ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
But the law He sent through a servant, whereas with grace He Himself came down; so that, because the law shows sins but does not take them away, those who wish to fulfill the law by their own powers, and are not able, may be driven to grace, which takes away both the disease of impotence and the guilt of disobedience. 324. The Christian observes the true Sabbath by abstaining from servile work—that is, from sin—since 'whoever commits sin is the slave of sin.' 325. No one has anything of his own except lying and sin. But if a man has anything of truth and justice, it is from that fountain which we ought to thirst after in this desert, that being besprinkled by it as it were with certain drops, we may not faint on the way.
326. What the Father does with Christ, Christ does; and what Christ does with the Father, the Father does; nor does the inseparable charity, majesty, and power do anything separately, as the Lord Himself says: 'I and the Father are one.' 327. The grace of regeneration is not diminished even by those who do not keep its gifts, just as unclean places do not pollute the brightness of light. Therefore you who rejoice in the reception of baptism, live in the holiness of the new man; and holding the faith which works through love, have the good which you do not yet have, that the good which you have may profit you.
328. Christ is the truth in such a way that the whole truth is received in Christ: the true Word of God, God equal to the Father, true soul, true flesh, true man, true God, true nativity, true passion, true death, true resurrection. If you call any of these false, corruption enters in; from the venom of the serpent are born the worms of lies, and nothing whole will remain, because where there is the corruption of any falsehood, there the integrity of truth will not be. 329. How great is charity! For if it be absent, the rest are had in vain; if it be present, all things are had. 330. Christ left the Father, because, 'though He was in the form of God, He did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.'
For this is what it means that 'he left his Father': not that he forsook the Father or withdrew from him, but that he did not appear to men in that form in which he is equal to the Father. And he left his mother by leaving behind the synagogue of the Jews, from which he was born according to the flesh, and by cleaving to the Church, which he gathered out of all the nations. Adam sleeps that Eve may be made; Christ dies that the Church may be made. While Adam sleeps, Eve is formed from his side; when Christ has died, his side is struck with a lance, that there may flow forth the sacraments by which the Church is fashioned. Hence the Apostle rightly calls Adam himself a figure of the One who was to come. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. God was made man.
What is man destined to become, for whose sake God became man? There is one birth from the earth, another from heaven; one from the flesh, another from the Spirit; one from time, another from eternity; one from male and female, another from God and the Church. But these two are each unique. For just as the womb cannot be re-entered, so neither can baptism be repeated. If you attend to visible things, neither is bread God, nor is water God, nor is this light God, nor is clothing God, nor is a house God; for all these things are visible, and each is a separate thing. For what bread is, water is not; and what clothing is, a house is not; and what these things are, God is not.
For these are visible things, but God is your whole good, which you rightly desire. And the whole variety of good things is poured out from one fountain, since together with his own gifts he imparts himself under the various names of his gifts. The soul that craves carnal things is likened to a woman who has no husband to govern her—that husband being the understanding, by whose wisdom she ought to be ruled; not as though it were something other than the soul, but because it is, as it were, a certain gaze and eye of the soul. For just as the outward eyes are something belonging to the flesh, so the mind is something belonging to the soul, that part which excels in the soul according to its participation in the divine reason.
And then it well presides over all its movements, when it is illumined by the light from above, that there may be in it the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world. You who are about to make supplication to God, and seek a holy and fitting place, cleanse your inner self; and when every evil desire has been driven thence, prepare for yourself a secret place in the peace of your heart. Wishing to pray in the temple, pray within yourself, and so act always that you may be the temple of God. For there God hears, where he dwells. The senses of the body report bodily things to the heart. And they do not all have one faculty, for that is not seen whence sound is heard, nor is taste perceived whence smell is taken; nor do these servants suffice, without touch, to discern smooth and rough, cold and hot, dry and wet.
But incorporeal things the mind judges by its own sense alone, and grasps all varieties by one movement; and whatever discernment between good and evil, just and unjust it reasonably finds, is the effect of one single act of attention—so that the image of God may appear to you, where there is one and the same thing by which the mind has power as far as it has power. The Son of God is said to have life in himself, just as the Father has, not having obtained it by participation, but by being born. For the Father, who is life, begot Life; nor does the essence of the begetter and the begotten differ in anything, since the Son is from the Father in such a way that, of co-eternal equality, there is not indeed one person, but one Godhead.
Although the Father never withdraws from the Son, yet for the judging of the living and the dead it is said that not he himself, but the Son will be present; for there neither the Godhead of the Father nor of the Son, but that form of the Son will be seen which he united to himself through the sacrament of the incarnation. He therefore will be the judge, who stood beneath a judge; he himself will judge, who was judged—that the ungodly may behold the glory of him against whose meekness they raged. Such therefore will the judge appear as can be seen both by those he will crown and by those he will condemn. But the Father will not appear, because he was not clothed in the form of a servant, but gave to the Son, who also was made man, the power of judgment.
Men do their own will, not God's, when they do that which displeases God. But when they so do what they will that they serve the divine will, then, although they willingly do what they do, yet it is the will of him by whom what they will is both prepared and commanded. If the Father teaches the one who hears his word, seek what Christ is, and you will find his Word. In the beginning was the Word—but not: In the beginning God made the Word, as it is said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth. For the Word of God is God, not a creature, nor made among all things, but that through which all things were made. Therefore, that a man set in the flesh might be able to come to the teaching of such a Word:
The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. The flesh of Christ is the life of the faithful, if they do not neglect to be his body. Let them therefore become the body of Christ, if they wish to live by the Spirit of Christ, by which nothing lives except the body of Christ. He receives the food of life and drinks the cup of eternity, who abides in Christ and whose indweller Christ is. For he who is at variance with Christ neither eats his flesh nor drinks his blood, even though he daily and indifferently receive the sacrament of so great a thing to the judgment of his own presumption. Worldly wisdom would have it that God should never permit those who are evil to be happy. But this God by no means allows.
But the evil, when they have what they will, are for this reason thought happy, because they do not know what happiness is. It is one thing to depart in body, another in heart. He departs in body who by a movement of the body changes his place; he departs in heart who by a movement of the heart changes his affection. If you love something else, you used to love something else. You are not where you were. The name of Christ is from chrism, that is, from anointing. For every Christian is sanctified for this reason: that he may understand himself to be not only a partaker of priestly and royal dignity, but also to become a wrestler against the devil. Let us follow Christ the true light, lest we walk in darkness.
But the darkness to be feared is that of morals, not of the eyes; and if of the eyes, not of the outward, but of the inward eyes, by which is discerned not white and black, but just and unjust. The Catholic faith believes and proclaims the Lord Jesus Christ to be both true God and true man. For both are written, and both are true. He who asserts Christ to be God only denies the medicine by which he was healed. He who asserts Christ to be man only denies the power by which he was created. Take up therefore both, O faithful and upright soul: both that Christ is God, and that Christ is man. What kind of God is Christ? Equal to the Father, one with the Father. What kind of man is Christ? The son of a Virgin, drawing mortality from man, not drawing iniquity.
The Lord Christ, sent by the Father, did not withdraw from the Father. His sending was the incarnation, and for the invisible Godhead to come into this world was to appear. But if he could be grasped quickly, there would be no need that he be believed, since he would be seen. Therefore by believing he is grasped, who, unless he be believed, is never understood. That the Father and the Son may be rightly believed, the Son himself must be heard, saying: I and the Father are one. For by two words two heresies are at once cut down. For by saying 'one' he struck down Arius; by saying 'are' he overthrew Sabellius; for he would say neither 'are' of one, nor 'one' of diverse persons. We ought to acknowledge both in Christ: both whereby he is equal to the Father, and whereby the Father is greater than he.
The one is the Word, the other the flesh; the one is God, the other man. But Christ, God and man, is one. The souls of many men are without doubt many, and many are their hearts. But if through faith and love they cleave to God, they all become one soul and one heart. If therefore the love of God, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us, makes such a unity of many souls and many hearts, how much more and more surely does the eternal and unchangeable unity abide in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, where the undifferentiated Trinity is one God, one light, and one beginning? The Father did not so teach the Son as though he had begotten one untaught and conferred knowledge upon one who knew not.
But of a teaching that is timeless there is a timeless essence. And to be taught by the Father is the very same as to be begotten by the Father, because, in the simple nature of truth, to be and to know are not one thing and another, but the very same. Faith always goes before vision. For we believe that we may know, we do not know that we may believe. Faith therefore is to believe what you do not see; the truth is to see what you have believed. The good fragrance of Christ is the preaching of truth. By which fragrance he receives life who serves and accords with the Gospel by good morals. But he incurs death whose life dissents from the things he speaks well.
This condition also binds the hearers, since right preaching is heard by some unto death through unbelief, and received by others unto salvation through faith. The faith of Christ is to believe in him who justifies the ungodly, to believe in the Mediator, without whom no one is reconciled to God, to believe in the Saviour, who came to seek and to save that which was lost, to believe in him who said: Without me you can do nothing. But he does not lay hold of this faith who, ignorant of the righteousness of God by which the ungodly is justified, wishes to establish his own, by which he is convicted as proud. For those who hold such things are hardened by their own pride and blinded, because by denying the grace of God they are not helped.
He who has charity, which is out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned, loves God and his neighbour as himself. For the lover of God is a lover of himself, and he who does not love God does not love his neighbour, because he does not love himself. But for the sake of this love even the world's hatreds must be patiently borne. For it is necessary that those should hate us whom we see hating that which we love. Two kinds of men are designated under the one name of 'world.' For just as the 'world' is spoken of in the case of the ungodly, so the 'world' is spoken of in the case of the saints. Hence, since the whole world is at variance with itself both in hatred and in love, we are commanded both to hate it and to love it, when it is said to us: Do not love the world; and when it is said:
Love your enemies—so that, while we abhor the iniquity of those, we may desire their salvation. To avoid the temptation of vainglory, the condition of the learner is better than that of the teacher. For the truth is heard more safely than it is preached. Because, when teaching is received, humility is preserved. But when disputation gives pleasure, it is scarcely possible that some little boasting should not strike the one debating. It is dangerous for a man to please himself, who must beware of growing proud. But God, however much he praise himself, does not, lofty as he is, exalt himself, nor does he wish to be seen as greater than his own majesty. But when he speaks to man of his power, he does this not that he himself may be more glorious, but that the other may become better and more learned.
For it profits us to acknowledge our Author, and to be subject to him who is over all things, so that of him concerning whom we cannot comprehend what he is, we may at least perceive what he is not. Christian observance attains to the advancement of perfect piety chiefly through the mutual forgiveness of sins, the Lord giving us the example of his own goodness. For if he, in whom there was no sin at all, intercedes for our sins, how much more ought we to pray for one another for our own? For a man, who cannot be free from all sin, ought to embrace so kindly a condition: that by forgiving the offences of others he may wash away his own. To the fullness of the desires of the righteous nothing will then be lacking, when God shall be all in all in them.
To which blessedness those attain who die to this world before the separation of the soul from the flesh, and are not found in those desires which the love of God alone overcomes—so that iniquity may suffer that which it chose, and righteousness may enjoy that good which it loved. He who so confesses Christ as God that he denies that same one to be true man—that is, having united to himself the nature of our flesh and soul—for him Christ has not died, because Christ died according to his manhood. He is not reconciled to God through the Mediator. For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
He is not justified through him, because, as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man shall many be made righteous. He will not rise in the resurrection of life, because through man came death, and through man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Nor let anyone defend himself by the example of blessed Peter, who with many tears both accused and washed himself, that the Church might follow her prince not by the imitation of denial, but of penitence. Among certain eternal things there can be some difference, but eternity itself is without any diversity of measure.
For the many mansions signify, in one life, the varied dignities of merits. But where God will be all in all, there will come about, even amid unequal brightness, an equal joy, so that what individuals have may be common to all. For through the bond of love, no part of the body will be a stranger to the glory of the Head. The faith of those who are to see God believes what it does not see. For if it sees, it is not faith. To the believer merit is gathered; to the one who sees a reward is rendered. He who would use ill what he wishes to receive, by God's mercy rather does not receive it. Accordingly, if that is asked of him whereby the man heard would be harmed, it is the more to be feared that what God might mercifully not give, he may give in anger.
He who loves me, says the Lord, shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. What does 'I will love' mean? As though he is to love then, and now does not love? Far be it. For how would the Father love us without the Son, or the Son without the Father? How, when they work inseparably, do they love separably? But 'I will love him' refers to that which follows, 'and will manifest myself to him'; 'I will love and will manifest'—that is, I will love unto this end, that I may manifest. For now he has loved us unto this end, that we may believe and hold the commandment of faith. Then he will love unto this end, that we may see and receive the very vision as the reward of faith. For we too now love by believing what we shall see, but then we shall love by seeing what we believe.
The branches are in the vine in such a way that they confer nothing on the vine, but receive from it that whereby they live. For the vine is in the branches in such a way that it supplies vital nourishment to them, and does not take it from them. And by this, both to have Christ abiding in oneself and to abide in Christ profits the disciples in both respects, not Christ. For when a branch is cut off, another can sprout from the living root; but the one who is cut off cannot live without the root. It was divinely said: Be not righteous overmuch. This is not the righteousness of the wise man, but the pride of the presumptuous. He therefore who becomes too righteous, by that very excess becomes unrighteous. But who is it that makes himself too righteous, except the one who says he has no sin?
Of no creature, not even an incorporeal one, is the substance truly simple, for which to be is not the same as to know. For it can be, and not know; but that divine nature cannot, because it is the very same as what it has. And by this it does not have knowledge in such a way that the knowledge by which it knows is one thing, and the essence by which it is another, but both are one—though both ought not to be spoken of, since what is most truly simple is one. For the Father has life in himself, and is nothing other than the life which is in him, and he gave to the Son to have life in himself, that is, he begot the Son, who himself also is life. So, then, we ought to take what is said of the Holy Spirit:
For he will not speak from himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that he will speak—so that we may understand that he is not from himself. For the Father alone is not from another. For the Son is born of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. But the Father is neither born of another, nor proceeds. Nor indeed let any disparity in that supreme Trinity occur to human thought, because the Son is equal to him from whom he is born, and the Holy Spirit equal to him from whom he proceeds. Although the unchangeable nature does not admit of 'was' and 'will be,' but only 'is'—for it truly is, because it cannot be otherwise than it is—
yet on account of the changeableness of the times in which our mortality and our mutability are caught up, we say not falsely both 'was' and 'will be' and 'is.' He was in past ages, he is in the present, he will be in those to come. He was indeed, because he was never absent; he will be, because he will never be wanting; he is, because he always is. For he does not, like one who already is not, perish with things past, nor, as though he did not abide, glide away with present things, nor, as though he had not been, arise with future things. Accordingly, since human speech is varied according to the rolling of the times, of him who could not, cannot, and will not be lacking through any times, words of every tense are spoken truly.
And so the Holy Spirit always hears, because he always knows; and to know and to hear is for him the same as always to be. But always to be is, for him, to proceed from the Father. And no one can say that the Holy Spirit is not life, since the Father is life, and the Son is life. And by this, just as the Father, having life in himself, gave also to the Son to have life in himself, so he gave to him to proceed from him as life, even as he proceeds also from himself. Assuredly it is the gift of God to love God. He himself gave that he might be loved, who, unloved, loved. We who were displeasing were loved, that there might come to be in us that whereby we might please. For the Spirit of the Father and the Son sheds abroad love in our hearts, whom we love together with the Father and the Son.
The peace of Christ has no end of time, and it is itself the perfection of all godly intention and action. For its sake we are imbued with his sacraments; for its sake we are instructed by his wonderful works and words; for its sake we have received his Spirit as a pledge; for its sake we believe and hope in him, and are kindled with love of him, as much as he grants; for its sake, finally, we bravely bear every tribulation, that in it we may happily reign without tribulation. For true peace makes unity, since he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. All time has been ordained by him who is not subject to time.
Since those things that were to be throughout the several times have their efficient causes in the wisdom of God, in which there are no times. Let it not therefore be believed that the hour of the Lord's passion came at the urging of fate, but rather by the ordaining of God. For no necessity of the stars brought the cross upon Christ, nor did the stars compel the Maker of the stars to die, who, being timeless together with the Father, chose the time in which he should die in the flesh, just as he chose that in which he should be born of his mother. In that which is said: This is, moreover, eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent—the order of the words is: that they may know thee, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, to be the only true God.
For consequently the Holy Spirit also is understood, since the Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, as the substantial and consubstantial love of both. Since there are not two gods, the Father and the Son, nor three gods, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the Trinity itself is the one only true God. Nor yet is the Father the same as the Son, nor the Son the same as the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the same as the Father or the Son, since there are three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but the Trinity itself is one God. Whatever God the Father gave to God the Son, he gave by begetting. For the Father gave to the Son, without which the Son could not be, just as he gave to him to be. For how could he give any words to the Word, in whom he ineffably uttered all things?
The keeping of God over us we ought not to take so carnally as though the Father and the Son guard us by turns, the keeping of both over us alternating, as if one should succeed when the other departs. For the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who is one true and blessed God, keep us at once. But Scripture does not lift us up unless it descends to us. As the Word made flesh descended to lift us up, it did not fall to lie low. If we have recognized him descending, let us rise with him as he lifts us, and understand that, when he so speaks, he distinguishes persons, not separates natures. If we consider the nature in which we were created, since Truth created all, who is not of the truth?
But not all are those to whom it is granted by Truth itself that they may hear the truth and believe—doubtless with no preceding merits, lest grace should not be grace. For if he had said: Everyone who hears my voice is of the truth, he would then be thought to be called 'of the truth' for this reason, that he obeys the truth. But he did not say this; rather he said: Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. And by this, he is not 'of the truth' because he hears his voice, but he hears for this reason, that he is of the truth—that is, because this gift was conferred upon him from the truth. And what else is this than that, by Christ's gift, he believes in Christ? Whoever loves himself and not God does not love himself; and whoever loves God and not himself, that very one loves himself.
For he who cannot live of himself surely dies by loving himself. Therefore he does not love himself who, in order not to live, loves himself. But when that One is loved by whom one lives, he loves himself the more by not loving himself—he who, for this very reason, does not love himself, that he may love him by whom he lives. Whatever it is that the Father must do toward the Son, it is not done except through the same Son—namely, toward him, because he is the Son of man and was made among all things; but through him, because he is the Son of God, and through him all things are done by the Father. It is no wonder that the Apostle says that even in the age to come the Son will be subject to the Father, where he says: Then shall the Son also himself be subject to him who subjected all things to him.
Since indeed in the Son the human form is destined to abide, in respect of which the Father is always greater. Although there have not been wanting those who supposed that subjection of the Son was then to be understood as the changing of the human form itself into the divine substance—as though that be subjected to a thing into which it is turned and changed. But it can be understood that the Apostle rather said this, that even then the Son will be subject to the Father, lest anyone should suppose that in him the spirit and the human body were to be consumed by some conversion: so that God may be all—not only in that form of man, but in all—when the glory of the Head shall fill the whole body. However great the good things, whether great or least, they cannot be except from God.
For what is greater among created things than intelligent life? Or what can be less than body? These, however much they fail and tend toward not being, yet some form remains to them, that they may in some way exist. But whatever form remains to any failing thing is from that Form which knows not how to fail, and which does not suffer the very movements of failing or advancing things to exceed the laws of their numbers. Whatever, therefore, is observed as praiseworthy in the nature of things, whether it be judged worthy of scant or of ample praise, is to be referred to the most excellent and ineffable praise of the Creator. God, compelling no one to sin, nevertheless foresees those who will sin by their own will.