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「Declare your iniquities, that you may be justified.」 There follows: 「For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in transgressions my mother bore me.」 Who performs repentance with such great feeling? He lay stretched upon the ground, melted into tears, did not taste food, renounced the bath. What more shall I say of the rest — that he abstained from royal adornment and retinue? He added the confession of his iniquity, and transmitted it to be sung through the whole world for perpetual ages. 「Behold,」 he says, 「I was conceived in iniquities, and in transgressions my mother bore me. Turn your face away from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Cast me not away from your face, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation.」
Before we are born, we are stained by contagion, and before the enjoyment of light we receive the injury of our very origin. We are conceived in iniquity — he did not express whether his parents' or our own — and in transgressions a mother brings forth each one. Nor did he here declare whether the mother gives birth in her own transgressions, or whether there are already some transgressions of the one being born. But see whether both are to be understood. Neither is the conception free from iniquity, since the parents too are not without lapse. And if not even an infant of one day is without sin, much more are those maternal days of conception not without sin. We are therefore conceived in the sin of our parents, and in their transgressions are we born. But the birth itself also has its own contagions, nor does nature itself have one contagion only:
The marriage is indeed good, the union holy; but yet let those who have wives be as though not having them. The marriage-bed itself is undefiled, and no one ought to defraud the other of it except perhaps for a time, that they may have leisure for prayer; yet according to the Apostle no one has leisure for prayer at that time in which he exercises the use of that bodily union. And to a menstruating woman the cloth is defiled, nor can she in those days of her purification offer sacrifice. And the days of childbirth of a woman who has given birth, and very many others, are kept apart from sacrifice, until by the lawful rite the one who has given birth is cleansed. Therefore, in him whom the Lord willed to have no contagions of such an origin, the Lord says to him:
「Before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb, I sanctified you, and set you a prophet among the nations.」 Who is so great a one, to whom such great things have been entrusted? Was it Jeremiah? But he indeed was not set as a prophet among the nations, but in Judaea at that time, and now even among the nations which have believed in the Lord Jesus. Yet see whether it is said to him who, before he was born of the Virgin, already long since was and ever was, and was at work even when established in the womb of Mary, and was so holy that he sanctified his prophets — in whom alone both the virginal conception and the birth were without any defilement of mortal origin.
For it was fitting that he who was not to have the sin of bodily lapse should feel no natural contagion of generation. Rightly therefore did David tearfully lament in himself the very defilements of nature, because in man the stain begins before life. While he says these things and confesses the foulness of sins both special and common, suddenly the splendor of truth and the brightness of spiritual grace shone forth upon him. For having transcended the shadow by his prophetic spirit, he beheld the very mysteries and sacraments of the heavenly things, whose figure Moses prefigured in the Law.
Wounded therefore by the wound of love and seized by the desire of searching out the truth, he stretched the gaze of his mind into higher things, and looking forward into things to come, he beheld in Christ the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; he foresaw the sacrament of baptism, and marveling at the grace, he suddenly cried out, saying: 「For behold, you have loved truth; the uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me.」 Not uncertain mysteries, because they are certain, nor uncertain secrets and arcana of wisdom, but not made manifest. For this is what it signifies, that they had been made manifest to none; for what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it ascended into the heart of man, this God has prepared for those who love him. Seeing these things therefore he says:
Behold, now not in shadow nor in figure, not in type, but in truth the open light shines forth: behold, now I behold the truth, I acknowledge the splendor of truth, now, O Lord our God, I venerate you with greater affection. 「For behold, you have loved truth;」 not through a mirror, not in a riddle, but face to face you have shown yourself to me, O Christ; in your sacraments I find you. These are the true sacraments of your wisdom, by which the hidden things of the mind are cleansed. And so now, joyful and secure, because the fullness of wisdom had flashed upon him, he says to the Lord: 「You shall sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed; you shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.」 He well both does not empty out the sacraments of the Old Testament and teaches that the evangelical mysteries are to be preferred.
He asks to be cleansed with hyssop according to the Law, he desires to be washed according to the Gospel, and he reckons himself, if he be washed, to be whitened above snow. By the little bundle of hyssop he was sprinkled with the blood of the lamb who wished to be cleansed by the typical baptism. But he is washed who is rinsed by the irrigation of the eternal fountain, and is whitened above snow to whom guilt is forgiven. In short, concerning the soul itself it is said: 「Who is this who ascends, made white?」 Before she was baptized, she is the one who said: 「I am black and comely, O daughter of Jerusalem.」 For she was black, deformed by the dark horror of sins, but after, being washed through baptism, she merited the remission of transgressions, made white she ascends to Christ. Hence too through Isaiah the Lord spoke, saying:
「If your sins be as scarlet, I will whiten them as snow,」 that is: if they be bloodstained, if foul, I will cleanse them. This is the intelligible snow, of which he says in the Gospel that the garments of the Lord Jesus shone like snow, because his flesh knew no sin, when it clothed itself coming into this world, clean from every blemish of transgression. Why do you marvel if he saw the sacraments of baptism, when he said above, where he described the Lord's passion: 「The Lord feeds me, and nothing shall be wanting to me; in a green place there he settled me, beside the water of refreshment he reared me」 — and elsewhere: 「The voice of the Lord upon the waters, the God of majesty」? And concerning that very sacrament he said more fully: 「You have prepared a table in my sight;
you have anointed my head with oil, and your inebriating cup, how excellent it is.」 Rightly therefore, exulting in these things, he says: 「To my hearing you shall give joy and gladness, and the humbled bones shall exult.」 You have proved, O Lord Jesus, that your words never pass away; you have proved that evangelical saying which you spoke: 「Many prophets and just men desired to see the things which you see and to hear the things which you hear.」 Behold, David rejoices in the hearing alone, because there was to be a remission of sins, and he prophesies that the humbled bones shall exult. As all the bones of the just shall say: 「Lord, who is like you?」 so the humbled bones shall exult — that is, of the just man humbling his own soul.
The bones, therefore, are said to be the virtues; the bones are said to be, as it were, certain motions of the spirit or of the soul, which motions are humbled by sins, and exult in the gift of heavenly grace. The bones are also said to be the peoples of the churches, whence you have it said in the psalm: 「My bone is not hidden, which you made in secret.」 He called his bone the church and the sacred assemblies of the devout people, since we are members of the body of Christ, of his flesh and of his bones. This therefore he says, because the church of the Lord shall recognize all the divine works and shall receive the faith of the resurrection. There follows: 「Turn your face away from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.」 It is a customary entreaty, that we should ask those whom we have injured to forget our own offense.
Morally, therefore, the prophet asks God to turn his face away from his sins and, as it were, to assume a forgetfulness of his sins. But because he beholds all things and nothing escapes him, he cannot forget as we do, from whom the memory of those things we have known slips away after a brief interval of time. Therefore he well says that he should turn his face away — not from himself, lest he fail being forsaken, but from his sins, that his sins may not be able to have strength. For those whom the Lord looks upon, he enlightens, and in the countenance of the Lord is mercy and indulgence. And therefore this same one says: 「From your countenance let my judgment come forth;」 for from the countenance of the Lord proceeds pardon, not punishment. He is to be asked, therefore, to look upon us, but to turn his face away from our sins, that he may blot them out.
For the things which he does not look upon he blots out, and the things which he has blotted out shall be buried in memory, as the Lord himself says: 「I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities, and I will not remember them; but do you remember, and let us be judged.」 Now sin is either pardoned, or blotted out, or covered. It is pardoned through grace, blotted out through the blood of the cross, covered through love. Likewise iniquity also, which is reckoned to be a habit of an unjust mind — although John in his epistle has said that he who commits sin has also committed iniquity, as we have it written: 「Everyone who commits sin commits iniquity also.」 Sin is iniquity, because in sin itself there is iniquity;
yet, as it seems to us, sin is the work of iniquity, but iniquity is the worker of fault and transgression. It is therefore a greater thing that iniquity itself be blotted out, that the root and seedbed of sins be cut away. Let the evil root be removed, lest it bear evil fruits; let every affection of error be abolished, let all kinds of iniquities be removed. And so, just as the discipline of wisdom entering into the soul takes away imprudence, and knowledge takes away ignorance, so perfect virtue blots out iniquity, and the remission of sins blots out all sin.
Whence the Apostle excellently says that the Lord Jesus has forgiven us our sins, blotting out the handwriting of the decree which was against us, and 「he took it,」 he says, 「out of the way, nailing it to the cross.」 He blotted out with his blood the ink of Eve, he blotted out the bond of the liable inheritance. Faith therefore diminishes sin. And therefore the Lord, in remitting sins, used to say: 「Be it done to you according to your faith.」 There follows: 「Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my inward parts.」 Above he asks to be cleansed from hidden things; here he asks that a clean heart be created for him, which comes to him who is renewed in spirit;
for in the new man the heart is clean, in which the filth of old transgressions has been blotted out, and no image of iniquity remains inscribed. But a great gift it is to be of a clean heart. Whence Solomon beautifully says: 「Who shall boast that he has a chaste heart?」 And the Lord in the Gospel: 「Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.」 For this reason David too desired to have a clean heart, lest he be cast away from the face of the Lord. But in him whose heart is clean, the spirit is renewed in his inward parts. For the bowels are, as it were, the inner parts of the body; so too there are intelligible bowels of the soul, such as are the bowels of mercy, such as are the inward parts which bless the Lord, of which he says:
「Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, his holy name.」 But the bowels of the soul are the inventions of the senses, the pursuits of good thought, the perseverance of virtues, and finally those which in Greek are called ἔννοιαι (conceptions). But a right spirit is one which directs well, which leads into the right way; this is the spirit of truth, or certainly the right conscience of man, bent by no sins, or the spirit which is in man. We have not passed over what others think; yet it seems to us that, since the reading speaks of mysteries and the grace of future renewal is expressed, the infusion of the Holy Spirit is asked for. For there follows: 「Cast me not away from your face, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.」
If one of our little servants offends us, we are wont to turn our face away from him. But very many of the rich are accustomed to send away their slaves and to banish them through their little farms, and this is reckoned a graver punishment. In short, they are wont rather to offer themselves to blows. If among men this is held grievous, how much more with the Lord our God. As though it were not from this point that the parricidal grief — which was indeed to be checked, if any piety could have tempered it — burst forth, that God turned his face away from the gifts of Cain, but looked upon the gifts of Abel. And so by his silent countenance he pronounced the one innocent, the other a sinner.
Therefore, like the lowest servant, he humbles himself and, as one caught in sin and guilty of an offense, he beseeches that he may rather be scourged than cast away from the face of the Lord. How God casts away from his face, hear him saying: 「Take him into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.」 He who is not amended is set in darkness from his face. Therefore the just man, lest he suffer darkness, says: 「Your countenance, O Lord, will I seek.」 For where the countenance of the Lord is, there is light, as it is written: 「Make your face to shine upon your servant.」 In short, as soon as he first looked upon Peter, he also enlightened him. A great punishment, therefore, it is to be cast away from the face of God. Adam was cast out of paradise, and not undeservedly; for he had himself first hidden himself from the face of God.
Cain too went out from the face of God, not only after he had committed his fratricide, but also after he supposed that God could be deceived, so that he might deny his crime. The sinner, therefore, is shut out from the face of God, but the righteous man says: 'Here am I.' Indeed David himself, when he saw the people perishing, offered himself, saying: 'Behold, it is I; I have sinned, and I the shepherd have done wickedly'; and thus the wrath of the Lord was appeased and pardon was granted. At the same time he shows that the saints abide, while the guilty are cast out. Therefore the spiritual grace must be guarded by us, lest because of our sins it be taken away from us. For he is not cast out in whom the Holy Spirit dwells; rather, with the fruit of his gift unmarred, he is eager to offer himself ever to the Lord, like the one who, when the Lord said:
'Do you also wish to depart?' answered: 'To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe.' At the same time this is to be considered, that the Spirit is not taken away except by the Lord's will, just as the Spirit is not given except by the Lord's will. And when He is given, He does not work as one compelled, but is distributed according to His own will, as it is written, the Apostle saying: 'But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each one as He wills.' Since therefore He is not taken away except by the Lord's will, it appears that the will of the Trinity is one. 'Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and strengthen me with a princely spirit.' To whom it is due, to him it is also restored: the joy of salvation is restored to the rational nature.
Now joy and gladness are the fruit of the Spirit; our firm support also is the princely Spirit. Indeed, he who is strengthened by the princely Spirit is not subject to bondage, knows not how to serve sin, knows not how to drift, knows not how to err, nor does he waver uncertain in his striving, but, established upon the rock, he stands fast with firm footing. Whom do we suppose is called the princely Spirit? Many refer 'the right spirit' to the Lord Jesus, who took away the sin of the world and renewed the whole human race by the shedding of His blood. And therefore it was said: 'And renew a right spirit within my bowels.' But by the Holy Spirit, of whom he says:
'And take not Your Holy Spirit from me,' they understand the Spirit of truth, but they reckon the princely Spirit to be God the Father. How fittingly, moreover, in a moral sense, he says: 'Cast me not away from Your face!' Faithfully he fears lest the grace he had received be taken from him. And therefore elsewhere he says: 'My eyes are ever toward the Lord,' and in the later verses: 'Behold, as the eyes of servants are upon the hands of their masters, and as the eyes of a handmaid upon the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes toward the Lord our God, until He have mercy on us.' Surely this is the Spirit, author and prince, who governs the mind, strengthens the affection, draws it where He will, and directs it toward the higher life. There are also those who have received the spirit of man, which is in him. Of this the Apostle says:
'For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him?' He who can know all things, whom the hidden things of man do not deceive, can hold the rule within man. There follows: 'I will teach the unrighteous Your ways, and the impious shall be converted to You.' That excellent pilot, who steers the ship upon a rocky shore; that good teacher, who sharpens duller minds toward the advancement of learning; that distinguished warrior, that wondrous general, who kindles the more timid for battle and props up the spirits of his men in well-explored positions, so that he may compensate for weakness of strength by the advantage of a convenient station: he likewise is the great preacher even of the faith, who teaches the unrighteous. Whence he beautifully says: 'I will teach the unrighteous.' He did not say:
'I will teach the righteous' — for the righteous know the ways of the Lord — but he says, 'I will teach the unrighteous.' Indeed, the author of prudence and the master of all says: 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.' And that heavenly Physician says: 'They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.' Whether, therefore, in the person of Him who called the nations, or in his own, he has well set it down:
'I will teach the unrighteous,' because heavenly doctrine and divine working can transform the inmost affections and convert the purpose, and can pour the zeal of piety into sacrilegious breasts, so that those who lived without law may be converted to the true Lord, who before were turned away; and so that those who practise iniquities and bitter wickedness may, after the royal example of penitence, be corrected, and, converted in faith and deed, may receive the remedy of saving doctrine; that they may enter upon the ways of the Lord, in which they meet no winding paths of error, no by-ways of headlong fall.
For just as a pattern of good life and a model of virtue is found in those men who have run through the seasons of their life unoffending, so those who, renouncing their former wickednesses or the errors of unbelief, have amended the course of their later age, are set forth for imitation to those who fall, whether in deed or in thought. There follows: 'Deliver me from bloods, O God, the God of my salvation.' This can also be referred to the death of Uriah: that, conscious of the murder he had ordered, he begs pardon for so great a deed; and although a king is absolved from the laws, yet he is guilty before his own conscience. Desiring to free himself from these bonds, he prays for divine help, that he may be cleansed from every stain of the crime committed.
And indeed, since the holy prophet, being gentle and meek of heart, always gave outstanding tokens of his gentleness and piety—so that he frequently pardoned his adversaries and thought he ought to refrain from their slaying—it is no wonder that he grieves so heavily that the sin of shedding innocent blood crept upon him. Therefore he asked to be delivered from bloods, that is, from mortal sins. He praised the Lord his God, he proclaimed the righteousness of the Lord, and therefore he added: 'My tongue shall exult in Your righteousness. O Lord, You shall open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Your praise.' For he who praises the Lord shall be saved from his enemies, as it is written. And surely he had said above, in the forty-ninth psalm: 'But to the sinner God said:
'Why do you declare My statutes of righteousness?' Since, therefore, God by his own mouth had said that He forbade the sinner to declare His righteous statutes, surely he himself, by declaring the righteousness of God, made plain that this deed was in no way reckoned to him as sin. And he added: 'You shall open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Your praise.' God closes the mouth of the sinner, that he may not speak the righteous statutes of God; the mouth of the righteous He opens, that he may speak. Whose lips, therefore, He opens, him He absolves from the guilt of sin. And the Lord opens the lips of him who receives the Word in the opening of his mouth. Whence the Apostle too asks to be helped by the prayers of the people, that a door of the word may be opened to him, to speak the mystery of Christ. By 'tongue' we understand the speech of him who exults in the praises of God.
Whence that passage too is thus estimated: 'My tongue is the pen of a swiftly writing scribe'—the discourse poured into the prophet. But if we take it as spoken in the person of Christ, see whether the scribe writing swiftly is the Word of God, which runs through and penetrates the inmost parts of the soul and inscribes upon it the gifts either of nature or of grace; while the tongue is that holy body sprung from the Virgin, by which the venom of the serpent was emptied out and the works of the Gospel, to be celebrated throughout the whole world, were accomplished. He proceeds to do away with sin, in that He took upon Himself humility; He bruised His own heart, which the Lord chose as a sacrifice rather than the holocausts for sins which by the law were wont to be offered. Indeed he says above: 'Holocausts also for sin You did not require; then I said:
'Behold, I come'—that is: not counting it robbery to be equal with God, I come, taking the form of a servant; I come in the likeness of assuming human nature, in the truth of the cross, to prove obedience by the humility of death, that disobedience might be wiped away. Rightly, therefore, here too He says: 'For if You had willed it, I would surely have given a sacrifice; You will not delight in holocausts. A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled God will not despise.' And as I said above, it is certain that it accords with the mystery that the Lord Jesus Himself seems here also to speak from His own person, who above set it forth with a clear attestation of His person.
For He Himself is the true David, strong in hand, truly humble and meek, the first and the last—first in eternity, last in humility—through whose obedience the guilt of the human race was wiped away and righteousness restored. He Himself, I say, Jesus, the end of the shadow and of the law, came as a master of humility, to teach the proud in mind and those puffed up with swelling of heart that they must pass over to meekness and simplicity. How then can sin be imputed in the type of His mystery, when in the mystery itself there is remission of sins? Unless perhaps for this reason David confessed his iniquity and the sin of his deed: that he himself might pertain to the remission of sin and the grace of the mystery.
For what does it mean that the man, confessing his sin, sings of Zion and Jerusalem, saying: 'Do good, O Lord, in Your good will to Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be built up'—except that it pleases him that the gathering of the Church should be hastened through the calling of the nations, which, belonging not to the sons of the bondwoman but to the free Jerusalem, that which is in heaven, should spread the offspring of its faith throughout the whole world, and should establish the enclosures of spiritual walls by the assertion of apostolic teaching? The walls of Jerusalem, therefore, are the bulwarks of faith, the defences of disputations, the summits of virtues: the walls of Jerusalem are the assemblies of the churches founded throughout the whole world; for the Church says: 'I am a wall, and my breasts a tower.'
And well are the walls of Jerusalem the assemblies of the churches, since whoever enters the Church in good faith and deed becomes a citizen and inhabitant of that heavenly city which comes down from heaven. These walls are built by the structure of living stones. Seeing therefore the true Jerusalem and Zion, he said: 'When You have blessed Jerusalem and Zion in Your good will, then You shall accept the sacrifice of righteousness'—that is, the sacrifice of the body of Christ, who says, when He spoke of His own passion: 'Open to me the gates of righteousness, and entering into them I will confess to the Lord.' And in the Gospel He says to John: 'Suffer it now; for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness'; and below: 'Blessed are they that suffer persecution for righteousness' sake.' Christ is righteousness;
He asserts, therefore, that the sacrifice of Christ will be acceptable to the Father. This, then, is that of which he says also above: 'Sacrifice the sacrifice of righteousness, and hope in the Lord.' This is the offering of spiritual righteousness and the holocaust of fervent devotion and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which he says will come to pass when the souls of believers begin to be brought to that spiritual altar of the Lord—souls which, renouncing pleasures and delights, draw the plough, as it were, within their own bowels, that they may be able to bring forth the fruits of holy cultivation. Or else thus:
When You have blessed the Church gathered from the nations, and the spiritual sacrifice of righteousness has begun to be frequented, then also the holy martyrs, who offered their body for Christ to be ploughed, shall be offered as calves upon the sacred altars; just as we find written in the Apocalypse of John, that 'under the altar were the souls' of those who offered their bodies in martyrdom for the name of the Lord Jesus, that they might purchase for themselves the grace of Christ. To Him be honour, glory, and perpetual praise, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, from the ages, both now and always, and unto all ages of ages. Amen.