The difference between the chaste and the adulterous generations: and between the death of the just and the wicked.
Great difference betwen chaste, and adulterous generations. 7. Speedier death of the iust is recompensed by Gods prouidence, 19. but the wicked incurre greater damnation by liuing long.
1How beautiful is the chaste generation with glory: for the memory thereof is immortal: because it is known both with God and with men.Quanto è bella la nazione casta con gloria! perocché la memoria di lei è, immortale, perché ella è conosciuta dinanzi a Dio, e dinanzi agli uomini.O How beautiful is the chaste generation with glorie: for the memorie therof is immortal: because it is knowen both with God, and with menO quam pulchra est casta generatio, cum claritate ! / immortalis est enim memoria illius, / quoniam et apud Deum nota est, et apud homines. 2When it is present, they imitate it: and they desire it, when it hath withdrawn itself, and it triumpheth crowned for ever, winning the reward of undefiled conflicts.La imitano quand'ella è presente; e la desiderano quand'ella è partita, e coronata trionfa nell'eternità, vinto il premio de' casti combattimenti.When it is present, they imitate it, and they desire it when it hath withdrawen itself, and it triumpheth crowned for euer, winning the reward of vndefiled conflictes.Cum præsens est, imitantur illam, / et desiderant eam cum se eduxerit; / et in perpetuum coronata triumphat, / incoinquinatorum certaminum præmium vincens. 3But the multiplied brood of the wicked shall not thrive, and bastard slips shall not take deep root, nor any fast foundation.Ma la moltiplica la turba degli empj non è più buona a nulla, e le piante bastarde non gettaran profonde radici, e non avranno stabile fondamento.But the multitude of the impious, that hath manie children shal not be profitable, and bastarde plants shal not take deepe roote, nor lay sure fundation.Multigena autem impiorum multitudo non erit utilis, / et spuria vitulamina non dabunt radices altas, / nec stabile firmamentum collocabunt. 4And if they flourish in branches for a time, yet standing not fast, they shall be shaken with the wind, and through the force of winds they shall be rooted out.Che se per un tempo nei rami loro germogliano, avendo debole appoggio, sono scosse dal vento, e sbarbate da turbine violento.And if in the boughes for a time they shal spring being weakly set, they shal be moued of the winde, and by the vehemencie of the windes they shal be rooted out.Etsi in ramis in tempore germinaverint, / infirmiter posita, a vento commovebuntur, / et a nimietate ventorum eradicabuntur. 5For the branches not being perfect, shall be broken, and their fruits shall be unprofitable, and sour to eat, and fit for nothing.Onde saranno spezzati i loro rami in sul crescere, e i loro frutti saran cattivi, e acerbi al gusto, e non buoni a nulla.For the vnperfect boughes shal be broken, and their fruites shal be vnprofitable, and sowre to eate, and meete for nothing.Confringentur enim rami inconsummati; / et fructus illorum inutiles et acerbi ad manducandum, / et ad nihilum apti.
6For the children that are born of unlawful beds, are witnesses of wickedness against their parents in their trial.Imperocché i figliuoli, che nascono da illegittima unione, son testimoni, che accusano la impudicizia de' genitori ogni volta, che siano interrogati.For the children that be borne of wicked sleepes, are witnesses of wickednes against the parents in their examination.Ex iniquis enim somnis filii qui nascuntur, / testes sunt nequitiæ adversus parentes in interrogatione sua. 7But the just man, if he be prevented with death, shall be in rest.Ma il giusto quando avanti tempo egli muoia, trova sua requie;But the iust if he be preuented with death, shal be in a place of refreshing.Justus autem si morte præoccupatus fuerit, / in refrigerio erit; 8For venerable old age is not that of long time, nor counted by the number of years: but the understanding of a man is grey hairs.Perocché venerabil vecchiezza si è non quella di lunga durata, e che dal numero degli anni si estima;For venerable oldage is not that of long time, nor accounted by the number of yeares: but the vnderstanding of a man are grey heares:senectus enim venerabilis est non diuturna, / neque annorum numero computata: / cani autem sunt sensus hominis, 9And a spotless life is old age.Ma la canizie dell'uomo ne' sentimenti di lui si ritrova, e la vita senza macchia è vecchiezza.and an immaculate life is old age.et ætas senectutis vita immaculata. 10He pleased God, and was beloved, and living among sinners, he was translated.Ivi ch'ei piacque a Dio, fu amato da lui, e perché trai peccatori vivea, altrove fu traportato:Pleasing God he is made beloued, and liuing among sinners he was translated.Placens Deo factus est dilectus, / et vivens inter peccatores translatus est. 11He was taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul.Fu rapito, affinché la malizia non alterasse il suo spirito, o la seduzione non inducesse l'anima di lui in errore.He was taken away lest malice should change his vnderstanding, or lest anie guile might deceiue his soule.Raptus est, ne malitia mutaret intellectum ejus, / aut ne fictio deciperet animam illius. 12For the bewitching of vanity obscureth good things, and the wandering of concupiscence overturneth the innocent mind.Perocché l'affascinamento della vanità oscura il bene, e la vertigine della concupiscenza sovverte l'animo sincero.For the bewitching of vanitie obscureth good thinges, and the inconstancie of concupiscence peruerteth the vnderstanding that is without malice.Fascinatio enim nugacitatis obscurat bona, / et inconstantia concupiscentiæ transvertit sensum sine malitia. 13Being made perfect in a short space, he fulfilled a long time.Stagionato egli in breve tempo compiè una lunga carriera;Being consummate in short space he fulfilled much time:Consummatus in brevi, / explevit tempora multa;
14For his soul pleased God: therefore he hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities: but the people see this, and understand not, nor lay up such things in their hearts:Conciossiache era cara a Dio l'anima di lui: per questo egli si affrettò di trarlo di mezzo alle iniquità. Le genti poi veggono queste cose, e non le comprendono, né in cuor loro riflettono,for his soule pleased God: for this cause he hastened to bring him out of the middes of iniquiries: but the peoples that are seing, and not vnderstanding, nor putting such thinges in their hartes:placita enim erat Deo anima illius: / propter hoc properavit educere illum de medio iniquitatum. / Populi autem videntes, et non intelligentes, / nec ponentes in præcordiis talia, 15That the grace of God, and his mercy is with his saints, and that he hath respect to his chosen.Come beneficio di Dio egli è questo, e misericordia verso i suoi santi, e come egli ha cura de' suoi eletti.that the grace of God, and mercie is toward his saintes, and respect toward his elect.quoniam gratia Dei et misericordia est in sanctos ejus, / et respectus in electos illius. 16But the just that is dead, condemneth the wicked that are living, and youth soon ended, the long life of the unjust.Ma il giusto morto condanna gli empj che vivono, e la giovinezza loro sì presto estinta condanna la lunga vita del peccatore.But the iust dead condemneth the impions aliue, and youth soone ended, the long life of the vniust.Condemnat autem justus mortuus vivos impios, / et juventus celerius consummata longam vitam injusti. 17For they shall see the end of the wise man, and it shall not understand what God hath designed for him, and why the Lord hath set him in safety.Quelli però vedranno la fine dell'uomo saggio, e non comprenderanno quali siano stati i disegni di Dio sopra di lui, né perché il Signore lo abbia messo in sicuro.For they shal see the end of the wise, and shal not vnderstand what God hath thought of him, and why our Lord hath fensed him.Videbunt enim finem sapientis, / et non intelligent quid cogitaverit de illo Deus, / et quare munierit illum Dominus. 18They shall see him, and shall despise him: but the Lord shall laugh them to scorn.Vedranno, e lo avranno in dispregio; ma il Signore si burlerà di loro:For they shal see and shal contemne him: but our Lord shal laugh them to scorne,Videbunt, et contemnent eum; / illos autem Dominus irridebit. 19And they shall fall after this without honour, and be a reproach among the dead for ever: for he shall burst them puffed up and speechless, and shall shake them from the foundations, and they shall be utterly laid waste: they shall be in sorrow, and their memory shall perish.Ed eglino dipoi anderanno vergognosamente per terra, e trai morti saranno in eterna ignominia; perocché Dio conquiderà i superbi fatti già mutoli, e gli scuoterà dai fondamenti, e li ridurrà in estrema desolazione, ed ei saranno in gemiti, e anderà in fumo la loro memoria.and they shal fal after this without honour, and in contumelie among the dead for euer: because he shal breake them puffed vp without voice, and shal remoue them from the fundations, and they shal be made desolate vnto the highest degree: and shal be moorning, and the memorie of them shal perish.Et erunt post hæc decidentes sine honore, / et in contumelia inter mortuos in perpetuum: / quoniam disrumpet illos inflatos sine voce, / et commovebit illos a fundamentis, / et usque ad supremum desolabuntur, / et erunt gementes, et memoria illorum peribit.
20They shall come with fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them.Verran fuori tutti paura, rammentandosi i lor peccati, e le loro iniquità stando a petto di essi li convinceranno.They shal come feareful in cogitation of their sinnes, and their iniquities on the contrarie shal conuince them.Venient in cogitatione peccatorum suorum timidi, / et traducent illos ex adverso iniquitates ipsorum.
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Calmet
Glory. The offspring of the chaste is happy, (Calmet) and honourable: (Haydock) very different from that of adulterers. (Calmet)
Worthington
Bodily chastity is a great virtue; but purity of faith is more requisite to please God, being the foundation of all virtues. (Worthington)
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Calmet
Itself. Virtue extorts the esteem even of worldlings. Antiochus wept for Onias, 2 Machabees 4:37. (Calmet)
Horace
Sublatum ex oculis quaerimus invidi. (Horace, 3:od. 24.)
Calmet
Conflicts. In the cause of continence. (Calmet)
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St. Augustine
Slips. Vitulamina, a word, to which the people were so habituated, that it could not be altered. (St. Augustine, de Doct. xii.)
Lyranus
Yet some read better (Calmet) plantationes. (St. Bonaventure) (Lyranus)
The offspring of the unchaste will not prosper, Wisdom 3:16.
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Haydock
Beds. Literally, "sleep," somnis, upnon, Wisdom 7:2. (Haydock)
Whether the children live or die, they are a reproach to their parents, as those who see them enquire about their birth.
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Calmet
Death. He is always ready; but dies in his youth. (Calmet)
Worthington
Whenever death comes, it is for his advantage, and if he depart in his youth, his immaculate life is to be preferred before the old age of the wicked, ver. 16. (Worthington)
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Calmet
"Bad conversations corrupt the best manners," 1 Corinthians 15:33., and Isaias 57:1. But could not God have supported the just under temptation? Undoubtedly. His judgments are unsearchable. (St. Augustine, de Praed. xiv.) (Calmet)
Worthington
The holy doctor thence proves, that those who die in a just state, might have forfeited it, if they had lived longer. God knew this possibility, and that it would not take place, and his foreknowledge agrees with man's free-will, which some, inclining to Pelagianism, would controvert. They objected to this authority: and he was therefore obliged to prove that the book of Wisdom is canonical. (Ibid.[St. Augustine, de Praed. xiv.?]) (Worthington)
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Bewitching. Thus the pleasures and goods of the world are well described. For as fascination consists in a delusion of the people, who suppose that their senses are deceived by vain appearances; so it is the mistake of worldlings to believe that the objects of their desires are real goods, and contain no danger.
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Menochius
Speechless. The damned shall have no excuse, being condemned by their own conscience, (Worthington) which shall be instead of a thousand witnesses. (Menochius)
In three words, three different punishments are specified.
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Calmet
Against. Conscience will condemn or acquit those who have no other law, Romans 2:15. (Calmet)
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Chastitie of the bodie is a singular great vertue, & spiritual chastitie of true faith and religion is greatter, and more generally commended, as the roote and fundation of al vertues. For vvithout faith it is vnpossible to please God.
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VVhen soeuer the iust dieth it is profitable for him & dying yong his immaculate life is more commendable then old age in the wicked. v. 16.
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11. He vvas taken avvay] By this place S. Augustin proueth that such as died in good state, might haue fallen into wickednes, if they had liued longer: and Gods prescience d⸢ea⸣th not preiudice mans free wil. therefore it was a benefite to them, to dye sooner And that it is neuertheles certaine, that God both knew the possibilitie that such might, yea would haue sinned, if they had liued longer, and also knew that they should d•e sooner, and so escape that danger. VVhich assured foreknowlege of al thinges that shal be, or may be, standeth wel with mans freewil: against certaine that inclined to Pelagianisme, attributing too much to mans freewil; and detracting from Gods foreknowlege, and prouidence. VVhich he prouing by this place, his aduersaries excepted against the auctoritie of this booke, and therfore he also •tl 17. •. 30. ciuit. proueth that it is Canonical Scripture. li. de Predest. Sanct. c. 14.
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The damned shal be vvithout al excuse vtterly confounded in their owne consciences.
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St Methodius † AD 311 The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity 1.3
… because it is known with God and with men. When it is present men take example at it; and when it is gone they desire it: it weareth a crown and triumpheth for ever, having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards.”
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St Methodius † AD 311 The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity 4.5
… prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy;” meaning by Jerusalem, as I said, these very undefiled and incorrupt souls, which, having with self-denial drawn in the pure draught of virginity with unpolluted lips, are “espoused to one husband,” to be presented “as a chaste virgin to Christ” in heaven, “having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards.”
St Methodius † AD 311 The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity 6.5
These, O fair virgins, are the orgies of our mysteries; these the mystic rites of those who are initiated in virginity; these the “undefiled rewards”
Theodoret of Cyrus † AD 458 Letters of the Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyprus 137
… We must remember that the Ruler of the world in His wisdom, and clearly knowing as He does not the present only but the future also, guides events for our good. A wise man who knew all this full well reasons about deaths of this kind and says, “Yea; speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding.”
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St Methodius † AD 311 The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity 1.3
… and rejoice with the wife of thy youth,” manifestly forbidding a plurality of wives. And Jeremiah clearly gives the name of “fed horses” to those who lust after other women; and we read, “The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 On Christian Doctrine 2.12
… Now translations such as this are not obscure, but false; and there is a wide difference between the two things. For we must learn not to interpret, but to correct texts of this sort. For the same reason it is, that because the Greek word μόσχος means a calf, some have not understood that μοσχεύματα
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St Methodius † AD 311 The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or Concerning Chastity 2.6
… but these appointed us to death, despising Thy command?” “For,” He says, “children begotten of unlawful beds are witnesses of wickedness against their parents at their trial.”
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St Gregory of Nazianzus † AD 389 Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen 43.23
23. Who possessed such a degree of the prudence of old age, even before his hair was gray? Since it is by this that Solomon defines old age.
St John Chrysostom † AD 407 The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews 7
… just as the young if they be but little children, yet if they are sober-minded, are better than the old. And this doctrine is not my own, but Scripture also recognizes the same distinction. “For,” it says, “honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, and an unspotted life is old age.” (
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St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 58.1
… that I, small and lowly as I am, should be eulogized by lips which have pleaded on behalf of our most religious sovereign? Do not, my dearest brother, estimate my worth by the number of my years. Gray hairs are not wisdom; it is wisdom which is as good as gray hairs. At least that is what Solomon says: “wisdom is the gray hair unto men.”
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 60.10
… But the more he struggled against it, the more he drew to himself the hearts of all: his refusal did but prove him worthy of an office which he was reluctant to assume, and all the more worthy because he declared himself unworthy. We too in our day have our Timothy; we too have seen that wisdom which is as good as gray hairs;
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 79.6
6. Why do I farther postpone the end? “All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” The dust has returned to the dust. He has fallen asleep in the Lord and has been laid with his fathers, full of days and of light and fostered in a good old age. For “wisdom is the grey hair unto men.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Letters of St. Augustin 218.1
1. Your life of eminent fortitude and fruitfulness towards the Lord our God has brought to us great joy. For “you have made choice of instruction from your youth upwards, that you may still find wisdom even to grey hairs;” for “wisdom is the grey hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age;”
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St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 On the Mortality 23
… “He was taken away,” says he, “lest wickedness should change his understanding. For his soul was pleasing to God; wherefore hasted He to take him away from the midst of wickedness.”
St Cyprian of Carthage † AD 258 Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews 3.59
… and I will put my Spirit upon you, and ye shall live; and I will place you into your land: and ye shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and will do it, saith the Lord.” Also in the Wisdom of Solomon: “He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding; for his soul was pleasing to God.”
St Ambrose of Milan † AD 397 On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus 1.30
… For if no one mourns for Enoch, who was translated when the world was at peace and wars were not raging, but the people rather congratulated him, as Scripture says concerning him: “He was taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding,”
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 39.3
… Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, Peter, James, and John, Paul, the “chosen vessel,” and even the Son of God Himself have all died; and are we vexed when a soul leaves its earthly tenement? Perhaps he is taken away, “lest that wickedness should alter his understanding…for his soul pleased the Lord: therefore hasted he to take him away from the people”
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 60.2
… No, I will be glad and rejoice that “speedily he was taken away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding” for “his soul pleased the Lord.”
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 75.2
… For, as it is written in the book of Wisdom, he was “taken away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding…for his soul pleased the Lord…and he…in a short time fulfilled a long time.”
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 79.2
… So profuse were the alms which he gave to the people that his doors were continually beset with swarms of sick and poor. And assuredly he “prayed to God alway” that what was for the best might happen to him. Therefore “speedily was he taken away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding…for his soul pleased the Lord.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants 1.30
… Now in both cases one recurs to the apostle’s outburst of wonder “O the depth of the riches!” Again, let me be informed, why out of the body of baptized infants themselves, one is taken away, so that his understanding undergoes no change from a wicked life,
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin 2.13
… We read,” adds he, “it written of such, Speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. Therefore He hasted to take him away from among the wicked, for his soul pleased the Lord; and, being made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled a long time.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on the Soul and its Origin 3.14
… Therefore God hastened to take him away from among the wicked; for his soul pleased the Lord; and being made perfect in a short time he fulfilled long seasons.’”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on Grace and Free Will 45
… and again, that one baptized person is left and forsaken in his present life, who God foreknew would be ungodly, while another baptized person is taken away from this life, “lest that wickedness should alter his understanding;”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace 19
… Let the objectors answer, if they can, why, when these were living faithfully and piously, God did not then snatch them from the perils of this life, “lest wickedness should change their understanding, and lest deceit should beguile their souls”?
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints 1.26
… Yet he argues most copiously and well that the risks of sinning are not wanting in this life, and that they do not continue after this life is done; where also he adduces that testimony from the book of Wisdom: “He was taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Expositions on the Book of Psalms 86.7
… be glad, because his prayer was not heard against thee. But thou sayest, I did not ask for this; I asked not for the death of my enemy, but for the life of my child; what ill did I ask? Thou askedst no ill, as thou didst think. What if “he was taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding.”
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St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 54.2
2. I say nothing of Paula and Eustochium, the fairest flowers of your stock; for, as my object is to exhort you, I do not wish it to appear that I am praising them. Blæsilla too I pass over who following her husband—your brother—to the grave, fulfilled in a short time of life a long time of virtue.
St Jerome † AD 420 The Letters of St. Jerome 79.6
… “All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” The dust has returned to the dust. He has fallen asleep in the Lord and has been laid with his fathers, full of days and of light and fostered in a good old age. For “wisdom is the grey hair unto men.” “In a short time he” has “fulfilled a long time.”
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St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 10.10
… In considering their consciences, and all the wounds of their souls, in what respect could they dare to say, We are unjustly condemned. Of whom it was said before in Wisdom, “Their own iniquities shall convince them to their face.”
St Augustine of Hippo † AD 430 Expositions on the Book of Psalms 86.22
… because none of us liveth without being ashamed, unless he first be ashamed and live anew. Now God grants them the approach of a healthy shame, if they despise not the medicine of confession: but if they will not now be ashamed, then they shall be ashamed, when “their iniquities shall convince them to their face.”
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the preceding verse, last: therefore it signifies all those begotten, or born) WITH GLORY! — In Greek, "better is childlessness with virtue," that is, better is the state of being without children or the lack of children with virtue; it is better to be without offspring, that is without children, and endowed with virtue, namely than to have children from adultery, bastard and wicked children, as preceded; whence St. Ambrose, book I On Virginity, reads, better is sterility with virtue; St. Jerome in Hosea chapter IX, it is better not to have children with virtue; St. Cyprian, book On the Singularity of Clerics, it is better to be without children with glory; the Syriac, it is better to be without children with glory; the Arabic, a noble thing is the privation of children with virtue. "Integrity," says Blessed Peter Chrysologus, sermon 146, "is a heavenly fellowship; virginity joined to Christ is a bond of virtue." Virgins therefore are earthly angels and heavenly humans, and therefore brides of Christ. Our author seems to have read for "childlessness" "chaste generation," or of chastity, or of the chaste generation, although indeed this compound word is not much in use among the Greeks, yet the simple words from which it is composed are customary: for the author of this book coins many words and compounds them anew. Indeed it seems our author had a different Greek exemplar diverse from the modern ones, for the modern ones do not have the exclamation O, nor "how beautiful." Or rather our author wisely understood by the lack of children, not mere lack and sterility: for this is not beautiful, but rather deformed; he therefore prudently observed sterility flowing from virtue, namely from beautiful chastity, flowing forth; whence he translated, O how beautiful is a chaste generation, that is, a nation, as if to say O how beautiful are chaste people! O how beautiful is chastity and the assembly, whether they be spouses, or celibates and virgins! For the Wise Man here by antithesis opposes and prefers the chaste sterile to adulterers abounding in offspring: for the chaste with virtue, that is from virtue, namely from love of chastity, whether conjugal or virginal, prefer to be without children rather than to lose virginity, or to pollute themselves with adultery, even if they could hope for offspring from it: for their virtue, namely chastity and virginity, is clearer and more illustrious than all the praise and glory they could hope for from children. The sense therefore is, as if to say, It is better, that is more excellent, more praiseworthy and more glorious to lack children, if you lack them from virtue, namely for love of chastity, by which you do not wish to be adulterated or to lose virginity, than to have abundant bastard and wicked offspring: thus St. Ambrose, book I On Virginity, where applying this saying to virgins, thus seems to explain it, as if to say, Better is sterility, that is better is virginity: For indeed in that age of the old law, on account of the expectation of the Messiah, whom each person from his own line desired to be born, sterility was a reproach, and was considered a curse and infamy; but fruitfulness was esteemed a blessing and glory; hence many who had sterile wives, so that they could not raise sons from them, turned aside to others, even foreign women and idolaters, so that they might procreate offspring from them. This Wise Man here refutes the foolishness and perversity of these men, and teaches that chastity of any kind whatsoever, even barren and childless, is far superior to any fruitfulness and offspring, especially spurious, adulterous and wicked offspring, because chastity is a virtue and that an excellent one, whereas adulterous fruitfulness is a great vice and crime; whence the Egyptians denoted modesty and purity hieroglyphically through fire and water, because by these elements all lustration and expiation is made, as Horus Apollo says, book II of Hieroglyphics, chapter XLI. Now as much as chastity illuminates and as it were silvered a person, so much does lust defile and deform: for as glorious as purity is, so shameful is impurity, which makes of men swine and pigs, as St. Basil teaches in Psalm I. The sense therefore is, as if to say, A son or daughter is beautiful in face, but one who is chaste and a virgin is more beautiful in virtue: a daughter is fair in countenance, but often indecorous and immodest in mind; a virgin however is both fair in countenance, and far more fair in virginal purity of mind. A beautiful father often begets a beautiful son like himself, according to that saying of Virgil, in the sixth book of the Aeneid: "Fairest offspring of the Teucri." And in book VII: "Born of fair Hercules." And in book IV: "Than whom no other fairer was of the Aeneadae." But this beauty of body is often disfigured by the deformity of lust: for "there is strife when great beauty is with modesty," as it disfigured the daughters of the Emperor Augustus, concerning whom Suetonius in his Life says: "Whose good fortune, he says, his daughters, granddaughters and grandsons made unhappy; so much so that he himself was accustomed to proclaim at the mention of them that it would be useful to remain without marriage, and to die without children; and also to call them his ulcers and cancers." For which reason Euripides said that one lacking children, that is, ἄτεκνον, is happy in misfortune. Reuben, Genesis XLIX, 3, is called the beginning, or the chief and head of his father's sorrow, because he was the violator of his father's bed. Hear Tertullian, in the book On the Good of Modesty, chapter 1: "Modesty, he says, is the flower of morals, the honor of bodies, the ornament of sexes, the integrity of blood, the faithfulness of lineage, the foundation of holiness, the prejudgment of every good mind; although rare, and scarcely perfectly achieved, and hardly perpetual, yet it will remain in the world in some measure, if nature has prepared it, if discipline has persuaded it, if censure has restrained it." Following Tertullian as his master, in his manner St. Cyprian, in the book On the Good of Modesty: "Modesty, he says, is the honor of bodies, the ornament of morals, the holiness of sexes, the bond of shame, the fountain of chastity, the peace of the home, the head of concord, etc. Modesty seeks nothing of ornaments; it is its own adornment. This commends us to the Lord, connects us to Christ: this conquers all illicit battles of desires from our members, brings peace to our bodies: blessed in itself, and making blessed." And a little later he gives these epithets to immodesty: "The hostile rage of desires, the burning of a good conscience, the mother of impenitence, the ruin of a better age, the dishonor of lineage, assailing the faith of blood and family, inserting its own sons into alien affections, bringing offspring of unknown and corrupt lineage into alien wills." St. Gregory of Tours, in the book On the Glory of Confessors, chapter CVI, relates that he was called to the funeral rites of St. Radegund then deceased, and says of her: "The holy face of Radegund shone from the bier so that it surpassed the beauty of lilies and roses;"; and in chapter LI, he relates of St. Severus the presbyter a lily offered by him to the temple, when it had already been dry throughout the whole year; yet when the anniversary day of his passing returned in spring, it was accustomed to grow green again and to flower anew each year. Moreover, since chastity is threefold, namely conjugal, widowed, and virginal, each excels in fruitfulness and in legitimate children: for conjugal chastity is beautiful, widowed chastity more beautiful, virginal chastity most beautiful: concerning conjugal chastity Lyran and Holcot take this meaning, others concerning virginal, as St. Cyprian (or rather Origen, as Pamelius judges) in the tract On Individual Clerics, St. Ambrose, book I On Virgins, St. Bernard, epistle 42, Peter of Blois, epistle 36; indeed the Church in the Office of Holy Virgins: thus also Cantacuzenus and other interpreters here. Hence St. Aldhelm, book I On Virgins, relates that an angel distinguished the threefold chastity, namely virginal, widowed and conjugal, by these degrees, "so that virginity is gold, chastity silver, conjugal union bronze; so that virginity is wealth, chastity mediocrity, conjugal union poverty; so that virginity is peace, chastity redemption, conjugal union captivity; so that virginity is sun, chastity lamp, conjugal union darkness; so that virginity is day, chastity dawn, conjugal union night; so that virginity is queen, chastity mistress, conjugal union handmaid; so that virginity is homeland, chastity harbor, conjugal union sea; so that virginity is man, chastity half-living, conjugal union body; so that virginity is purple, chastity dyed cloth, conjugal union wool." Cyril represents this meaning graphically with a remarkable parable of the rose, lily and fig tree, book IV of Moral Apologies, chapter VIII: "The rose, he says, and the lily grew up beside the fig tree; when they had spread forth their blooming leaves shining with brightness, and pouring forth the dew of sweetness, and exhaling the fragrance of aromatic odor, and that one, bereft of the light of the flower, had likewise sprouted into a bitter fruit, itching with the milk of envy, soon brought forth an invective, saying: After such a pleasant blooming radiance, where is your fruit? For it is vain to bloom without fruit. Indeed, wise nature binds fruit in the flower, and on account of the very flowering flower germinates. But he, soon scenting the root of eloquence, said in peaceful reason: We well know that on account of the itch of generation you have lost the glory of the flower, and therefore you are now stripped of leaves, while you speak thus. Surely you bear the sweetest fruit, but nevertheless you suffer in the root an itch, by which you sent forth the flower. But for us from the full purity and sweetness of substance, the flower itself is the fruit; whence in us the flower and fruit are in no way distinguished, since with the overflowing flower of purity, and the moisture of fragrant sublimity in us that very thing has become flower and fruit. Is not the purest vapor of the earth wholly crystallized into flowering gold, and the sweetest dew of heaven, with virginity flourishing, congealed into a pearl? Therefore the rose, and the lily, and the fruit-bearing flowers, and the flowering fruits are." Then, adding many things in praise of virginity, he compares it to the lily, rose, magnet, sapphire, emerald: "The fruit, he says, is most sweet, the beauty most excellent, the odor most pleasant, the value entire: namely it itself is the most brilliant gem of nature and virtue, supreme temperance, perfect victory, spirit above the bud, all glory. As therefore the fragrant rose, and the shining lily is holy virginity, flower and fruit; to whose fragrance the unicorn attracted runs sweetly, by whose sweetness its ferocity is tamed, by whose purity its most powerful strength delighted, as if conquered in the bright lap of virginity, reverentially lies down recumbent. O magnetic virtue of virginity, drawing nature to yourself! O wonderful sapphire of chastity, putting to flight and destroying all poisonous reputation! O shining emerald of perpetual verdure, lover of the purity of inviolate integrity, tolerating in no way the foul corruption of Venus! At these things the fig tree, stupefied, fell silent." Do you wish a specimen and mirror of the beauty of holy virginity? St. Pulcheria Augusta, daughter of the Emperor Arcadius, was a perpetual and glorious virgin, inasmuch as she educated Theodosius the emperor, her younger brother, in piety and every virtue for the governance of the realm, and when he died, succeeding him in the empire, she married Marcian, and made him Augustus, so that he might administer the kingdom with greater authority; but she preserved the virginity which she had previously vowed to God in matrimony, and devoted herself entirely to protecting the faith and to extirpating the heresy of Eutyches. Wherefore the entire Council of Chalcedon acclaimed her: "New Helena, bulwark of the Orthodox, and glory of the Churches." Finally, what is rare in emperors, by her chastity, justice and sanctity she merited to be inscribed in the catalogue of Saints on the 10th of September. Such also was St. Cunegundis, who preserved chastity equally with Henry the emperor her husband, and in testimony thereof walked unharmed with bare feet upon glowing iron, and after her husband's death, entering the monastery founded by herself, professing as a nun, she spent fifteen years in marvelous humility, abstinence and penance; wherefore she is read to have been inscribed in the calendar of saints on the 3rd of March. Truly in such a pinnacle of empire, chastity shines forth to the whole world as it were more brightly than the sun. St. Elzearius, count of Ariano, with his spouse Delphina preserved untouched virginity: wherefore the blessed Mablina, illustrious in nobility and piety, saw in spirit a holy youth splendidly clothed, bearing through a broad plain in his hands a white and brilliant standard, whose elegance and splendor illuminated all the air and that plain; and there followed him an innumerable multitude of men of every age, sex and order. And when she sought from God the explanation of this vision, she heard: "This is the virginity and holiness of Elzearius, whom the whole world shall venerate, and many shall follow him:" thus his Life has it with Surius, chapter XVI, on the 17th of September. Most excellently St. Ignatius, epistle 13 to Heron: "Virgins, he says, preserve as precious jewels of Christ;" and St. Cyprian, in the book On the Attire of Virgins: "That is the flower of the ecclesiastical seed, the ornament and adornment of spiritual grace, the joyful nature of praise and honor, a work whole and incorrupt, the image of God answering to the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious portion of Christ's flock. The Church rejoices through them, and in them the glorious fruitfulness of the mother Church flourishes abundantly, and the more that abundant virginity adds to its number, the more does the joy of the mother increase." Thus the virginity of the Vestals was a matter of admiration to the Romans, although that was purchased, temporary, and full of pride, as St. Ambrose says against Symmachus: for as Naumachus, an illustrious but pagan poet, says: It is beautiful to have a chaste body, and to remain an untouched Virgin, and always to delight in pure thoughts, etc. To remain as it were a queen of weak women, Raising a splendid eye to that life, In which glorious and true are the nuptials, where mingled with Divine words, it brings forth meditations full of light. Inflamed by these praises of virginity, St. Casimir, son of the king of Poland, loved it so greatly that, although physicians asserted he could not be freed from the disease from which he suffered unless he took a wife, and his father and the nobles of the realm urged him to do so, he nevertheless answered steadfastly: "I prefer to die a virgin than to live not a virgin." He spoke, and he did it, and therefore as a victim of virginity, he was inscribed by the Church in the roll of holy virgins on the 4th of March. He was therefore himself as it were an ermine, which when surrounded by hunters with a yellow rampart, prefers to be captured and to die rather than to go forth and be defiled; whence his citizens the Lithuanians gave him this anagram: "Casimir, I am and iris," namely into which the Sun of Justice radiating forth breathed upon him his splendor of chastity. And this epitaph: Willingly thou fallest, yet for love thou fallest, Casimir, of modesty. Wondrous, with Christ making thee wondrous, thou fallest. Among the first fathers of our Society was Father James Ledesma, a distinguished theologian and conspicuous for religious sanctity of morals. To him at the beginning of his vocation, as he was troubled about perpetuating chastity, the Blessed Virgin appeared at Brescia brighter than the sun, accompanied by St. Mary Magdalene, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Catherine of Siena, and promised him the gift of chastity throughout his whole life: and when she returned to heaven, the three companions already mentioned sweetly sang this song: "O how great is the gift of chastity, which God bestows upon piety!" thus our Father Francis Sacchinus relates it, part II of the History of the Society of Jesus, book I, number 63. Read the Life of St. Julian and Basilissa, spouses but virgins, and thou shalt find marvelous things on this matter: it is extant with Surius, on the 9th of January. See St. Athanasius, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Basil On the Praise of Virgins, and Climacus, step 15, and Cassian, conference XII. Symbolically, how beautiful is the generation of Christ, both eternal and divine, and temporal and human! for both are chaste and virginal, because the eternal was made without a mother, the human without a father from the Holy Spirit; whence Christ in heaven is ἀμήτωρ, that is lacking a mother; on earth however ἀπάτωρ, that is lacking a father. Both alike are bright, nay most bright; whence of the former it is said, Psalm CIX: "With thee is the beginning in the day of thy power in the brightness of the saints, from the womb before the day-star I begot thee." Thus the Angel of Peace, Exposition on the Symbol, chapter XIV. With glory. — In Greek with virtue, among which because charity excels, hence St. Bernard and Peter of Blois, epistle 36, read with charity: hear St. Bernard, epistle 42 to Henry: "Chastity without charity is a lamp without oil; take away the oil, the lamp does not shine; remove charity, chastity does not please. But, O how beautiful it is (as the Wise Man cries out, Wisdom IV, 1) a chaste generation with charity! with that, I say, charity, which the Apostle describes, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned." Our translator renders it with glory, because the Greek ἀρετή, and the Latin virtus, often signify strength, power, excellence, superiority, renown, glory; whence that line of Virgil: Then shame inflames his strength, and conscious virtue. Therefore τὸ with glory can be taken first, so that it is the same as the Greek with virtue, for virtue alone begets praise and glory; whence by poets virtue is often called praise, as I have shown elsewhere. Second and genuinely, τὸ with glory is the same as clear, to be joined with τὸ how beautiful, as if to say: O how beautiful and clear is a chaste generation, or nation! for chastity is accustomed to associate with itself the other virtues; it therefore has the praise, beauty, glory and splendor of other virtues, because it is ἀρετή, that is strength and martial fortitude, which surpasses all things, and triumphs victorious over all desires: which indeed is its great glory and splendor. Mystically, Lyra understands glory as the clarity of conscience, which is given to the just, especially to the chaste: wherefore experience confirms that chastity is the mother of wisdom, and causes the conscience to be resplendent with wonderful charity equally as the intellect and mind. Furthermore, the Greek ἀρετή, that is virtue, indicates that chastity requires great strength and military power, and as it were martial: for ἀρετή is said to be from Ἄρης, that is Mars; virgins therefore are as it were Marses, who continually fight a hard and difficult battle for chastity: thus also virtue is said from vis (force), and from vir (man), as if virile, for chastity makes women into virago-like men, and as it were men, and with virile force resists all temptations of the world, flesh and devil. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Sons, supporting their parents, are to them for beauty and strength, and thence for glory and honor; but greater is the beauty, strength and glory of chastity and virginity, which it communicates to the chaste, so that on account of these three gifts it may be celebrated and glorious, and may make the chaste glorious before God, equally as before angels and all men. This is what Ecclesiasticus says, cap. XLIV, verse 14: "The name of them (of the just, especially of heroes, such as virgins and martyrs) liveth unto generation and generation. Let people declare the wisdom of them, and let the church shew forth their praise;" and cap. XLIX: "The memory of Josias is made like the composition of a sweet smell made by the art of the perfumer; his memory shall be sweet as honey in every mouth, and as music at a banquet of wine;" and the Psalmist, Psalm CXI, 7: "The just shall be in everlasting remembrance." AND AMONG MEN, — both the good and chaste, and the wicked and unchaste, who admire and marvel at virgins and a chaste life, as angelic and divine, which surpasses and transcends the powers of themselves and all nature, as St. Ambrose teaches, book II On Virgins, and St. Basil, On Virginity. Symbolically our Alvarez de Paz, book IV On the Dignity of Perfection, part III, chapter XXXVII, expounds this entire passage concerning the just and holy thus: A chaste generation, he says, is nothing other than a multitude of the just, which is beautiful in mind, because it shines with the beauty of grace; and chaste in body, because it gleams with the splendor of propriety; and clear with the light of wisdom, because it is resplendent with knowledge of heavenly things: whose memory neither perishes before God nor before men; not before God, because He always has the saints with Him, and never departs from His purpose of glorifying them; not before men, because they do not abandon the celebrated memory of those whom they always acknowledge as their patrons before God and mediators, so much so that, because the Church cannot celebrate the feasts of all the saints individually (for they are innumerable), nor can it know all the perfect and just by name, or have special remembrance of them, it has instituted most solemn festival days each year, on which (God commanding) it honors the choirs of all the saints, and brings them to the remembrance of the faithful. It also invokes all of them frequently, when in public supplications it sings: "All holy men and women of God, intercede for us."
FOR HER MEMORY IS IMMORTAL: BECAUSE IT IS KNOWN BOTH WITH GOD, AND WITH MEN, — which therefore no lapse of time, no change of circumstances, no succession of ages will blot out with oblivion; but her memory and glory will flourish eternally as long as the eternity of God and angels and all men shall endure. He proves the beauty and brightness of a chaste generation, or nation and people, from the fact that its memory is immortal and its glory eternal both with God and men, which he therefore sets in opposition to and prefers before the fleeting and perishable propagation of children, whose memory and fame lasts for a short time only, and perishes with them. Therefore those err who seek immortality through children, and strive to make their name and lineage eternal, when true immortality should be sought from virtue and chastity: for these have eternal praise and glory both with God and men. A generation perpetuates the corruptible species, since individuals cannot be perpetuated, as Aristotle testifies in the De Generatione; but the memory of the just and chaste, indeed their very soul, and its happiness and glory, is perpetuated in that individual himself. The Greek texts have it more significantly, ἀθανασία γάρ ἐστιν ἐν μνήμῃ αὐτῆς, that is, immortality indeed is in her memory, namely of virtue, which preceded, virtue, I say, by which one prefers to be barren and without children, from love of virginity or conjugal chastity, rather than to beget children from strangers or foreigners: Finally St. Cyprian (or Origen, as some wish), in the treatise On Singular Clerics, a little before the end, cites this entire passage, and from it proves that clerics and those devoted to chastity cannot dwell with women: for thus he says: "It is better to be without children with glory; there is no being without children with glory, except through solitude alone, which not only does one's conscience keep unspotted by any stains, but also no suspicious opinions of impropriety disgrace: for if chastity, which is difficult, preserves male and female equally in virginity, it does not have glory, because the community itself cannot but obscure it with certain shadows of reproach; but solitude is so clear and manifest to all, that by the splendor of its purity it shows itself pure and bright to all."
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— St. Cyprian reads, when it has withdrawn itself, namely when through martyrdom or death of the chaste or virgins, chastity or virginity has withdrawn itself with them into heaven: in Greek it is, they desire the one departing, and therefore the absent one: the sense is, as if to say, Chastity is so beautiful that, when it shows itself present in the chaste, it draws many to love and imitation of it; but when it is absent, it sharpens the desire for it: for good things present we often despise, absent we desire and earnestly seek, according to that saying of Horace, III Carm. Ode 24: We hate virtue unharmed, We seek it enviously when taken from our sight; and that: "Presence diminishes fame." But to upright men chastity when present is admirable and imitable; when absent, however, it is desirable. An example is in St. Augustine, who, bound to his concubine, freed himself from her through the examples of holy virgins. Hear him, lib. VIII Confess. XI: "There was opening," he says, "from that side toward which I had turned my face, and where I trembled to pass, the chaste dignity of continence, serene and not dissolutely cheerful, honestly alluring, that I should come, and not doubt, and extending toward me to receive and embrace me, pious hands, full of multitudes of good examples. There so many boys and girls; there much youth, and every age, and grave widows, and aged virgins, and in all of them continence itself not barren, but a fruitful mother of children of joy from a husband, you, O Lord. And she mocked me with a mocking exhortation, as if to say: Can you not do what these men and women do? or can these and those do it in themselves, and not in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand, and not stand? Cast yourself upon him, do not fear, he will not withdraw himself so that you fall. Cast yourself, secure he will receive you, and will save you. And I blushed exceedingly." Wherefore St. Basil, in the homily On St. Gordius the Martyr, says: "When in the holy volumes we hear of the life of Moses, the gentleness of his character, greatly desired by our nature, we immediately emulate it. When we hear or read of Joseph, we greatly desire to attain his chastity. But if the history of Samson is related, we are kindled to imitate his strength."
AND CROWNED FOREVER TRIUMPHS, WINNING THE PRIZE OF UNDEFILED CONTESTS. — In Greek it is, — In Greek it is, ἀμιάντων ἄθλων ἀγῶνα νικήσασα, that is, winning the contest of unfading or incorruptible contests, or prizes (for ἄθλων, if derived from the masculine ἄθλος, means the same as contests; but if from the neuter ἄθλον, means the same as prizes, which contests merit) the agon, as if to say: Chastity, and especially virginity, because it generously conquers the hard agon of contests and temptations of lust, to which great and unfading rewards are proposed by God, hence crowned with a crown of glory and the laurel or aureole of virginity, it triumphs in the heavens. Hence St. Cyprian reads, winning the battle of undefiled contests; where note that undefiled contests can be understood as unpolluted, which namely, with temptations of lust, polluting the bodies and minds of many, so that scarcely anyone escapes them, are so received and overcome by the chaste that they themselves remain entirely untouched and undefiled by them. But if you translate it, of undefiled prizes, by these understand the unfading crown of glory proposed by God to the chaste, which never fades, is never polluted, defiled or stained by any sorrow, pain or fear. Peter Faber adds, in book II of the Agonist, chapter XII, and book III, chapter IV, that the contests of holy virgins dedicated to God are called uncontaminated, so as to distinguish them from the contaminated contests which are celebrated by the gentiles in honor of gods, that is, demons. It could also be explained by hypallage thus: "Winning the prize of undefiled contests" or "battles," that is, winning the contest or battle of undefiled prizes: thus in Psalm XVIII, 6, it is said: "In the sun he set his tabernacle," for, in his tabernacle he set the sun; and in Psalm XXXII, 7: "Laying up the abysses in treasures," for, laying up treasures in the abysses. Thus elsewhere it is said: "He sent the city into fire," for, he sent fire into the city; and: "You shall have shoes on your feet," for, you shall have feet in shoes, or shod, Exodus XII. However you translate and explain it, the sense will always return to the same thing. Concerning the crown or aureole of virginity, see St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure and the other scholastics in IV, distinction 33. Our translator, for ἀγῶνα, that is, battle, rendered it, prize, by metonymy, because in a contest the agonothete proposed a prize to the victor of the contest or battle in place of a reward, as if to say: The chaste and virgin, winning the battle in so perilous an agon of temptations of the flesh, carries off the prize, namely the crown of glory, with which he triumphs forever. Hear St. Ambrose celebrating the glorious crowns and triumphs of virgins, and therefore of martyrs, in book III, epistle 25 to the Church of Vercelli, toward the end: "Among us," he says, "even maidens, sublime in their contempt of death, have raised the steps of virtues even to heaven. Why should I speak of Thecla, of Agnes, of Pelagia, who, like noble saplings sprouting forth, hastened to death as to immortality? Among lions the virgin exulted, and awaited the raging beasts intrepidly. And, that we may compare our deeds with the Indian gymnosophists, what that one gloried in with words, St. Lawrence proved by deeds, so that while burning alive, he said to the flames: Turn, eat. Not unworthy of the Abrahamides and the Maccabees, he contended with the boys, of whom some sang over the flames, others while burning did not ask that mercy be shown, but urged that the persecutor be inflamed all the more. Therefore a wise book." He then adds the rare fortitude of St. Pelagia: "But what is more sublime than St. Pelagia, who, surrounded by persecutors, before she came into their sight, said: I die willingly, no one shall touch me with his hand, no one with a wanton eye shall violate the virgin! I shall carry with me modesty, I shall carry with me unharmed shame; no plunderers shall gain profit from their insolence: Pelagia shall follow Christ, no one shall take away freedom, no one shall see the captive free faith, and remarkable chastity and lineage of prudence. What is servile shall remain here, owed to no uses." She said and did it: for before she was seized by the satellites, throwing herself down from on high, the virgin and martyr flew away to heaven, as the same St. Ambrose relates in book III On Virgins, St. Chrysostom and others. Hear also the triumphs of St. Victoria, virgin and martyr: for St. Anatolia urged her to preserve virginity with these words: "O Victoria, conquer the devil, and be a true victory! I on the day when are shown:" St. Basil has similar things in his work On Sacred Virginity. Moreover, that virgins were accustomed to be crowned by the gentiles with a flowery crown or with pine branches (for the pine is a symbol of virginity) is taught by Charles Paschasius, book II On Crowns, chapter XV, and book VI, chapter XXVIII. Finally, a threefold crown is owed to virgins: the first, of virginity; the second, nuptial, because they are married to God: for formerly virgins, when they were married, were crowned; the third, athletic, because like athletes they undergo and overcome a difficult and hard struggle against lust; hence almost all peoples crown virgins with roses and flowers when they die: for a virgin is the subduer of lust, the vanquisher of demons, the victor over passions and senses. To which in all respects that excellent praise of Maccabees applies, I Maccabees III, 4: "He became like a lion in his deeds, and like a lion's whelp roaring in the hunt. And he pursued the wicked, searching them out: and those who troubled his people he burned with flames: and his enemies were put to flight, and all the workers of iniquity were troubled; and salvation was directed in his hand."
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— It is an antithesis, that is to say: The pious and chaste by their virtue and chastity bring forth for themselves eternal crowns and triumphs; but the multitude of the impious, even if very great, is useless, indeed harmful to themselves and their neighbors by their impiety: for they bring upon themselves the fires and torments of hell. You will say: Why therefore does God create men whom He knows will be impious, and why does He tolerate them? I answer, first, so that in them He may show His avenging justice, just as in the pious He shows His mercy through grace and glory, which He bestows upon them, as the Apostle teaches in Romans IX; and so that through justice exercised upon the impious, the pious may better recognize the mercy shown to them, and give greater thanks to God. Second, so that through the impious the pious may be exercised, purified and perfected: thus Cain exercised Abel, Ishmael Isaac, Esau Jacob, Pharaoh Moses, Saul David, Haman Mordecai, etc. Hear St. Augustine, sermon 52 on the Gospel of St. John: "Clearly," he says, "you see therefore that the wicked are necessary to the good. In a certain way we are in the furnace of a goldsmith, that is, in this world. If you are not gold, you burn together; but if you are, the chaff is the wicked; if you are also in the chaff, you will be smoke together." And on those words of Psalm LI: "Thou hast made thy tongue sharp like a razor: Behold," he says, "what the wicked do to the good, they shave off hairs," that is, as he explains shortly after, the wicked will deprive of temporal goods. Third, the impious provide many services to the pious in mechanical arts, commerce, and other temporal matters in which they excel, being wholly intent on gain, manufacturing, civil order, etc.
AND SPURIOUS SHOOTS SHALL NOT GIVE DEEP ROOTS. — That is to say, Just as spurious plants do not strike deep roots, and therefore quickly wither and perish, so the bastard and impious children of adulterers and the impious quickly fail, nor do they propagate a line or family: for spurious plants are the children of those born out of wedlock and illegitimately. Whence the Syriac translator renders it, and those who are from alien seed shall not give roots in depth; the Arabic, their shoots shall not establish deep roots. Spurious shoots therefore are adulterous plantings, thus read here St. Bonaventure, Lyra, Hugo, Holcot and Dionysius: for these are signified by the Greek νόθα μοσχεύματα, that is, bastard or spurious and adulterous plants: for the word shoots is found in no lexicons or classical authors in this manner; whence St. Augustine, book II On Christian Doctrine, chapter XII: "Because," he says, "μόσχος in Greek is called a calf, some did not understand μοσχεύματα to be plantings, and interpreted them as shoots. This error so occupied many manuscripts that it is scarcely found written otherwise; and yet the meaning is most manifest, because it is made clear by the following words: for adulterous plantings shall not give deep roots is said more fittingly than shoots, which move on feet over the ground, and do not cling by roots. The other context in that place also preserves this translation." St. Augustine is followed by Jansenius, who rejects the Vulgate reading, which has shoots, as corrupted or less fitting, as do St. Bonaventure, Hugo, Vatablus, Clarius and Polydorus Virgilius in Sacred Adages, book II, adage 379. But spurious shoots are read here in all manuscripts of the Vulgate edition, which, because the Council of Trent, session IV, approved it as authentic, it is now lawful for no Catholic to reject: thus also Optatus of Milevis, book IV Against Parmenian, reads spurious shoots, and the children of adulteresses, and explains it of heretics: "Among whom," he says, "there are false unions of sacraments, and in whose beds iniquity is found, where corrupted seeds have been brought to the destruction of faith." It appears therefore that the word shoots was received in use in that age. Furthermore, spurious is called one who is born of a known mother and unknown or ignoble father; whence the ancients denoted a spurious person by S. P., as if you were to say, without a father. Spurious moreover is said from σπόρος, that is, seed, which has nothing from the father except seed: for indeed he does not succeed into the father's family, status and inheritance: thus St. Isidore, book IX Origins, chapter V, Plutarch in Questions, Sigonius On Roman Names, and others. St. Isidore adds that spurious is said as if outside purity, that is, unclean; others think spurious is said from filthy; but the former etymology is the genuine one. I say therefore that our Interpreter aptly translated shoots: first, because it is Grecizing, and imitates the Greek, who from μόσχος calls μοσχεύματα, that is from calf shoots; μοσχεύματα, that is shoots, are to the Greeks shoots, which cut from a tree are sown or planted, so that they grow into a shrub or tree; likewise tender branches, which from a tree are brought down to the ground, as a cutting or twig from an olive, a shoot from a vine: for μοσχεύω is the same as to sow by shoots cut from a tree, to plant tender branches torn from a tree, to establish nurseries or living roots. Thus St. Bonaventure says that St. Ambrose in a certain letter wrote, you are noble shoots; and it is said from the vine, which is a noble planting. Add, the root of a tree is called a bull, why not also a calf, or a shoot? Hear Quintilian, book VIII, chapter II: "Just as in those things which are called homonyms, as whether taurus is an animal, or a mountain, or a sign in the sky, or the name of a man, or the root of a tree, unless distinguished, is not understood." Thus μόσχος in Greek signifies both a calf, and a tendril, and a living root, that is a plant which is sown with a living root, as if having a living root: whence μοσχεύμα is called a shoot, a tender plant, a young branch, a vine shoot, a living root. Secondly, because vitulamen is a Latin word, and aptly signifies a wandering, wanton and, like a calf frolicking and wantonly luxuriating, a spurious luxuriance of plants, equally as of adulterers: for vitulari to the Latins is the same as to rejoice, to exult, to wanton like a calf, whence vitulamen is the very wantonness itself: thus Festus, Nonius and others. Now just as men are said to wanton and frolic metaphorically, so also plants when their branches luxuriate: for there is an analogy and similarity between the propagation of plants, beasts and men: whence just as men are said to frolic, when after the manner of calves they leap and wanton, so also plants: wherefore our Interpreter aptly called from the foolish and wanton frolicking of a calf, foolish and wantonly luxuriating plants, or shoots, vitlamina. Paulo otherwise Cervantius: The word vitlamina, he says, signifies degenerating, unfruitful, foolish, and luxuriating plants, which are wont to be born at the trunk of the vine, from which they take their name, and harm vines, and are brought forth as fodder for calves from the earth ploughed by calves, or oxen: thus impious ignoble, degenerate, sterile, foolish and weak men in adversities are such that they succumb to them easily: and to Christ the Lord, "the true vine, John XV, and its branches," or the Church, the vineyard most pleasing, most beautiful and most precious to God, they love and burn to bring harm with all their might; but they will not long flourish, nor will they mature, so as to correspond to their nature; certain punishments await these plants, Isaiah V; Jeremiah XII; Ezekiel XV. So also others derive vitlamina not from vitulus, but from vitis; but thus they ought rather to be called vitilamina, as vitiligo is said, not vitlamina, unless you say vitlamina alludes equally to vitulus as to vitis. But why are vitlamina, that is plants, or branches, called spurious, which do not strike deep roots? Resp. first: Spurious herbs and plants are those which degenerate from genuine ones, likewise false ones, which have the appearance of genuine ones, but not their power and nature: thus the olive in sterile soil becomes wild, and degenerates into wild olive; spurious therefore is the branch of wild olive, if it be grafted into the olive, either it does not coalesce with it, nor grows, or certainly it does not take on nor imbibe the nature and goodness of the olive; whence Theophrastus, lib. I On the Causes of Plants, cap. VII, says that cultivated trees ought to be grafted by inoculation onto wild ones, but not wild ones onto cultivated ones, namely that the olive ought to be grafted onto wild olive, not wild olive onto olive: "For which reason, he says, it is sufficient to graft or inoculate afterwards onto wild olives: for they coalesce and take hold more vigorously, and the root drawing more nourishment causes the tree to bear fruit well: for if on the contrary you sow wild in cultivated, although there will be some difference, yet a tree of good fruit is never truly produced." Secondly, by spurious vitlamina, that is spurious plants and shoots, can be understood the manifold and dense branches, which a tree, or vine luxuriating in moisture produces at its roots, but then, the moisture and sap failing, is unable to nourish them; whence it kills them by its own shade. Hear Pliny, lib. XVII, cap. X: "Nature and nurseries have shown that from the roots of many, a dense offspring sprouts forth, and the bearing mother, which it kills: for indeed its shade presses down the confused multitude, as in laurels, pomegranates, planes, cherries, plums. Few in this kind spare branches for offspring, as elms and palms; but such shoots do not come forth from any, except those whose roots, from love of sun and rain, spread out on the surface of the earth. It is not the custom to place all these immediately in their place, but first to give them to a nurse, and to grow them in nurseries, and then to move them again. This transition in a wonderful way even tames wild ones: whether also the nature of trees, like that of men, is desirous of novelty and travel; or whether those departing leave behind their poison, and become tame through handling (or become wild), while the plant is torn from the root." Pliny calls shoots the tender branches, which are soft and delicate, like young birds and girls: in a similar way luxurious and adulterous men generate a great offspring of spurious ones, but on account of their strength exhausted by lust a weak and infirm one, which they then nourish with difficulty and neglect; whence all that easily fails and dies, and scarcely leaves behind a long-lived offspring. Third, plants degenerate from their native goodness and nature, and become spurious, if they are transferred and transplanted to another place dissimilar to the former, or less suitable to them, and then they easily wither away: hear Columella, lib. III, cap. V: "Cuttings deposited in strong soil, although they take hold and shoot forth quickly, nevertheless since they have become living-rooted before they are transferred, they dry up again, nor can they grow;" and more clearly cap. IX: "It matters greatly that in transferring seeds we observe a similar condition of sky and place, and the very habit of the vine itself: for very often a shoot degenerates, if either the situation of the field or the quality of the air is opposed to it, or even if it is brought from a tree to a yoke. Therefore we shall transfer from cold to cold, from warm to similar, from vineyards to vineyards." Fourth, spurious plants are those which, eroded by worms or eaten away by decay, or struck by rust or some other defect, have lost their vigor, and therefore wither and rot. Such are the dull branches, stolons, such as a cutting, or a small stake from an olive, a shoot from a vine, which therefore cannot be planted so as to take root and sprout. Fifth and best of all, spurious plants and branches are those which are born grafted onto the branches of another species with seed injected, which because they cannot strike deep roots in those, cannot grow from there, but quickly wither: thus Theophrastus, lib. De Causis plantarum, cap. XXXIII, relates that a terebinth was seen to grow in an olive, and polypodium in trees, and a laurel in a plane tree and oak, and he adds the cause: "For when, he says, seed falls into a part of the tree almost converted to earth by decay, it sprouts and lives, drawing nourishment from the tree beneath it;" but because that is scanty, hence it lives and grows equally scantily. Again, there are certain plants which by their nature are born grafted only onto the branches of another tree, which if you tear them away from those and plant them so that they become living-rooted, they wither and die. Such is mistletoe, which is a shrub, from which mistletoe, or birdlime, is made: for this shrub, adhering to the branches of certain trees, remaining green through winter, bearing berries in autumn, by which thrushes, blackbirds, and wood pigeons feed. It is born in oaks, apples, pears, lindens, birches, willows, medlars, quinces and other trees. If it is sown in earth, it does not come forth; it is the companion of the tree alone, nor is it born except from seed returned through the belly of some bird. It is said, says Athenaeus, lib. IX, if a bird has eaten the seed of mistletoe, wherever it has relieved its belly upon any tree, mistletoe is born. Whence Virgil, VI Aeneid.: "As mistletoe is wont to grow green in the woods with winter's cold, with new foliage, which the tree itself does not sow, and to encircle the smooth branches with saffron fruit." Theophrastus teaches the same, lib. II De Causis plantarum, cap. XXIII and XXIV: "Hyphear, he says, and stelis are born in fir and pine, mistletoe in oak, terebinth," etc.; and cap. XXV, he teaches that certain plants need others upon which to lean, and therefore are born grafted to them, such as smilax, thyme, ivy, which therefore if separated, cannot subsist by themselves, but wither. And Pliny, lib. XVI, cap. XLIV: "Certain things, he says, cannot be produced in earth, and are born in trees: for since they do not have their own seat, they live in another's, as mistletoe does." Such properly are adulterers, who beget bastard sons from another's wife, as it were spurious shoots, which therefore do not strike roots in this earth of generation and lineage. Pliny adds: "And in Syria there is an herb, which is called cadytas, winding itself not only around trees, but even around thorns themselves: likewise around Tempe in Thessaly, which is called polypodion, and which dolichos, and thyme, and also to the wild olive (cut off, pruned) which they call phaunos; and that which is in the fuller's thorn, hypophaeston, with empty calyces, small leaves, white root, whose juice is held to be most useful for reductions in the falling sickness. Three kinds of mistletoe: for in fir and larch stelin Euboea is said to produce, hyphear Arcadia; but mistletoe in oak, robur, ilex, wild plum, terebinth, and not in other trees, most say. Most abundant in oak, which they call dryos hyphear. In every tree, oak and ilex excepted, he makes a distinction by smell and poison; and the leaf not of pleasant smell in both, in mistletoe bitter and sticky." And these are the bitter fruits which the Wise Man here adds, saying: "And their fruit is useless, and harsh to eat." Pliny concludes concerning mistletoe: "Altogether, when sown, it is born in no way, nor except through the belly of birds returned, especially doves and thrushes. This is the nature, that unless ripened in the belly of birds it does not come forth." Just as therefore fungi and mistletoe are born upon another tree unnaturally, and do not allow themselves to be torn from it; but if you tear them away and plant them, they do not take root, nay rather they die and wither, and their fruit is insipid and bitter: so entirely the impious and adulterous offspring of the impious and adulterous are born only in adultery, as it were in foreign soil; hence by itself it is not vital, nor is it able by itself to subsist, or to propagate its stock, and to found its own family, but it withers and perishes; and their fruit also is bitter and harsh, as I shall soon show. Let Augustus Caesar be an example, who, given over to lusts and debaucheries, left offspring only like himself, namely two Julias, his daughter namely, and from her a granddaughter, both luxurious to his shame, and in them his line was extinguished. The same happened to Julius Caesar, to C. Caligula, to Nero, and to other emperors devoted to adulteries and luxury, who left no offspring as heir to so great an empire. Read Suetonius and others who wrote the lives of the Caesars. St. Augustine took one son from a concubine, named Adeodatus; but death also took this boy from him, God thus providing that he might not create some infamy or hindrance to the future doctor of the Church, concerning whom he himself thus writes in Book IX of the Confessions, Chapter VI: "I confess thy gifts to thee, O Lord my God, creator of all things, and very powerful to reform our deformities: for in that boy I had nothing except the fault, etc.; thou didst quickly take his life from the earth, and I remember him more securely, fearing nothing of his childhood, nor of his adolescence, nor of manhood altogether." Thus God killed the little child born to David from adultery with Bathsheba: Theodoret seeks the reason in Book II of Kings, Question XXVI, and answers: "He would have been living as an argument of his father's crime; God therefore, caring for the pious king who was also a Prophet, did not allow him to live."
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— as if to say, Let spurious plants, that is, spurious and adulterous sons, grow and prosper for a short time, nevertheless soon they will be shaken and torn away by some wind of adversity, and as it grows they will be uprooted, especially when they see and think that they are begotten from the infamous luxury of their parents, neglected by them, and despised by others; whereby it comes to pass that they in turn also make light of their parents, and do not allow themselves to be corrected by them, but freely, equally as they themselves, indulge their own concupiscence and luxury, and thus shorten their life for themselves, and lose wealth, fame, life and soul, and that by the just vengeance of God, who utterly eradicates the impious with their seed and offspring, often in this life, and always in the future, according to that passage, Isaiah LXIV, 6: "We have all fallen as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have carried us away." Following the manner of the wise man, Sirach concerning adulterous sons thus utters an omen from God: "His sons shall not lay deep roots, and his branches shall not bring forth fruit: he shall leave behind him a curse for his memory, and his disgrace shall not be blotted out," etc., Ecclesiasticus Chapter XXIII, 35: see the sayings there.
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— He says the same thing, and emphasizes it with various other words: for from the preceding chapter, verse 16, up to this point he repeatedly urges and inculcates the baseness, infamy, sterility and brevity of life of adulterous children; whence he calls them unfinished branches, that is, which do not attain to perfection and consummation, and their fruit bitter, that is their offspring depraved and malignant: for they imitate their parents, which therefore before maturity, as if raw fruit are plucked and torn away. Again their fruit, that is their works, counsels and machinations are bitter to others, that is harmful and destructive. Τὸ confringentur signifies that they die a violent death, as being untimely, and subsequently inflicted by force. To this pertains that passage, Job XXII, 16, concerning the impious: "Who were taken away before their time, and a flood overturned their foundation." Alluding to this maxim of the Wise Man, St. Paulinus, epistle 35 to Desiderius, thus prays piously: "Then I, aroused to the vigilance of solicitude, prepared at every hour shall stand by and in the Lord's absence shall be fearful, that when He comes I may be secure; at every time, every day may Christ find me fruitful for Him, that is so that I may never appear immature to any work of His will; but if perchance in the time of wrath He should desire His peace from me, may my mind not be raw through the bitterness of wrath for concord, nor may I wait for the sun to set upon my anger, lest my life set, if evening should close the day before peace shall extinguish the fury." And he adds the reason: "And this is what He wished to be understood through the Evangelist indicating to us, that He did not seek fruit from the tree at His own time, so that at every time man may know he owes fruit to God: because the good Lord, who prepares mortal man for immortality, already in this world wishes him to put on the appearance of perpetuity, so that he may not receive fruit from time, but at every time shall be reaping for Him, with whom he will remain either in an age without time." so that virtue from Him may be poured forth into many ages. This certainly will be a kind worthy of all praise and zeal: for thus many men will become zealous, if the human race be, for in horses also and dogs, and other animals, the same reasoning applies." I have said more on this matter in Proverbs XXX, 16.
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— as if to say, Children born from unjust intercourse (which is wont to happen at night, at the time of sleep: thus in chapter VII, verse 2, the author says he was conceived by the pleasure of sleep befitting, where there is more on this matter: it is an honest periphrasis of a base thing, for through sleep he rightly denotes intercourse) are witnesses and indices of wickedness, namely of lust and adultery of parents, and they tacitly, but in fact accuse them in their interrogation, that is in inquiry or examination, as if to say, If anyone should inquire, examine, or question bastard children: Who is your father, who your mother? he will understand that they were fornicators, or adulterers, and therefore wicked and infamous. Bastard children therefore are witnesses of wickedness, that is of lust and illicit intercourse of parents: wherefore parents, who wish to consult their own reputation, hide bastard children, and send them away from themselves, and take care that they be educated in secret, for those who glory in them glory in their own baseness and infamy. Again bastards are witnesses of the wickedness of parents, because often through the corrupted seed of parents, lust, levity, anger, and other vices they contract, and openly display them: for the fruits of evil are indices of an evil tree. Hence we see not rarely that bastards are lecherous, cunning, deceitful and vicious; for which reason, equally on account of infamous birth they are barred from the priesthood and sacred things. Adulterous offspring therefore is ill-fated, and labors under infamy, which is never washed away: wherefore concerning adultery Job rightly said, chapter XXXI, verse 12: "It is a fire devouring unto perdition, and eradicating all offspring." Legitimate children therefore are more upright than bastards, because those participate in the virtue, these in the vice of parents: Aristotle gives this reason, III Politics chapter VI. The same in Stobaeus, sermon 88: "The causes," he says, "we have already stated, namely that nobility is the virtue of lineage; but virtue is a thing praiseworthy and worthy of zeal. Likewise a lineage in which many zealous and good men have been is worthy of praise and zeal; but such a lineage comes about when its beginning has been praiseworthy: for the beginning has this faculty, that it makes many things like itself. This work, this force is of the beginning, that it renders many things similar to itself. When therefore one such has been in some lineage, and so good,
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— He meets a tacit objection: for he said the impious and adulterers, and their children, as it were bitter fruits are snatched away by premature death. Someone will object that also the just, and their children, sometimes die prematurely: he meets this, and answers that their death, although with respect to nature and age it may appear premature, is nevertheless mature to them, both because it transfers them to rest and eternal glory, and because it was foreseen by them, indeed awaited and desired: wherefore death finds them prepared and expecting it, as it were a passage to a better life. (In refreshment), in Greek, in rest it will be: for in purgatory also there is rest, says Dionysius, on account of certainty concerning salvation, the suffrages of the living, and the consolation of angels. Death therefore to the just is rest, sleep, cessation from labour and pain, recreation, and therefore not premature, but itself maturity; whence from the Greek it can be translated, the just if he shall have anticipated or forestalled finishing (namely life and the labours of life; or) the just if he shall attain what he strives for (if he shall obtain his wish, if he shall arrive where he desires, namely that he may finish the labours of life), in rest it will be. The just therefore in this sense is not forestalled by death, because he himself in mind forestalls, anticipates and forestalls death: for when he rises in the morning, he has meditated upon that saying of Anthony: "Think this day will be your last;" thus therefore act, thus live, as if you were to finish your works and merits with life today; and that of St. Jerome: "Live so, as if you were dying daily, study so, as if you were always to live." Wherefore the just and wise man does not defer the good things he intends to the morrow, but executes them the same day, if he can; if he cannot, he offers to God his good will, and his purpose of executing, when it shall be permitted: for he is mindful of that saying, Ecclesiastes IX, 10: "Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly: because neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge shall be in hell, whither thou art hastening." Our Father John Maldonatus did this, the oracle of France in his age, who made examination of death four times daily: for he examined his conscience, whether there was anything in it that could create anguish or trouble for him at the hour of death, and if he found anything of that sort, he immediately removed it: wherefore he composed himself and his affairs daily, as if he were to die that day: for, as Climacus says, in step 6: "It is not possible to pass through the present day piously, unless we believe this to be the last of all our life." He passes from hypothesis to thesis, from species to genus, namely from the chaste to the just: for he who is chaste is easily also just; he who is unchaste is unjust: the reason is, first, that among the other parts and virtues of Christian justice chastity is the most difficult; whence it, in order to protect and preserve itself, needs the protection of the other virtues: wherefore he who has it ought also to have the others; he who does not have those and is therefore unjust, it is difficult, indeed impossible, that he long preserve chastity. Second, because to wisdom (of which the Wise man treats throughout this whole book), that is prudence and virtue, chastity is an inseparable companion, just as lust is a companion of folly. Third, because every upright man is chaste, every wicked man is an adulterer before God: for he violates, through disobedience and sin, the faith given to God in circumcision or baptism, or owed to be given, according to that, II Corinthians XI, 2: "I have espoused you to one husband, a virgin chaste to present to Christ:" wherefore Solomon in Proverbs, especially chapters IV, V, VI and VII, laboriously dissuades his son or disciple, whom he instructs in wisdom, from lust, as the greatest impediment to wisdom. Listen now to St. Bernard, Epistle 105 to Romanus: "For the just man indeed does not avoid death, yet he does not fear it. Finally, if he be overtaken by death, he shall be in refreshment. The just man dies indeed, but securely, for whose death, as it is the exit from the present life, so it is the entrance into a better one. A good death if thou die to sin, that thou mayest live to justice. This death must necessarily precede, that the other secure death may follow. In this life as long as it lasts, compare to thyself that which lasts forever. While thou livest in the flesh, die to the world, that after the death of the flesh thou mayest begin to live to God. For what if death shall have struck down the sack of thy body, while joy shall continually surround thee? O how blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, hearing from the Spirit, Apocalypse XIV, 13, that they may rest now from their labors. Not only this, but moreover joy succeeds from newness, and security from eternity. A good death therefore of the just on account of rest, better on account of newness, best on account of security. On the contrary the death of sinners is worst, Psalm XXXIII, 22; and hear whence it is worst. For it is evil in the loss of the world, worse in the separation of the flesh, worst in the double torment of the worm and fire. Come then, hasten, go forth, depart: let thy soul die the death of the just, that thy last things may be like unto theirs. O how precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, Psalm CXV, 16. Flee, I beseech thee, stand not in the way of sinners. How canst thou live, where thou darest not die?" Hear also St. Augustine (or whoever is the author) in the book On the Christian Life, chapter V, volume IX: "But someone will say: What is it that we see both good and evil perish together? They do not perish, but escape, as it were freed from the fellowship and persecutions of the wicked, and are transferred to rest. They truly both die and perish, whom departing from this world the punishment and penalty of a greater judgment still awaits: for the good are called before their time, lest they be vexed longer by the wicked; but the wicked or impious are taken away, lest they persecute the good any longer. The just are called from pressures, tribulations and anguishes to rest; but the wicked are snatched from luxuries, riches and delights to punishment. Those indeed go, that they may judge; these, that they may be judged. Those, that they may be avenged; these, that vengeance may be executed upon them, as it is written in Wisdom IV, 7: But the just, if he be overtaken by death, shall be in refreshment; and again, verse 8: Being taken away in the midst of sinners; and again, verse 14: For his soul pleased God, and therefore He hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities; and again: When the wicked go to death, but the just are in peace." Dost thou wish examples? Take this. Robert Holcot at this place relates that a certain learned and upright man was found dead among books, and when those arriving were struck by this event and looked upon him more carefully, they saw his finger pointed at this sentence: "The just, if he be overtaken by death, shall be in refreshment." Blessed Jordan, the successor of St. Dominic as general of the Order of Preachers, when sailing to Jerusalem, the ship being broken by a tempest and he being engulfed and suffocated by the waves, in the year of the Lord 1236, and many marveling and grieving at so sudden and sad a fall of so great a man, appeared himself in great light and marked with a cross, and said: "I have gone forth from this world to the glory of the blessed, and I have been borne up among the choirs of apostles and prophets;" and again: "Hold this firmly and doubt not, that all shall be saved who shall have served our Lord Jesus Christ even unto the end," by whatever death they shall have died. Thus it is in Leander in his Life, which is extant at Seville, volume II, on the 13th of February. Simeon Stylites (not that celebrated one of whom Theodoret and others speak, but another, of whom John Moschus in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter LVII) was struck by lightning and died, whose soul Julian the Stylite saw ascending to heaven with rejoicing and exultation. Thus St. Fulgentius, Epistle II, chapter IV, with this sentence: The just if by death, etc., consoles Galla concerning the death of her husband in the flower of his age, and adds: "By these words indeed Holy Scripture teaches us that in this age it profits faithful Christians not to have a long life, but a good one, and to know as much as is possible the merit of each deceased, we must look not at how long he lived, but how he lived: for as an evil life, the more it is prolonged temporally, the more it multiplies punishment for the offenders, so a good life, although it be terminated here in a brief time, acquires great and eternal glory for those living well." Add that the just are sometimes snatched away by swift and violent death, so that through it, as through a purgatory, certain light faults of theirs may be expiated. Thus Nadab and Abihu were consumed by sudden fire, so that their lighter defects might be consumed in this fire, Leviticus X. The same is piously believed concerning Ananias and Sapphira, struck down by sudden death by St. Peter, Acts V. A memorable example is that which Anastasius of Nicaea relates, Question XVII in Holy Scripture. It happened, he says, that a certain anchorite's disciple, entering into the city, saw his prince already dead being carried to the tomb with great pomp, with ointments and incense. But when he had returned to the desert, he found his master devoured by a hyena. He began therefore to be troubled in mind, and almost to contend in judgment with God, and to say: Where is, O Lord, Thy just judgment? How is it that this wicked prince, who often provoked Thee to anger, died so gloriously? But this holy man, who served Thee much, captured by a beast, met his death? While he was thus disputing with God with these and similar words, the angel of the Lord stood by him and said: "That prince, since he was altogether wicked, had one good work, and through the honor which he obtained while being carried forth, he received the reward of this one good deed, and went away absolutely and perfectly condemned; but thy master, since he had done all things that were pleasing to God, had also himself, as a man, some small fault, and through this death he lost it, and went away there fully purged and expiated." 8 and 9. VENERABLE OLD AGE (in Greek τιμία, that is precious, worthy, honored, revered, venerable; St. Jerome in Zechariah chapter IV translates it, honorable) IS NOT PROLONGED (in Greek πολυχρόνιος, that is long-lived; St. Jerome, of many times) NOR RECKONED BY THE NUMBER OF YEARS: BUT THE GREY HAIRS OF A MAN ARE HIS WISDOM, AND THE AGE OF OLD AGE IS A LIFE WITHOUT BLEMISH. — Vatablus, for venerable old age is not that which consists of a long time, or which you measure by the number of years, but wisdom brings grey hairs to men, and the age of old age is a life without stain; the Syrian, grey hairs and understanding of man; but the state of old age, a quiet dwelling; the Arabic, the veneration of old age is not in the multitude of years, because grey hairs are the wisdom of man, and the age of old age is a seed in which there is no blemish. This is another distinction of the just from the wicked, that the just, even if overtaken by death in youth, is nevertheless already old in prudence and virtue: because old age is estimated not by years, but by virtues and merits; the wicked, however, even if old in age, is nevertheless truly a child on account of folly and childish vices, and is to be reckoned among children, according to that passage, Isaiah LXV, 20: "The child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be cursed." The reason a priori is that venerable old age exists for two causes: the first is, on account of experience of much time and the prudence thereby acquired; the second, on account of the composition of humors and thereby of morals; for in the aged the fervor of blood and heat fails, and in its place succeeds cold, by which the heat of lust, anger, and other passions is extinguished: wherefore if any old man lacks these two things, namely prudence and composed morals, he has nothing from old age that is worthy of price, esteem and veneration; but if any young man possesses these two things, he has all that which in old age is precious, esteemable and honorable; whence it follows: "But the grey hairs of a man are his wisdom," that is to say. Grey hairs, namely the greyness of a man, is estimated and reckoned to be not grey hair, but the very wisdom and prudence: for in Greek it is, πολιὰ δέ ἐστι φρόνησις ἀνθρώποις, that is grey hairs are the prudence of men. And thus St. Epiphanius reads it, heresy 67. St. Jerome in Zechariah chapter VIII translates it, grey hairs are the prudence of men; the same in Isaiah chapter XXIV reads, the grey hairs of a man are his wisdom; others, a sensible mind is grey hairs to men, that is it makes them venerable, just as if they were old and grey. This is what Solomon says, Proverbs XVI, 31: "The crown of dignity is old age, which shall be found in the ways of justice;" and Sirach, Ecclesiasticus XXV, 8: "The crown of the aged is much learning, and their glory is the fear of God:" see the remarks on both passages. Moreover, historians relate that some boys naturally turn grey, indeed are born grey; whence Cassiodorus thinks Seneca is said to be named from an old man grey-haired, because he to whom this cognomen was first given was born grey, which is also related of Numa Pompilius. That Tyrrhenus, from whom Tyrrhenia is named, turned grey from early boyhood, Strabo and others consider fabulous: I would readily believe it to be true, for I know that the same thing happened to my father in a single night's study, while still a youth, says our Delrio in Hercul. Furent. Senecae, at the beginning of the first act. The same thing is expressly transmitted by St. Isidore and Nonius Marcellus, and Lipsius in Vita Senec., cap. I, who all say that Seneca is the same as an old man or a little old man. This opinion is an axiom, received and approved equally by all the faithful as by the heathen. Hear, ye faithful. St. Ambrose, epist. 12 to Valent. Imper.: "Let old age blush, he says, which cannot amend itself: the greyness of years is not to be praised, but that of morals;" the same lib. I Hexaem. cap. VIII: "Old age is to be praised in good morals sweeter, in counsels more useful, more prepared for constancy in undergoing death, firmer in repressing lusts;" lib. III, epist. 21 to Anysium: "Truly, he says, this old age is venerable, which is not grey, but whitens by merits: for that is the reverend greyness of the soul, shining forth in grey thoughts and works. For what is the true life of old age, except an immaculate life, which is propagated not by days or months, but by ages, whose duration is without end, whose longevity without weakness? for the longer it is, the stronger; and the longer one has lived that life, the more strongly does it grow into a perfect man;" the same, serm. 55 in Domini Resurrect.: "Ages, he says, are certain ones of merits: for old age of morals is found even in boys, and the innocence of infants is found in the old. Finally, that in younger people there is a certain old age of honesty, the Prophet says: For venerable old age is not of long duration, nor is it computed by the number of years; for greyness is wisdom in men. The same, lib. X in Luc. cap. XXIV at the end: "Good old age, he says, not weakened by the length of life St. Ambrose, epist. 12 to Valent. Imper.: "Let old age blush, he says, which cannot amend itself: the greyness of years is not to be praised, but that of morals;" the same lib. I Hexaem. cap. VIII: "Old age is to be praised in good morals sweeter, in counsels more useful, more prepared for constancy in undergoing death, firmer in repressing lusts;" lib. III, epist. 21 to Anysium: "Truly, he says, this old age is venerable, which is not grey, but whitens by merits: for that is the reverend greyness of the soul, shining forth in grey thoughts and works. For what is the true life of old age, except an immaculate life, which is propagated not by days or months, but by ages, whose duration is without end, whose longevity without weakness? for the longer it is, the stronger; and the longer one has lived that life, the more strongly does it grow into a perfect man;" the same, serm. 55 in Domini Resurrect.: "Ages, he says, are certain ones of merits: for old age of morals is found even in boys, and the innocence of infants is found in the old. Finally, that in younger people there is a certain old age of honesty, the Prophet says: For venerable old age is not of long duration, nor is it computed by the number of years; for greyness is wisdom in men. The same, lib. X in Luc. cap. XXIV at the end: "Good old age, he says, not weakened by the length of life prepared, which may restrain the lasciviousness of bodily pleasures, nor indulge in desires, decline all sweet things, not desire fair things. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and wishes to walk in transverse paths, finding for itself diverse pleasures. But good old age of the mind, which thinks not what is pleasant to the body, but what is useful to the mind, chooses, nor is borne away by the voluptuous appetite of the body, but is recalled by the restraint of resistance, as it were in life." The same, lib. I De Cain et Abel, cap. III, preferring Abel the younger to Cain the elder: "To the elder, he says, the younger is preferred, because, although younger in time, he is superior in virtue: for innocence is later in time than malice, and at a certain equal age, but more ancient in the nobility of merits: for venerable old age is not grey in years, but in morals. And age, he says, of old age is an immaculate life. Where therefore generation is expressed, let Cain come; where the preaching of disciplines is made, let Abel run before." St. Anacletus, the third Roman pontiff after St. Peter, from this saying, as well as from a similar one in Proverbs XX, 29, and from the deed of Moses, Numbers XI, 25, proves that in choosing presbyters, elders should be selected, not so much by age as by wisdom: for thus he speaks in distinction 84, final chapter: "Moreover, Moses is commanded to choose presbyters, that is, elders; whence also in Proverbs it is said, chapter XX, verse 29: The glory of old men is their grey hair. But here grey hair designates wisdom, concerning which it is written, Wisdom IV, 8: Grey hair is the hoary age of a man, and a spotless life is old age. And whereas we read that men lived nine hundred and more years from Adam to Abraham, no one else was called presbyter, that is, elder, before Abraham, who is shown to have lived in far fewer years. Therefore presbyters are not named on account of the described age or old age, but on account of wisdom." St. Gregory, book II of the Dialogues, chapter I, praising St. Benedict: "There was," he says, "a man of venerable life, blessed by grace and in name, bearing from the very time of his childhood a heart of old age: for surpassing his years in conduct, he gave his mind to no pleasure; but while he was still on this earth, when he could have freely used temporal things, he already despised the world as if it were withered, along with its flower." St. Jerome, epistle 13 to St. Paulinus, afterwards bishop of Nola: "Do not," he says, "dearest brother, estimate us by the number of years, nor reckon wisdom by grey hairs, but grey hairs by wisdom, as Solomon testifies, Wisdom IV, 8: Grey hair is the prudence of a man. For Moses too is commanded to choose seventy presbyters, whom he himself knew to be presbyters, certainly to be judged not by age, but by prudence. And Daniel, still a boy, judges the aged, and impure old men are condemned by wanton age. Do not, I say, weigh faith by times: nor think me better for this reason, that I began earlier to serve in the army of Christ. Paul the Apostle, a vessel of election, changed from a persecutor, last in order, is first in merits: because, though last, he labored more than all. Judas, who once heard: But thou, O man, that wast my guide and my familiar, who didst take sweetmeats together with me, in the house of God we walked with consent, Psalm LIV, 14, the betrayer of a friend and master, is convicted by the voice of the Savior: And he ties a knot of shapeless death from a high beam. On the contrary, the thief changes the cross into paradise, and makes the punishment of homicide a martyrdom. How many today, by living long, carry their own funerals, and like whited sepulchres are full of the bones of the dead! Sudden heat overcomes long lukewarmness. Finally, you too, having heard the sentence of the Savior, Matthew XIX, 21: If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me, turn words into deeds, and following the naked cross naked, you climb the ladder of Jacob more swiftly and lightly." Cassian, Collation II, chapter XIII: "The riches of the aged," he says, "are not measured by the greyness of the head, but by the industry of youth and the wages of past labors. For what you did not gather," he says, "in youth, how will you find in your old age? For old age is honorable, not by duration, nor reckoned by the number of years. But grey hairs are the senses of a man, and the age of old age is an unspotted life," Wisdom IV, 8. Whence shortly after he adds: "For there are some, of whom, which is more lamentable, the greater number, who, growing old in that lukewarmness which they conceived from adolescence, and in idleness, acquire authority for themselves, not by maturity of morals, but by the multitude of years: concerning whom that rebuke of the Lord is properly enough said through the Prophet, Hosea VII, 9: And strangers have devoured his strength, and he knew it not: moreover grey hairs are spread about in him, and he knew it not. These, I say, have been advanced in example to the younger, not by the probity of life, nor by any laudable and imitable strictness of this purpose, but by age alone. Their grey hair, which the most cunning enemy, proposing in prejudged authority for the deception of the younger, hastens to subvert and deceive even those who could have been incited to the way of perfection either by their own or others' admonitions, by the fraudulent subtlety of their examples, leading them either into harmful lukewarmness, or into lethal desperation by their teachings and institutions." Cassiodorus in Psalm. lib. XXIV, and lib. IX Variar. epist.: "Certain old men, he says, are stained by levity of morals, when conversely many young men are adorned with gravity of morals matured beyond their years." St. Bernard, epist. 42 to Henry of Sens: "We see many of the young, he says, surpass the old in understanding, and grow ancient in morals before their time, forestall their years by merit, and compensate for what age lacks by virtue." You have heard the maxims of the Latin Fathers; now receive their counterparts from the Greeks, which Antonius cites in Meliss. part. II, cap. XVIII. St. Basil: "There is no difference between boyish age and a mind imitating boys. I have known some who, when they had fallen into the vices of the flesh in youth, persisted in them on account of habit even to grey hairs." St. Gregory of Nazianzus: "It is shameful to have lost the vigor of age, but not to have lost lust. Even grey hairs learn something, nor should any old age seem to have attained sufficient prudence." St. Chrysostom: "Therefore when an old man labors under the same diseases as youth, it is a great vice, and he does not even have the excuse of youth: for neither can it say, Psalm XIV, 7: Remember not the sins of my youth, and my ignorances. See therefore that you do not deprive yourself of pardon for youthful sins on account of deeds of old age." Philo: "Those who have spent much of their life in vices of the body without any virtue and probity, it is right to call them long-lived boys, as those who have been trained in no disciplines worthy of old age. How long, then, shall we old men still be boys? Ancient indeed in body on account of the length of time, but still boys in soul on account of ignorance and dullness." A good boy was Samuel, who was a ready listener to God speaking, saying, I Reg. III, 9: Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. As if to say: I am prepared, and I am not troubled, that I may keep thy commandments, Jerem. I, 6. Good also was Jeremiah, who was sanctified before he was born, and when he excused himself on account of boyhood, was nevertheless set over nations and kingdoms. Good also was Daniel, whose spirit God raised up, that he might convince unjust judgments, and free innocent blood. Finally, grey hairs are the sense of a man, and the age of old age is an immaculate life, Sapient. cap. IV, vers. 9. "Tobias grew white, not with grey hairs, but with merits," says St. Ambrose, lib. III, epist. 21. St. Agnes, in the thirteenth year of her age, underwent the contest of martyrdom with incredible wisdom, as much as with fortitude, concerning which the Church sings from St. Ambrose in her Ecclesiastical Office: "Infancy indeed was reckoned in years, but there was immense old age of mind." In her therefore was grey hair, that is whiteness, not of years, but of morals: "for grey hair, says St. Isidore, lib. XI Origin. cap. II, is called from whiteness, as it were whiteness, whence that: Blooming youth, milky (that is white) grey hair." St. Alexander, boy and martyr, sixth son of St. Felicity, when the judge objected his tender age, replied that his mind was grey, as the martyrdom of St. Felicity and her seven sons relates. Macarius of Alexandria was called παιδαριογέρων, that is, a boy-old man (namely Seneca, or an old man with grey hair), because in boyish age he appeared an old man, and excelled beyond his years in wisdom and virtues, as Palladius testifies in the Lausiac, cap. XVII. St. Dorotheus relates that Dosithaeus, his disciple, in a short time equaled the sanctity of the elders, and that he received this from God's revelation. St. Bernardine of Siena as a boy was so grave and composed in morals, that he appeared an old man, so much so that his schoolmates, from seeing him, all composed themselves to modesty and gravity, saying: "Be silent, Bernardine is here," as his Life relates. From the Pagans: "Demophilus, says Pindar, ode 4 Pyth., was among boys a young man, but in counsels an old man, having attained a hundred years of age." Solomon was followed not only by the Fathers, but also by philosophers. Plato in the Timaeus calls the Greeks children on account of their ignorance of antiquity, according to that saying: "Twice children are the aged." Zeno used to say it was shameful for an old man to learn from a commentary, as Seneca reports, epistle 33. Cicero, in the book On Old Age: "Not grey hair, he says, not wrinkles can suddenly bring authority, but an old age honestly spent reaps the final fruits of authority." Alexander the Great in Curtius, book IX: "I, he says, measure myself not by the span of age, but by glory," because glory extends the narrow span of age: for he himself began to reign at the age of twenty, and at thirty-two he had subjugated almost the entire world. Seneca, in the book On the Brevity of Life, chapter VIII: "There is no reason, he says, for you to think that anyone has lived long because of grey hair or wrinkles: he did not live long, but existed long: for what if you think he sailed much, whom a savage storm caught from port and tossed hither and thither, and drove him in circles through the same spaces by the forces of winds raging from opposite directions? He did not sail much, but was tossed about much." The same, epistle 36: "It is shameful, he says, and ridiculous for an old man to be a beginner: the young man should prepare, the old man should use," according to that saying: "In youth gather, in old age distribute." Do you want examples? Take from the Old Testament Solomon, who at twelve years old, as St. Ignatius wishes, or at twenty, namely when he was about twenty years old, as Pineda, Salianus and others more truly judge, performed the judgment of the harlots with stupendous and more than aged maturity and sagacity, III Kings, chapter II, 16. Take also Samuel, Jeremiah and Daniel, who prophesied as children, and condemned the wicked as old men, concerning whom hear St. Bernard, epistle 42: "Better are adolescents of good character than those grown old in evil days. A child of a hundred years is cursed, and on the other hand old age is venerable, not long-lived, nor to be measured by the number of years—
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— The sense will be clearer if, with the Vatican manuscripts, you place a comma after beloved and after sinners; whence Vatablus translates, because it pleased God that he, was held dear, while living among sinners, was taken from their midst. The sense is, as if to say, The just man, because he pleased God, or because by justice he pleased God, was therefore beloved by Him, and for this reason while he lived among sinners, he was taken from them to the heaven of the patriarchs in limbo, and after Christ to the assembly of the saints in heaven, lest, if he remained longer among sinners, he should be affected by their wicked words and examples, as if by contagion, corrupted, stained, and pass into their lot. That this is the sense is clear from the Greek: thus also the Wise Man explains it, adding harshly: "He was taken away lest malice (of sinners, among whom he lives) should change his understanding." He alludes to Enoch, who, as Moses says, Genesis V, 21: "When he had lived three hundred and sixty-five years, he walked with God, and was not found, because God took him." Which words the Septuagint translated thus, and Enoch pleased God, and was not found, because God translated him: which reading Ecclesiasticus followed, saying chapter XLIV, verse 16: "Enoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise, that he might give repentance to the nations." And Paul, Hebrews XI, 5: "Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God translated him: for before his translation he had testimony that he pleased God." Tertullian, book III Against Marcion, chapter II, writes that Enoch, inflamed with zeal for God, mourning the crimes of the most wicked nation of that age, and especially of the giants, and striving to turn them from their wickedness, when he saw himself laboring in vain, finally asked of God with groaning and tears, and obtained, that he be snatched from the company of the worst men into paradise. St. Ambrose thinks Enoch is alluded to, in the Oration on the Death of his Brother Satyrus, and writing on Psalm XL and XLV, and Jansenius followed him. I said alluded to, for from what precedes and follows it is clear that properly and strictly the discourse here is not of Enoch living, but of the just man snatched away by death. The sense therefore is, as if to say, Just as Enoch, living among sinners, lest he be polluted by their contagion, was prematurely (if you consider the life of other men of that age) snatched away and translated by God into paradise; so any just and elect man, lest he be stained by the vices and filth of his companions, is quickly snatched away by God, and into heaven before Christ, but after Christ into heaven is transferred. There is a third distinction between the swift death of the just and the wicked, namely that the just man is snatched from the filth of the wicked to the assembly of the saints, but the wicked man from the filth of sinners is snatched to the tartarus of the damned.
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Ambrose reads his heart), OR LEST DECEIT (in Greek δόλος, that is, guile) SHOULD DECEIVE HIS SOUL. — The Syriac version: he was taken away lest malice should change the purpose he had conceived; the Arabic: he was translated and taken away before contempt should change his understanding, or fraud should cover his soul; Vatablus: he was snatched away lest malice should change his sense, and lest his soul should be circumvented by fraud, as if to say: A just man beloved by God was taken away, lest the depravity of men of his age should imbue and corrupt his mind with wicked opinions, or lest he should consent to the wicked counsels of a wicked generation, or lest he should be deceived by their guile, but so that persisting in his justice and in the grace of God even to the end of life, he might die and be saved. Thus therefore the just man taken away quickly, before he should be tempted, was predestined, says St. Augustine, On Correction and Grace, chapter VIII and following. The reason is deceit, or, as it is in Greek, guile: for the impious are accustomed, in order to pervert the pious, to weave deceits and frauds for him, suborning men of apparent virtue; likewise women, who might entice him into love of themselves and into unlawful sin. "Moreover, simulated equity is double iniquity," says St. Augustine, in Psalm LXIII; for it is iniquity, and it is also simulation. With this simulation and deceit the world is full; the wicked opinions of the world are that honours are to be sought, that pleasure is to be indulged, that if someone has harmed you vengeance is to be taken, etc. Hear St. Cyprian, On Mortality: "But also the Holy Spirit," he says, "teaches through Solomon that those who please God are removed from here more quickly, and are freed sooner, lest, while they remain longer in this world, they be polluted by the contacts of the world. He was taken away, it says, lest malice should change his understanding: for his soul was pleasing to God, Wisdom IV, 10. By malice understand malice properly so called, namely wickedness, with St. Ambrose in Psalm XLV, according to that passage, Isaiah LVII, 1: 'The just man was gathered away from the face of malice.' Some, however, understand by malice the affliction, labour, and troubles of this life, which often incite to sin: thus Judas Maccabaeus, exhorting his men to battle, says, I Maccabees III, 59: 'It is better for us to die in battle, than to see the evils of our nation.' Thus Possidius relates that St. Augustine was snatched from this life, weary of the evils of his country, especially of the city of Hippo, when he had begged dismissal from this world from God. St. Jerome writes that Pope Anastasius was for this reason taken away and translated, lest the head of the world (Rome) should be mutilated under such a bishop, and lest he should attempt to bend by his prayers a sentence once passed. With this maxim St. Jerome consoles St. Paula mourning over the death of her daughter Blaesilla, epistle 24: "Why do we grieve," he says, "that anyone is dead? for we were not born for this, that we should remain eternal. Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Peter, James, John, Paul the vessel of election, and above all the Son of God dies, and do we rage that someone should depart from the body: perhaps he was taken away for this reason, lest malice should change his understanding: for his soul was pleasing to God: for this reason He hastened to lead him out from the midst of iniquity, Wisdom IV, 9, lest on the long journey of life he should wander astray in devious windings. Let the dead be mourned, but that one whom hell receives, whom Tartarus devours, for whose punishment eternal fire burns. We, whose departure is attended by the company of angels, to whom Christ himself comes to meet, should be more grieved if we remain longer in this tabernacle of death: because as long as we remain here, we are pilgrims from the Lord, II Corinthians V, 6. Let that, that desire hold us, Psalm CXIX, 5: Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged from me, I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar, my soul has sojourned much. If Cedar is darkness, and this world is darkness, because the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it," John I, 5. Then, applying this to Blaesilla, he adds: "I favour our Blaesilla, who has migrated from darkness to light, and in the ardour of beginning faith, has received the crown of completed work. Truly, if untimely death had snatched away one thinking of worldly desire, and, which God avert from his own, the delights of this life, she would have been to be lamented, and wept with every fountain of tears. But now, with Christ propitious, after almost four months, having washed herself in baptism a second time, as it were, of her purpose, and having lived thus that, having trampled the world underfoot, she always thought of the monastery; do you fear lest your Saviour say to you: Are you angry, Paula, because your daughter has become my daughter? Do you rage at my judgment, and with rebellious tears do you wrong the one who possesses her? For you know what I think of you, what of your others." Moreover, Commentators, among whom is Alphonsus Curiel, writing on this passage of Wisdom, interpret it thus, saying that God knows future things, not only absolutely, but also under condition, for example what Peter would do if he were assailed in such a place and time by so great a temptation of the flesh, whether he would consent or not? For they say, He knows what would be in the matter in the future if the condition of temptation were posited, even if it were never actually posited. Therefore He snatches away the just man beloved and chosen from life, lest, if he should live, he fall into temptation and perish. If you say: He snatches him away on account of the danger of falling, to remove him from it; they answer that this is true, but not sufficient: for it is not said here that God snatches away the just man in order to remove him from the danger of falling, but in order to remove him from falling that would truly come to pass; for it says: "He was taken away, lest malice should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul." God therefore knew for certain that this just man, unless he were snatched away, malice would in fact alter his understanding, and deceit would beguile his soul, even if the common and ordinary helps of grace, which others have, were not lacking to him. Otherwise indeed, if he were not to be changed, nor to be deceived, God in this His judgment, saying the contrary, would have been false and erred in this judgment, which God forbid: for God's knowledge is scientific, and therefore certain and infallible, whereas that of men is often conjectural, probable and uncertain, and therefore fallible and erroneous. Again, they say, the certain providence of God concerning the just as well as the wicked, which the Wise Man here describes, requires certain foreknowledge of future things, even under condition only: for it rests upon this as upon a foundation, and is supported by it, for example God decrees to snatch away the just man from temptation, or to give him such great grace as He knows will be the case that he will in fact resist the temptation and overcome it; therefore He must first know this conditional thing: If I give to Peter, when tempted in such a way, such great grace, it will come to pass absolutely that he will resist; I will therefore give him such grace: otherwise He would have decreed to give him another greater one. God wished to show His power and strength in Pharaoh and the Egyptians, compelling him to let the Hebrews go, and therefore He wished to multiply His wonders in him, and to add greater plagues to the lesser ones up to ten. He knew therefore before He decreed to send the first plagues of frogs, gnats, flies, locusts, that if He sent them, Pharaoh would not be bent by them to let the Hebrews go, and thus he himself would have the occasion to send upon him the greater plagues of hail, pestilence, lightning, and the death of the firstborn, and to show His power to the whole world. For if Pharaoh had yielded to the first plagues and let the Hebrews go, God could not justly have sent upon him the later and greater plagues, which nevertheless He was determined to do, in order to strike terror of Himself into mortals. He foreknew therefore, before He sent the first plagues, that Pharaoh's heart would not be bent by them, and thus He would have the opportunity to inflict the others. This is what God predicted to Moses before all the plagues, Exodus VII, 3: "I will harden," that is, I will permit to be hardened, "his heart (Pharaoh's), and I will multiply My signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and he will not hear you," etc.; and cap. IX, verse 16, God says to Pharaoh himself: "For this reason have I raised thee up, that I may show My power in thee, and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth;"; and cap. X, verse 1, He says to Moses: "Go in to Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the hearts of his servants, that I may work these My signs in him, and that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy grandson, how many things I have done in Egypt, etc., and that you may know that I am the Lord." For God knows all truth: but from contradictory propositions about the future, whether they be absolute or conditional, necessarily one or the other is true. God therefore knows determinately which part will be true, because He knows all truth. The reason a priori is, they say, the immensity of the divine mind and vision: for its power of penetrating, discerning, knowing in every direction is infinite, wherefore it fully penetrates to the very bottom, perceives and comprehends all things and causes, even contingent and free ones. He therefore knows what the free will of each man or angel would do, if this or that temptation or condition were posited: because the propensities, inclinations, even hidden, latent and most secret acts, He plainly and fully perceives and comprehends: just as a man of the keenest sight perceives all things which are enclosed in a glass box are. Hence David asking, 1 Kings 23:12: "Will the men of Ceila deliver me and the men that are with me into the hands of Saul? The Lord said: They will deliver thee," and yet in fact they did not deliver him, because David, hearing this from God, fled from Ceila, as is added there. Thus Christ says, Matthew 11:21: "If in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the mighty works that have been wrought in you, they would have done penance long ago in sackcloth and ashes;" and chapter 24:22: "And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened." These things are from Alphonsus Curiel and the commentators already cited; but the treatment of the question already mentioned properly belongs to the scholastics: see Suarez, Vasquez, Molina, Gregory of Valencia, etc., 1st part, Question 14, article 13, and Curiel here: for I have a great sea remaining to plough, and therefore must proceed to further matters. Finally, St. Augustine, in book 1 of On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 14, rightly and powerfully refutes the semi-Pelagians from this passage, teaching that each person is predestined by God and given grace, or reprobated and deprived of grace by God, according to each one's merit or demerit, not absolutely, but conditionally foreseen, for example, that God predestined this little child to die in infancy because He foreknew he would work well and rightly use His grace if he had lived longer; but reprobated that one because He foreknew he would work badly and wrongly use His grace if life had been granted to him. For the Wise One teaches the direct contrary here, namely that the just man is snatched away from life by God lest malice change him: therefore God foresaw he would be changed unless He first snatched him away; He snatched him away therefore lest he be changed, but that he might persevere in justice, and thus be chosen for glory and be saved; otherwise, being thus snatched away, he ought to be reprobated and damned, not predestined and chosen, according to the opinion of the semi-Pelagians. Hear St. Augustine: "He was snatched away lest malice should change his understanding. For it was said according to the perils of this life, not according to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew this, that it would come to pass, not that it would not come to pass, that is, that He was about to grant him an untimely death, lest he be drawn into the uncertainty of temptations, not that he would sin, who would not remain in temptation. For concerning this life it is read in the book of Job, chapter 7, verse 1: Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation? but why to some it is granted that they be taken away from the perils of this life while they are just, while other just men, until they fall from justice, are held in the same perils with a longer life? Who has known the sense of the Lord? And yet from this it can be understood that even for those just men who keep good and pious morals even to the maturity of old age and the last day of this life, glory is not to be boasted of in their own merits, but in the Lord: because He who snatched away the just man by the brevity of life lest malice should change his understanding, He Himself in whatever length of life preserves the just man lest malice change his understanding. But why He held back this just man who was about to fall, whom before he fell He could have taken away, is most just indeed, but His judgments are inscrutable." And below he proves this by the example of little children, "of whom, since some are baptized and some are not baptized, they reach the end of this life, they sufficiently indicate mercy and judgment: mercy indeed gratuitous, judgment due: for if men were judged according to the merits of their life, which they would not have, death preventing, but would have if they lived, it would profit nothing to him who was snatched away lest malice should change his understanding; it would profit nothing to those who fall and die, if they died before, which no Christian would dare to say." By the foreknowledge mentioned at the beginning, St. Augustine understands absolute, as is evident from the reason which he subjoins, not conditional; that he knew this is clear from the book On the Good of Perseverance, chapter 3, and the Enchiridion, chapter 94, and On Correction and Grace, chapters 8 and following; therefore St. Augustine wishes only to say that merits under a condition to come are not truly merits, and therefore are not absolutely foreseen by God, so that on account of them He decree reward or punishment. Tropologically from this place St. Cyprian, in the book On Mortality, whom St. Augustine cites in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter XIV, teaches that death is useful and to be desired by the just, because it frees them from the dangers and temptations of this life, and makes them secure and impeccable. "Why not," says St. Augustine from St. Cyprian, "since you are to be with Christ, and secure in the Lord's promise, you who are called to Christ, embrace it, and rejoice that you are free from the devil?" and in another place: "Children," he says, "escape the danger of slippery age;" and the same in another place: "Why do we not hasten and run, that we may see our homeland, that we may greet our parents? A great number of our dear ones awaits us there, parents, brothers, children; a frequent and abundant crowd desires us, already secure in their own safety, yet still solicitous for our salvation." Properly indeed by this maxim we are taught to ask from God that He snatch us from life when we are in justice, that is in a state of grace, and temptations press upon us, which create for us the danger of sinning and falling from grace: for in this opportune snatching away consists our predestination, election and eternal salvation, as St. Augustine teaches in On Correction and Grace, chapter VIII. For he whom God thus snatches away has that great gift of perseverance, and with it dies and is saved, which therefore does not fall under merit, but must be earnestly and humbly begged from God, as the Council of Trent teaches from St. Augustine, session VI. How many are in heaven who, unless they had been quickly snatched from life and temptation, would now be in hell? and how many are in hell who, if they had been quickly snatched away, would now be in heaven? Therefore timely and fitting death is not a sign of hatred, but of the highest love, indeed a certain sign of divine predestination and election, indeed its proper effect. Seneca perceived this very thing through a shadow, who in the Consolation to Marcia, chapter XXIII: "The journey to the gods above," he says, "is easier for souls quickly released from human conversation: for they have drawn less dregs and weight; before they became hardened and conceived earthly things more deeply, freed, they fly back lighter to their origin, and more easily wash away whatever is obsolete and smeared. Nor is a long stay in the body ever dear to great minds; they desire to go forth and burst out, they bear these straits with difficulty, wandering through all that is sublime, and accustomed from on high to despise human things. Hence it is that Plato cries out that the wise man's soul is wholly inclined toward death, wills this, meditates on this, is always borne by this desire tending outward." Furthermore St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the tract On Infants who are snatched away prematurely, gives a beautiful similitude: Just as, he says, a wise pedagogue quickly leads a boy away from a longer banquet, in which there are many dishes and delicate wines, which treacherously incite the palate to excess, and from this create vomiting and surfeit: so God quickly leads infants from this banquet of life, lest they become inebriated and maddened by its pleasures. Plutarch brings another similar example in the Consolation to his Wife: "For just as fire," he says, "if you extinguish it and then kindle it again, is stirred up and catches flame more quickly: so the soul, if it flies away from here as swiftly as possible, swiftly flies through the dread threshold of Dis, before it is imbued and beguiled by a great love of human things, and as if wasted away by poison."
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For "nugacity" in Greek is φαυλότητος, that is, malice, dishonesty, wickedness, or baseness, vanity, levity, ineptitude; nugacity therefore is malicious nugacity, that is, enticing by its trifles, bewitching, and leading man to destruction; whence the Syriac translator renders it: the zeal of malice corrupts good things; the Arabic: because the body of malice obscures good things. Fascination is a kind of enchantment, by which men are so bound that they are not free, nor in possession of their senses, often coming to extreme emaciation; likewise by which magicians so constrain the eyes and senses, that things seem to them to see, hear, and perceive most beautiful things, which in reality they neither see, nor hear, nor perceive; whence the Greek βασκαίνω, that is, I fascinate, is said as it were βάζω κάνω, that is, I kill with the eyes by looking, according to that passage of Virgil, Eclogue III: I know not what eye fascinates my tender lambs. Hence against fascination the pagans worshipped and invoked the god Fascinus, concerning whom Pliny, lib. XXVIII, cap. IV, says: "By religion, he says, is changed and his tender lambs by the eye. Hence against fascination the pagans worshipped and invoked the god Fascinus, concerning whom Pliny, lib. XXVIII, cap. IV: "By religion, he says, is changed and Hence against fascination the pagans worshipped and invoked the god Fascinus, concerning whom Pliny, lib. XXVIII, cap. IV: "By religion, he says, is changed and Fascinus, the guardian also of emperors, not only of infants, which god is worshipped among the Roman sacred rites by the Vestals, and hanging beneath the chariots of the triumphing, defends as a physician against envy, and commands that they themselves receive it." Now First, Francis Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, cap. LXVIII, holds that fascination is nothing other than a false opinion of the common people, and a superstitious fear, by which from a received false opinion among the rude, many fear to be infected by the eyes of old women, or those with sore eyes, or the envious, when in the nature of things these eyes cannot harm the one looking: the wise man therefore here borrows a phrase and metaphor from the credulity of the common people, although false. "Fascination" therefore "of nugacity," he says, is called the concupiscence of the eyes, that is, avarice and desire for the goods of others: because indeed this disease is conceived through the eyes, it is called by allegory fascination; and it is said to be of nugacity, because of false goods, according to that passage, Psalm IV, 3: "O ye sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?" that is, vain and lying goods. Therefore the concupiscence of the eyes is the fascination of nugacity: this obscures good things, because, as it is said in I Timothy VI, covetousness is the root of all evils; and, as is said likewise in Wisdom: "The eagerness of covetousness perverteth the sense without malice." Therefore that utterance of Wisdom concerning fascination is allegorical: and the allegory is taken from the common opinion. Thus far Valesius. The same doctrine is taught by St. Jerome in Galatians III, 1, and St. Chrysostom, ibid., and St. Basil, homily 11 On Envy, and our Delrio in the Magical Works, lib. III, cap. III, Question IV and following. Hence some derive fascination from φθονέω, that is, I envy; but this is the same as to see excessively: for he who envies cannot turn his eyes away from seeing and envying. But these things are true, if you regard nature, for there is no natural fascination; but not if you regard magic: for through it the demon constrains and fascinates the eyes, ears, and all the senses and limbs, and infects them, and often afflicts them with disease and death, as is evident from the daily experience of witches. See Delrio in the Magical Works, lib. III, part. I, Question III, sect. I, where he extensively shows that fascination is not done by nature, but by magic and the demon, and that it consists of its deceptions. Hence Now First, Francis Valesius, in Sacred Philosophy cap. LXVIII, holds that fascination is nothing other than a false opinion of the common people, and a superstitious fear, whereby from a false opinion received among the unlearned, many fear to be infected by the eyes of old women, or those with sore eyes, or the envious, when in fact these eyes cannot harm the one beholding from the nature of the thing: therefore the wise man here borrows a phrase and metaphor from the credulity of the common people, although false. "Fascination" therefore "of vanity," he says, is called the concupiscence of the eyes, that is avarice and covetousness of the things of others: because indeed this disease is conceived through the eyes, it is called by allegory fascination; and it is said to be of vanity, because of false goods, according to that, Psalm IV, 3: "O ye sons of men, how long will you be dull of heart? why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?" that is, vain and false goods. And so the concupiscence of the eyes is the fascination of vanity: this obscures goods, because, as it is said I Timothy VI, covetousness is the root of all evils; and, as it is said likewise in Wisdom: "The eagerness of covetousness turneth away the simple." And so that utterance of Wisdom concerning fascination is allegorical: and the allegory is taken from the common opinion. Thus far Valesius. The same teaches St. Jerome in Galatians III, 1, and St. Chrysostom, ibid., and St. Basil, hom. 11 On Envy, and our Delrio in the Magical Works lib. III, cap. III, Question IV and following. Hence some derive fascination from φθονέω, that is I envy; and this is the same as I see excessively: for he who envies cannot turn his eyes away from seeing and envying. But these things are true, if you regard nature, for there is no fascination of nature; but not if you regard magic: for through it the demon constrains and fascinates the eyes, ears, and all the senses and limbs, and infects them, and not rarely afflicts them with disease and death, as is evident from the daily experience of witches. See Delrio in the Magical Works, lib. III, part. I, Question III, sect. I, where he shows at length that fascination is not done by nature, but by magic and the demon, and that it is his deception. Hence Thus far Valesius. The same teaches St. Jerome in Galatians III, 1, and St. Chrysostom, ibid., and St. Basil, hom. 11 On Envy, and our Delrio in the Magical Works lib. III, cap. III, Question IV and following. Hence some derive fascination from φθονέω, that is I envy; and this is the same as I see excessively: for he who envies cannot turn his eyes away from seeing and envying. But these things are true, if you regard nature, for there is no fascination of nature; but not if you regard magic: for through it the demon constrains and fascinates the eyes, ears, and all the senses and limbs, and infects them, and not rarely afflicts them with disease and death, as is evident from the daily experience of witches. See Delrio in the Magical Works, lib. III, part. I, Question III, sect. I, where he shows at length that fascination is not done by nature, but by magic and the demon, and that it is his deception. Hence But these things are true, if you regard nature, for there is no fascination of nature; but not if you regard magic: for through it the demon constrains and fascinates the eyes, ears, and all the senses and limbs, and infects them, and not rarely afflicts them with disease and death, as is evident from the daily experience of witches. See Delrio in the Magical Works, lib. III, part. I, Question III, sect. I, where he shows at length that fascination is not done by nature, but by magic and the demon, and that it is his deception. Hence Secondly, our a Castro more aptly attributes this fascination to the persuasion and counsel of impious associates, or teachers, or counselors, who recommend evils as if they were goods and counsel them; that is to say, Malice, or dishonesty, fascinates and obscures goods, that is, harms and corrupts them, just as a fascinator infects with his eyes and gaze the face of an infant whom he beholds, so that sometimes he kills him: thus depravity, or rather a dishonest man, harms and corrupts goods by his depraved opinions, so that a simple man thinks evils to be good; and on the contrary thinks to be good those things which are truly evil. To this our Delrio adds in the place already cited: "The fascination of frivolity," he says, "is a vile, frivolous and worthless fascination, in Hebrew phrase: for thus it signifies that we are constrained and mocked by the vilest and most worthless trifles of earthly things, especially by nugatory and adulatory praise, so that we are utterly blinded to true goods, so that we hold goods for evils, evils for goods; we prefer earthly things to heavenly, transitory things to eternal: but he uses the name of fascination, because the common people of the Jews believed that false fascination to occur, so much so that they do not fear to attribute such a fascination of the eyes to the impious circumcised, whom Abulensis refutes in Genesis cap. XXX. St. Bonaventure, Commentary on that verse 12, saw an allusion to fascination, and therefore says: According as malignant men are said to fascinate boys by praising them, sufficiently indicating how much weight he gave to that. Thus Delrio. To this pertains that saying of Festus Pompeius: "Fascination and fas are named from fando," because fascination was made through words by speaking, and especially by praising: for the pagans believed that fascination of boys, or of the beautiful, was made by praise: thus likewise praise fascinates and maddens many, so that they esteem themselves to be more than they are, and plainly think themselves to be others and distinguished before the rest, which is a great frivolity, both of the one praising, and maddening the hearer with his adulatory jests; then of him who feeds on his praises, and willingly allows himself to be maddened. These therefore are peddlers of frivolity, because they sell their frivolous praises: thus formerly he was called a peddler of frivolity, who sold something to women, says Nonius: for all things which women use are held to be vain and empty things. Again on the other hand βασκανία, that is fascination, signifies envy, accusation and detraction: for these often fascinate, both the envious man, and him to whom he is envious, while they obscure and overturn his good works: for while the impious accuse them, the pious often cease from them out of human fear, lest they provoke the malediction of the impious upon themselves. Thirdly, any concupiscence and allurement of sin could be called the fascination of frivolity, because it itself veils, covers and obscures reason, virtue, and honesty by its frivolous and alluring beauty and vanity of appearance and paint: for the appearance of pleasure, by which the malice and vanity of sin conceals itself, so fascinates and seizes the mind, that it does not see, does not consider, the turpitude of sin lying hidden beneath it, much less the beauty and honesty of virtue. Pleasures therefore are as it were sirens, which fascinate, bind and kill man by their alluring appearance and song. Again the fascination of frivolity consists of innumerable and vivid phantasms, which suggest to the mind anger, lust, envy, pride, and other passions: for these resound within in the head with such force, multitude and tumult, that they cloud the soul, fascinate it, and often lead it away from the true and right. What therefore Paul says to the Galatians, cap. III, vers. 1: "O senseless Galatians, who hath fascinated you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth crucified among you?" that is to say, Who hath bewitched you, and with eyes and gaze For thus it signifies that we are so constrained and mocked by the vilest and most worthless earthly trifles, especially by nugatory and adulatory praise, that we are utterly blinded to true goods, so that we hold good things for evil and evil things for good; we prefer earthly things to heavenly, transient things to eternal: but he uses the name of fascination because the common people of the Jews believed that false fascination to occur, so much so that they do not fear to attribute such a bewitchment of the eyes to the impious circumcised, whom Abulensis refutes in Genesis, chapter XXX. St. Bonaventure, in his Commentary on that verse 12, saw an allusion to fascination, and therefore says: According as wicked men are said to bewitch children by praising them, sufficiently indicating how much weight he gave to it. Thus Delrio. To this pertains that saying of Festus Pompeius: "Fascination and fas are named from fando," because fascination was made through words spoken, and especially through praising: for the pagans believed that fascination of children or the beautiful occurred through praise: thus likewise praise fascinates and drives many mad, so that they esteem themselves to be more than they are, and plainly think themselves to be others and distinguished before the rest, which is great frivolity, both of the one praising and dementating the hearer with his adulatory jests; and of him who feeds on his praises and willingly allows himself to be driven mad. These therefore are peddlers of trifles, because they sell their frivolous praises: thus once a peddler of trifles was called one who would sell something to women, as Nonius says: for all things which women use are held to be vain and empty things. Again on the other hand βασκανία, that is fascination, signifies envy, accusation and detraction: for these often bewitch, both the envious man and him who is envied, while they obscure and overturn his good works: for when the impious accuse them, the pious often cease from them out of human fear, lest they provoke the curse of the impious upon themselves. With evil deeds, as if by sleight of hand he imposed upon you, so that what you see before you, you do not see, and what is not, you think you see? The same you would say to the glutton, the luxurious, the slothful, the wrathful, the proud, the avaricious: Who bewitched you, O fool, so that on account of a feigned and false appearance of pleasure, gluttony, luxury, sloth, wrath, pride, avarice you abandon and despise reason, virtue, law, heaven itself and God? Who with his sleights of hand so maddened you, that for a little honey you purchase eternal gall for yourself? that for a drop of sweetness you bring upon yourself a sea of bitterness and sorrows? that on account of a meager titillation of taste and touch, you wish to burn perpetually in the eternal fires of hell? O stupor! O fascination! O madness! O insanity! What error, what fascination, what frenzy compels you to prefer childish, vile, paltry trifles to things true, solid, precious, earthly things to heavenly, a moment to eternity, hell to paradise, the creature to the Creator? See what I have said concerning trifles and frivolity in Zephaniah III, 18.
AND INCONSTANCY (St. Fulgentius, Fulgentius, epistle II, cap. 17, reads constancy, for concupiscence presses upon, solicits and urges man to pursue the thing desired) PERVERTS THE SENSE WITHOUT MALICE. — For inconstancy in Greek is ῥεμβασμός, that is wandering, error (whence the French rêver and rêverie), agitation, whirlwind, vertigo, circling, gyration, circumrotation: hence ῥύπτηρ is a sling, which casts a stone by rotating it. To this word is likewise akin ῥόμβος, that is a whirlwind, rhombus, which is an instrument to which women wind the threads they have spun: by which likewise witches or sorceresses were accustomed to use for bewitchment, namely for drawing down the moon with twisted threads; whence that passage of Martial, lib. IX: By which now with a Thessalian rhombus to draw down the moon. And that of Propertius, lib. II, Eleg. XXI: The magic twisted rhombi fail beneath the incantation. Hence Cervantes translates, and the rhombus (rotating) weakens the simple mind of desire. This therefore wandering and rotation of concupiscence perverts the sense without malice, in Greek ἄκακον, that is innocent, sincere, simple, pure. Concupiscence therefore is a whirlwind, and like a whirlwind it gyrates and rotates man in a circle, so that now toward this, now toward that, now toward another thing to be desired, like a whirlwind he is turned and rotated. The cause is first, that concupiscence is itching and wanton; whence wantonly it runs and leaps from one pleasure to another, so that it may curiously explore where the greater pleasure might be. Second, that it does not satisfy the soul with the same thing, inasmuch as it is base and meager, and therefore quickly creates in it disgust of itself; wherefore the soul, so that it may relieve itself from this satiety and tedium, seeks another and another object of pleasure, saying: "Bring, bring," Proverbs XXX, 15. Third, that pleasures are connected among themselves equally as vices are: for acedia draws and incites to gluttony, gluttony to luxury, luxury to anger, anger to pride: and so it transforms and transfigures it into another form (for this is what ῥέμβω means) as Our Douay-Rheims renders it, chapter XVI, verse 25: in Greek μετασχηματίζω, that is, as if it digs out metals, hollows out and excavates, as Our Douay-Rheims renders it, Deuteronomy VIII, 9, as if to say: Just as miners by digging excavate gold, silver and other metals from the bowels of the earth, so concupiscence digs out, excavates and exhausts from the bowels of the mind all sense, all prudence, all sincerity, all innocence and virtue, and inverts and perverts it through vice: for this is precious as gold, indeed more precious than gold and silver; wherefore if it be exchanged with cupidity and vice, it is plainly depraved, vitiated and perverted, just as if gold were turned into bronze, silver into lead and perverted, according to that passage, Jeremiah VI, 30: "Call them reprobate silver:" see the remarks there. TRANSVERTED,—that is, inverted, perverted, as Vatable renders it, transmuted from good into evil, see the remarks on Lamentations I, 8. Hear Cassiodorus, tract. On Friendship: "When after obtaining the desired thing he feels himself laboring under a greater want, he begins to despise what was preferred, and again the appetite is kindled for another thing, yet not to be satisfied, but deceived by the imagination of another false happiness: this is the circuit of the impious; this is the reproach of many dwelling in the circuit; this is the mill of Samson, which with his virtue's hairs cut off and prudence's eyes put out, he turns about, following the circuit of cupidities, even having abandoned the shortcut of charity. The head, he says, of their circuit, the labor of their lips shall cover them." This is what the Psalmist says, Psalm LXXXII, 14: "O my God, make them like a wheel," as if to say Origen: "Thus turn and revolve them, so that there be no rest, as it is the nature of a wheel to be turned and revolved;" and Euthymius: "Make, he says, them continually unstable and turned about by frequent changes: thus they can be compared to wheels." St. Augustine adds: "Make them like a wheel, because a wheel is lifted up from those things which are behind, cast down from those things which are before: thus all enemies of the people of God become." And St. Gregory, XVI Morals XXV: "The wicked are placed like a wheel, because sent in the circuit of labor, while they neglect those things which are before, and follow those things which are to be abandoned, and are lifted up by those things which are behind, and fall in those things which are before." And Procopius in Isaiah LIV: "It is, he says, the heart of the erring unstable, and like drunkards is agitated and wavers with cupidities; for it is turned about by any spirit, and what is in the proverb, they are snatched away by the ῥεμβασμῷ of cupidities, that is, by the whirlwind." See the remarks on Isaiah LVII, 20. Wherefore St. Chrysostom, homily 7 on Acts: "Homoic, he says, that is, bad is said, παρὰ τὸ πονεῖν, that is from laboring; thus indeed Scripture always calls malice labor, as when it says, Psalm X, 7: Under their tongue is labor and sorrow." And indeed Seneca, On the Happy Life, chapter XXVIII: "Do you not, he says, even now, although you feel it little, have some whirlwind turning and involving your minds, fleeing and seeking the same things; and now dragging you bound on high, now dashed down to the depths?" They are therefore deceived by the faithless world, and by the deceitful demon, as parasites by the Emperor Heliogabalus, of whom Lampridius thus writes in his Life: "He bound parasites to a water wheel, and with the spinning cast them under water, and again revolved them to the top, and called them Ixionian friends." Flattery therefore, equally as cupidity, is the wheel of Ixion. Flattery therefore, equally as cupidity, is the wheel of Ixion. The Wise man therefore notes here two roots of evil and sin, namely the depravity of opinions and counsels in the intellect, which is the fascination of vanity; and the wandering intemperance of cupidities in the appetite and will, which is the inconstancy of concupiscence: both of these this world is full, wherefore God by his provident benignity quickly draws the just out of it through death, lest he fall into these its snares, be captured and perish.
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Fulgentius reads, he filled) MANY TIMES. — In Greek μακρούς, that is long, as if to say: The just man, who in a brief time through the grace of God and his own diligent cooperation with it, became perfect in prudence and virtue, is to be reckoned as having lived long and through many times. In Greek it is τελειωθείς, that is, he who arrives at completion and consummation, namely of virtue and of a just life: for to this as to a unique end by God the span of life is given and measured out to mortals; therefore, perfected in virtue, he is reckoned to have arrived at his measure of perfect age (namely of virtue), although in years and age he be young: for what others would have accomplished through many years, he completed in few, and he obtained that holiness in a short time which another would not have acquired for himself in a long time, as Clarius says. Whence St. Bonaventure explains it, as if to say: "Perfect in grace, he fulfilled in a short time the merit which others acquire through many times:" for this maxim pertains to that verse 8: "For the grey hairs of a man are many days, and a life unspotted is old age:" for it returns to that. On the contrary, of the impious it is said: Isa. LXV, 20: "The child shall die a hundred years old." Therefore, perfected is not the same as consumed, dead, deceased, as Vatablus and Guarinus translate it: In a brief span of life, he says, having discharged or ended it, he filled many times in few; but perfect in virtue, namely he who through frequent, intense and heroic acts of virtue, in a short time arrived at the summit of holiness; whence St. Ambrose at the funeral of the Emperor Theodosius: "Perfect," he says, "is the age where virtue is perfect." Therefore many times are called those which are full of good works; but few times those of others, which are empty of them, according to that, Job III, 3: "So I also had empty months." Where St. Gregory, lib. VIII Moral. cap. V: "In this life," he says, "some things are laborious, some empty, some indeed both empty and laborious: for by love of the Creator, to be exercised in the tribulations of the present life is indeed laborious, but not empty; but by love of the world to be dissolved in pleasures is indeed empty, but not laborious. But by love of that same world to endure some adversities, is both empty and laborious at once: because the mind is affected by adversity, and is not filled with the reward of recompense. In these therefore Holy Church, those who placed in her still flow away into pleasures, and therefore are not enriched by the fruit of good work, counts as empty months, because they spend the times of life without the gift of retribution." Whoever therefore is wise, fill empty years with virtues. Thus Christ the Lord lived only 33 years, and St. John the Baptist nearly the same number of years, and in so few years he attained such a great accumulation of merits! St. Anthony of Padua, a fervent and apostolic preacher, lived only 36 years; St. Casimir, 25 years. There were three daughters of St. Sophia, all glorious virgins and martyrs, namely St. Faith, twelve years old, St. Hope, ten years old, and St. Charity, nine years old, who underwent martyrdom bravely: the Church celebrates their triumph on the first day of August. Thus Father Gaspar Barzeus of Zealand, the companion and indeed vicar of St. Francis Xavier, an apostolic man, in the seven years which he lived in the Society of Jesus, of which he spent five in India, namely in Goa and Hormuz, accomplished such deeds either in the almost infinite multitude or in the admirable magnitude of the matter, truly so that someone writing from India about him said that, having been perfected in a short time, he fulfilled many times, as our Trigaultius says in his Life, chapter XIV. Read the Life of the same man, and you will be astonished. But he whom he cites was Father Anthony Quadrius, provincial superior of India of the Society of Jesus, as is evident from the end of the Life. And to pass over others, Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga, a religious of our Society, was perfected in the year of his age 24. Wherefore he himself was continually sighing for this rapture and transition from this life to the heavenly one: for when Cardinal Bellarmine, then his confessor, urged him to ask God for a longer life, so that others might be instructed by his example, having asked pardon, he denied that he could do this: "Because," he said, "no greater grace can be conferred upon man by God than to call him to himself, while he is found in grace," in whose grace he then hoped to be. The same thing in a certain letter which Blessed Virgilius Ceparius recites in his Life, book II, chapter VIII at the end: "I pass," he said, "joyful days, hoping that within a few days it will come to pass that I be called by God from the land of the dying to the homeland of the living; from the company of men to the society of angels and saints." For he himself was an angel in purity and sanctity; whence deservedly the Auditors of the Rota, having examined his canonization process in Rome, gave him the title of Angelic: for at seven years old he began to serve God and to dedicate himself entirely to him; at nine years old he dedicated and vowed his virginity to God and the Blessed Virgin. Never throughout his whole life did he sin mortally, never did he experience the stings of the flesh, never did he feel distraction in prayer, as these same men affirm from the testimony of his confessors, and namely Cardinal Bellarmine, and other grave men. Seneca saw this very thing through a shadow, epistle 69: "A harbor must be sought," he says, "never to be refused; into which if anyone is carried within the first years, he ought not to complain any more than one who sailed quickly." Thus Homer calls Diomedes among the Greeks smallest in age, greatest in prudence; Pindar calls Demophilus young in years, old in counsel; Livy prefers Appius Claudius, smallest in age, to senators greatest in age; the boy Ascanius is commended by Maro, IX Aeneid: "Before his years bearing a mind and manly care." great men affirm. Seneca saw this very thing through a shadow, epistle 69: "A harbor must be sought," he says, "never to be refused; into which if anyone is carried within the first years, he ought not to complain any more than one who sailed quickly." Thus Homer calls Diomedes among the Greeks smallest in age, greatest in prudence; Pindar calls Demophilus young in years, old in counsel; Livy prefers Appius Claudius, smallest in age, to senators greatest in age; the boy Ascanius is commended by Maro, IX Aeneid: "Before his years bearing a mind and manly care." and years bearing a mind and manly care. Hear St. Ambrose in Psalm CXVIII, sermon 18: "It is clear therefore," he says, "that not the longevity of old age is to be chosen, but the keeping of the words of God. Finally, Moses himself approved Jesus and Caleb as youths before the others, whose counsel in the land of election he himself followed rather than that of many elders, and God preferred it." Could again τελειωθείς be translated, first, as immolated; second, as consecrated; third, as crowned with glory and honor, that is to say, the Just man offering all his actions and passions to God, immolating and consecrating them, through them, although small and brief, is crowned with eternal glory like Christ, of whom Paul says in Hebrews II, 10: "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many children into glory, to perfect the author of their salvation by his passion," see the remarks there. Otherwise St. Bernard explains this sentence, in epistle 254 to Guarinus; namely, that is to say, the Just man, although he lives for a short time, nevertheless completes and fulfills many times, because in his soul he embraces all eternity, so that, if he were to live forever, he would always wish to serve God, and to go from virtue to virtue; hear St. Bernard: "For how did he not fulfill all times, who passed over into eternity? How many times indeed, not by length of life, but by length of soul, that is not by a series of years, or number of days, but by devotion of mind and an unquenchable desire always to make progress, could he traverse, so many he not undeservedly claimed for himself in merits. For he retains by virtue what he lost in time. Moreover true virtue knows no end, is not confined by time." And with a few things interjected: "The Just man never says: It is enough; but always hungers and thirsts for justice, so that, if he always lived, he would always, as far as in him lies, strive to be more just, would always endeavor to make progress from good to better with all his strength: for not to a year or to a time like a hireling, but for eternity he binds himself to divine service." Whence he concludes: "Therefore the eternal hunger of the just deserves eternal refreshment, and although he is completed in a short time as to duration, he is nevertheless judged to have fulfilled many times as to the perpetuity of virtue."
4:14
FOR HIS SOUL WAS PLEASING TO GOD (through justice inherent, and grace infused into him by God on account of the merits of Christ): FOR THIS REASON HE HASTENED (the Lord, who commanded) TO BRING HIM OUT FROM THE MIDST OF INIQUITIES. — St. Fulgentius, from the midst of iniquity; the Greek texts have only, for this reason he hastened from the midst of iniquity, namely for the just to depart, as Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, Lot from Sodom, Moses and the Hebrews from Egypt; but our author better refers τὸ hastened to God, and therefore understands τὸ to bring him out, for God snatched away the just, as he said in verse 11; therefore not the just man snatched himself away, for God is the origin, fountain and first and principal cause of all grace, liberation, perseverance, good death and salvation to us.
BUT THE PEOPLE SEEING, SAID SUCH THINGS: — understand, they marveled and murmured, either against the just, as if he himself by his crimes deserved a swift death; or against God, because he punished the just innocent man with sudden death. More simply and properly you would explain it by Hebraism, that is to say, the unfaithful people, or ignorant and rude, seeing, that is they saw, the swift death of the just, and not understanding the causes already mentioned, that is they did not understand, nor took them to heart: for the Hebrews often use benoni, that is the participle, especially the past (for in Greek here are the aorists ἰδόντες and νοήσαντες, which have the signification of the past, that is to say, when they had seen, they did not understand) for the past itself. A similar enallage is in Romans XII, 11: "Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, instant in prayer," etc., that is, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be instant in prayer; and II Corinthians X, 12: "But they themselves, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing (that is we measure and compare) themselves with themselves," etc. That this is the sense is clear, because thus the Wise man immediately explains himself saying verse 17: "For they shall see the end of the wise man, and shall not understand what God hath thought concerning him," etc.
4:15
d. They do not think) SUCH THINGS (in Greek, τάδε, namely what follows) BECAUSE THE GRACE OF GOD, AND MERCY IS IN HIS SAINTS, AND HIS REGARD IS IN HIS ELECT, — that is to say. The unfaithful or unlearned peoples do not understand, nor do they think that the swift death of the saints is a remarkable grace and mercy of God, by which He snatches the saints from the perils of this world, and regards and visits His elect, transferring them from the labors of the present life to eternal rewards, which they have merited by their continence, mortification and virtue; whence Vatablus, connecting this entire verse, translates it clearly: the common people, however, seeing this do not understand, nor do they perceive this very thing (that the just are quickly snatched from life) to be a benefit and mercy toward His saints, and a regard had for His elect: for the common people think that premature death in a young man, beautiful, rich and noble is the greatest evil and misfortune, because they are ignorant of the future and glorious life, into which he is transferred. Thus today the worldly, who see noble youths die quickly in the religious life which they have embraced, esteem them unhappy and miserable, because they do not know nor think that by this death God's grace and eternal glory are secured to them; whence Cervantes thus expounds it by amplification: "This was hidden from them, namely that grace, benefit and favor, and mercy, or the most tender and sweetest affection, most merciful grace, and most gracious mercy of God—for God is the origin, fountain and first and principal cause of all grace, liberation, perseverance, good death and salvation to us." Hugo and others less correctly understand by grace justifying grace, by mercy accompanying or subsequent grace.
AND HIS REGARD (in Greek ἐπισκοπή, that is inspection, observation, regard, consideration, care, visitation to reward the just labors and sufferings undertaken for God and piety, as I said at chapter III, 6) IN HIS ELECT, — whom God from eternity before all foreknowledge of works chose for Himself by the grace of predestination, so that by it throughout the whole time of life persevering in justice, they might be chosen and destined by Him to eternal glory, that is to say. God has a peculiar regard for His elect, that is consideration, care and providence, and therefore He snatches them away before they fall into temptations and sin, so that their youth spent in piety He may reward with heavenly glory.
4:16
Athanasius reads, longevity; in Greek it is, πολυετὲς γῆρας, that is, old age of many years; the Vatican [manuscript], long-lived old age) THE UNJUST. — This is a condemnation not verbal, but real through the comparison and example of life: "for the life of the just reproves the sinner, whom it condemns by a greater authority, tacitly, than if it spoke with voice," says St. Ambrose in Psalm XXXVI, as if to say, The just man dead condemns the living impious not by words, but by deeds, because he preferred to die piously rather than to live impiously, which the impious do. Their pious death, therefore, occurring in youth, in reality condemns the impious life of the unjust elder, who defiles and stains his old age with vices and crimes: for the longer and worse one lives, the more is he to be blamed and condemned. He speaks in general of any just man, although the Gloss restricts it to the martyr, and Cantacuzenus to Christ slain by the Jews: because Christ, young though he was slain, his life-giving death, he says, will vindicate those believing in him from destruction, and will bestow immortality upon them; but those who did not believe, and especially who dared to rage against him, it will openly reprove and condemn; and the mystery of redemption, which he himself accomplished in the flower of his age, will remove from the midst the law of sin, which had grown old. He speaks this truly, but narrowly: for he speaks of any just man, but especially of Christ, who is the prince of the just, and the Holy of Holies. Hence Barlaam, a septuagenarian, when asked by Josaphat how many years old he was, replied: Forty-five: "Because," he said, "I have served God for only so many years, but the remaining years in which I served the world, I do not count as years of life, but of death," according to that: "He lived, while he lived well:" thus Damascus in his Life. Again, he condemns, that is, on the day of judgment the dead just man will condemn the wicked elders, who lived long, while he will approve the sentence of Christ condemning them on account of the vices in which they grew old, as worthy of hell.
4:17
— This maxim does not pertain to what immediately preceded, for the dead just man condemns the living impious; but in the Hebrew manner, somewhat more remotely, to the verse 14, the people seeing, and not understanding: for these words correspond equally to them, and explain what they will see and not understand, namely that the peoples will see the end, that is, the exit and premature death of the wise man, that is, of the just, and will not understand its cause, namely why God snatched him so quickly from the middle of the course of life and from the flower of it, and what he intended to do concerning him, because, drunk with the love of the present life, they do not grasp the glory of the future life; hence they reckon swift death to be the height of unhappiness.
AND WHY THE LORD HATH PROTECTED HIM. — There is a threefold reading here. First, — There is a threefold reading here. First, the Complutensian and Royal [editions], why he diminished him (his years and days of life, says Rabanus, and from him Holcot) the Lord: but the Greek and other Latin [texts] read consistently protected, not diminished. The second is that of the Greek manuscripts already, and why he protected ἑαυτῷ, that is, himself the Lord, as if to say, Why the Lord made his decree concerning the just man, snatching him away by swift death, safe and firm. The third and genuine reading is that of the Vulgate and others, who, reading αὐτὸν for ἑαυτῷ, translate, and why the Lord protected him, that is, why God, snatching away the just man swiftly, kept him safe and upright from sin, falling away, and damnation; why he provided for his salvation, and repelled every danger from it: for this is what the Greek ἠσφαλίσατο signifies, that is, bestowed security, provided, protected; hence Vatable translates, and to what end the Lord kept him safe; Clement of Alexandria, book VI of the Stromata: They will see, he says, the death of the wise man, and will not understand what the Lord decreed concerning him, and to what end he established him: for the just man, God granting, struggles against all resistance like a palm, and the more he is beaten, the more he raises himself up, and the more he flourishes, according to that, Psalm CXXXI, verse 18: "His enemies will I clothe with confusion; but upon himself shall my sanctification flourish;" where Arnobius: "Christ," he says, "is compared to the palm itself, always flourishing, who, sitting at the right hand of God, extends his branches to the victors, bestowing a crown from his flowers, and from his fruits imparting perpetual nourishment."
4:18
— For he who despises the just man, tacitly despises God, just as he who despises a servant or legate despises his master or lord; but God, just as he honors those who honor him and his, so in turn he despises those who despise him, according to that said to Heli, I Kings II, 30: "Whosoever glorifieth me, I will glorify him: but they that despise me, shall be despised;" and that, Isaiah XXXIII, 1: "Woe to thee that spoilest, shalt not thou thyself be spoiled? and thou that despisest, shalt not thyself be despised?" he alludes to that of David, Psalm II, 4: "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them, and the Lord shall deride them," and Psalm XXXVI, 13: "But the Lord shall laugh at him, for he foreseeth that his day shall come."
4:19
— First, Vatablus, they shall fall shamefully; in Greek, ἔσονται εἰς πτῶμα; which first, when you translate it with our version, they shall be in ruin or fall, or a fall into dishonor, that is bereft of honor and ignominious, as if to say: The impious, even if for a time they are exalted here with riches and honors, nevertheless at length from this pinnacle of worldly happiness and glory they shall fall, and shall tumble into poverty, misery, vileness and infamy, as into an abyss, especially in death, and after death into hell. Second, you may translate: they shall be like a vile corpse: for death from the living, luxurious and splendid shall make foul and hideous corpses, for the more delicately bodies have been nourished in life, the more they putrefy and stink after death: for the Greek πτῶμα is derived from πίπτω, just as cadaver from cado: thus Jansenius. Third, you may translate: they shall be like olives falling, or like apples shaken from a tree and falling to the ground, or like a tree with roots torn out cast down to the earth, cast down and inglorious. Thus above in verses 3 and 4, he compared the impious to trees agitated by wind and uprooted: for all these things are signified by the Greek πτῶμα: thus Peter Nannius here. Some interpret all these things, as I said above, of tyrants slaying martyrs; but Cantacuzenus interprets them of the Jews crucifying Christ: for these on account of this infamous deicide were cut off by Titus, sold, condemned to beasts, exiles and wanderers, made a mockery to the whole world; but truly and adequately you should understand these things of the impious persecuting any just man.
AND IN SHAME AMONG THE DEAD FOREVER. — Lucifer of Cagliari, — Lucifer of Cagliari, Apology for St. Athanasius, reads, they shall be in the shame of death forever; Vatablus, and they shall labor in perpetual ignominy among the dead, both among men, both among the heavenly, both among the infernal: for they shall go into hell, where they shall be a mockery of demons, according to that, Dan. XII, 3: "And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake: some unto life everlasting, and others unto reproach, to see it always;" and Isa. LXVI, 24: "Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be a loathsome sight to all flesh." The phrase among the dead is the same as among the damned: for the corpses of the impious putrefy in the sepulcher, but their souls shall be tormented perpetually in hell with the damned, according to that, Psalm XXVIII, 13: "Like sheep they are laid in hell" (Theodoret, they have constituted themselves, whence they are unable to be extricated), death shall feed upon them; St. Jerome, death shall be their shepherd, and he adds: "Deservedly are they fed by death, who refused to have Christ as their good shepherd," John XI, 14; and that saying of St. Gregory, book XV of the Morals, chapter XII, where he expounds that passage of Job XX, 18: He shall pay for all things which he hath made, and yet shall not be consumed: "He is not consumed by death, he says, because if the life of the dying were consumed, the punishment also would be ended; but in order that he may be tortured without end, he is compelled to live in punishment, so that whose life was dead here in guilt, there his death may live in punishment."
BECAUSE HE SHALL BREAK THEM IN PIECES INFLATED WITHOUT VOICE, That is to say: Just as a bladder inflated and swollen with wind is broken and burst with a great crash, so God shall break in pieces the impious swollen with pride in death with great crash and pain, and shall make them ἀφώνους, that is without voice (some read ἀφρόνους, or rather ἀφρόνας, that is senseless, so that they may appear to lack mind, that is counsel and judgment, and to be destitute of all reason). Moreover without voice, that is tongueless and mute, like fish, so that they can neither speak, nor, if they could, dare to mutter or gape, on account of confusion and consciousness of their crimes; hence he who had not a wedding garment at the nuptials of the Lamb became silent; wherefore with hands and feet bound he was cast out into outer darkness, Matthew XXII, 12. Moreover the Greek words are transposed, for thus they have it, because he shall break them without voice inflated, or, as some read, inflamed; whence Cervantes refers τὸ without voice to the inflamed, and thus explains it, without voice, that is as it were a flame, consuming and devouring the impious with a bland and at the same time sharp silence, sent forth from heaven, and without any resistance, without the crash of any branch breaking itself, as it were complaining, shall utterly destroy, overthrow, remove them, and shall so devour them in the fire of divine wrath, that it transfers them also from their place into hell. Our interpreter seems to have read πρησθείς for πρηνεῖς, from πρήθω, that is I inflate, or I inflame; whence he translates inflated, and this aptly coheres with the verb shall break; others translate inflamed, indeed some think that for inflated should be read inflamed; whence πρηστήρ is prester, that is a fiery whirlwind; but Vatablus and others, reading πρηνεῖς, from πρηνίζω, that is I precipitate, or I bend forward on the head, translate prone, cast down, or headlong; whence Vatablus translates, because he shall shake them with voice shut off precipitated: for he shall precipitate them into tartarus. Moreover God shall break in pieces the impious, first, in death, when he shall tear away and sever the soul from the body; which tearing away, on account of the supreme union of the soul with the body, is most bitter. Second, in judgment he shall sever, that is separate them from the society of angels and the blessed. Third, in gehenna he shall break them in pieces with torments, stripes, plagues and most bitter pains, so that they may appear to be torn apart and broken limb by limb. He alludes to the torment of wheels, in which the limbs and members of robbers are broken; and to wheels by which martyrs, being turned about, were torn and broken by knives and swords placed beneath them: for similar wheels, but far more atrocious, in gehenna were seen by the saints, who were caught up thither in spirit by God, in which the bodies of the damned were twisted and torn apart, but so that they were always restored to new torments. See the authors who have written concerning the torments of hell, and especially Dionysius the Carthusian On the Penalties of Hell, article 47 and following, and On the Judgment of the Soul, chapter XXI and following. Fourth and genuinely, the Greek ῥήγμα signifies to strike down with vehemence and crash, and to fall from above, as stormy rain and hail are wont to do; likewise to be torn away and snatched, as trees, houses, and great masses are swallowed up by a chasm in the earth: in a similar manner the bodies of the damned, inflated, gross and heavy like lead, from the valley of Josaphat, where they shall be judged and condemned by Christ, when the earth opens with great force and crash, are struck down, torn away, snatched and fall into the depths of tartarus, all which Our Lord indicated by the word shall break in pieces, that is shall sever.
AND HE SHALL SHAKE THEM FROM THEIR FOUNDATIONS, AND HE SHALL SHAKE THEM FROM THEIR FOUNDATIONS, AND EVEN TO THE HIGHEST THEY SHALL BE DESOLATED: AND THEY SHALL BE GROANING, AND THEIR MEMORY SHALL PERISH. — And he shall shake them from their foundations, that is, as Vatablus says, he shall shake them utterly, just as trees, houses, or doors are shaken and broken when they are torn from their foundations and hinges: he alludes to that passage in Job XXII, 16: "A river hath overturned the foundation of them who said to God: Depart from us;" in Hebrew it is, a river poured forth (Septuagint, flowing) their foundation: he alludes to the waters of the flood. This river signifies the onset of God's wrath against the wicked, and the swift consumption of them, and the immense force and mass of calamities inundating them. And even to the highest they shall be desolated, that is, they shall be extremely desolated, says Vatablus, so that nothing of theirs remains safe: for it is fitting that the impious, who in this life had the greatest delights, consolations and joys, should likewise have in the future the greatest sorrows, desolations and torments. And they shall be groaning, in Greek, and they shall be in manifold and greatest pain, such as that of women in travail; for this is what ὠδίν signifies: for they shall be tormented by the fire and torments of hell. And their memory shall perish, in the sense which I gave above-
4:20
d. The impious in their mind and memory, as their conscience dictates, shall gather together as it were into one heap all their crimes of the life that has passed, whereby it shall come to pass that they are seized with the greatest fear, and struck down with extreme shame; hence Vatablus translates it, they shall come forth trembling at the reckoning of their sins, they shall come forth, that is, so that they may render to Christ the judge an exact account of each of their deeds, words and thoughts; whence trembling they shall consider with themselves what they shall answer to Christ, and shall find nothing suitable.
AND THEY SHALL ACCUSE (In Greek ἐλέγξει, argue and convince, and shall set them forth to all as convicted criminals) THEM TO THEIR FACE OF THEIR INIQUITIES, — so that they cannot deny, palliate or excuse them: conscience, which is a thousand witnesses, on the day of judgment shall show, not only to the impious themselves, but to all men and angels all their crimes, according to that: And all the secrets of all shall be laid bare to all. Hence Vatablus translates it, and they shall be convicted by their own crimes before all: thus in chapter II, verse 14: "It hath been made unto us," he says, "a reproach," that is a public rebuke. Less correctly Cantacuzenus: They shall accuse, he says, that is, they shall lead apart, and shall lead away the impious from the fellowship of the saints; for the Greek ἐλέγξω is the same as what Jeremiah imputes to the impious, chapter II, verse 19: "Thy malice shall reprove thee, and thy turning away shall rebuke thee," as if to say: There will be no need of an accuser or according to that: And all the secrets of all shall be laid bare to all. Hence Vatablus translates it, and they shall be convicted by their own crimes before all: thus in chapter II, verse 14: "It hath been made unto us," he says, "a reproach," that is a public rebuke. Less correctly Cantacuzenus: They shall accuse, he says, that is, they shall lead apart, and shall lead away the impious from the fellowship of the saints; for the Greek ἐλέγξω is the same as what Jeremiah imputes to the impious, chapter II, verse 19: "Thy malice shall reprove thee, and thy turning away shall rebuke thee," as if to say: There will be no need of an accuser or according to that: And all the secrets of all shall be laid bare to all. Hence Vatablus translates it, and they shall be convicted by their own crimes before all: thus in chapter II, verse 14: "It hath been made unto us," he says, "a reproach," that is a public rebuke. Less correctly Cantacuzenus: They shall accuse, he says, that is, they shall lead apart, and shall lead away the impious from the fellowship of the saints; for the Greek ἐλέγξω is the same as what Jeremiah imputes to the impious, chapter II, verse 19: "Thy malice shall reprove thee, and thy turning away shall rebuke thee," as if to say: There will be no need of an accuser or that is a public rebuke. Less correctly Cantacuzenus: They shall accuse, he says, that is, they shall lead apart, and shall lead away the impious from the fellowship of the saints; for the Greek ἐλέγξω is the same as what Jeremiah imputes to the impious, chapter II, verse 19: "Thy malice shall reprove thee, and thy turning away shall rebuke thee," as if to say: There will be no need of an accuser or witness, because thy conscience itself shall lay bare thy crimes to the whole world, shall accuse and testify; and Job, chapter XV, verse 24: "Trouble shall terrify him, and anguish shall surround him, as a king who is prepared for battle." Weigh each word of the Wise Man from verse 18 hitherto, and thou shalt find as many punishments of the impious and the damned in hell: for each one threatens a new torment: moreover Holcot so aptly adapts and fits each punishment to the corresponding sins. The fall of the impious, especially of tyrants, he says, shall take its punishment from their ambitious pride; contumely shall answer to the contumely with which they afflicted the saints; mockery likewise to mockery; perpetuity shall be watered by the obstinacy with which they perpetuated their life in sins even unto death; they shall be broken, just as they broke the pious: they shall be without voice and mute, because they condemned the saints unheard, and gave them neither space to defend themselves, nor faculty of speaking; they shall be shaken from their foundations, who strove utterly to uproot the pious; desolation shall succeed carnal consolation, groaning to laughter, to pleasures and delights; their memory shall perish, because they themselves forgot God, the law, virtue and their salvation.
Machine translation from the Latin, not reviewed.
4:1
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; …
4:7
In this symbolic meaning it is already found used in the Old Testament (Ps. 65, 11; Wis. 4, 7; Jer. 6, 16); in the New Testament the rich glutton, parched, asks Lazarus ut refrigeret linguam (Lk. 16, 24). St. Paul writes: Det misericordiam Dominus Onesiphori domui; quia saepe
4:10
… very condition to pity (cf. Ex. 22, 22; Deut. 24, 17; 19, 21; 14, 29; 26, 12-13; 16, 11, 14; 10, 18; 27, 19; 22, 24); very often, having no close relatives to defend her, she is at the mercy of the violent (cf. Job 22, 9; 34, 3, 21; Ps. 95, 6; Wis. 4, 10; Is. 1, 23; 10, 2; Jer. 7, 6; Ex. 22, 7, 25; Mal. 3, 5, etc.); she is consoled and helped only by the charitable man (cf. Job 29, 13; 31, 16; Jer. 22, 3; Zech. 7, 10; …
4:11
… God attains His end in different ways according to the cases: e.g., by anticipating the moment of death (cf. Sap. 4:11), or by delaying it, or by not permitting temptations, or, by permitting them, giving the efficacious strength to overcome them, or by raising up the fallen sinner, so that the last …
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.