Works (CSEL) 4 part 4/5

He therefore who, awaited for the salvation of all, came on my behalf, was brought forth from a virgin's womb on my behalf, was offered on my behalf, tasted death on my behalf, rose again on my behalf. In him the redemption of all men was undertaken and resurrection was assumed. He is the true Levite, that he might make us Levites, cleaving to God, pouring out continual prayers to him, hoping for salvation from him, fleeing earthly affairs, being numbered in God's possession, as it is written: 'Lord, possess us.' For this is the only possession which, subject to no storms, brings forth the fruits of perpetual grace.

The redeemer is a Levite, because the wise man is the redemption of the foolish; like a physician he cherishes the sick mind of the foolish and sprinkles upon the more solid intellect certain medicines of prudence, imitating that Physician who came from heaven to show men the ways of prudence and to reveal the paths of wisdom to the little ones.

For he saw that those who labor could not be saved without a remedy, and therefore he bestowed medicine upon the sick; therefore he brought to all the aid of healing, so that whoever should perish might ascribe to himself the causes of his own death, since he refused to be cured when he had a remedy by which he could escape; whereas the mercy of Christ is proclaimed as made manifest toward all, in that those who perish, perish by their own negligence, while those who are saved are set free according to the judgment of Christ, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Indeed, even Sodom, had it possessed fifty righteous men, would not have been overthrown, and had it possessed ten, would have been redeemed, because the word of the remission of sins strips the soul of its servitude, and the fullness of perfect discipline does not allow the mind to be consumed by the devouring vapor of lusts. Yet it greatly profits and builds up moral feeling, if we take it also in a plain sense that the number of the righteous avails for the salvation of peoples. It checks and cuts back envy, it confounds wickedness, it stirs up virtue, it increases grace. For no one ought to envy another a praise which profits himself; and every wicked man, while he frequently receives his redeemer, imitates him, certainly venerates him, and very often even loves him.

He too, if he knows that he will be of profit to others, is increased in zeal, and by this grace he binds peoples together, heaps up the love of citizens, and the glory of cities. How blessed is the city that has very many righteous men, how celebrated on the lips of all; how is the whole blessed for the part, and its state esteemed blessed and enduring! How I rejoice when I see certain gentle and wise men live long, when I behold chaste virgins, grave widows of great age, like a kind of hoary senate of the Church, which by its very countenance and the appearance of gravity puts forth something to be revered, to be imitated, by which men may be tinged with every grace of character! For I do not rejoice for their own sakes — since many wearinesses of this present age beset them while they live — but because they profit the greater number.

Likewise, when any such man departs, though laid to rest in long old age, I am moved, because the flock of the young is bereft of its aged wall. In short, this is the first sign of a city about to perish, or of impending evils, or of coming ruin: if men of better counsel fall, or graver women as well; from this first is opened the gate of onrushing evils. As therefore a whole city is made solid and increased by the assembly of the wise, or is shaken by their death, so a grave and, as it were, aged discourse full of prudence is wont to make firm the soul of each one and to strengthen the mind. And if there be added the practice of many readings, a kind of senate of very many precepts and counsels, it effects, as it were, the perpetual stability of that city which is in the inmost heart of each.

For this reason, then, Moses called the Levites the firstborn and the redeemers of the rest, because men of riper and more useful judgment in the one respect display a certain old age of the soul, and in the other confer redemption. Hence too in the Old Testament Moses signified that the cities of the Levites were places of redemption, because he who flees for refuge to that soul in which the word of God dwells — a soul fortified and walled about after the manner of a city — acquires for himself perpetual liberty.

For just as in the cities of the Levites there was remission of penalties, so that if anyone fled to them who had committed an unintentional slaying of a man, no one was permitted to kill him so long as he was placed within the cities of the Levites, so likewise whoever repents of his own sin, which he committed either unwittingly or unwillingly, if he cleave to the dwelling-place of the Levites and think that he must not depart from those teachers who dispense the commandments of God, the Law itself sets him free from all penalty and punishment for the crime committed. Nor should you think it absurd that the guilty dwell together with the pious, and the spotted with the consecrated; for those who are polluted by any contagion of offenses have need to be purified. And in a certain way the case meets together from a diverse kind.

For just as the Levite, renouncing worldly pleasures, is an exile from guilt, so the man guilty of blood is a fugitive from his fatherland. But there is this difference: that the latter forsakes his own people out of necessity, through fear of the law, whereas the minister of God renounces the fellowships of human passions and, for the pursuit of virtue, by a certain kinship divorces himself from the enticement of the flesh. Nor does this also depart from the truth, that the latter too lays a kind of hand upon himself, to slay the pleasures of his own body and to work a certain destruction of his own flesh. Moses indeed slew the Egyptian and became a fugitive from the land of Egypt, that he might avoid the tyrant of that land.

But he would not have first slain the Egyptian man, had he not first slain within himself the Egyptian of spiritual wickedness, and renounced himself from the luxury of royal honors, esteeming the reproach of Christ a greater patrimony than the treasures of Egypt. And though to the foolish this seems a reproach, yet to us that reproach of the Lord's cross is the power of God and his wisdom. There is added the fact that there are in God two principal kinds of virtues: one by which he remits, the other by which he punishes.

Sins are remitted through the word of God, whose interpreter and, as it were, executor is the Levite; they are remitted through the office of the priest and the sacred ministry. They are also punished through men, as through judges, who exercise power for a time, as the Apostle teaches, saying: 'Do you wish not to fear the power? Do good and you shall have praise from it; for it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, fear; for not without cause does it bear the sword; for it is God's minister, an avenger in wrath upon him who does evil.' Sins are punished also through peoples, as we read, since often, by aliens stirred up at God's command, the people of the Jews was subdued because of an offense against the divine majesty.

Not even he who has unwillingly committed some homicide is outside the ministry, since the Law says of him that 'God delivered him into his hands.' Therefore his hands, after the manner of an instrument, furnished a ministry to the divine vengeance. The Levite, then, is a minister of remission; but the slayer who has committed homicide, not by design but against his will, is a minister of divine vengeance. Consider this also: that when the impious man is slain, Christ is poured in, and where abomination is abolished, sanctification is gathered, because the Lord said: 'On that day, on which I shall slay every firstborn of Egypt, I shall sanctify to myself every firstborn of Israel.' This you should refer not to the one day of Egypt's affliction, but to all time.

For when wickedness is renounced, virtue is at once admitted; for the going-out of malice works the entrance of virtue, and by the same zeal with which crime is shut out, innocence is joined on. You have this in the Gospel, that where Satan put himself into the heart of Judas, Christ withdrew from him, and at the very moment in which he received the one, he lost the other. For so it is written: 'And after the morsel Satan entered into him. Jesus therefore said to him: What you do, do quickly.' What does this mean? That, because Satan had entered into him, he himself should depart from Christ. He is therefore cast out and thrust forth, in that he who had begun to be with the devil could no longer be with the Lord Jesus; for there is no communion of Christ with Belial.

Whence at once, expelled by command, he departed, as we read, the evangelist saying that, 'when he had received the morsel, he went out immediately; and it was night.' He not only went out, but went out immediately and by night. Nor is it a wonder if he had the darkness of night who was forsaking Christ. But just as he himself, received by the devil, was shut out from Christ, so Zacchaeus, renouncing avarice, received Christ. And deservedly, seeing his zeal, in that he had climbed into a tree to see Jesus passing by, the Lord says: 'Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must remain in your house.' And he came down in haste and received him joyfully. But by receiving Christ he shut out avarice, banished faithlessness, renounced frauds;

for Christ does not otherwise enter except to shut out vices, since he does not dwell together with errors. In short, he cast the money-changers out of the temple, because he himself wished to dwell there. Hence Zacchaeus, understanding this, that he could not receive Christ with his old disposition, bade his former vices go out from his lodging, that Christ might enter. Deservedly, then, to those who murmured that the Lord Jesus had turned aside to a sinful man, he said to the Lord: 'Behold, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by fraud, I restore it fourfold.' In this he answered those who said that a sinner ought not to have offered hospitality to Christ, as if to say: 'I am no longer a publican, no longer that Zacchaeus, no robber, no defrauder.'

'I restore what I took away, I give back to those from whom I was accustomed to carry off. Now I bestow upon the poor, whom before I stripped bare; now I confer my own goods, I who used to seize the goods of others.' The crimes fled after Christ entered; all the blindness of carnal passions was dispelled, where the light of eternal life was poured in. We have spoken of the firstborn; let us speak also of the fat portions, concerning which David teaches sufficiently, saying: 'Let my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness.' And above he says: 'And let your whole burnt offering be made fat,' teaching thereby that the sacrifice is acceptable which is fat, which is sleek and fattened with a certain food of faith and devotion and with the richer nourishment of the heavenly word.

Frequently we call a work 'fat' which we wish to be understood as dense and laborious, and a sacrificial victim is proclaimed 'rich' which is not thin and lean. Hence too we rightly name a sacrifice 'fat' which we desire to declare rich. But this also serves as proof, that the fat cows, by prophetic interpretation, were compared to fruitful years. Now let us consider what it means that the Lord says: 'If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, you have sinned; be still.' This is an indication that God is not appeased by the gifts offered, but by the disposition of the offerer. In short, the offerer Cain, condemned, perceived through the conscience of his insincere offering that his sacrifice was not approved by God, and was made sorrowful.

For when the mind is conscious to itself of rectitude, it rejoices, and the spirit is filled, as it were, with a certain spiritual infusion of joy, when anyone's zeal or works are not disapproved by God. The sorrow of Cain, therefore, is the testimony of his conscience, the sign of his rejection. And although he offered a gift, yet because he did not divide rightly and justly, he incurred guilt. For there are four kinds by which sacrifices were commended: if they were either new of the new, or roasted, or divided, or continual. 'New of the new' at the first season of the year, which were estimated under the figure of the firstfruits; but now it has been revealed that there are signified those who are renewed through the sacraments of baptism.

For this is truly the firstfruits sacrifice, when each one offers himself as a victim, begins with himself, that afterward he may be able to offer his gift. The faith, therefore, of the renewed must be new, strong, growing to maturity, acquiring increase of virtue, not slackened, not wearied, not withered by any old age nor sluggish in vigor — such is fit for sacrifice — which sprouts with a certain verdant germ of wisdom and grows young with the youthful fervor of divine knowledge, yet retains the sap of the ancient teaching; for as the teaching of the new, so also of the Old Testament ought to run together, since it is written: 'Eat the old things of the old, and bring forth the old from before the face of the new.' Let the knowledge of the patriarchs be food to us; let the soul feast on the oracles in the books of the prophets.

On such fattening let the inner mind be fed; but now let there be not the figure of the lamb, but the truth of the body of Christ. Let not the shadow of the Law dim the eyes, but openly let the grace of the Lord's passion and the splendor of the resurrection illumine the sharpness of the mind. 'But if you offer a sacrifice from the firstborn of the sheep, roasted in fire' — fat roasted — you offer a sacrifice of the firstfruits, as it is written, which signifies that your faith ought to be, as it were, tried by fire and fervent with the Holy Spirit. In short, Jacob cooked the lentils and snatched away from his brother the primacy of the blessing, which assuredly a solid faith would attain. This man, therefore, robust and lively, was being increased; but the other, who knew not how to cook his own food, wearied and failing, was flowing away.

Let the virtue of your soul therefore be burned by the word of the Lord as by fire. See Joseph burned, as it is written: 'The word of the Lord burned him.' Let your faith be roasted like the ears of the harvest; for then they display the ripeness of their fruits, when the summer seasons have roasted them at the first advance of the sun. The abundant word of the Scriptures, then, strengthens the soul and colors it with a certain vapor of spiritual grace, and corroborates the reasonable findings as well, and dissolves all the force of the unreasoning passions.

And therefore Esau, the bonds of his virtue being loosed, was dissolved; but those who, with loins girt, were bidden to eat the head of the lamb neither raw nor boiled in water, but roasted in fire, as you have in Exodus, with a strong and faithful soul crossed the seas on foot, by a journey on land. In the Gospel too the Lord Jesus ate roasted fish, as it is written, in which the fullness of the Holy Spirit overflowed. And perhaps Esau was failing for this reason, that he desired food boiled in water, which Jacob, as unsuited to himself, gave to the weak one. But the offering and the prayer ought not to be confused, but distinguished by a fitting division.

For in all confusion, distinction is better — much more in prayer and offering, which, unless they have sure divisions, become more obscure. And therefore the Law commands that the limbs of the victim be for the most part divided and the whole burnt offerings be offered, so that the sacrifice may be without admixture and covering and naked, because our faith ought to be fervent naked and stripped of all wrappings, lest it be clothed with wandering and deceptive opinions, but let the pure and sincere simplicity of the mind appear. Then let it be divided into fitting parts. For virtue is a genus, which is divided into very many species; but the principal ones are four: prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice.

Let your prayer, therefore, give forth the fragrance of prudence toward the knowledge of God and the truth of faith; let it give forth the fragrance of temperance, which the Apostle thought should be demanded even of spouses, saying: 'Do not defraud one another, except perhaps by consent for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer.' And the Law bids those who have been sanctified the day before and the day before that to approach the sacrifice. Let prayer hold fortitude, that it be broken off by no fear, fail through no weariness; for then ought the intention toward praying to be more robust, when we are pressed by adversities. Let supplication keep justice, which had Judas held it, his prayer would not have been turned into sin. For when ought we more to abstain from unjust works and pursuits than when we pray for the justice of God?

And therefore the Lord, that justice might be dear to our heart, says: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice' sake; theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' This was lacking in Judas; for had it been present, he would not have betrayed the Lord, would not have given up his master. It was lacking too in the sacrifice of that Cain, who, had he held to justice, ought to have offered to the Lord the firstfruits, not the later things. And so division was lacking to him, and therefore the answer says: 'If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, you have sinned; be still.' You see how great the fault is. Where division is lacking, there the whole sacrifice is refused. It remains for us to speak of continual and unceasing prayer, that we ought to abide and have leisure for prayer.

The Lord spent the night in prayer, not that it might profit himself, but that he might teach us. For frequent prayer works a certain discipline of praying, because practice itself makes men teachable to God, while negligence makes them unteachable. A good exercise, therefore. In short, the strength of the body is increased by frequent exercise, but unexercised it diminishes and slips away; for very many, by disuse of exercise, dissolve even their natural strength. Likewise the fortitude of the soul is made solid by the constancy of exercise, so that the labor of discipline becomes not a burden but a benefit. Let us bring this food to our mind, which, worn down by much meditation and polished, may strengthen the heart of man like that heavenly manna.

We have received it 'ground and polished' not without reason, in that we ought long to grind and polish the discourses of the heavenly Scriptures, turning them over with our whole soul and heart, that the sap of that spiritual food may diffuse itself into all the veins of the soul. Therefore, if faith grows up as it were maturing, which banishes the failing of an aging devotion and is fervent in spirit and is held by the fitting distinction of a lawful division, and constancy commends the grace, then there comes about that fat and, as it were, fattened kind of prayer, concerning which the prophet says: 'You have anointed my head with oil.' For as lambs grow fat with much milk and as well-fed sheep are sleek with fatness, so the prayer of the faithful, fed with the apostolic sap, grows fat.

If any of these things which we have said above be lacking, the sacrifice is not approved. And therefore it was said to Cain: 'If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly.' For the world itself is read to have been made distinctly, whereas before a part of it was without order, since 'the earth was invisible and unformed.' Indeed light was made first, and 'God called the light' and 'God divided between the light and the darkness, and the darkness was called night.' And in order we read that the individual things were made: the heaven, the earth, fruit-bearing trees, the various animals. And the lighter things were distributed to the higher regions, as air and fire, and the heavier to the lower, that is, water and earth.

Assuredly God could have bidden all things to be made at once, but he preferred to keep distinction, that we might imitate it in all our affairs, and especially in the exchanges of thanksgivings. In these it is not enough to render back what you have received, but to commend that which you render back. For if anyone should pay a debt and in repaying it do an injury to the creditor, it is surely more intolerable than not to have repaid what he owed. Therefore not the quantity of the payment, but the disposition of the one who renders and the quality and the affection is considered. He offered rightly, therefore, because the offering is the mark of devotion and the token of thanksgiving; but he did not divide rightly, because before all things he ought to have presented the firstfruits to God, that he might begin from the grace of the Author.

For this is the order of division: that the first should run before the second, not the second before the first, and that heavenly things should be preferred to earthly, not earthly to heavenly. But because Cain confounded this order, it is said to him: 'You have sinned; be still.' God teaches all things: first, that you should not sin, as he warned in Adam; second, that, if you have sinned, you should be still, as you are taught in Cain. For we ought to blush and condemn sin, not defend it, since by shame guilt is lessened, by defense heaped up, and by keeping silence we are corrected, while by contention we slip away. Let there be at least shamefacedness, where there is no acquittal. Hence that saying: 'The just man is at the beginning of his speech an accuser of himself.' And again elsewhere we read it said by the Lord himself: 'Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified.'

How great the grace of shame, that shamefacedness should hold the justice which the guilt of the fault had taken away! And for this reason he says: 'Be still,' since you have nothing to excuse. The turning of the fault itself is toward you. For the brother is not made over to him, but the error is ascribed, of which he himself is to himself the author. 'Upon you,' he says, 'returns the crime which began from you. You have nothing in which you may accuse necessity rather than your own mind. Upon you your wickedness is turned back; you are its prince.' Well does he say: 'You are its prince.' For impiety is a kind of mother of offenses, and he who has sinned in graver things easily slips into the rest. For how can he refrain from human things who has violated the divine, and be good to men who has wounded God?

The remaining vices, therefore, follow a more atrocious guilt of crimes, since whither the shameful deeds incline, thither the rest lean as well. You, then, are the prince of your work, you the leader of the crime. Error did not draw you unwilling, did not draw you unwitting, but as a voluntary culprit by judgment, you wrought the deceit not by a slip but deliberately, whereby you yourself convict yourself as guilty of injury to God. Admonished, therefore, to be still, he increases his insolence, embitters his outrage. What, then, does he mean by saying: 'Let us go into the field,' except that a place bare of growing things is chosen for fratricide? For where could the brother be slain except where fruit was lacking?

As though foreseeing it, nature had denied seedlings to the place of so great a crime, because it was not fitting that the same ground should both receive the defilements of fratricidal blood against nature and bring forth fruits according to nature. Deservedly he himself says: 'Let us go into the field'; he does not say: 'Let us go into paradise,' where the fruits bloom, nor into any cultivated and fruitful place. The very fratricides indicate that they cannot have the fruit of their crime, nor does fruit remain in the keeping of those who have lent their service to so great an impiety.

For they shun the very kindness of the elements, like this Cain, who seems to have feared lest the too liberal produce of the good earth should hinder his grim deed, and lest, by the wonted generosity of the life-giving soil — by which it makes various offspring and fruits germinate for itself — even by the mute appearance of itself, in this very apparatus of crime it might recall his brotherly affection. The robber flees the day as a witness of his crime, the adulterer flees the light as one blushing at its complicity, the fratricide flees the fecundity of the earth. For how could he behold the partnerships of a common birth, who was slaughtering the partner of his own blood? Joseph is cast into a dry pit; Amnon is slain within the house.

Nature, therefore, bestowed a just judgment, by depriving of the dowry of its gift those places in which fratricide was to occur, so that by a certain condemnation of the innocent soil it might show how great would be the punishments of the guilty. Because of the crime of men, therefore, even the elements themselves are condemned. In short, David wished perpetual sterility as a punishment upon the mountains on which Jonathan was slain together with his father, saying: 'You mountains that are in Gilboa, let neither dew nor rain fall upon you, mountains of death!' Now let us consider for what reason God asked Cain where his brother was, as though he did not know that he had been slain. But as regards God's knowledge, he convicts the one who denies, and as one who knows he answered the one who disavowed:

'The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me.' But as regards the deeper reason, he admonishes sinners to repentance; for confession is a shortening of penalties. Hence in worldly judgments those who deny are placed on the rack and tortured, and a certain compassion for the one confessing touches the judge. There is in sins a certain shamefacedness, and it is a portion of repentance to confess the crime and not to divert the guilt, but to acknowledge it. The shame of the accused mitigates the judge, but the obstinacy of those who deny rouses him. God wishes to provoke you to pardon, wishes you to hope for indulgence from himself, wishes to demonstrate by your confession that he is not the author of malice.

For those who refer their sin to a certain necessity of a decree or of their own deed, as the heathen assert, seem to accuse the divine, as though their own force were the cause of the sin; for whoever has slain compelled by some necessity has slain as it were unwilling. But those things which are from ourselves have no excuse, whereas those which are beyond us are excusable. But how much graver it is to refer to God what you have done, beyond the sin itself, and to transfer the odium of your guilt onto the author not of crime but of innocence! But weigh the fratricide's reply. 'I do not know,' he says; 'am I my brother's keeper?' Although this speech betrays contumacy, yet it sounds as though, had he regarded his good brother, he ought to have been the keeper of his piety.

For whom ought he to have preserved more than his brother? But how could he keep the office of brotherhood, who had not acknowledged the affection of kinship? Or how could it come about that he should render obedience to nature, who showed no reverence to God? He denies first, as before one who is ignorant; he refuses the duty of fraternal guardianship, as one having no part in nature; he declines the judge, as one of free will. Why do you wonder if he did not acknowledge piety, who did not acknowledge the Author? And therefore you are taught by this series of Scriptures that faith is the root of all the virtues.

Hence the Apostle also says that Christ is our foundation, and that whatever you build upon this foundation, this alone redounds to the fruit of your labor and your virtue. Fittingly, then, did the Lord answer the one who so foolishly denied, saying: 'The voice of your brother's blood cries to me'; that is: 'Why do you not know where your brother is? You were alone with your two parents; among so few, your brother could not have escaped your notice. Or is it because your parents cannot be accusers? For I would not have that bond which is the author of salvation become the author of peril, that in you alone nature should lose her own laws. Do you therefore think your crime lies hidden because your parents ought not to accuse? Yet on that very account your condemnation is the greater.'

For if the dear names of kinship ought not to accuse, much more ought they not to kill. But if you refuse me as witness and shun me as judge, the voice of your brother's blood is a witness, which cries to me. It convicts you with greater authority than if your brother were alive. You were alone: who else could have killed him? If you accuse your parents, you prove them parricides. He who does not spare his parents could kill his brother; he could be a parricide who desires to prove himself sprung from parricides. And well does it say: