnt-offering.”
3:6
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Letters of St. Augustin 189.5
… Would that one faith existed in all, for then there would be less weary struggling, and the devil with his angels would be more easily conquered; but since it is necessary in this life that the citizens of the kingdom of heaven should be subjected to temptations among erring and impious men, that they may be exercised, and “tried as gold in the furnace,”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist 2.39
… according to the saying of John, ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.’ There is no gold among their pollution: all that is precious has been purged away. For it is written, ‘As gold is tried in the furnace, so also are the just tried by the harassing of tribulation.’
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 12.12
… here drink that wherewith ye may be satisfied, and not in those other feasts, that only whereby ye may be maddened. Stand fast in the Lord. Ye are silver, ye shall be gold. This similitude is not our own, it is out of Holy Scripture. Ye have read and heard, “As gold in the furnace hath He tried them, and received them as a burnt-offering.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Expositions on the Book of Psalms 70.5
… The tongue of the flatterer doth more persecute than the hand of the slayer: for this also the Scripture hath called a furnace. Truly when the Scripture was speaking of persecution, it said, “Like gold in a furnace it hath proved them” (speaking of Martyrs being slain), “and as the holocaust’s victim it hath received them.”
3:7
Theodotus † fl. AD 160 Excerpts of Theodotus 1
… “And they shall be,” it says, “as the faithful in this world of a hundred years of age.” Wherefore also Peter, in the Revelation, says: “And a flash of fire, leaping from those infants, and striking the eyes of the women.” For the just shines: forth as a spark in a reed, and will judge the nations.
St Gregory of Nazianzus † AD 389 Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen 40
… Light was That Vision which blazed out upon Paul, and by wounding his eyes healed the darkness of his soul. Light is also the brilliancy of heaven to those who have been purified here, when the righteous shall shine forth as the Sun, and God shall stand in the midst of them,
Pseudo-Cyprian On the Glory of Martyrdom 11
… for He says, “The righteous shall shine as sparks that run to and fro among the stubble; they shall judge the nations, and shall have dominion over the peoples.”
3:9
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 On the Holy Trinity 8.7
… but He says, “Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.” For humility, which is most solid, is more powerful and safer than pride, that is most inflated. And so He goes on to say, “And ye shall find rest unto your souls,” for “Love is not puffed up;” and “God is Love;” and “such as be faithful in love shall rest in Him,”
3:11
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 The Epistles of Cyprian 61.1
… but with constancy and firmness take counsel for our brethren and sisters, and maintain the discipline of the Church by all the ways of usefulness and safety, since the Lord speaks, saying, “And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, and they shall feed you with discipline.” And again it is written, “Whoso despiseth discipline is miserable;
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 On the Dress of Virgins 1
… “But unto the ungodly saith God, “Why dost thou preach my laws, and takest my covenant into thy mouth? Whereas thou hatest discipline, and hast cast my words behind thee.” And again we read: “He that casteth away discipline is miserable.”
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews 3.67
… Blessed are all they who trust in Him.” Also in the forty-ninth Psalm: “But to the sinner saith God, For what dost thou set forth my judgments, and takest my covenant into thy mouth? But thou hatest discipline, and hast cast my words behind thee.” Also in the Wisdom of Solomon: “He who casteth away discipline is miserable.”
3:13
St Ambrose of Milan † AD 397 Concerning Virgins 1.7
… And virginity itself cannot exist, unless it have some mode of coming into existence. I am comparing good things with good things, that it may be clear which is the more excellent. Nor do I allege any opinion of my own, but I repeat that which the Holy Spirit spake by the prophet: “Blessed is the barren that is undefiled.”
3:15
St Gregory of Nazianzus † AD 389 Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen 7.14
… Such was the godliness of Cæsarius, such its results. Let all men, young and old, give ear, and press on through the same virtue to the same distinction, for glorious is the fruit of good labours,
3:16
St Methodius † AD 311 The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity 2.3
… And that you may not take refuge behind a safe wall, bringing forward the Scripture which says, ‘As for the children of the adulterers, they shall not come to their perfection,’
3:1
The connection of this chapter with the preceding one is easy and obvious: for there he described the bitter hatreds with which the impious persecute the just even unto death and most shameful death; lest therefore anyone should think the impious, as it were masters of things, happy; but the just, as oppressed by them, unhappy, for this reason he here shows the contrary, from the fact that the souls of the just after death pass over to blessed life, where they dwell in the house, nay in the hand of God, whereas on the other hand the souls of the impious after the first death of the body pass over to the second, that of hell, and that eternal, where they are in the house, nay in the hand of the devil. By the just here understand any persons, but especially those suffering for justice, namely martyrs; whence the Church reading this in the Ecclesiastical Office applies it to martyrs. The sense therefore is, as if to say, Death, undergone by martyrs for Christ, does not afflict them, but delights them. They do not grieve in their departure, nor shudder in their passage, nor... envy brought into the world, propagate it in themselves and others by sinning and envying, while they consent to its wicked suggestions, as Adam consented; they die therefore, because they follow the instigation of the devil, who is the author of death. But the just, because they follow God and God's inspirations, are granted by him life and eternal happiness; whence it follows: "The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them." For imitantur in Greek is πειράζουσι, that is, they tempt: for whoever imitates tempts and tries that thing which he wishes to imitate, says Jansenius. Hence secondly, very aptly thus with St. Basil, hom. On Envy, St. Augustine, lib. IV On Baptism against the Donatists, cap. viii, and Christopher a Castro you may expound: They tempt him, or imitate, or strive to imitate him, who are on his side; that is, the devil moved by envy brought death into the world, and destroyed our first parents, and all as many as follow his faction strive to imitate him by killing the sons of God, just as he killed Adam most beloved son of God; but they will attempt or strive in vain, because "the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them." This sense pleased the Fathers: Tertullian, lib. On the Good of Peace, cap. v: "For that same thing," he says, "which had plunged Adam and Eve into death, he taught his son to begin with murder;" Cyprian in epist. On Zeal and Envy, while he says: "Thence envy rages on the earth, while the one about to perish follows the master of perdition with envy, while the devil, who is zealous, the imitator, as it is written, Wisdom II, 23: But by the envy of the devil death came into the world; therefore they imitate him who are on his side. Hence the first hatreds of the new brotherhood, hence accursed parricides began, while Cain the unjust was zealous of Abel the just; and that Esau became an enemy to his brother Jacob, it was zeal; and that the brothers of Joseph sold him, the cause of selling descended from emulation. King Saul also, what else but the stimulus of zeal provoked him to hate David? And lest I make it long by recounting individuals, did not the Jews perish from this, while they prefer to envy Christ rather than to believe in him?" This is what Christ says to the Jews, John VIII, 44: "You are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning," as if to say, Just as the devil killed Adam, so you his sons wish to kill me. Others translate the Greek παράζουσι properly, they experience, as if he said: The impious experience death (for θάνατος, that is death, in Greek is of masculine gender) who are on the side and lot of him, namely the devil, who indeed the devil, from whom death was introduced, imitate in pride, envy and crimes; and thus the sense returns almost the same: so Osorius, Jansenius, Vatablus. Hence aptly the end of the chapter is connected with the beginning of the following: for it follows by antithesis:
Arabicus, a blessed soul. The connection of this chapter with the preceding one is easy and obvious: for there he described the bitter hatreds with which the impious persecute the just even unto death and even the most shameful death; lest therefore anyone should think the impious, as masters of things, happy; but the just, as oppressed by them, unhappy, for this reason he here shows the contrary, from the fact that the souls of the just after death pass over to blessed life, where they dwell in the house, nay in the hand of God, whereas on the other hand the souls of the impious after the first death of the body pass over to the second, that of hell, and that eternal, where they are in the house, nay in the hand of the devil. By the just here understand any persons, but especially those suffering for justice, namely martyrs; whence the Church reading this in the Ecclesiastical Office applies it to martyrs. The sense therefore is, as if to say, Death, undergone by martyrs for Christ, does not afflict them, but delights them. They do not grieve in their departure, nor shudder in their passage, nor are ashamed in the sight and judgment of the Lord, which is the threefold torment of the impious in death. From this place St. Epiphanius proves, book II Against Heresies, chapter thirty-six, that the soul of man is immortal, and likewise the resurrection of bodies: for the soul in death does not perish, but survives, lives and dwells in the hand of God, so that He may unite it again to the body at the end of the world, raise it up and make it blessed. Again Theophylactus, in Matthew chapter eight: The soul, he says, having departed from the body, does not wander in the world, nor roam about, as the gentiles thought: "For the souls of the just are in the hand of God;" but the souls of sinners are likewise taken away hence into hell, as the soul of the rich man feasting. Theophylactus took this in his manner from St. Chrysostom, homily 29 in Matthew.
IN THE HAND OF GOD. St. Augustine, in Psalm 148, says that many read, in thy hands, namely, O God. In the hand, that is in the special care, providence, protection, guardianship, preservation, strengthening, direction, recompense, beatification and glorification of God are, as if to say, God protects, preserves, strengthens the souls of the just and martyrs in this life, and even in torments themselves, so that they overcome them and keep the faith given to God, and much more after death He bestows upon those same souls eternal glory and crowns them. This latter meaning is more proper and genuine to this place. Morally the just man is borne in the hand of God, first, as a child in the hand of a mother or nurse, according to that, Hosea 11:3: "And I was like a foster father to Ephraim, I carried them in my arms, and they knew not that I healed them." Second, as a sheet of paper is in the hand of a writer, so that he may write and paint upon it whatever he wishes, according to that, Isaiah 49:16: "Behold, I have written thee in my hands: thy walls are always before my eyes:" thus Christ crucified inscribed His beloved ones in His hands, not with pens, but with nails, not with ink, but with blood, so that He might testify His surpassing love toward them, and so that He might confirm and establish them in grace, according to that, John 10:28: "And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever. And no one shall snatch them out of my hand." Whence as the Holy Spirit is called the finger of God the Father, Luke 11:20: so consequently the Son must be called the hand of God the Father, because He mediates between the Father and the Holy Spirit, as the hand is intermediate between the arm and the finger. Third, as a ring is in the hand of a king: for the soul of the just is equally precious in the hand and in the eyes of God: see Jeremiah, chapter 30, verse 24; Ecclesiasticus, chapter 49, verse 16; Haggai, chapter 2, verse 24, and what I have noted on those passages. Whence Isaiah, chapter 62, verse 3: "Thou shalt be, He says, a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of thy God." Fourth, as a sick or weak person is in the hand of one who strengthens, according to that, Ezekiel 3:14: "The Spirit also lifted me up, and took me away: and I went in bitterness, in the indignation of my spirit: for the hand of the Lord was with me, strengthening me." Fifth, as lilies, roses and flowers are in the hand of one who smells them: so also the souls of the saints exhale a fragrant odor in the nostrils of God, and please God with an odor of sweetness: "For we are the good odor of Christ unto God," II Corinthians 2:15. Sixth, the souls of the just are in the hand of God, as matter, or an instrument is in the hand of a craftsman, so that He may polish them with blows, pressures, patience, and every virtue and grace; and as a sword is in the hand of a soldier to slay the enemy; whence St. Chrysostom, homily on these words of Wisdom: The souls of the just, etc., which is found at the end of volume I: "In thy struggle, He says, the Lord goes forth, the Lord fights, the Lord wages war, and victory is ascribed to thee. Thy struggle is God's struggle, thy battle is the battle of Christ. Why dost thou tremble, why art thou afraid, as if thou wert to conquer by thy own strength? Take up arms, go forth to battle, fight bravely, so that He who knows not how to be conquered may be present to thee as thou fightest." And after some remarks: "For the Lord preserves some for other victories after one struggle, some He already crowns after their martyrdom is completed, some He retains as victors for an example, some already perfect He sends to heaven, some He frequently desires to see struggling, some already worthy through suffering He places in the heavenly kingdoms triumphing, so that the dignity of the Emperor Christ may be praised by all, who in His own people conquers the enemy both once and frequently, and whom, however He shall see fighting, He will reward; only let the spirit be roused against the enemy, let virtue be exercised and devotion be prepared, so that the soldier going forth to battle may either be crowned in the first struggle, or be honored with the number of palms through frequent trophies." Seventh, the souls of the just are in the hand of God, which namely He places crowns upon them, and breathes light, life and glory into them; whence Theodore, patriarch of Alexandria, in the Second Council of Nicaea, act. 3: "The saints, He says, are the storehouses of God, and pure dwellings of Christ, and unspotted mirrors of the Holy Spirit; nay, even their souls are in the hand of God, as it is written in Wisdom, chapter 3, verse 1: For God is life existing; when therefore the saints are in the hand of God, it is necessary that they exist in life and light." And Damascenus, book IV On the Faith chapter xvi: "That the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and death does not touch them, divine Scripture says, Wisdom iii, 1: for the death of the saints is rather a sleep than death; they have labored also in the present world, and they live forever. Psalm cxv, 13: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints; but what is more precious than to be in the hand of God? for God is life and light: those who are in the hand of God exist in life and light." Therefore the souls of the just, says Damascenus, are in the hand of God, "sleeping in sweet sleep, with mind watchful," just as a child sleeps securely in the bosom of his mother, according to that, Isaiah li, 16: "In the shadow of my hand I have protected thee;" and Deuteronomy xxxiii, 3: "He hath loved the people, all the saints are in his hand." Most excellently St. Ambrose in Psalm cxviii, octon. 3, expounding that passage Lamentations iv, 20: In the shadow of thee we shall live: "Christ," he says, "is life, and he who lives in the shadow of Christ is in the shadow of life. Jesus hath spread forth his hands to us, that he might overshadow the whole world; how are we not in the shadow, we who are protected by the covering of his cross? how are we not in the shadow, we whom the crucified one defends from the malignity of the world and the heat of the body?" The saints therefore in dangers, in torments, in death and martyrdoms do not fear, but rejoice, and like fearless lions say with the Psalmist, Psalm xxvi, 1: "The Lord is my illumination, and my salvation (from the Hebrew you may translate, The Lord is my light, namely my sun, and my Jesus) whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, from whom shall I tremble?"
AND TORMENT SHALL NOT TOUCH THEM. For torment some read malice: neither word is in the Greek, which has it thus, and anguish shall not touch them: so also the Syriac and Arabic; Our translator therefore added to the word torment the phrase of death, because torments lead to death, and martyrs are killed: for he alludes to that impious utterance, chapter ii, verse 19: "Let us examine him with revilement and torture;" that is, as they soon explain, "let us condemn him to a most shameful death:" for the supreme torment is ignominious death. The sense is, as if to say, Because the souls of the just are in the mighty hand and protection of God, hence even if they are afflicted and tortured by the impious, yet these torments either they do not feel, as many martyrs did not feel their own tortures and pains; or certainly they overcome and transcend them with a strong and lofty spirit, so that they rejoice and exult in them, and esteem not pains, but favours of God. But in death itself they do not feel its agony and torment, because their soul is already separated from the body by that longing with which they pant toward heaven and God, as it were, so that they desire and wish to be dissolved, and to be with Christ: much less does the torment of the second death in hell touch them. Therefore absent from the just is the anguish of dying, the perilous conflict with the devil, eternal damnation, nor is he confounded, when he speaks to his enemies in the gate, says St. Jerome, epistle 34. Again, the torment of death is that by which the impious torture the just and drive them to death, as it were to complete destruction and the supreme evil: for they think the soul perishes with the body, as if to say, We shall torture the just, both with the torments of life, and with the torment of death, so that in death they may grieve that they have lived a life in sorrows, penalties and penances, and at the same time, that in death all their life, hope and pleasure must end, without any further hope of life or reward: which indeed, if it were true, would be a great torment, and so the torment of death: for "if in this life only we are hoping in Christ, we are of all men most miserable," says the Apostle, I Corinthians xv, 19. But this torment does not touch the just, because they believe and firmly hope for another life and eternal glory: wherefore with greater right they say what Anaxarchus said to Nicocreon, tyrant of Cyprus, when by his command he was being pounded in a mortar: "Pound, pound the sack of Anaxarchus, but Anaxarchus (the soul) you are not pounding," as Cicero relates, Tusculan Disputations II. Whence explaining this, he adds: "They seemed to die in the eyes of the foolish, but they are in peace." The torment of death therefore signifies five things: first, sharp and deadly torments, or equal to the agony of death, such as tyrants inflicted on the just; but these did not touch them in the perfect act, that is, did not penetrate them, did not torture them; but rather made them cheerful, strong and glorious. Thus Christ rising says to Mary Magdalene, John xx, 17: "Do not touch me," that is, do not wish to hold me here by touching: but go, announce to my apostles that I have risen. Second, the very agony of death, when the soul is separated from the body: for this is a great torment to the impious, but not to the just on account of hope and the transition to a better life. Third, the very death and destruction of the soul, which the impious think they inflict on the just, but they are mistaken. Fourth, the torment of hell, which is the second and eternal death. Fifth, the torment of an evil conscience, which is called death, because it is most bitter, and because in death on account of the impending judgment and hell it most greatly torments the dying man and will torment him eternally. Hear St. Bernard, book V On Consideration: "This is," he says, "the worm, which does not die, the memory of things past. Once cast in, or rather born in through sin, it has adhered firmly, and can never thereafter be torn away. Nor does it cease to gnaw the conscience, and fed by it, it perpetuates life with food that is surely unconsumed. I shudder at the biting worm, and at death that threatens. I shudder to fall into the hands of living death, and of dying life. This is the second death, which never quite kills, but always kills. Who would give them to die once, that they might not die eternally? Those who say to the mountains, Luke xxiii, 30: Fall upon us, and to the hills, Cover us, what else do they wish but to end or escape the death of death by its benefit? Finally: They shall call upon death, says Apocalypse ix, 6, and it shall not come." Excellently the same Bernard, sermon 41, among the small ones: "Death," he says, "of sinners is worst, evil in the loss of the world, because they cannot be separated from him whom they love without pain. Worse in the dissolution of the flesh, from which their souls are torn away by evil spirits. Worst in the torments of hell, when body and soul are together given over to perpetual fires. On the contrary, the death of the good is best, because there is rest from labor, there is joy from newness, there is security from eternity." The same elsewhere: "There is," he says, "in the death of the wicked pain in departure, horror in transition, shame in the sight of God. But certainly," says Holcot, "these things will not be in the death of the just, rather precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints; whence a certain Saint says: Death is nothing other than the exit of the soul from prison, the end of exile, the completion of labor, the arrival at port, the ending of pilgrimage, the laying down of the heaviest burden, the descent from a wild horse, the liberation from a ruinous house, the termination of all sicknesses, the evasion of all dangers, the consumption of all evils, the breaking of all bonds, the payment of nature's debt, the return to homeland, the entrance into glory." it takes away, not from the good, and death is not destruction taking away and destroying all things, but a certain migration and change of life, which in illustrious men and women is accustomed to be a guide to heaven." Hence the Syrian translates, and as it were their departure from us is broken; Guarinus, and their departure is reckoned as hardship; Vatablus, their departure is reckoned as calamitous, and their withdrawal from us as fatal, while they enjoy happiness.
3:2
For affliction in Greek is κάκωσις, that is malice, that is misery, hardship, affliction; the Syrian and Arabic, damages or injuries were reckoned to them (the impious), as if to say: Just as the entrance of the pious into life was miserable, so also was their departure miserable: they were born miserably, they lived miserably, they died miserably. Therefore their whole life was nothing other than continuous misery, their entire being and existence was miserable, so that they seem to have been born and made for nothing but miseries: thus the foolish reason, but foolishly. Hear St. Bernard, sermon 2 On Peter and Paul: "How many, while the apostles were suffering, do we believe were present, who would not at all envy their precious deaths; for they seemed to the eyes of the foolish to die, and their departure was reckoned an affliction, and thus indeed they seemed to the eyes of the foolish to die. But to me," says the Prophet, Psalm 138:17, "Thy friends are exceedingly honored, O God, their principality is exceedingly strengthened. Brethren, the friends of God seem to die to the eyes of the foolish; but in the eyes of the wise they are judged rather to sleep. Finally, Lazarus also slept, because he was a friend: and when He shall give sleep to His beloved, behold the inheritance of the Lord, Psalm 126:2. Let us strive, brethren, to live the life of the just, but much more let us desire to die their death." For destruction in Greek is σύντριμμα, that is breaking, fracture, drawn namely from a metaphor of earthen vessels, which, when once broken into pieces by chance, cannot afterwards be repaired and made whole again, according to that, Jeremiah 30:11: "Thus will I break this people and this city, as a potter's vessel is broken, which cannot be made whole again." Thus to the worldly, who know only the present and are ignorant of eternal things, the death of the just appears a most wretched breaking, a most fatal departure, and as it were a wholly irreparable destruction. But the blind wander how very far away. "For we know that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven," II Corinthians 5:1; hence in the Martyrology the day of the death of saints is called their birthday, namely when, dead to this life, or rather to death, they are reborn to blessed immortality, and from this life, as from a dark womb, they fly forth into the region of the living, says Origen, book III on Job. Moreover, the Brahmans among Strabo, book XV, said that death is a birth into true and happy life. See how different, nay contrary, is the judgment of the wise, even of the gentiles and of the foolish, or of the impious, concerning life and death: for Plato in the Gorgias cites that saying of Euripides: "Who knows whether to live is to die, and to die is to live?" and Maximus of Tyre, a Platonist, sermon 25, says: "That which men call death, this very thing is the beginning of immortality, and the procreation of future life;" and Nazianzenus, oration On Human Life: "I know not," he says, "whether this life of ours ought rather to be called death, and death on the contrary to be named with the name of life, although they appear otherwise to the common people."
3:3
thus read with the Romans and Greeks; therefore it is read incorrectly in some places as "exterminii," although it comes to the same meaning, that is to say, The departure of the just from this life, which is as it were a journey by which the just have departed from us, that is from the society of men, was reckoned by the impious as an extermination, namely full destruction and ruin, by which they would be completely exterminated and blotted out; whereas this departure is to the just an entrance into peace, that is into rest and eternal life: for, as St. Augustine says, XIII On the City of God, 1, God has granted such great grace of faith, that death, which is known to be contrary to life, is an instrument by which one passes over to life. See here a paradox: "Death to the just is the beginning and gate of life;" whence for journey in Greek is πορεία, that is a going forth, a migration, that is to say, Death is nothing other than a going forth to blessed life; hence Themistius in Stobaeus, discourse 120, reckons that death, that is death, is so called because it transfers man departing from life ἄνω θεῖν, that is upward to God, and to the divine seat; and Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book I: "From evils, he says, death
3. AND WHAT IS FROM US A JOURNEY, IS EXTERMINATION: BUT THEY ARE IN PEACE. The Hebrews by the name of peace signify all good and all happiness; eternal life therefore is peace, in which the just rest fully, free from all misery, pain, danger, and full of all happiness, joy, security; whence they say and rejoice perpetually, Psalm iv, 9: "In peace in the selfsame, I will sleep and rest;" thus Isaias, chapter xxxii, verse 17, describes the beatitude of the just through peace and the benefits of peace: "And the work of justice shall be peace, and the service of justice silence, and security forever; and my people shall sit in the beauty of peace, and in the tabernacles of confidence, and in wealthy rest." Add, before Christ, when this book was written, the just had not yet had access to heaven to see God; but their souls descended into the limbo of the fathers, namely into the bosom of Abraham, and there waited in quiet for Christ, who would open heaven. This place therefore is rightly called peace, both because the just pass from the war which they waged in this life against concupiscence, and against impiety and the impious, to peace; and because death puts an end to all the labors, miseries, and sufferings of this life, and thus establishes men in quiet tranquility; and because it leads the just to the bosom of Abraham, in which there was great peace, joy and gladness of the holy fathers, especially on account of the hope of future beatitude to be given through Christ. Hence the name of the kingdom of heaven is not found in the Old Testament, says St. Chrysostom, homily 4 on Mark; but St. John the Baptist first named and preached it, saying, Matthew iii, 2: "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Yet by other names the same was known to the ancients: for they believed and hoped for the holy and blessed resurrection of the dead, as is evident from Job xix, 25; Isaiah xxvi, 19; Daniel xii, 2; II Maccabees vii, 9, and elsewhere.
3:4
In Greek κολασθῶσιν, that is, they have been punished, chastised, corrected, afflicted with evils. Vatablus: indeed while they are tormented in the sight of men, they nourish a hope full of immortality: he speaks of the just who suffer tribulations and persecutions, but especially of martyrs: for the hope of glory sustains and strengthens these in torments, which is then soon turned into the thing itself. Torments therefore consecrate martyrs, and sanctify them in the very proof of their passion, says St. Cyprian, On the Exhortation to Martyrs, chapter xii; such as the Maccabees suffered from Antiochus, and the Jews under Ptolemy Lagus, who first succeeded Alexander the Great in the kingdom of Egypt, and oppressed the neighboring Jews, as Josephus testifies, in whose time this book appears to have been written. To their sufferings and martyrdoms therefore does he here allude.
4. AND IF THEY SUFFERED TORMENTS BEFORE MEN, YET THEIR HOPE IS FULL OF IMMORTALITY. First, hope can be taken metonymically for the thing hoped for, namely for reward and recompense, as if to say: The reward of the just who are afflicted and of martyrs, which they hoped for in this life and now possess in heaven, is the fullness of immortality, riches that shall not perish, an abundance of goods that shall not fail, as John Alba says, On the Elect, chapter cxxxiii. Hear St. Cyprian, On the Exhortation of Martyrs, chapter xii: "What hope and reward awaits the martyrs, after the conflicts of this time and sufferings, the Holy Spirit showed and proclaimed through Solomon, saying, Wisdom iii, 4: And if they suffered torments before men, yet their hope is full of immortality. This is what Job says, chapter xi, verse 17: As the brightness of noon shall rise upon thee at evening, and when thou shalt think thyself consumed, thou shalt rise as the morning star; and the Apostle, Hebrews xi, 35: Others were racked, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection. And others had trial of mockery and stripes, moreover also of bands and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, etc. Second, hope can be taken properly, as if to say: Martyrs both in life and in death, and much more after death, with victory already won, hope for full immortality: for the just of that age, having finished their life, hoped to obtain this shortly through the coming of Christ. Hence it is clear that in the souls of the fathers in limbo, as well as in those which are in purgatory, hope remains, even if they themselves are certain of their salvation. Francis Suarez proves this, treatise On Hope, disputation 4, section viii, point 3. First, because faith and charity remain in them; therefore hope also remains, which is the mean between faith and charity. Second, because they do not yet obtain beatitude; therefore they hope for it. Third, because there is no cause in them for the corruption of hope, nor are they in such a state as to be incapable of hope. You will say: For them the attainment of beatitude is not difficult, for rather they judge it to be necessary, and they judge it impossible to lose it, nor do they properly fear this. It is answered that it is not necessary for hope that the attainment of the good hoped for be apprehended as difficult, that is, doubtful, or as something that can be hindered, but it suffices if it be apprehended as exceeding the perfection of nature, and in this way also the souls in purgatory have the attainment of beatitude offered to them as a difficult thing. Whence it is not of the nature of hope that it can always have joined with it servile fear properly so called with anxiety: wherefore if even in this life God should reveal to someone His grace and perseverance in it, nevertheless he could truly and properly hope, although he could not fear in that manner. Hence it follows that in the fathers of the Old Testament true hope remained until the coming of Christ: this is clear from the reason stated, and because they particularly hoped for the coming of the Messiah; whence of them it is said, verse 4: Their hope is full of immortality. And these things are so certain that there is no disagreement whatsoever. Thus far Suarez, who also adds that in the souls already blessed in heaven the habit of hope remains, indeed even a secondary act, because they actually hope for the resurrection and the glory of the body. This hope stirred up the martyrs, so that they not only offered themselves to torments, but also sought them out and demanded greater ones. Hear St. Ephrem, Encomium on All Holy Martyrs, at the beginning: "Thus indeed the holy martyrs gave themselves wholly with heart and soul to God, so that henceforth they despised both death itself and all the hostile snares of tyrants, prepared to endure blows and the necessities of torments and various tortures of the whole body. They gave their backs to the lashing of whips and to various cuttings of sinews and marrow." And after some things: "Indeed they even broke their very bones savagely; and therefore they received strength from God, so that they might bravely endure all sufferings; and as if lacking the sense of pain, they bore themselves toward whatever snares, so that they suffered as if in alien bodies; indeed they even boldly insulted the very rulers and judges, and stirred them to greater anger, saying: If you have more severe torments, apply them to us: for these are of no account. Wherefore those also, more inflamed and boiling with rage, like most savage beasts raged against them, and calling the lictors, they took care that the bodies of these holy champions be beaten and torn apart more violently. But they in turn to the prefects and judges: Where are, they asked, the threats of punishments? for your fire appears cold to us, and torments ineffective, your executioners weak, and your swords rotten wood; you have nothing that corresponds to our readiness and eagerness; we stand prepared to endure more and greater things." Do you want examples? Take them. Animated by this hope, St. Quirinus the martyr, father of St. Balbina the virgin and martyr, under Pope Alexander I, said intrepidly to Aurelian the Count: "If you wish to kill, if you wish to beat with rods, if you wish to burn with fire, do what you like; for we are all prepared to undergo death for Christ, just as the hungry are prepared for bread." St. Sabina the martyr constantly reproached St. Serapia, who was being tormented by the prefect Antiochus: "Rabid Asiatic dog, do not injure the holy virgin of God and your mistress with insults." St. Hesteria the virgin and martyr of Bergamo said to the prefect: "Behold," she said, "my neck is ready; rage against it; I willingly deliver it for the faith of Christ my Lord." St. Sylverius the Pontiff and martyr under the Emperor Justinian, exiled to the island of Pontia, writing to Amator the bishop: "I am sustained," he said, "by the bread of tribulation and the water of distress, and yet I have not abandoned nor do I abandon my office...." St. Genesius, a mime turned martyr under Diocletian, while being suspended on the rack, lacerated with claws, burned with torches, was saying: "There is no God except Christ, for whom if I were killed a thousand times, you cannot take him from my mouth, you cannot take him from my heart." St. Eusebius, Pontianus, Vincent and Peregrinus, Roman martyrs under the Emperor Commodus, when they were being tortured on the rack, beaten with nerves and rods, were asserting to their torturers: "Do not relent: for the time will fail you before our spirit fails in suffering for Christ;" and when Vitellius the prefect, admiring their constancy, said they were endowed with magic and rejoiced in torments, Vincent replied: "We rejoice only in the Lord Jesus Christ." St. Achatius the centurion and martyr under Diocletian said to the prefect: "Behold," he said, "my body is most ready for scourges; use it as you wish, but certainly the purpose of my mind neither you, nor the emperor, nor all the malice of demons will be able to overturn, so that I would sacrifice to the impure, that is to demons. Among the seven brothers Maccabees, who underwent a glorious struggle of martyrdom under Antiochus, the third in order, when asked for his tongue, quickly brought it forth, and steadfastly stretched out his hands, and said with confidence: 'I have these from heaven, but now I despise these very things for the sake of God's laws, because I hope to receive them back from him himself': the other brothers animated themselves to martyrdom with the same hope, II Maccabees, chapter vii, 11 and following. Finally the Apostle, Hebrews xi, 1: "Faith," he says, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not," where thereafter throughout the whole chapter he brings forth the ancient heroes of faith, who, animated by this hope, performed heroic works of virtue, and consecrated themselves and their name to immortality.
3:5
In Greek, elegantly, ὀλίγα παιδευθέντες μεγάλα εὐεργετηθήσονται, that is, chastened in small things, they shall be benefited with great benefits or felicities, as the interpreter of Clement of Alexandria translates it, book IV of the Stromata. Our author seems to have read combinavia, that is, they shall be well arranged, or well disposed, because it is a fitting and equal reward, that those who are vexed and ill-treated here, should be very well treated in heaven, and very well disposed. The Syriac version approved them in small measure, and they shall inherit much; the Arabic, and because they were approved in few conversations, He shall do good to them with many benefits; Vatable, lightly vexed they shall obtain ample benefits; Pagninus and Arias, in many things they shall be affected with good; others, moderately disciplined, or, undergoing little discipline, shall be heaped with great benefits. Understand discipline as the correction of morals, which God inflicts, or a superior, or even an enemy. Cantacuzenus says, these are not, he says, torments properly, but chastisement; nor is it severe, but light; vexed in few things, not indeed with respect to the cruelty of torturers, but to the hope and reward of those who were being tortured; Jansenius, corrected as sons or disciples by a parent or teacher. Properly from the Greek you would translate, instructed and taught; for the effect of tribulation of the just is their instruction, according to that exhortation of Paul to the Hebrews, Hebrews xii, 5, from Proverbs iii, 11, and Job xvii, 4: "My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord: neither be weary whilst thou art reproved by him." Hence in II Maccabees vii, 32, the martyr says: "For we suffer these things for ourselves, having sinned against our God: and such things have befallen us. But do not think that we have suffered these things for no reason; for if our living God is for a little while angry with us for chastisement and correction, He will again be reconciled with His servants;" and verse 36: "But my brothers, having now endured a short pain unto perfection under the covenant of eternal life, are now under God's mercy;" and verse 38: "And in me and my brothers, let the wrath of the Almighty, which hath been justly brought upon all our nation, be stayed." This St. Jerome, in epistle 4 to Marcella, exhorting her to the endurance of labors and tribulations: "The Lord," he says, "has placed you among the labors of men, and has visited you with the salutary scourge of paternal piety, that, vexed in small things, He might dispose you well in many things." The Wise Man speaks properly of martyrs; consequently, however, of any just persons who endure and overcome grave things through patience, fortitude, continence or another virtue: for any virtue has its own struggle and its own martyrdom; whence St. Gregory of Nazianzus, oration 20 in praise of St. Basil: "Without blood," he says, "and without wounds, he obtained the victorious crown of a martyr." St. Jerome in the Epitaph of Paula to Eustochium: "Your mother," he says, "was crowned with a long martyrdom: for not only is the shedding of blood in confession reckoned as martyrdom, but the devoted service of an immaculate mind, a daily martyrdom, is also reckoned as such." St. Gregory at the end of homily 3 on the Gospel: "Although the occasion of persecution is lacking," he says, "peace nevertheless has its own martyrdom: because, although we do not subject the neck of the flesh to the sword, we nevertheless slay carnal desires in the mind with a spiritual sword." St. Bernard, sermon 30 on the Song of Songs: "It is a kind of martyrdom to mortify the flesh by the spirit; that one, namely, by which the limbs are struck with iron, is indeed milder in horror, but more troublesome in duration." The same, sermon 1 on the feast of all Saints: "What does it mean that the same promise was made to the poor and to martyrs, except that voluntary poverty is truly a kind of martyrdom?" etc. The same in the Sentences: "Martyrdom without blood is threefold: frugality in abundance, which David and Job had; generosity in poverty, which Tobias and the widow exercised; chastity in youth, which Joseph used in Egypt." St. Jerome, epistle to Demetrias: "Chastity preserved also has its own martyrdom." St. Ambrose, book I On Virgins, concerning Blessed Agnes: "You have in one victim a twofold martyrdom, of modesty and of religion." Blessed Peter Damian, On St. Alexius: "A new kind of martyrdom offers a new spectacle in admiration: for to martyrs the prison was punishment, the chain was pressure; but to this one his own house decorated with gilded couches was the matter of temptation: armed hands of executioners tortured those; but this one was more gravely punished by the daily sight of the piety of his parents," etc. The same at the end of sermon On St. Apollinaris: "Do you wish me to tell openly how in the peace of Holy Church you can find martyrdom? etc. Ascend the tribunal of your mind, and drag yourself to the judgment of questioning. Let thought accuse, let the mind judge, let a penitent conscience strike like an executioner, let tears burst forth like a wound: thus through the likeness of martyrdom you will arrive at the true dignity of martyrs." St. Laurentius Justinianus, sermon On St. Martin: "He became," he says, "a colleague of the saints and a sharer in the martyrs' lot, whose soul, although the persecutor's sword did not take away, nevertheless he did not lose the palm of martyrdom, etc. Great is this kind of martyrdom, to give oneself willingly to dangers for the honor of Christ;" and after a few words: "He merited the palm of martyrdom as many times as he opposed himself to the enemies of the faith by disputing;" then: "It was indeed a singular martyrdom, that while he was infirm with the infirm, etc. Hear a martyr without iron, dying from charity alone: I die daily (says Paul, I Corinthians xv, 31) for your glory;" finally: "By right, this holy man is not to be denied the crown of martyrdom, who, bearing care for the Churches and zealous for the salvation of his neighbors, neither feared to die nor refused to live." A splendid example of martyrdom was given by Martinianus with his fellow martyrs, who on account of their heroic works of faith and apostolate, were dreadfully tortured by Geiseric the Arian king, and remained strong in hope of the crown amid torments. Hear Victor of Utica, book I of the Persecution of the Vandals: "Geiseric orders the servants of God, with feet bound behind their backs, to perish running after four-horse chariots, through thorny places of forests alike, so that their innocent bodies might be torn by the thorny points of wood as they were led and brought back; binding them thus, so that they might see their end mutually. When they beheld one another from nearby while running with the Moors, each one thus said farewell to himself in the narrow flight: Brother, pray for me. God fulfilled our desire, thus one arrives at the kingdom of heaven. And so, praying and singing psalms, with rejoicing angels, they gave forth their pious souls, where even to this present day Jesus Christ our Lord does not cease to work great miracles."
BECAUSE GOD TRIED THEM, AND FOUND THEM WORTHY OF HIMSELF. God does not tempt, that is, does not incite anyone to sin: for this is the work of the devil: "For God is not a tempter of evils," says St. James, Epistle I, 13; yet He is said to tempt, that is, to prove and test the faith and virtue of men, when He sends upon them or permits to be sent upon them poverty, sickness, infamy, persecution, death, martyrdom: for although He Himself foreknows their faith and virtue, nevertheless He wills that they themselves exercise it and make it manifest to others, as I have shown on James I, 13. Thus St. Gregory, XXIII Morals, cap. xviii: "Behold," he says, "amid adversities the strength of faith shone forth more powerfully: behold the integrity of the flesh was cut away, but the bones of virtues were laid bare; hence concerning them through Wisdom it is said, cap. iii, vers. 5: God tried them, and found them worthy of Himself. They were tried indeed by the adversity of plagues, but they were found worthy by the laying bare of their bones: for a certain trial of theirs is that which is applied through scourges, there it is openly declared, while it follows ibid. vers. 6: As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a victim of holocaust He received them." Take the elegant symbols of this matter. The anthracite stone, when ignited and coal, if cast into fire, is extinguished as among the dead; but on the contrary, when sprinkled with water it blazes up, says St. Isidore, lib. XVI Orig. cap. xiii. The gagate stone is kindled by water, extinguished by oil, says Pliny, lib. XXXVI, cap. xix: thus the just, anointed with the oil of pleasure, grow sluggish, and sprinkled with the water of tribulation, blaze forth in virtue and become more pleasing and worthy to God. The dionysian stone is dark, scattered with reddish marks: the same, if mixed with water and ground, smells of wine, and what is wonderful in that odor, it resists drunkenness, says Solinus in the Polyhistor. Thus virtue altogether exerts its powers amid adversities, for as the common proverb goes, sailors are accustomed to be fearless, according to that of Ovid, Trist. lib. IV, eleg. iii: And fill with sad material your virtues; Through steep and precipitous paths glory goes its way. Who would know Hector, if Troy had been happy? The public way of virtue is through evils. Thus our Causinus, lib. XI Parab. Hist. cap. xxxii et seq.
AND HE FOUND THEM WORTHY OF HIMSELF. By His grace, friendship, inheritance, kingdom and heavenly glory; hence it is evident that the just merit heavenly glory not only by congruity, but also by condignity: for although works, considered in themselves nakedly, for example giving alms to a poor person, do not merit so great a glory, according to that passage, Rom. viii, 18: "The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come;" yet inasmuch as those works flow from the grace of God and from a man pleasing to God, to that extent they are worthy of so great a glory: for grace is commensurate with glory, and is as it were its seed and beginning. He assigns here the end for which God sends or permits tribulations and martyrdoms to the just, namely that He may prove them, exercise them, and make them worthy of His kingdom. Hear Lucifer of Cagliari, in the tract On Dying for the Son of God: "For by torments the martyrs are strengthened, and by the very passion of trial are crowned, as Holy Scripture opens to us, Psalm cxv, 15: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. And if they suffered torments before men, their hope is full of immortality; vexed in a few things, they shall be ordered well in many things: because God tried them, and found them worthy of Himself," Wisdom iii, 5. Hear also Eusebius of Emesa, in the homily On the holy Martyrs Epiphodius and Alexander, where he introduces the martyrs speaking and exhorting in a moving manner thus: "Does not the living voice of kindred blood cry out to our heart? Learn, he says, to acquire faith by seeking, to cultivate it by living, to preserve it by dying; learn to fear sin more than the sword; learn to love justice more than life for the sake of life, and faith and fear of God. Him whom we have kept in the midst of the tribulation of war, observe, lest you lose yourselves in peace or in the security of peace. Beware lest you lose in the harbor the anchor of hope and religion which we have kept in the storm. Beware lest you judge a good life, if ever you see it subject to afflictions, to be miserable. Beware lest in the arena of the world, into which we have been sent to undergo contests, you expect any happiness to be acquired. Blessedness here can be suffered, it cannot be acquired. Do not seek here what Christ Himself did not find here. If the world had peace, the martyrs would not have glory; if examination did not precede, the occasion of tribulation would perish." Hear also St. Paulinus, in epistle 4, where citing that passage from the Song of Songs iii, 11: His head is the finest gold: "This gold, he says, is the form of the saints, who in the head of the body shine as lights, and are gold set on fire for God: because namely He found them (as it is written) worthy of Himself, tried in the furnace of this world's trials of sufferings, and in them He struck the sacred coin of His image, impressing upon their hearts and tongues the word of His truth, and setting them themselves as money-changers, that according to His form they might strike coins pleasing to the Lord, and with the figure of Caesar abolished from us, Matt. xxii, they might stamp the living numisma of the eternal king, and inscribed with the spirit of redemption, with neck now free from the yoke, and with forehead fortified by the title of salvation we might sing, Psalm iv, 7: The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us. Therefore with the greatest effort let us strive to prepare ourselves so that we may deserve to be the hairs and gold of the divine head (which Christ is to us through the grace of God)."
3:6
that is to say, Just as gold is purified from dross in the furnace and shines more brightly, so God purifies the just through tribulations and martyrdoms from the dregs of venial sins, and makes them stronger and more illustrious through patience and virtue; whence Hugo of St. Victor, in the tract On the Daughter of Jephthah: "Imitating this," he says, "many thousands of martyrs even unto death contended for the truth, and were sacrificed by raging enemies; of whom Scripture says, Wisdom iii, 6: He proved them as gold in the furnace." The first to use this maxim was St. Job, cap. xxiii, vers. 10, saying: "He (God) knoweth my way, and hath proved me as gold that passeth through the fire;" then David, Psalm lxv, 10: "Thou hast proved us, O God," he says, "thou hast tried us by fire as silver is tried, etc. We have passed through fire and water, and thou hast brought us out into a refreshment;" third, Solomon, Proverbs xvii, 3: "As silver," he says, "is tried in the fire, and gold in the furnace, so the Lord trieth hearts;" fourth, Isaias, cap. xlviii, vers. 10: "Behold," he says, "I have chosen thee in the furnace of poverty, but not as silver;" fifth, Daniel, cap. xi, vers. 33: "And some of the learned shall fall (in the persecution of Antiochus and Antichrist) that they may be tried, and chosen, and made white;" sixth, Zacharias, cap. xiii, vers. 9: "And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will burn them as silver is burned, and will try them as gold is tried;" seventh, Malachias, cap. iii, vers. 2, concerning Christ he says: "For he shall be as a refiner's fire, and as the herb of fullers: and he shall sit refining and cleansing silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold and as silver;" whence will come to pass what follows: "And they shall offer to the Lord sacrifices in justice," as being now fully purified and justified; eighth, Ecclesiasticus, cap. ii, vers. 5: "For," he says, "gold and silver are tried in the fire: but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation." Behold for you so many testimonies of prophets, by which God hath confirmed this maxim throughout all ages by oracles, equally as by examples. It is an eternal law sanctioned by God, that all the just be tried by tribulation, as by fire, be purified, be perfected; no one is excepted from it, as many show, Judith, cap. viii, vers. 21, and Mathathias I Maccabees ii, 52. Do not you therefore be excepted, lest you likewise fall away from justice. Most excellently Tertullian in the Scorpiaco, cap. vii: "Hear indeed," he says, "God saying elsewhere, Proverbs xvii, 3: I will burn them as silver is burned, and I will try them as gold is tried, namely through the torments of fires and punishments, through the martyrdoms of faith which are trials;" and St. Augustine, in Psalm lxi: Nevertheless be thou subject to God, O my soul: for from him is my patience: "My tribulation comes," he says, "and my patience comes, and my purification comes. Does not gold shine in the furnace of the craftsman? in the ornament it will shine, in the adornment it will shine; yet let it endure the furnace, that purged from filth it may come to the light; this furnace, there is chaff, there is gold, there is fire, to this the goldsmith blows, in the furnace the chaff burns, and the gold is purified; that is turned to ashes, this is stripped of filth. The furnace is the world, the chaff is the wicked, the gold is the just, the fire is tribulation, the goldsmith is God. What therefore the goldsmith wills, I do; there the craftsman places me, I endure; I am commanded therefore to endure, he knows how to purify. Let the chaff burn even to inflame me, and as it were to consume me; it is turned to ashes, I am free from filth. Why? because my soul shall be subject to God: for from him is my patience." Tribulation therefore is a furnace, which tries men; for the strong and holy come forth from it constant and shining as gold; but the faint-hearted remain as dross. It is memorable what Victor of Utica writes, lib. I Persec. Wandal., that Gaiseric the Arian king, when he had condemned a notable hero of faith, named Masculan, to death, secretly ordered that if he should deny the faith at the point of death, he should be killed; if he should persist in the faith, he should be set free: "For if," he says, "you kill him with the sword, the Romans will proclaim him a martyr;" hear Victor: "Who (Masculan) when he remained strong and unconquered, he orders him to undergo capital sentence; yet in such a cunning way secretly commanding that, if in that hour of the vibrating sword he should fear the blow, he would kill him rather, lest he should have made him a glorious martyr; but if he should perceive him strong in confession, he would refrain from the sword. But he, as an immovable column made strong by Christ solidifying him, returns glorious. And if the envious enemy was unwilling to make him a martyr, yet he could not violate our confessor." How foolish and wretched Masculan would have been, if in death he had fallen away from the faith! for he would have lost both body and soul, and would have passed from present death to eternal; but now remaining constant in faith, he preserved both for both lives, and brought forth eternal glory in heaven and on earth. Victor adds the proof of Satur, procurator of the house of King Huneric, who when he was being most bitterly tempted both by the royal ministers and by his wife to deny the faith, answered intrepidly: "You speak as one of the foolish women; I would fear, woman, if there were only the bitter sweetness of this life; by artifice, spouse, you minister to the devil. If you loved your husband, you would never draw your own husband to the second death. Let them tear away my sons, separate my wife, take away my substance, I secure in the promises of my Lord will keep the word, Luke xiv, 26: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. What more? the woman departing with her children refuted, Satur is strengthened unto the crown, he is scourged, stripped, worn down by torments, dismissed a beggar. Access to going forth is forbidden to him, they took everything from him, yet they could not take away the stole of baptism." The same author, book III, relates that Huneric deceitfully offered this oath to the Catholics: Swear, he said, that you desire my son Hilderic to succeed me in the kingdom, and I will restore you to your Churches. The wiser ones suspecting the deceit, were unwilling to swear, saying it was forbidden to them in the Gospel to swear, Matt. v, 34: the simpler ones swore. Then the king said to these: Go into exile, because you swore against the Gospel. Similarly to those not swearing he said: Because you do not desire the kingdom of my son, for this reason you were unwilling to swear; for which cause I order you to be banished to Corsica; therefore this demand of his oath was serpentine and vulpine; and two-horned on both sides, so that he might certainly destroy and ruin all the orthodox. Mystically, by gold Philo of Carpathus understands the glory of divinity and happiness in the Commentary on the Canticle, vol. I of the Library of the Holy Fathers, page 664: "As gold in the furnace he proved them, etc. They are compared to gold, he says, on account of the proof of faith, and the most firm argument of hardships and temptations: for in these and in each of the elect souls shines gold, while he shows them the contemplation of the power of his divinity, from which, while the beauty of heavenly joys is shown a little, as if it were a golden reclining place for the elect, in which they may refresh and rest themselves, contemplating it even in this mortal light."
AND AS IT WERE A HOLOCAUST VICTIM HE RECEIVED THEM. In Greek, as a holocaust victim. St. Cyprian, On the Exhortation of Martyrs, chapter xii, and Lucifer of Cagliari, Apology for St. Athanasius, read, as it were a holocaust victim; Vatable, as a solid sacrifice he received; Anastasius of Nicaea, Questions IX in Holy Scripture, reads, and as it were an oblation of sacrifice. All just persons suffering adversities from the love of God are his holocausts, but especially martyrs, who offer themselves wholly as a holocaust to God. Triple was the sacrifice of the Jews, or victim, as it is said in Leviticus I, 2 and 3, namely the victim for sin, the peace victim, which was offered for the peace and welfare of someone, and the holocaust, which was wholly burned to God: for this is what the Greek ὁλοκάρπωμα signifies, since from the other victims scarcely anything but the fat and blood went to God, the rest went to the priest and to the laity offering the victim. Therefore the penitent are as it were a victim for sin, because they offer to God the mortification of the flesh for it; the innocent are as it were a peace victim, because they consecrate to God the purity of mind; martyrs truly are as it were a holocaust, because they dedicate to God both the mortification of the flesh, and the purity of mind, and life, and all that they have, through martyrdom. Whence Themistius, in Stobaeus, discourse 120, says that these three are near and cognate, namely τελευτᾶν, that is to die, and τελεταί, that is victims, and τελεῖσθαι, that is to be initiated into sacred rites. This holocaust of martyrdom St. Ignatius desired for himself; whence, in his epistle to the Tarsians, he openly protests with ardent voice: "I am ready for fire, for beasts, for swords, for the cross, only that I may see Christ my Savior and God, who died for me;" and in his epistle to the Romans: "If the beasts are unwilling to devour me, I will force myself upon them, I will urge them. Forgive me, I know what is expedient for me." St. Ambrose testifies the same ardor in him in many places, in his Exhortation to Virgins: "How good," he says, "is the Lord, for whom injuries are sweet, and death is welcome! And rightly welcome, which acquires immortality." Blessed Peter Damian, sermon On St. Peter the Apostle: "He loves strongly, who when it is necessary, exposes body and soul to torments for the faith of the Savior. This is the fruit of the work, the consummation of labor, the proof of love," etc. In like manner mystical martyrs, equally as holocausts are religious, who devote themselves wholly to God, namely external goods through the vow of poverty, the body through the vow of chastity, the soul and death through the vow of obedience, as St. Thomas beautifully shows, II II, Question clxxxviii, article 7, and our Jerome Platus, book II On the Good of the Religious State, chapters xiii and xv. Furthermore all the faithful are sacrifices and holocausts of God, if they refer all things to his law and honor: for, as St. Augustine says, book X On the City of God, chapter vi: "Our body when we mortify it through temperance, if we do this as we ought for God's sake, so that we do not present our members as weapons of iniquity to sin, but as weapons of justice to God, is a sacrifice. To which the Apostle exhorting says, Romans xii, 1: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living victim, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service. If therefore the body, which the soul uses as something lower, as a servant, or as an instrument, when its good and right use is referred to God, is a sacrifice: how much more the soul itself when it refers itself to God, so that inflamed by the fire of his love, it loses the form of worldly desire, and reformed as subject to him as to an unchangeable form; hence pleasing to him, which it has received from his beauty, becomes a sacrifice. For what does the Apostle consequently add, verse 2: And be not conformed, he says, to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, to prove what is the will of God, what is good and well-pleasing and perfect." See St. Gregory, homily 22 on Ezekiel, where he teaches that the faithful is the temple of God, the mind and heart the altar, the victim the body: for the faithful through three kinds of good works offers all his things to God, namely through almsgiving he offers external goods, through fasting he offers the body, through prayer and devotion he offers the soul and the will: thus St. Thomas, II II, Question lxxxv, article 3 to 7; wherefore those who so work, which are God's, yet so that they do not leave behind certain things of the world, these offer a sacrifice indeed, but not a holocaust to God, says St. Gregory, homily 12 on Ezekiel. Note, for holocaust in Greek is ὁλοκαρπώμα, which our a Castro thinks signifies an offering of fruits, as when a sheaf of ears was burned to God on the second day of Passover, while a holocaust is of animals, namely oxen, sheep, doves, which were wholly burned to God. But the sacrifice of these animals also, or holocaust, is called by the Septuagint ὁλοκάρπωμα, as is evident from Leviticus I and following. Wherefore ὁλοκάρπωμα is the same as holocaust, so called because the whole through fire and smoke would go into καρπόν, that is the fruit, use, and worship of God, as I said on Leviticus I.
AND IN TIME THERE SHALL BE RESPECT UNTO THEM. And, that is, for this reason, as if to say, Because the just, especially martyrs, have proved their constancy in torments to God, as gold in a furnace, and have offered themselves as a holocaust to God, for this reason there shall be respect unto them, in Greek ἐπισκοπή, that is, visitation, inspection, observation, respect, that is, God shall visit them with His beneficence, rewarding them with the crown of glory due to martyrdom, and especially adorning their bodies, which have endured such atrocious torments, with the gifts of immortality, which He soon sets forth; whence the Greek texts connect this clause with the following one, and thus read, in the time of His visitation they shall shine forth, as if to say, In the day of judgment, when God shall visit and examine the deeds of each one, then shall He bestow wondrous glory upon the patient and the martyrs, so that they shall shine as stars in heaven; then therefore shall God respect those whom the world now despises. In similar phrase, verse 13, it is said of a virgin or celibate: "She shall have fruit in the respect of holy souls;" and chapter iv, verse 15: "And respect in His elect." Respect therefore here is retribution, reward, recompense, which in view of and respect to good works, especially patience, is given to the just and to martyrs; whence some translate it, in the time of their prefecture they shall shine forth. Hence and explaining this, He adds: "They shall judge nations, and shall have dominion over peoples." Again, this visitation and respect can be referred to the present life; as if to say, For a time the just lie hidden and are depressed; but ἐν καιρῷ, that is, when the opportune time shall have come, God shall cause them to be openly inspected and celebrated: thus He did, so that the fortitude and sanctity of the martyrs shining forth in torments throughout the whole world, nay even by the gentiles themselves and by the torturers, should be celebrated. Whence again some thus expound it, in the time of visitation, that is, of examination, of trial, of patience and of their martyrdom, God shall cause the patient and the steadfast to shine forth with great virtue, praise and glory of fortitude.
3:7
"They shall shine" like stars, indeed "like the sun in the kingdom of their Father," as Christ alluding to this explains and testifies, Matthew xiii, 43: for stars in heaven are like sparks in a reed-bed, with respect to similar brightness, color, multitude, beauty, efficacy, glory, variety, and swiftness; whence that saying of the Poet, II Aeneid, verse 144: "You eternal fires," that is, you eternal stars; see the sayings, Daniel xii, 3, and I Corinthians xv, 41. In the Greek, "they shall shine" is connected to the preceding sentence in this way: In the time of their visitation, or regard, they shall shine. Hence St. Athanasius, Apology for Flight, explains these things of the present life, not the future, and refers them to the just fleeing persecution, who by this flight shone forth more brightly, like sparks, and taught peoples, and obtained the distinguished honor and glory of fortitude, as he himself obtained it, like their leader, through a continuous flight of 46 years. Following him, our a Castro explains these and the following things thus, that is to say: In the time when there shall be regard, or visitation of them, that is when they shall be tested by tribulation, like gold in fire, they shall shine forth becoming brighter, like gold drawn from fire it shines forth: for their virtue and supreme constancy shine forth, and become celebrated and admirable to all; and just as sparks seize upon straw, and easily run about among reeds, so they among the wicked, light and inconstant, lift up their head, and touch with envy their excellence, and impose silence upon them: thus they shall condemn by their virtue the weakness of nations, and by their constancy the levity of those tormenting them, and shall lift up their head above all peoples, as much as a city set upon a mountain lifts itself up and a lamp placed upon a candlestick. They shall therefore be kings of peoples, and the Lord shall be their king. He proves this sense to be true by experience from those words which follow: "For those who have confidence in him shall understand," and shall experience this truth. Thus he himself. But others more aptly and genuinely refer these and the following things to the future life and heavenly glory, not to the present: for the words plainly signify this, and also that which he says in verse 2 entirely demands it: "They were seen in the eyes of the foolish to die, and their departure was accounted affliction, and that our way from them is destruction; but they are in peace;" for these words cannot be understood except of the dead and blessed; thus think Clement of Alexandria, lib. IV Strom. cap. vi, St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrs, cap. xii, St. Bonaventure, Lyra, Dionysius, Francis Suarez, III part. tom. II, disp. 48, sect. i and following, and others throughout, who by the word "they shall shine" think the gift of clarity is noted; by the word "they shall run" the gift of agility; which shall be in the bodies of the blessed, especially of martyrs, who by the darkness of prisons merited this clarity, and by their chains merited this agility. Furthermore, St. Bonaventure, in IV, dist. 49, part. II, art. 2, Question i, thinks four gifts of the glorious body are signified by these words, when it is said: The just shall shine, and like sparks in a reed-bed shall run: "For in brightness," he says, "clarity is signified; in justice impassibility, because justice is perpetual and immortal; in spark subtlety, in running agility." He then adds subtly that the number of these four gifts can be deduced from a twofold cause, namely formal and material: first, from the formal, because when in our body, he says, there is a twofold nature and form, namely elemental, which now dominates, and celestial, which is the nature of light, which shall be as the formal and completive form of the glorious body, this shall dominate in the resurrection. Therefore, because light has these four properties, as is evident in a ray, namely clarity, because it illuminates; impassibility, because nothing corrupts it; agility, because it goes suddenly; penetrability, because it passes through diaphanous bodies without their corruption: so also the glorious body, in which the nature of light dominates, has four gifts. Secondly, it is taken according to material cause thus: Our body is composed of four elements, and because the elements are imperfect, it has from them a fourfold defectibility: from water, which is a humid and passive element, it has passibility and corruption, whence watery humidity corrupts the body; from earth truly it has obscurity, because it is an opaque element; from fire it has animality, because heat continuously consumes, therefore it continually needs the nourishment of foods; from air truly it has infirmity, for air is most easily changed and yields to any force impelling it. Since therefore these four defects ought to be removed by opposite goods in order that the body be perfect with complete perfection, therefore there are four gifts: against corruption impassibility, against obscurity clarity, against animality spirituality, that is agility, against infirmity virtue or penetrability, that is subtlety. And this last acceptance is more fitting than all, because it corresponds to the authority and reason: to the authority of the Apostle, for thus the Apostle takes it, I Corinthians xv, 42: "It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption," behold impassibility: "it is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory," behold clarity: "it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power," behold penetrability, that is subtlety: "it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body," behold agility; whence the Apostle takes the gifts by comparison to those four defects, which they remove. Similarly St. Augustine, On the City of God, book XXII, chapter xix: "There shall be absent from our bodies," he says, "all deformity, all slowness, all infirmity, all corruption: all deformity through clarity, all slowness through agility, all infirmity through subtlety or penetrability, all corruption through impassibility." Thus far St. Bonaventure. Moreover, fulgebunt can also be referred to the posthumous fame of martyrs, by which glory, miracles, feasts, temples, images, worship, invocation shine forth on earth, equally as in heaven: "For great," says St. Cyprian, On the Praise of Martyrdom, "is the brightness, to adorn eternal life of salvation with the honour of passion; great is the sublimity, before the eyes of the Lord and the sight of Christ not to fear human torments of power, but to despise them. Thus Daniel overcame the threats of the king, the raging fury of roaring lions through the constancy of his faith." Finally, for fulgebunt, in Greek it is ἀναλάμψουσι, that is they shall shine forth from above, they shall be illuminated from on high with wondrous brightness, they shall be inflamed from heaven with received splendour, and like most brilliant lamps they shall irradiate: because namely from Christ and Christ's glory as from a sun shining from above, the martyrs shall draw and seize the rays and brightenings of their clarity; for ἀνά in composition signifies back, or upward.
AS SPARKS RUNNING THROUGH THE STUBBLE. The Arabic version: the just shall shine forth as the course of sparks in the stubble; in Greek ἐν καλάμῃ, that is in stubble, for this produces more frequent sparks than reeds; whence that passage from Ovid, IV Fasti: And soon through the burning heaps of stubble ruling, You traverse with swift foot your vigorous limbs. The sense is, as if to say: Just as stubble or dry reeds seized by fire immediately turn into sparks flying most swiftly and dart forth in all directions; so likewise the bright bodies of the just and martyrs, like certain lightnings here and there at will most nimbly shall run about, and like sparks shall dart forth and fly. Just as stubble or dry reeds seized by fire immediately turn into sparks flying most swiftly and dart forth in all directions; so likewise the bright bodies of the just and martyrs, like certain lightnings here and there at will most nimbly shall run about, and like sparks shall dart forth and fly. Tropologically, St. Jerome (or whoever is the author: for the style differs from the style of St. Jerome), epistle 7 On the Perfect Man, vol. IX: "The reed-bed," he says, "are the unfaithful, among whom the just in this world do not stand still, nor fix foot and mind, but like pilgrims yearning toward heaven shall run about. What is it," he says, "that compared to stars through reed-beds they shall roll about, and in the form of starry brightness they shall traverse the most wretched stems of the earth, when lightnings and reed-beds are far incongruously mixed, or lightnings with reed-beds?" And he responds: "Understand that through the images of the reed-bed unfaithful men and unbelievers are shown, and their bodies pleasant in appearance, and inwardly empty of virtues, which when once the spirit of vanity shall have inflated, they shall hear the hissing of the serpent, and healthy offspring, the brood of vipers shall obey. Sparks," he says, "in the reed-bed; therefore the holy among penetrators, because not all flesh is the same flesh. In the reed-bed," he says, "that is bodies empty of light, and about to be burned by alien splendors, by which the brightness of the saints shall be future as a punishment: because God is a consuming fire, and the just shall come into the image of the Godhead." And St. Gregory, XXXIII Morals, chapter iii: "The reed-bed," he says, "he calls the life of worldly men, who like reeds through temporal glory advance outwardly as if to heights, but inwardly are emptied of the solidity of truth." Again St. Bonaventure, Hugh and Isidore of Pelusium, book I, epistle 5: The impious, they say, is a reed, because the reed grows in mud, yields to the wind, is empty, unstable, sonorous, light, vile, weak and apt for fire; such precisely is the impious: among the impious therefore the just run about like sparks on account of subtlety, smallness, agility, proceeding from great fire, and great inflammation of other things (namely of neighbors), either by converting them through charity, or by burning them through zeal for justice with shame of confusion (and pain of hell), with sentence of damnation struck together with Christ, which shall blow upon them and strike them like chaff and reeds in the manner of a hurled thunderbolt. Thus the apostles like sparks running through the reed-beds, nay through the thorny thickets of all nations, inflamed all with the fire of divine love.
3:8
The just shall all judge the unfaithful nations in the universal judgment, and impious peoples in judgment, not properly so called, but metaphorically and comparatively: namely, because by the example of their life and virtues they shall silently condemn the wicked life of the impious, which they shall also refute by living voice, and shall declare worthy of hell. Thus Christ says, Luke xi, 31: "The queen of the south shall rise in judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them: because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon: and behold more than Solomon here. The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonas: and behold more than Jonas here." In this manner many of the Fathers understood the judgment of the saints, as St. Jerome in Isaiah, cap. l: "He judges," he says, "with the Lord not by the authority of one reigning, but by the comparison of virtues, just as the apostles also judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba the people of the Jews." Whence piously and pathetically St. Augustine, in Meditations, cap. iv: "So many judges," he says, "shall I stand before destitute, as many as preceded me in good works; so many shall confound me by accusing, as many as gave me examples of living well; so many shall convince me as witnesses, as many as admonished me with profitable words, and gave themselves to be imitated by the just in their actions." But the apostles and apostolic men and religious, especially martyrs, who left all things for Christ, and even offered their life for him as a holocaust, shall properly judge in the judgment as assessors of Christ, approving and confirming his sentence: for this is what Christ promises them, saying Matt. xix, 28: "Amen," he says, "I say to you that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, shall sit you also upon twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Wherefore in the judgment the martyrs shall judge and condemn their former kings and judges, by whom they were unjustly judged and slain, namely the Maccabees shall judge Antiochus, St. Peter and Paul Nero, St. Lawrence Decius and Valerian, St. Sebastian Diocletian, etc. Whence St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrs, cap. xii: "When therefore," he says, "you think of yourselves about to judge and to reign with Christ, you must necessarily exult, and trample upon present judgments by the joy of future things;" and Tertullian to the Martyrs, cap. ii: "A judge is awaited," he says, "but you yourselves are about to judge from among the judges themselves."
AND THE LORD SHALL REIGN OVER THEM FOR EVER. The pronoun "them" does not refer to "the Lord," but to "shall reign," as if to say, the Lord God shall reign over them, that is, shall reign over them, or in them, as Vatable translates it. It is a Grecism, for in Greek it is βασιλεύσει αὐτῶν, that is, as if a king shall rule over them; it signifies therefore that the king of the just and martyrs shall not be Antiochus, Nero, or Decius, as he was formerly in this life; but God himself, who shall reign in them through love and through glory, inspiring and communicating to them all his joy, all his riches, all his kingdom, all his happiness, making them kings of the whole universe, according to that, Daniel vii, 27: "The kingdom and power shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High:" wherefore then God shall be all in all, I Corinthians xv, 28.
3:9
In Greek πεποιθότες, which is a past participle, as if to say, Those who formerly trusted in God. He has hitherto celebrated the fortitude of the just in adversities, and the constancy of the martyrs in torments; now he shows who and what kind they are, namely those who trust in God, and are faithful in love: by which he at the same time declares by what way and by what means that fortitude and constancy is attained, namely by confidence in God, and by faithful love toward God; the sense therefore is, as if to say, These are the patient just, who on account of their patience shall shine forth, and as sparks shall run about, shall judge nations, and shall reign for ever with God, who namely had already before wholly trusted in God, and placed all their hope in him: for strengthened by God from this hope (for God hears, consoles and strengthens those who hope in him, and call upon him in adversities) they bravely endured all adversities and torments whatsoever. These therefore illuminated by God shall understand the truth of those things which I have said, namely that the souls of the just do not perish with the body, but are in the hand of God, and are comforted by him, which corresponds to him, which explaining he adds: "For he that casteth away wisdom and discipline, is unhappy."
ACCORDING AS THEY HAVE THOUGHT, is first, on account of the merit of wicked thoughts and desires, for from these proceed wicked words and wicked deeds, as St. Bonaventure, Lyra and Dionysius say. Or secondly, as if he were to say: They shall be corrected and punished, according as their own conscience dictating while they sinned, they have thought, that is, they have divined and portended; the punishments which they feared shall in fact befall them; they shall fall into the evils which they dreaded, according to that passage, Job III, 25: "For the fear which I feared hath come upon me:" for a great part of punishment is the foreboding, anguish, terror, and continual dread of it as if hanging over the head: for as it is said in Proverbs X, 24: "What the wicked man feareth shall come upon him, and his desire shall be given to the just."
AND THEY HAVE DEPARTED FROM THE LORD — to the devil, to the devil, as apostates, faithless and sacrilegious traitors: whence in Greek it is, καὶ τοῦ Κυρίου ἀπόσταντες, that is to say, Apostates from the Lord, and rebelling against him, because having spurned justice they gave themselves wholly to injustice and wickedness. He treats especially here and throughout the whole book of tyrants and unjust judges, who in order to indulge fully their own ambition, avarice, lust and tyranny, finally apostatize from the faith and God, and become heretics or atheists, of which kind we have seen many in this age; whence Cantacuzenus reads, who have neglected the Lord; and have departed from justice: for first, he says, that is the case that the Lord is neglected, and that one departs from his glory and worship at the same time; then that his precepts also are despised.
3:10
— He passes from the just to the wicked, and compares their lot with that of the just by antithesis, opposes and sets it after: so that as the lot of the just is most happy, so that of the wicked is most unhappy, even in this life; the sense therefore is, as if to say, Just as the pious shall receive glory according to their thoughts of patience and sufferings, so the wicked shall receive correction; in Greek ἐπιτιμίαν, that is a fine and punishment; Vatable, shall be fined; others, shall be punished, according to their thoughts of injury and crimes, by which they despoiled the pious, harassed them, killed them; whence explaining he adds: "Who have neglected the just," that is, treated him as vile and neglected with all reproaches and evils. It is a meiosis. Or "have neglected the just," in the neuter gender, that is, have violated justice, have trampled upon all right and law, and that ma- chose for herself Mary, which shall not be taken away from her." Grace therefore chosen of virgins is, life and conversation angelic, by which free and unoccupied with care of husbands, children, handmaids, they lead a quiet life in the service and worship of God, where they frequently feel the multitude of the sweetness of the Lord, the delights of charity, the glory of conscience, peace and joy of spirit: which is the unction teaching of all things, and the hidden manna, which no one knoweth, but he that receiveth it, according to that passage of the Apostle, I Corinthians VII, 34: "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;" and soon brings forth the fruit and reward of virginity: "Which affordeth her the faculty of beseeching the Lord without hindrance," or, as others read, observing, which indeed is a chosen gift, nay an angelic one, which deserveth the highest praise and glory in heaven; whence Holcot and Lorinus understand by the chosen gift a peculiar crown of virgins, which is called an aureola, for this shall be given to faith, that is to their fidelity, by which rejecting all earthly husbands, to Christ alone as a spouse, they gave and kept the faith of chastity, according to that passage, II Corinthians XI, 2: "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." Hence again faith here can be properly understood, for virgins, who contain themselves their whole life, and by mortifying the continual assaults of the flesh strenuously contend for chastity, deserve the chosen gift of faith, that is an excellent knowledge, love, sense and taste of heavenly things, which we believe by faith, as I have already explained. Finally, the chosen gift of faith can be attributed, not to virgins alone, but also to married persons without children, for he opposes and prefers both to adulterers, abounding in illegitimate offspring: for the gift chosen of marriage and married persons is threefold, namely faith, offspring and sacrament: faith is fidelity and conjugal love, which supplies the defect of offspring, whence Elcana said to Anna his barren wife, I Kings I, 8: "Am not I better to thee than ten children;" sacrament, because marriage in the new law is a sacrament, and confers grace: but the chosen gift more properly and fully belongs to virgins.
AND A LOT IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD MOST ACCEPTABLE. — What is this lot promised to virgins? Some interpret this lot as special care, — What is this lot promised to virgins? Some interpret this lot as special care and singular patronage of God; but this is a mystical lot. The literal one therefore is that which I have said, namely a peculiar grace which is given to virgins, so that they may desire and taste to serve God entirely, and therefore to go from virtue to virtue, so that they may perfect their souls, whereby they may fully please their spouse God and Christ, which is a most holy, equally peaceful and most pleasant lot and life of Mary Magdalene, as I have already expounded. He alludes to eunuchs by nature: for these, as it were cut off, mutilated and half-men, were excluded from the Mosaic Church, Deuteronomy XXIII, 1, as they are still excluded by canon law from the priesthood. The sense is, as if to say, Eunuchs by nature are excluded from the temple of God; but I shall place eunuchs by virtue and grace in my temple, that is in my Church, both militant and triumphant, as it were in the first and best place: for in the Church militant by Christ, the apostles and the Fathers, virgins are preferred to widows and the married; whence by Tertullian, in the book On Modesty, St. Cyprian, St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Chrysostom, in the treatise On Virginity, the state of virgins is called the flower of morals, the honour of bodies, the adornment of the sexes, the integrity of blood, the faith of the race, the foundation of holiness, the prejudgment of every good mind, the flower of ecclesiastical seed, the joy of prophets, the glory of apostles, the life of angels, the crown of saints, a blessed appearance worthy of God, to which nothing is comparable, an angelic crown, perfection beyond man. Of Constantine the Great Eusebius reports, in book IV of his Life, that he almost adored the virgin choir; he judged that God dwelt with those to whom the maidens had devoted themselves. He alludes to that passage of Isaiah LVI, 5: "I will give them (to eunuchs, that is to virgins) in my house, and in my walls a place," in Hebrew yad, that is a hand, that is a separated and selected lot, degree, place; "and a name better than of sons and daughters." Which St. Jerome and Cyril, and St. Basil, in the book On Holy Virginity, interpret thus, that the chaste not only dwell in the house of God, but are also illuminated by that glory and excellence of dignity which far surpasses all the splendour which the procreation and succession of children could have brought: nay, as St. Augustine teaches, On Holy Virginity cap. XXV, they obtain a certain proper and excellent glory before other saints, which is called by the scholastics an aureole. Our author from Castro adds that formerly eunuchs and the chaste were appointed to certain principal ministries in the temple, as Jeremiah asserts of the Rechabites on account of similar sanctity, cap. XXXV, vers. 19. It appears therefore that celibates among the Levites and priests excelled in honour and dignity, and especially among the singers: as today we see eunuchs and the castrated in temples excel others in voice and song, and this is hinted at in vers. 16, as I shall show there. Again among the Jews in the temple there was a gynaeceum, that is an honoured place of virgins, among whom the Blessed Virgin was presented and brought up; whence they are said to keep watch at the door of the tabernacle, Exodus XXXVIII, 8; I Kings II, 22; II Maccabees III, 19: for there they devoted themselves to prayer, fasting, mortifying passions, holiness, perfection, equally as to manual work, weaving, mending, adorning the vestments and things of the temple. Thus likewise among Christians no one is admitted to the ministry of the temple, so as to be a bishop, priest, deacon, unless he profess virginity or celibacy; but in monasteries, which are seminaries and temples of God, a solemn vow of chastity is made by all, to whom therefore marvellous honour has been paid by kings and princes in every age. To say nothing of others, St. Helena the empress, mother of Constantine the Great, as Rufinus testifies, in book II of his History cap. VIII, the virgins whom she found at Jerusalem consecrated to God, having invited them to dinner, cared for them with such devotion that she believed it unworthy if they should use the services of handmaids, but with her own hands, her garment girded up, she set food before them, offered them the cup, poured water over their hands. Hear St. Bernard, epistle 42 to Henry, archbishop of Sens, chapter III: "What is more becoming than chastity, which makes the unclean from unclean seed, the domestic enemy, and finally an angel from a man? Indeed man and angel differ from each other, but in happiness, not in virtue; but although that chastity is happier, this is nevertheless recognized to be stronger. Chastity alone is that which in this place and time of mortality represents a certain state of immortal glory. Alone among the solemnities of marriage does it claim the custom of that blessed region in which they neither marry nor are given in marriage, affording in a certain way to the earth an experience of that heavenly conversation already." And soon after: "Therefore I would rightly say that this ornament of such great beauty honors the priesthood, which makes the priest beloved of God and men: whose memory indeed is not in the succession of flesh, but in spiritual blessing, and renders him similar in glory to the saints, although still constituted in this region of unlikeness." Again in temples formerly (as even now is done in Rome and throughout all Italy) the place of women was separated from men, and virgins dwelt in the first place there: witness is St. Clement, book II of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter XXI: "Young women, he says, if there be a place, let them remain apart, etc., virgins, and widows, and old women first of all, either let them stand or sit." St. Gregory of Nazianzus in the Dream of Anastasia: "Holy virgins, he says, together with grave matrons from a lofty seat inclined their most chaste ears to my words." More clearly and forcefully St. Ambrose to a Fallen Virgin, chapter VI: "Did you not, he says, remember that place separated by boards in which you stood in the Church, to which religious matrons and noble women ran eagerly, seeking your kisses, who were holier and better than you? Did you not remember those precepts which the wall itself, written before your eyes, pressed upon you? The woman is divided, and the virgin who is not married thinks on the things of the Lord, how she may be holy both in body and in spirit, I Corinthians VII, 34; but you, turning the saying to the contrary, thinking thus, acting thus, so that you were neither holy in body nor in spirit: in body indeed by fornicating, but in spirit by lying about virginity." Excellently Tertullian, On the Dress of Women, chapter I: "Since we are all, he says, the temple of God, with the Holy Spirit brought into us and consecrated, the high priest and guardian of that temple is chastity, which allows nothing unclean or profane to be brought in, lest God himself, who dwells there, offended by a defiled seat, abandon it." Therefore the gift of virgins, especially of religious men and women, chosen and most acceptable as a lot in the temple of God, is the most noble and worthy occupation, namely to contemplate God and their spouse Christ continually, to love God perfectly, to cut off desires, to imbue and strengthen the soul with every virtue and holiness, so that they may be superior to temptations, demons, and the whole world, and may rule over them: because "they shall judge nations, and shall rule over peoples:" These therefore are the elect and beloved, whom God, as perfect, and therefore most dear sons, loves singularly; the Blessed Virgin, as most beautiful offspring, loves; the holy Church, as most precious gems, by which illustrious and splendid and comely she proceeds, holds dear. They themselves are finally better and more beautiful than the other children of the Church, because they adorn the court of God, build the palace of the eternal King, and constitute the nobility of the Church. See in what way perfection is the closest union with God, which makes perfect men not merely sons of God, but most dear sons of God, and most similar and most closely joined to the Father. Who, as sons of God and heirs of the kingdom of heaven, are clothed with all virtues as with royal garments, are refreshed with the most delicate foods of holy desires and pure thoughts, and are surrounded as with royal ministers by angels, and delight in their father's occupation, namely divine contemplation, and seek nothing else except to be like God, and in all things to show themselves as sons and servants of God for the honor of God. Thus our Alvarez de Paz, book IV On the Dignity of Perfection, part I, chapters VIII and IX. Thus also St. Jerome in Isaiah, chapter LV, and the interpreters in this place. In the triumphant Church moreover virgins shall follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, and sing a new canticle, which no one can say but a virgin, Apocalypse XIV, 3; whence he adds concerning them: "These were purchased from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb:" see the things said there. Finally, through the gift of faith in the elect, and through a lot most acceptable in the temple of God, the children of sterile parents could be received, whom God gave to parents on account of the merit of chastity and holiness, and made them glorious and distinguished, as it were His administrators in the temple, as He did with Samuel, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ, and others of whom I shall speak in verse 16: hear St. Gregory, III part. Past. cap. XXIX: "For eunuchs indeed are those who, having restrained the movements of the flesh, cut off in themselves the affection for wicked works; but in what place they are held with the Father is shown, because in the house of the Father, namely in the eternal dwelling, they are preferred to sons. Let them hear what is said through John, Apocal. cap. XIV, vers. 4: These are they who have not been defiled with women: for they are virgins, and follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." Furthermore, because "the life of the saints is the interpretation of the Scriptures," as St. Jerome says, learn from the life of St. Emeric (which Surius described from Bonfinius and others on 5 Nov.) how clear and beautiful chastity is in the temple of God, which not only makes those possessing it, but also through them makes others dark and foul beautiful and radiant to God: for St. Emeric, the son of St. Stephen, the first king of the Hungarians, when praying at night in the Church of St. George, was thinking what gift he could offer most pleasing to God, behold with heavenly brightness a voice from heaven: "A splendid thing," it says, "is virginity: therefore I require of you the virginal integrity of mind and body: offer this to God, and persevere in it with steadfast purpose of mind." He obeyed and resolved to remain a virgin; but when his father commanded him to take a wife most distinguished in form, lineage and character, who would bear sons as heirs of the kingdom, he obeyed, but lived with his wife as with a sister in perpetual virginity. A rare example of purity in the flower of youth and royal delights; but he subdued his flesh with fasts lest it become wanton. It happened that a certain Conrad, who had perpetrated most foul and enormous crimes, repenting of them, by the command of the pontiff bound an iron breastplate to his naked body, with a document on which his crimes were written, and visited various shrines of the saints, until the breastplate should be loosened and the writing obliterated. When he had visited various shrines in vain, he came at last to the shrine of St. Stephen, where praying he heard from him: "Rise, friend, and go to the monument of my son Emeric, which is near. He, because by preserving the integrity of the flesh he has merited principal grace with God, will obtain for you forgiveness of your crimes: for he is of that number who have not defiled their garments and follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, and before the throne of God sing a new canticle." The man awoke immediately, betook himself to the chapel of Blessed Emeric, poured out prayers, and more quickly than expected the iron bonds burst asunder, the document opened has no trace of writing: hearing this, Ladislaus, king of Hungary, caused the body of St. Emeric to be honorably elevated and inscribed in the Catalogue of Saints on the 5th of November.
3:11
— "Discipline," in Greek παιδείαν, that is instruction, learning, correction of children, by which namely the frivolity, wantonness and greed of childish men are corrected and chastened; hence also the rod itself, or scourge, and the very scourging, is commonly called discipline: again all adversities by which God instructs, purges and perfects the just, are the discipline of God. Hear the Apostle, Hebrews XII, 5: "My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord: neither be weary whilst thou art rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth: and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. For what son is there whom the father doth not correct? But if you be without chastisement, of which all are made partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons. Moreover we have had fathers of our flesh, for instructors, and we reverenced them: shall we not much more obey the Father of spirits, and live? And they indeed for a few days, according to their own pleasure, instructed us: but he for our profit, that we might receive his holiness. Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring joy, but sorrow: but afterwards it yieldeth, to them that are exercised by it, the most peaceable fruit of justice:" for, as St. Cyprian says, at the beginning of the book On the Discipline and Habit of Virgins, "discipline is the guardian of hope, the bond of faith, the guide of the way of salvation, the kindling and nourishment of good character, the teacher of virtue; it makes one always remain in Christ, and continually live to God, and attain to the heavenly promises and divine rewards: it is wholesome both to follow and to practice this; and to resist and neglect it is deadly. Discipline therefore is instruction and formation of morals toward all honesty and virtue: he who rejects this, (in Greek ἐξουθενών, that is despising, disdaining, making nothing of, he who namely neglects to learn those things which he ought to do, or if he knows them, does not carry them out in deed) is unhappy," ταλαίπωρος, that is wretched, miserable, calamitous, because he will fall into many calamities with God or man as avenger, according to that, Psalm II, 10: "And now, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you that judge the earth. Serve ye the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling. Apprehend discipline, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way." On the other hand: "Blessed is the man that findeth wisdom," as Solomon also says and describes at length, Proverbs III, 13 et seq., and Ecclesiasticus cap. I, vers. 19 et seq. Wisely St. Leo, sermon 7 On the Epiphany: "The whole," he says, "discipline of Christian wisdom consists not in abundance of words, not in the cleverness of disputation, nor in the desire for praise and glory, but in true and voluntary humility." Somewhat differently St. Augustine reads and explains (or whoever is the author: for the style differs from the style of St. Augustine), tract. On the Good of Discipline, cap. V, where he thus says: "Behold the Prophet says, Psalm I, 6: He that hateth correction, hateth his own soul. And truly as he said, so it is, for he is an enemy and adversary to his own soul, who, despising the warnings of discipline, is occupied with diabolical deeds. Some say that discipline is established by sufficiently harsh laws. Let those speak thus who are sufficiently wretched, whom the devil, author of death, invites to every crime, whose minds are possessed by insatiable gluttony, over whom drunkenness reigns, whom foul lust holds captive, and from whom ungrateful pride never departs; but to those whose study it is to keep faith with honest continence, to serve humility and piety, the burden of discipline is sweet, and the yoke of the Lord is light, which does not weigh down, except upon those who are either lost, or about to perish."
VAIN IS THEIR HOPE, of the foolish, that is of the impious, whereas the hope of the wise and just "is full of immortality," as he said in verse 4. The reason a priori is that the impious lacks grace and charity, which is the principle and source of all merit of condignity: wherefore even if the impious prays, fasts, gives alms, etc., nevertheless through these he does not merit eternal life and heavenly glory; his works therefore, even if otherwise good and meritorious, in him are as it were vain, and empty of reward. Again "vain is their hope," because the riches, glory and happiness which they hope for, they do not attain; hence "labors without fruit," in Greek ἀνόνητοι, that is without utility and value are, nay rather harmful and destructive, because they labor and serve sin and the demon, to their own eternal damnation. Some read ἀνόητοι, that is foolish, stupid, senseless are the labors of the impious, because they themselves are senseless and foolish; hence also "useless works," nay rather pernicious, because impious. Hugo, Holcot, Dionysius and the Gloss wrongly read, uninhabitable works, and thus explain it, as if to say, In which God does not dwell, or which are repugnant to the dwelling, intercourse and society of men; or which exclude them from dwelling in the Church, both militant and triumphant, namely from heaven. But all these are side issues, for in Greek it is ἄχρηστα, that is useless. The pious and impious labor therefore, but the pious will bring back great reward from small labor, namely the eternal weight of glory, as the Apostle says, II Corinthians IV; the impious however will bring back no reward from great labor, but immense punishment, both present and future, namely the fires of hell. How wise therefore are the pious, and how mad and foolish the impious!
3:12
d. Of the foolish, that is, of the impious, among other things this is their lot and punishment: first, that they have wives and children like themselves, namely foolish, that is, wicked, criminal and impious: for a husband, as the father of the household, rubs in and instills his own foolishness, that is, his vices, to the whole family by word and example, according to that saying: "Evil ravens lay evil eggs," and that of Seneca in the Hippolytus: "The race returns to its authors, / And degenerate blood brings back the original stock." And that from IV Esdras IX, 17: "As the field, so also the seeds: and as the flowers, so also the dyes: and as the worker, so also the creation: and as the husbandman, so also the cultivation." Second, by the senseless he properly means adulterous women, and consequently by wicked sons he understands bastards and illegitimate children; as if to say: This is the punishment of the impious, that, since they themselves are unfaithful to God, their wives likewise experience themselves as unfaithful and adulterous to them, who claim and substitute offspring from another man, namely an adulterer, as if their own to the husband: for concerning adulterers and illegitimate offspring the following verses treat: thus Jansenius. From this learn, O men, that those who violate the faith given to God and live impiously, with God as avenger obtain this consequence, that neither fidelity is shown to them by their wives, nor honor by their sons. The Apostle teaches this, Romans I, 21: "Because," he says, "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, nor gave thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, etc. Therefore God delivered them up to the passions of dishonor: for their women changed the natural use into that use which is against nature." Hence among heretics and their preachers there are so many adulteries, fornications and incests, but hidden ones: for he who does not keep faith with God, how will he keep it with man? He who believes or teaches that chastity is impossible to observe, how will he observe it, or rather how will he believe it possible for himself? Morally let husbands learn here, if they wish to have virtuous and chaste wives and offspring, they themselves must precede them in the example of virtue and chastity: for they themselves will follow this, and God is accustomed to reward the virtue of the husband with this fitting reward of his own: let us find our wives chaste, and let them find us chaste, and if we seek them untouched, let us be untouched. For this reason that righteous man Job, fearing God, in chapter XXXI, verse 9, says: "If my heart hath been deceived upon a woman, and if I have laid wait at my friend's door, let my wife be the harlot of another, and let others bend over her." But also Aesop, according to Planudes, thus admonishes his son Ennus: "Always cleave to your wife, lest she wish to make trial of another man." This also pertains to that passage, Hosea IV, 14: "I will not visit upon your brides when they shall have committed adultery, because they themselves conversed with harlots," as if namely adulterous women are in some way excused on account of the adulteries of their husbands. Hence Seneca, epistle 94 to Lucilius: "He is wicked," he says, "who demands chastity from his wife, while he himself is a corruptor of other men's wives." Finally St. Augustine, in the tract On Good Discipline: "If the husband is the head," he says, "he ought to live better and to precede his wife in all his deeds, so that she may imitate the man:" for, as Pacatus says in the Panegyric to the Emperor Theodosius: "Commanded correction exasperates, but most gently is it commanded by example." namely if the husband be wicked and unchaste, he will have a wicked and unchaste wife and children. Again, if the mother be unchaste, the daughter will learn unchastity from her: thus we commonly see it happen, although sometimes the contrary occurs through extraordinary divine providence; hence St. Ambrose, book III On Virginity, speaking of Herodias: "What," he says, "can a daughter learn from an adulterous mother, except the loss of modesty?" And therefore the prophet Ezekiel, chapter XVI, verse 44, says: "As the mother, so also her daughter," and to this meaning the Gloss in the chapter If anyone with soldiers, VI, Question I, brings forward the common verse: "The daughter lightly follows the path of her mother." Whence also Virgil in the Bucolics, eclogue I: "Thus puppies like dogs, thus kids like mothers / I knew." By whose authority Columella, book XI of Rural Matters: "There is no doubt," he says, "that nature itself wished the offspring to be like the mother;" and he writes certain other things on this, and extends it also to vineyards. Diogenes the Cynic, as Laertius testifies, when he saw a drunk man in the forum: "His father," he said, "was drunk." Horace, book IV of the Odes, ode 24, thus sings: "Great is the dowry, the virtue of parents." Moreover, it is evident both from experience and from reason that the wives of adulterers are often themselves adulterous: for the adultery of the husband makes the wife unchaste, both because it gives her an example of lust, for the husband's conduct is a mirror which she herself imitates; and also because it suggests to her the means of avenging herself, for the wife, seeing that the faith given to her by her husband is not kept, does not keep the same faith toward him in turn, and in order to avenge the injury inflicted upon her by his adultery, she inflicts a like injury upon him by adultery. Ovid, in the book On the Art of Love, gives the example of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra: "While the son of Atreus," he says, "was content with one, and she was chaste: she became wicked through the fault of her husband. And soon after: And the daughter of Tyndareus avenged her husband who sinned grievously." Wherefore Aristotle, in book I of the Economics, chapter IV: "First," he says, "let there be laws for the husband toward the wife, so that injury may cease, thus neither shall he himself suffer injury; but it is" (as he writes with a few things interposed) "the husband's injury the intercourse with foreign women;"; and, as Seneca writes to Lucilius, epistle 93: "The gravest kind of injury to a wife is to have a concubine." Wherefore Lactantius wisely admonishes the husband, book VI: "The wife," he says, "is to be taught by example of continence, so that she may conduct herself chastely: for it is unjust that you should demand that which you yourself cannot provide;"; and a little later he writes that the wife of him who is occupied in corrupting the wives of others, being incited by example, either thinks she should imitate or avenge herself; and this is what St. Augustine himself similarly admonished in the chapter If you were about to speak, XXXII Question VI, that such as you wish "For there shall be given to her the chosen gift of faith, and a lot most acceptable in the temple of God," which indeed is given not to the married, but to virgins. Therefore she who knew not the marriage bed in sin, is the same as she who knew not sin (namely adultery, fornication) in the bed, that is the couch, such as she is both as one married through conjugal chastity, and rather as a virgin through virginal chastity, and therefore he says, not she who knew not sin in the bed, but she who knew not the bed in sin, that is to say, A virgin is so far from and abhors the sin of adultery and fornication, that she is ignorant of the very bed or couch of intercourse, by which sin can be committed, and by which sin is usually committed, that is to say, A virgin is ignorant of all intercourse, all union. The plain and full sense therefore is, that is to say, Cursed is the generation, that is both the parents and the offspring of adulterous and wicked impious ones, because on the contrary blessed and happy is the generation and stock of the pious: for blessed is the wife undefiled, and therefore as to bodily offspring barren, she who is wholly ignorant of all the bed and intercourse, by which sin is usually committed; for she shall have abundant fruit in the regard of holy souls. The Wise man here digresses into a censure of lust, and a commendation of chastity and virginity, because chastity and virginity are the companions, nay the sisters of wisdom; whence St. Gregory of Nazianzus, as Rufinus testifies, both appeared to him in a vision in feminine and virginal form, and when he was opposing them and turning his face away, he heard from them: "Do not be troubled, O young man, by our appearance, for we are sisters, and familiar to you; one is named wisdom, the other chastity; we have come to visit you, because you have prepared for us a pleasant dwelling in your soul." Wherefore the love of wisdom guards chastity, and chastity in turn incites to the study of wisdom. In former times I gave this counsel to many religious, and still give it, that if they wish for the purity of the soul, and the good of religion
3:13
— The Syriac version: cursed is their offspring, because it is better to be barren and undefiled, who knew not the bed of misfortune or ruin; the Arabic: cursed is their condition, because barren and unspotted is blessed in itself, who knew not the bed in ruin. He contrasts the offspring of the pious with the offspring of the impious, as if to say: "Creature," in Greek γένεσις, that is, generation and offspring, namely sons and daughters, are cursed, that is, impious and wicked, both because parents transmit vices of body as well as of soul to their offspring in generation, for the seed of parents is corrupted on both sides; whence we see that if parents are afflicted with stones, gout, epilepsy, drunkenness, lust, adultery, their sons too are subject to the same diseases and vices; and also because impious parents raise their offspring impiously and daily set before their sons the examples of the vices to which they are subject. For what will a son learn from a parent whom he sees daily quarreling, swearing, getting drunk, except that he himself should quarrel, swear, and get drunk? For paternal and domestic example is powerful and effective upon the souls of sons: wherefore he leaves them as heirs to his vices. On the other hand, "blessed is the (woman) barren and undefiled, who knew not the bed in sin," that is, who is ignorant of the marriage bed and couch of adultery and fornication, that is, who is free from adultery and fornication: for although she be barren, yet she shall not lack her fruit and offspring in judgment, when God shall visit, judge, regard and reward chaste and holy souls. He therefore prefers a virtuous and chaste woman, though barren, to an impious and unchaste woman, though fruitful and abounding in offspring, because the latter begets, raises and forms impious offspring; the former, however, shall obtain a glorious reward for her chastity from God. Whence Budaeus in the Pandects translates: execrable is their offspring, when blessed is the barren undefiled: for not every barren woman does he beatify, says Jansenius, but the undefiled one, just as neither in the following verse every eunuch, but him who hath not wrought iniquity, and hath not thought wicked things against God; whence also St. Jerome in Isaiah, chapter LVI and Hosea, chapter IX, reads: blessed is the barren immaculate woman, who knew not the bed in sin, or the couch in sin, namely in adultery, for this on account of its enormity is called by antonomasia sin or transgression; Vatable: truly blessed is the barren uncontaminated woman, who knew not intercourse in shame; she shall obtain fruit in knowing the cause of souls. Some understand by the barren woman a married woman who preserves conjugal chastity and keeps the marriage bed undefiled in matrimony: thus Hugo and St. Thomas, and our a Castro, who expounds it aptly and contrastively thus: Cursed creature, that is, the offspring of the impious, as being born from adultery, as if to say: Unhappy that wife who, because she does not bear from her husband, and she herself commits shame by defiling her husband's bed, and bears accursed sons. How much happier is she who is barren, who, content with childlessness, has not suffered her bed to be defiled or contaminated by sin; namely, in that she knew not the bed or couch in sin, for she committed no sin in the bed, by hysteron proteron, that is, shameful intercourse: for she preferred God to children. Yet better, more fully and more perfectly, others understand by the barren undefiled woman a virgin: for she alone is undefiled, that is, uncorrupted, not withered, who preserves the flower of virginity inviolate: for soon after, in chapter IV, he runs into praises of virginity, for a married woman in the Old Testament, if she were barren, was considered not so much blessed as cursed, as lacking the common gift of that age, namely fruitfulness. Thus the Church understands this passage of a virgin in the Office of the Common of Virgins, St. Jerome in the place already cited, and St. Ambrose, book I On Virgins, where he reads: barrenness is better with virtue: so also Holcot, Dionysius and our Gabriel Vasquez, whom hear: To know not the bed in sin is not to violate the bed through adultery, but the same as to be without a wife with whom one could lie in the same bed, because one is a eunuch or barren, and yet to be full of good works: just as on the other hand one who is fruitful and has children, even from a lawful bed, yet does not keep the law of God, is said to know the bed in sin, that is, to know the bed and have the fruit of matrimony, and at the same time to sin against the law of God. Thus Vasquez, III part., vol. II, disp. 124, num. 47. The same is evident from the following verse, where what he said here of a woman, he says of a man, and calls him a eunuch, that is, one who cannot be other than a virgin. The same requires an eminent reward promised to both in verse 14: mate and flourishing chastity as an example; and this not only do I not grieve that I have not known venereal pleasure, but bound with inviolable purity I delight that I shall never know it. Let your knowledge therefore, or rather your desire be of good and evil, by which momentary sweetness of intercourse, by the madness of insane lust, you lose life and head eternally. Which being said, they were separated from one another."
SHALL HAVE FRUIT IN THE VISITATION (in Greek again it is, ἐν ἐπισκοπῇ, that is in visitation, inquiry, examination, regard) OF HOLY SOULS,—that is, when the merits of each shall be visited, judged and rewarded, as St. Jerome reads and explains it, in Isaiah chapter LVI. The word "holy" is not in the Greek, but is understood, for souls shall not be rewarded unless they are holy: the Vulgate therefore added this to contract the name of visitation, so as to signify the recompense of holiness. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Let chaste and virgin women be sterile, that is, lack offspring, yet they shall have their fruit, that is their reward in the future age, namely on the day of judgment, when Christ shall visit all the words and deeds of all, that is shall examine, judge and crown them. Secondly, it can be understood with Peter Nannius that by fruit is meant offspring, for this reward aptly corresponds to sterility, as if to say: Although a virgin be sterile, and bear no bodily children, yet she shall not lack her spiritual offspring, offspring, I say, of virtues flowing from chastity, in the way that offspring of chastity is prayer, meditation, abstinence, almsgiving, etc., and the glory and aureole corresponding to these in heaven. Again, the offspring of virgins are other saints, whom virgins have impelled to holiness and virginity by their word and example: for these are children of the spirit, not of the flesh. In which phrase St. Ambrose, in the book On the Ark and Noah, chapter IV: "Approved men," he says, "are the offspring of virtue; and just as men are the offspring of men, so virtues are the offspring of souls." He alludes to that passage, Isaiah LVI, 3: "And let not the eunuch say: Behold I am a dry tree, etc. I will give them in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, which shall not be cut off;" where I have treated this matter at length: wherefore I shall add nothing more here. Note here that before Christ in the Old Testament there existed praise and the evangelical counsel of celibacy and virginity, for although these things can be understood prophetically of the New Testament, where they are seen to be most true; yet the Wise Man speaks in general of all the chaste, even of his own age, as is evident; whence St. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Philadelphians, relates that in the Old Testament there were virgins Elijah, Elisha, Joshua, Jeremiah, Melchizedek and John the Baptist: virgins also were the sons of the prophets, of whom frequent mention is made in the books of Kings. Most excellently does St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Poem on Virginity, give these praises to it: Virginity is a thing wonderful in every age. The love of virginity lifts minds to the stars. The virgin is the Holy Trinity. The First Trinity is virgin. Virginity is the renowned part of great Christ. Virginity is the most ready path to heaven, and cleaving to the wise counsels of God. Virginity (of Daniel) was able to lull the tawny lions to sleep. Virginity is the life of Angels. Virginity is adorned with Christ as spouse. Trinity. The First Trinity is virgin. Virginity is the renowned part of great Christ. Virginity is the most ready path to heaven, and cleaving to the wise counsels of God. Virginity (of Daniel) was able to lull the tawny lions to sleep. Virginity is the life of Angels. Virginity is adorned with Christ as spouse. it is advisable that they lead them to the study of letters with piety, especially of theology and sacred Scripture: for by this first idleness is removed, which is the cause of all evil, and secondly the mind is elevated from the flesh and fleshly pleasures to the knowledge and taste of divine things: thirdly, man becomes learned, so that he can both teach others and instruct them to perfection: wherefore experience shows that nothing so reforms religion and monastic discipline as the study of letters joined with piety. Indeed in our Society many marvel that these three things so contrary are joined together, namely such great humility with such great knowledge, such great obedience with such great prudence, such great chastity with such great youth; but the cause, after God's vocation and grace, is assiduous study of wisdom: for we are always learning and teaching, by which it comes about that we are chaste, and either do not feel the temptations of the flesh, or overcome them through God's grace, according to that saying of St. Jerome: "Love the knowledge of the Scriptures, and you will not love the vices of the flesh." Let those who are zealous for wisdom take care above all to study the knowledge of God and of themselves, that they may revere God supremely, they may despise themselves supremely: for otherwise "knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth," as the Apostle says. The truth of this opinion Cyril represents by a notable fable of the phoenix and the viper, interspersed with golden maxims as with gems, lib. IV Apolog. moral. cap. VII: "The viper, he says, finding the phoenix alone reclining, greeted her and said: Why do you sit alone? Where is the friendly society of your kind? To which she replied: Indeed I am alone in my kind, nor is there any distinction of sex in me: I am one and singular in the world. Hearing this, the viper marveled greatly and said: Was nature alone illiberal to you, when to other animals it is so in the sweetest joy of generation and the most pleasing good of offspring? To what purpose is this beauty for you, since you are deprived of the sweetness of conjugal life and the pleasure of union? Surely if you are to die, you will wholly perish; if you are immortal, you will be sad forever. What more? In this chastity of yours, with your eyes closed and stopped up, you will never feel what is evil and what is good, nor do you know. To these things the phoenix, not ignorant of the fastidiousness of venery and not unaware of the joy of purity, answered not at all disturbed: There is the supreme and joyful society, where there is the intimate unity of the whole species. Therefore because I am singular in species assimilated to the heavenly, I rejoice most intently, I exult that I am whole and not partial: for the whole thing, the whole force is in me alone; and all the goodness of me is clear to the species. But if I do not enjoy the charm of generation, gold, sapphire, star, orb and mind also do not generate, and they are no less esteemed precious on that account. For a nature more unworthy, removed by dissimilarity from the first source of goodness, could not always be in its unity; but from the division of successive generation solace is weighed, why not also the torment of its toil? Although indeed offspring is conceived in one instantaneous pleasure, yet it is cherished with abomination, borne with labor, preserved with fear, brought forth with pain, generated with peril, nourished with filth, increased with servitude, loved with anxiety, and lost in a moment with the greatest tribulation. Will you perhaps alone rejoice in generation, experience will teach you: for you will conceive delightfully and give birth lethally; when you have nourished your offspring, then on account of it you will lose yourself and lose it. And thus you prepare for yourself, dearest, food of death. I will say, what grace has the hen, which cherishes her chicks born with such an impulse of love? Is it not from says the Apostle. The truth of this opinion is represented by Cyril in a notable fable of the phoenix and the viper, interspersed with golden maxims as with gems, lib. IV Apolog. moral. cap. VII: "The viper, he says, finding the solitary phoenix reclining, greeted her and said: Why do you sit alone? Where is the friendly society of your kind? To which she replied: Indeed I am alone in my kind, nor is there any distinction of sex in me: I am one and singular in the world. Hearing this, the viper, greatly amazed, said: Was nature alone illiberal to you, when it is to other animals in such a most sweet joy of generation and most pleasing good of offspring? To what purpose is this beauty for you, since you are deprived of the sweetness of conjugal life and the pleasure of union? Surely if you are to die, you will wholly perish; if you are immortal, you will be sad forever. What more? In this chastity of yours, with your eyes closed and stopped up, you will never feel what is evil and good, nor do you know. To this the phoenix, not ignorant of the disgust of venery and not unaware of the joy of purity, answered not at all disturbed: There is the highest and joyful society, where there is the intimate unity of the whole species. Therefore because I am assimilated singular in species to the heavenly things, I rejoice most intently, I exult that I am whole and not partial: for the whole thing, the whole force is in me alone; and all the goodness of me is clear to the species. But if I do not enjoy the charm of generation, gold, sapphire, star, orb and mind also do not generate, and they think themselves no less precious on that account. For a nature more unworthy, removed by dissimilarity from the first source of goodness, could not always be in its unity; but from the division of successive generation is weighed the consolation, why not also the torment of its toil? Although indeed offspring is conceived in one instantaneous pleasure, yet it is cherished with abomination, borne with labor, guarded with fear, brought forth with pain, generated with peril, nourished with filth, increased with servitude, loved with anxiety, and lost in a moment with the greatest tribulation. Perhaps you alone rejoice in generation; you will learn by experience: for you will conceive delightfully and give birth lethally; when you have nourished your offspring, then on account of it you will lose yourself losing it. And thus you prepare for yourself, dearest, food of death. I will say, what grace has the hen, which cherishes her hatched chicks with such an impulse of love? Is she not ignored by them when they have grown?" From which, congratulating chastity to herself and her like, she concludes: "This therefore is my joy, to generate myself; my consolation is to cherish myself, while without division and stain, with purifying fire, I generate myself; and when heavy with age I fail, then renewed I rise again, and thus I truly always live: for the ash of my dissolution is the vivifying seed of new life. Do not say certainly that I have corrupted nature in vain, or purified it, since I am a gem— would overcome the love of children, and the reproach which at that time arose for the sterile: for this is shown by what it says: "Blessed is the barren and undefiled, who has not known a bed in sin," and blessed is the eunuch, "who has not wrought iniquity;" but unhappy are the impious, who beget children from adultery: for such children will be profane and will be destroyed as born from an iniquitous bed. Of such eunuchs therefore does this speak, although spado properly signifies a eunuch who cannot be a husband, as being impotent for conjugal union, yet it can be extended to one barren, who cannot beget children for another reason. All these things tend to this, that they prefer the lack of children with virtue to the abundance of children with vice; whence in the following chapter, vers. 1, the Greek has, it is better to be without children with virtue. 14. AND THE EUNUCH (in Greek, eunuchus) WHO HAS NOT WROUGHT INIQUITY BY HIS HANDS, NOR THOUGHT WICKED THINGS AGAINST GOD (repeat from the preceding verse blessed is he: he gives the reason): FOR THERE SHALL BE GIVEN TO HIM A CHOSEN GIFT OF FAITH. — He praised the virgin woman; here he praises in like manner the virgin man, and combines and equates him with the virgin woman, as if to say: As I said that the barren and undefiled woman, that is the virgin, is blessed, so likewise I declare that the virgin man is blessed, namely he who by purpose or vow of chastity, as a eunuch, has castrated himself for the kingdom of heaven, according to the counsel of Christ, Matt. XIX, 12, that is, he who from love of purity has forbidden himself all use of lust, and therefore "has not wrought iniquity by his hands," namely pollution, immodest touches, and other crimes, both of lust and of other vices; "nor thought wicked things against God," in Greek πονηρά, that is evil and perverse things, as if to say: Who has not sinned against God either by the acts of his hands or by the perverse thoughts of his mind; who has restrained his hands from forbidden work and his mind from evil thought, especially venery (for in this one often sins even among the continent, through internal lingering pleasure of lust, even if the external act is absent, indeed is abhorrent) rather, he has wrought many good things with his hands and thought and intended many pious things with his mind. It is a meiosis, for virgins free from the burdens of marriage are wholly vacant for God and for pious thoughts and works, and therefore—
FOR THERE SHALL BE GIVEN TO HIM A CHOSEN GIFT OF FAITH, — In Greek, for there shall be given a chosen grace of faith, and a lot in the temple of the Lord more acceptable, more pleasant, or more agreeable; or, as St. Jerome in Isaiah LVI, delightful; in Greek it is, θυμηρέστερος, that is, more pleasing to the mind, from θυμῷ ἀρέσκω, that is, I please the mind; some read, θυμηδέστερος, that is, more delightful to the mind, from θυμὸν ἥδω, that is, I delight the mind; but the sense comes to the same thing. You will ask, what chosen gift of faith is here promised to the voluntary eunuch, namely to the virgin? First, Lyra understands the gift of faith common to all the elect; second, St. Bonaventure and Vatable understand faith, not any faith, but efficacious and eminent faith, which beatifies in hope, even if not yet in reality, and is given from God's election, and makes men perfect; third, Cantacuzenus understands placement at the right hand of Christ on the day of judgment, for this is the proper and singular gift of the elect; fourth, Dionysius understands the gift of internal purity and inner progress; fifth, more plainly and genuinely our author from Castro explains it, as if to say: to be made secure and blessed eternally, so that in heavenly glory they may shine forth like suns, and like kings may rule over unfaithful and impious peoples. Again, the just are constant, patient in any tribulations; they are those who are faithful in the love and charity of God: for these shall cleave to him, in Greek προσμενοῦσιν αὐτῷ, that is, shall remain with him, that is, shall firmly adhere to him in this life, and shall obey his worship and law; whence one of them said, Rom. VIII, 35: "Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? tribulation? or distress? or hunger? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the charity of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." He adds the reason: "For it is a gift and peace to the elect of God:" thus also St. Augustine reads in the Mirror, and the Vatican Codex, as if to say, The just are so confident in God, and so lovers of God, and therefore so constant in adversities, because they know that God never abandons his elect friends, but is present to them and helps them, and therefore communicates to them his gift of manifold grace and virtue, and his peace, that is, all good, and especially eternal rest in heaven, according to that passage, Rom. VIII, 29: "For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And whom he predestinated, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us?" VIII, 35: "Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? tribulation? or distress? or hunger? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the charity of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." He adds the reason: "For it is a gift and peace to the elect of God:" thus also St. Augustine reads in the Mirror, and the Vatican Codex, as if to say, The just are so confident in God, and so lovers of God, and therefore so constant in adversities, because they know that God never abandons his elect friends, but is present to them and helps them, and therefore communicates to them his gift of manifold grace and virtue, and his peace, that is, all good, and especially eternal rest in heaven, according to that passage, Rom. VIII, 29: "For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And whom he predestinated, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us?" our Lord." He adds the reason: "For it is a gift and peace to the elect of God:" thus also St. Augustine reads in the Mirror, and the Vatican Codex, as if to say, The just are so confident in God, and so lovers of God, and therefore so constant in adversities, because they know that God never abandons his elect friends, but is present to them and helps them, and therefore communicates to them his gift of manifold grace and virtue, and his peace, that is, all good, and especially eternal rest in heaven, according to that passage, Rom. VIII, 29: "For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And whom he predestinated, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us?" Moreover the Greeks now have it otherwise and add certain things, for they say, grace and mercy to his saints, and visitation, or regard, in his elect: which words express more clearly the sense already given, as if to say, God gives to his saints grace of patience and constancy in this life, and glory to his elect in the future: moreover these words are found in the Vulgate, in the following chapter, verse 15, and from there they seem to have been translated hither into the Greek, as Jansenius carefully observes.
3:15
The glorious labors of virgins, and therefore producing glorious fruits of rewards (of which thing there was a symbol among the Romans of old, for access to the temple of Honor was not open except through the temple of Virtue, as Plutarch testifies in his Moral works) are continual struggles with the flesh, prayers, fastings, almsdeeds, study, teaching, preaching, zeal for souls, to which virgins devote themselves, because they are not occupied with earthly things, etc.; hence to virgins is assigned by Christ the fruit of a hundredfold, to widows sixtyfold, to the married thirtyfold, Matt. XIII, 23; hence also Christ did not wish to command virginity, as being so difficult a matter, but only to counsel it, Matt. XIX, 12: "He that can take it, let him take it," for, as St. Augustine says, serm. 230 De Temp.: "The battles of chastity alone are harder, where the struggle is daily and victory rare." Hence the chaste bed of Solomon is sought after by sixty of the mightiest of Israel, Cant. III, 7. Moreover, the ancients depicted Pallas as the goddess of virginity and wisdom, armed. And the Astrologers place the sign of the Virgin in the heavens midway between the Balance and the Lion, to indicate that virginity needs leonine strength and balanced temperance. See St. Gregory, lib. VI, in I Reg. cap. I and II. Furthermore, the fruits of virginity are its rewards and the aureola, which I enumerated in the preceding verse.
AND THAT THE ROOT OF WISDOM DOES NOT FALL. In Greek, and which cannot fall (that is, it is firm and stable) the root of wisdom; he gives the reason why the glorious and perpetual fruit of good labors is such, namely that wisdom itself is the root of these same labors, which never falls, nor withers, but always living, flourishing and vigorous produces these fruits. By wisdom understand not the speculative, but the practical, namely prudence and virtue, especially chastity and celibacy: for these produce the constant fruits of prayer, mortification, almsgiving and other good works. He opposes and prefers this fruit to fruit, that is to the offspring of the impious and luxurious, who raised offspring from foreign wives, or from foreigners (which was forbidden by the old law); whence he subjoins of them: "But the children of adulterers shall be in consummate ruin." Moreover the root of wisdom can be taken as wisdom itself, as I have already said, just as the virtue of chastity is chastity itself; or precisely the root of wisdom, that is of virtue, is the fear of God, according to that, Ecclesiasticus I, 16: "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord," see what is said there: for this fear does not fall away, nor perish, but remains forever. Otherwise our Lorinus, who by the root of wisdom understands the knowledge of God and of oneself, namely to know that one is nothing, nor can be chaste by one's own powers, but that this is a gift of God, as are all other things: for to know this practically is the root and cause of chastity, as the Wise man teaches in chapter VIII, verse 21; and he adds appropriately: Rightly indeed, having spoken first of chastity, which is σωφροσύνη, he said its root to be φρόνησιν. For the greatest prudence and wisdom is required for chastity, and it is as it were the root of that: again indeed prudence and wisdom σώζει, that is preserves and guards, chastity and temperance; whence that saying of the Apostle, which we read in Romans XII, 3: "To be wise unto sobriety," εἰς τὸ σωφρονεῖν, St. Jerome, book II Against Jovinianus, translates as to chastity; although St. Augustine, epistle 47, reads it as to temperance; Irenaeus, book V, chapter XX, as to prudence. Could, secondly, by the fruit of good labors be understood the offspring of the sterile; for this is directly opposed to the offspring of adulterers, as if to say: The offspring which God sometimes gives to sterile but chaste and pious parents, because they were unwilling to seek offspring from foreign or foreign wives, because this was forbidden by law, are the glorious fruit of their chastity and piety, and therefore God is accustomed to exalt them, and make them prophets, pontiffs, or eminent and glorious saints: as to Abraham and Sarah, sterile, he gave a son Isaac the patriarch, from whom were born Jacob and all the patriarchs and Israelites, and Christ himself, who therefore rightly was called by God Isaac, that is laughter and joy of parents, equally of all posterity. Thus God gave to Manoah and his wife, sterile, a son Samson, who was the strength and avenger of Israel, Judges XIII, 24: thus to Anne, sterile, he gave a son Samuel, who was judge of Israel, and under Heli served God in the temple, I Kings I, II and II, 18; to Zacharias and Elizabeth, sterile, he gave a son John the Baptist, who was the precursor and herald of Christ, and therefore in the desert, as in a temple, lived almost as an angel among angels: thus finally to the Blessed Virgin, not by nature, but by the vow of virginity sterile, he gave a son Jesus Christ, who was the savior and redeemer of the whole world. See therefore how God rewards chaste and holy sterility with fruit, that is with holy and glorious offspring, which assists God as in a temple, serves and obeys him constantly, as all those already named did. Note here, all who were born from sterile parents became eminent and glorious men, as being given by God's gift to parents and to the world for its salvation: and therefore God imposed on each a proper name, which would presignify their office and glory; and this is "a gift of faith chosen, and a lot in the temple of God most acceptable," of which he spoke in verse 14. To these he now opposes the fruit, that is the offspring, of the impious who, since they do not have offspring from their own wives, or have deformed ones, seek against right and propriety other beautiful ones, so that from them they might raise beautiful sons. Of these therefore he says:
3:16
d. Quickly shall they be consumed, that is, they shall be consumed and shall die) WILL BE. — In Greek it is, ἄτεκνα ἔσται, which signifies two things: first, they will be unconsummated or imperfect, they will not attain to consummation or perfection, whether of body, or of age, or of prosperity; second, they will not be initiated, nor shall they be sacred, but profane; whence the Zurich Bible translates it, but the children of adulterers shall be excluded from sacred things; so also Osorius: the sense is, as if to say, The children of faithful and chaste parents are wont to be consummated and perfect, both in nature and in grace, and therefore sacred and as it were priests of God; but the children of adulterous parents are not always, but frequently imperfect, both in nature, so that they do not attain to full and perfect age, and therefore weak, sickly or maimed they live miserably, and scarcely vigorous they die quickly; both in grace and virtue, and therefore profane and hateful to God, as it were bastard and impious children of adulterous parents. Thus the son born to David from adultery with Bathsheba was swiftly smitten with death by God, II Kings XII, 18; Her and Onan, sons of Judah, lustful men, begat no sons, but they themselves were punished by God with swift death, Genesis XXXVIII, 7 and seq.; Abimelech, the spurious son of Gideon, slew seventy of his brethren, and made himself a tyrant of Israel, and therefore shortly after was slain by a woman, Judges IX, 53. There is a twofold cause: the first divine, namely that God by this penalty fittingly punishes adulterers, so that in that wherein they sinned, namely in the generation of children, in the same they are punished; the second natural, namely that adulterers and other lustful men frequently exhaust their spirit and strength by the use of Venus, and thus weaken the power of generation; whence it comes to pass that they beget weak and feeble, and likewise vicious and similar to themselves, children. That this is the sense is clear, because thus the Wise Man explains it when he adds: "And from the wicked bed the seed shall be rooted out," as if to say, Children born from adultery, or from marriage with foreigners forbidden by law, shall not grow to full and perfect age, shall not attain to an honored and stable state and rank, but shall die prematurely and shamefully. Theognis gives the reason: For indeed, he says, from a squill neither a rose nor a hyacinth is born, Nor from a slave-woman a freeborn son. Again, they shall be rooted out from the Church of the Lord, according to the law, Deuteronomy XXIII, 2: "A mamzer, that is, one born of a harlot, shall not enter into the Church of the Lord, even to the tenth generation:" thus from Castro. Thus, to pass over others, in this age Henry VIII, king of England, when he could not have male offspring from Catherine his wife, repudiated her, and took Anna Boleyn, and from her begat Elizabeth, but in her all his line and progeny failed, although he successively took six wives. Thus also princes who are mystically adulterers, that is, apostates, namely those who, falling away from the faith and the Church, become heretics or idolaters, often have no offspring, or not long-lived, which fail in the second or third generation, as happened to Zimri, Hosea, Jehu and other kings of Israel who were idolaters. Read the books III and IV of Kings. We have seen the same thing happen in this age in the most noble families. Wherefore Optatus of Milevis, book IV Against Parmenian: "The children of adulterers are unconsummated: this," he says, "is said of heretics, among whom there are false marriages of sacraments, and in whose beds iniquity is found, where the seeds are corrupted unto the destruction of faith: while Valentinus contends that the Son of God was in a phantom, not in flesh, he corrupted his faith and that of his followers. The seed of their nativity is rooted out, who did not believe that the Son of God was born in flesh of the Virgin Mary, and suffered in flesh." Moreover Gratian, dist. 56, can. XII Cenomanensem, reads thus and explains it in this way, meaning that the sons of adulterers, as being vicious, according to the canons, are not to be initiated into sacred things: for thus he says: "But whereas the vice of origin is denied to be imputed to the seed, it seems to be contrary to that sentence: The children of adulterers are an abomination to the Lord; but, as it has been said above concerning the sons of priests, so also this concerning the sons of adulterers is to be understood, that those are said to be an abomination to the Lord, to whom the paternal crimes descend by hereditary succession." Whence in the same place cap. IX, St. Boniface, martyr of the English, writes to the king, that the vices of adulterers are sown forth into offspring: "If the English nation, he says, despising lawful marriages, and committing adultery and luxury, after the manner of the Sodomitic nation, shall have led a foul life, from such a mixture of harlots it is to be estimated that degenerate peoples, and ignoble, and raging with lust are to be begotten, and at last the whole common people tending to worse and more ignoble things, and finally neither strong in secular war, nor stable in faith, nor honorable to men, nor beloved of God shall come to be, as has befallen other nations of Spain, and Provence, and the peoples of the Burgundians, which thus receding from God have fornicated, until the avenger of such crimes permitted avenging punishments to come and rage through those ignorant of the law of God, that is through the Saracens." St. Justin objects, Quaest. LXXVIII ad Orthod., in what way this sentence is true, when the genealogy of Christ is drawn from David the adulterer? He responds that David repented, and took as wife the widow left by Uriah, whom he had previously violated while her husband lived, and that God wished to honor David's repentance also in this way, that mention should be made expressly of the wife once of Uriah. But St. Ambrose, De Joanne Baptista, serm. 65, interprets the sons of adulterers as not initiated, as he likewise reads, as vile, spurious and infamous: for he writes thus greatly against concubinaries: "But someone says: I do not have a wife, therefore I have joined a handmaid to myself. Hear what Scripture says to Abraham, Genesis XXI: Cast out the handmaid and her son: for the son of the handmaid shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. If therefore the son of the handmaid is not heir, therefore neither is he a son. But why is such a marriage sought, from which the son received can neither be heir of succession, nor of blood? for he cannot have the fellowship of inheritance, who does not have the privilege of origin. Why, I say, is such a cohabitation sought, from which the born are not sons of matrimony, but witnesses of adultery? why are such adulterers taken up who are shame to the father, not honor? Scripture says, Wisdom III, 16: The children of adulterers shall be in consumation, and the seed from an unjust bed shall be destroyed. Let your wife therefore, if she is endowed with such customs as to deserve fellowship, deserve also the name of wife: grant your concubine freedom and the name of wife, lest you be rather an adulterer than a hus- nymus in Hosea cap. IX, reads, from an unjust cohabitation the seed shall perish; Vatablus, from an illegitimate cohabitation the seed shall be abolished; Osorius and the Carthusian, married adulterers shall be deprived of the fruitfulness of offspring, or if any offspring be born to them, shall live unhappy and shall perish untimely: thus it often happened of old and even now happens, but not always, on account of other secret judgments of God. Moreover this sentence is true, not only in adulterous sons, but also in legitimate ones: for often from this law of sterility enacted by God against adulterers it comes to pass that he who seeks sons from another's bed, neither receives them from his own: thus Genesis XX, 18 "The Lord had shut up every womb of the house of Abimelech, because of Sara the wife of Abraham," whom Abimelech had claimed for himself: wherefore if the king shall have been an adulterer, his posterity shall be cast down from the kingdom; if chaste, offspring shall be established in the kingdom. Thus it not rarely happens.
3:17
d. The impious and adulterous children of adulterers, if they should happen to live longer and be long-lived, will nevertheless be of no value, vile and abject), AND THEIR FINAL OLD AGE SHALL BE WITHOUT HONOUR, — that is to say, The longer they live, the more they will be dishonoured and disgraced, both because with age their impiety and infamy increase; and because, since according to the law, Deuteronomy XXIII, 1, they are repelled as infamous from the Church and society of the other Israelites, the longer they live, the longer and greater will be their disgrace, infamy and reproach, especially because old age itself, burdened with so many miseries, is wont to be despicable and contemptible in itself; to which if there be added the ignominy of birth, lineage and morals and life, a twofold, nay threefold and fourfold turpitude and infamy will arise: for they besmirch the silvery brightness as it were of grey hair with lead, nay with the filth of baseness. Hence St. Jerome in Hosea chapter IX reads thus, when they shall have been of long duration, they shall be reckoned as nothing, and ignoble shall be their old age in the end. Truly Ecclesiasticus, chapter XXV, verse 3: "Three, he says, kinds of things my soul hath hated, and I am grieved exceedingly at the life of them: a poor man that is proud, a rich man that is a liar, and an old man that is a fool and senseless," in Greek, an old man that is adulterous and diminished in intellect, such as were those old men whom Jeremias rebukes, chapter XXX, verse 22, and those laying snares for Susanna, Daniel XIII, 40. St. Fulgentius treats this saying most excellently, epistle II, chapter III and IV, where he consoles Galla concerning the death of her young husband: "Such men, he says, however long-lived they may die, are plunged into a bitter death, and although their age may appear mature in body, yet the deadly love of the world retains the bitterness of an immature mind in the heart; but a Christian, who has lived in the fear of God, at whatever age of body he may have departed, is not plunged into a bitter death, but supported by what is pleasing to God is transferred with the maturity of years: for we read in the same book of Wisdom, chapter IV, verse 9: For honourable old age is not that of long time, nor counted by the number of years: but the understanding of a man is grey hairs, and a spotless life is ripe old age. And further below: "For as an evil life, the more it shall be prolonged in time, the more it multiplies punishment for the offenders: so a good life, although it be ended here in a short time, acquires great and eternal glory for those living well. An evil life therefore plunges immature and bitter old men into Tartarus; but a good life leads the young who have departed to maturity in the kingdom."
3:18
LXVI, 24: "Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched: and they shall be a loathsome sight to all flesh."
NOR IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT (in Greek διαγνώσεως, that is, of discernment, discrimination, examination, observation, condemnation, namely in the day of judgment, when the cause of each one shall be known and discerned, and shall be condemned according to his merits) ANY CONSOLATION. — In Greek παραμύθιον, that is, consolation, as if to say: The impious shall not have in the day of judgment any consolation by which they might either excuse their crimes, or deprecate their punishment, or console their miseries: for neither shall they themselves be able to speak for themselves, nor shall anyone else dare to speak for them; but all shall be silent and stupefied: for they shall be utterly abandoned by all men and creatures, nay, shall be hated and abhorred by all, and therefore in the utmost desperation of all things: for every creature shall rise up against the impious to avenge the injury done to its Creator, according to that passage, chapter V, verse 21: "The whole world shall fight with him against the unwise." Great shall be this affliction of the damned, when they shall receive from Christ, nor from the Blessed Virgin, nor from angels, nor from friends, nor from parents, nor from any mortal, not even a single word of kind consolation or comfort. Thus consolation is taken for solace and mitigation of sorrow, or remedy, by Seneca in the Troades: It is fitting for others to address parents in mourning. Where see our Delrio, who brings forth more testimonies of this signification. And by Catullus in the Hendecasyllables to Cornificius: By which consolation thou didst comfort. Moreover St. Fulgentius, epistle II, chapter III, reads magnitudinis (I know not whence) instead of agnitionis, and thus piously and pathetically explains it: "They shall not have hope, nor in the day of majesty any consolation. But what is the day of majesty, except the day in which the Lord shall come not to be judged, but to judge? For now, when He came to be judged for us, it was not a day of majesty, but of diminution, in which He was made a little lower than the angels; but then it shall be a day of majesty, when according to the testimony of John in the Apocalypse VI, 17, all the wicked shall desire to hide themselves in the caves of the mountains, saying to the mountains and rocks: Fall upon us, and hide us from the sight of the Father sitting upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, because the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? In this day of majesty, the wicked shall not have consolation, but rebuke: for they shall not hear, Matthew XXV, 34: Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; but it shall be said to them, ibid. verse 41: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels."
3:19
d. The ends and exits of the impious are most bitter, most sorrowful, most disastrous, because with Christ thundering forth the sentence of condemnation, they will go into present and eternal death, namely into hell and eternal fire. Some codices read less correctly, for the wicked nations are dire for consumption, although the sense comes to the same thing. Add that adultery is punished by death among most nations, even heretical ones, and indeed among infidels, as Tiraquellus shows, leg. 13 connub. num. 6 and seq. Moreover, an illustrious example of all these threats and punishments which are here leveled against the impious and adulterers is found in the sons of Heli, whom God, together with their father Heli, punished with these penalties on account of incestuous lusts, adulteries, and sacrileges, I Kings II, 32: "Behold, days come, saith he, and I will cut off thy arm, and the arm of thy father's house, that there be not an old man in thy house. And thou shalt see thy rival in the temple, in all the prosperity of Israel: and there shall not be an old man in thy house for ever. But yet I will not wholly take away a man of thee from my altar: but that thy eyes may fail, and thy soul may languish: and a great part of thy house shall die when they come to man's estate. And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two sons, Ophni and Phinees: In one day they shall both die."
That is to say, First, the wicked imitate the devil as their father, so that death, which he himself brought into the world through his envy, they propagate in themselves and others by sinning and envying, while they consent to his wicked suggestions, as Adam consented; they die therefore, because they follow the instigation of the devil, who is the author of death. He asserts this to be probable, and confirms it by many arguments. Finally, Caesarius of Arles, homily 23, asserts that a man is occupied by as many demons as he has vices. He who is proud, he says, is full of the devil; but that he who is envious cannot be without a demon, Scripture says, Wisdom II, 24: By the envy of the devil death came into the world; and they imitate him who are of his part. St. Chrysostom, however, in homilies 22 and 47 on Genesis, says that envy is an invention of the devil, a most pernicious plague, the foulest of vices, an evil beast devastating our salvation above all things. Whence St. Basil wisely concludes, in his homily On Envy: "Let us flee therefore, brethren, this intolerable evil; it is the precept of the serpent, the invention of the devil, the satisfaction of the enemy, the pledge of punishment, the impediment of piety, the way to hell, the deprivation of the kingdom of heaven: for even by their own confession this vice of the envious is thus; their look is dry and dark, their cheek somewhat sad, etc., their soul suffused with the very disease, having no providence in discerning truth, and in conducting affairs." And St. Chrysostom, homily 45 to the People: "I beseech you, let us flee the plague of this vice, for it is the most pernicious of all vices, and devastates our very salvation above all things: for it is the invention of the wicked devil; and therefore the Wise man said, Wisdom II, 24: By the envy of the devil death came into the world." And the Nyssene: "Envy is the prince of evils, the mother of death, the first gate of sin, the root of vices," etc. And Cyprian, in the book On Zeal: "What an evil is this, brethren, by which an angel fell, by which that high and glorious sublimity could be circumvented and subverted, by which he who deceives was deceived?" Finally St. Augustine, sermon 83 On the Seasons: "And therefore, he says, let us observe, brethren, the onset of this vice, lest perchance we be found partakers of the work of the devil, and be condemned by the same sentence as he, as it is written, Wisdom II, 24 and 25: By the envy of the devil death came into the world: and they imitate him who are of his part. This evil harms somewhat even those against whom it is directed; but more gravely and perniciously it afflicts those from whom it proceeds: for as rust consumes iron, so envy consumes and destroys that very soul in which it is; and as they say vipers, having torn and burst that maternal womb in which they were conceived, are born: so also the nature of envy consumes that very soul from which it was conceived, and destroys it. What a worm of the soul is this? what a corruption of the thoughts of the breast? how great a rust to begrudge in man the gift of God, and to turn the goods of others into evil reproach, to make the glory of others the punishment of one's own, as if to bring certain executioners to one's breast, to employ torturers in one's thoughts and senses, who lacerate themselves with intestinal torments?"
To this is added Cantacuzenus: "For no one, he says, participates more in the malice of death than he who has made himself altogether worthy to be in his parts." This author, as also others, refer ex parte illius to death: for it can be referred thus from the Greek; yet it is better referred to the devil. Both are true, for the wicked are both of the part and lot of the devil, and of death: for in the kingdom of death the devil is king and rules; hence St. Bonaventure explains it, that is to say, "They imitate the devil, who are of the part of death," that is, destined to death, namely who are the part and food of death.
CHAPTER THREE. SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER. The happiness and glory of the just, whom the impious persecute, especially of martyrs, is described, and on the other hand the unhappiness of the impious, and namely in begetting offspring, sterility, or wickedness, that is to say that they have foolish and adulterous wives, and therefore adulterous and most wicked sons; whereas on the contrary the pious have chaste and virtuous spouses and offspring. 1. But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. 2. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure was accounted affliction: 3. and their going away from us, utter destruction: but they are in peace. 4. And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. 5. Being afflicted in a few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them, and found them worthy of himself. 6. As gold in the furnace he proved them, and as a victim of holocaust he received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them. 7. The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds. 8. They shall judge nations, and rule over peoples, and their Lord shall reign for ever. 9. They that trust in him shall understand the truth: and the faithful shall abide with him in love: because grace and peace is to his elect. 10. But the wicked shall be punished according to their own devices: who neglected the just, and forsook the Lord. 11. For he that rejecteth wisdom and discipline, is miserable: and their hope is vain, and their labours without fruit, and their works unprofitable. 12. Their wives are foolish, and their children wicked. 13. Cursed is their offspring, because blessed is the barren: and undefiled is she, who hath not known the bed in sin, shall have fruit in the visitation of holy souls: 14. and the eunuch, who hath not wrought iniquity with his hands, nor thought wicked things against God: for to him shall be given the choice gift of faith, and a most acceptable lot in the temple of God. 15. For glorious is the fruit of good labours, and the root of wisdom shall not fail. 16. But the children of adulterers shall not come to perfection, and the seed of an unlawful bed shall be rooted out. 17. For even if they live long, they shall be nothing regarded, and their last age shall be without honour. 18. And if they die quickly, they have no hope, neither speech in the day of trial. 19. For dreadful are the consumptions of the wicked nation.
Machine translation from the Latin, not reviewed.
3:1
The hope for the future is expressed clearly in Ps. 16, 11; 49, 16; 73, 23 ff. and often in the book of Wisdom, which speaks of immortality (Sap. 3, 4; 4, 1; 8, 17; 15, 3), of incorruptibility (ibid. 2, 23; 6, 18 ff.) and of the different lot that awaits the just (ibid. 3, 1 ff. 7, 9; 4, 4-17; 5, 15) and the wicked (ibid. 1, 16; 2, 21-25; 5, 6-13), always in messianic or eschatological contexts. …
3:4
The hope for the future is expressed clearly in Ps. 16, 11; 49, 16; 73, 23 ff. and often in the book of Wisdom, which speaks of immortality (Sap. 3, 4; 4, 1; 8, 17; 15, 3), of incorruptibility (ibid. 2, 23; 6, 18 ff.) and of the different lot that awaits the just (ibid. 3, 1 ff. 7, 9; 4, 4-17; 5, 15) and the wicked (ibid. 1, …
3:6
… influence of Grace, during our earthly existence, is the operation by which God nourishes the supernatural love that sanctifying Grace causes to spring spontaneously from the faithful heart: the divine goldsmith blows upon the furnace after having lit it (Wis. 3:6). This direct concurrence, or inspiration of Grace, corresponds to the promised mission of the Spirit Consoler (Jn. 14:26). Authentic spiritual consolation is, in various ways and …
3:7
… Theol., suppl., q. 85, a. 1), making them conformable, even in the body, to the Incarnate Word: (Phil. 3:21) whence « tunc fulgebunt iusti sicut sol in regno Patris mei » (Mt. 13:43; cf. Wis. 3:7; Dan. 12:3); c) agility (δῶσις), whereby the bodies, freed from natural heaviness, will be able to move rapidly from one point to another (cf. Is. 40:31; St. Augustine, Serm., 242, …
3:13
the teaching of the Savior (it suffices to cite the sixth beatitude: "blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" [Mt. 5, 8]), and a whole series of praises proclaimed by Sacred Scripture either to the virtue itself (Tob. 3, 16; Wis. 3, 13; Sir. 42, 9-10; Is. 56, 4-5) or to the persons who distinguished themselves in it (Joseph [Gen. 39, 6-12]; Judith [Jud. 16, 26]; Susanna [Dan. 13, 63]); d) chastity was commonly …
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.