Yet a chorus of saints too can speak of itself in the plural and in the singular. For a chorus has as it were a single person, but is a number of many, as is that: 'This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me' (Isa. 29:13; Matt. 15:8). But what is the confusion that covered the Lord Jesus, since sins bring about confusion — for it is they that cover the sinner — but He committed no sin (1 Pet. 2:22)? But just as there is a confusion that brings sin, so there is a confusion that abolishes sin, namely the confusion of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which sins are cleansed.
There is also every confusion that is good, which you may undergo for the name of Christ, and it is exceedingly glorious, if, for example, in a persecution there should be a law that a Christian be scourged, that he lose his dignity, that he be deprived of privilege, that he be led away into chains. This confusion surely, even though it has no privilege, has the glory of a devout confession. There is also a confusion of Christ, as He Himself says: 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of me before men, I also will be ashamed of him before my Father who is in heaven' (cf. Mark 8:38; Matt. 10:33). A good confusion, then; yet to very many this confusion of Christ is bitter — that is, to those who do not believe — but joyful to those who believe.
Whether, then, you wish to understand the confounding of Christ as in his cross, which seemed to the Jews to be a disgrace—they who mocked him, as though Christ should blush at that work in which he was effecting the salvation of all—or whether you wish to understand this confusion which seemed to be heaped upon him by the voice of the reviler and the slanderer, by the face of the enemy and the persecutor: for he grieved that his elect people had so fallen, and he was confounded over them in the sight of the Father, those whose end had come. For the Father was present to the Son, from whom the Son can never be separated, and therefore he heard him saying to the Jews: 「Behold, your house shall be left to you desolate.」
But there are also those who glory in their own shame, like those of whom the Apostle says that their glory is in their own confusion. Contrary to these is the glory of Christ, who took up the cross and did not flee the shame, which we too ought by no means to fear nor to shrink from in dread or disdain, lest sin draw down upon us what is able to draw down the grace of life. For there is even a glory of shame: as when you fall in among many gentiles or philosophers, and they cast the cross of Christ in your face and you cannot answer in word, nor does anyone hear you bringing forth the words of salvation. There is shame, but it comes from the voice of the reviler and the slanderer, from the face of the enemy and the persecutor. And therefore, 「do not answer a fool according to his folly」;
be as a man dumb and silent, and as one not hearing the words of those who insult and slander—not because you are unable to answer, but because you ought not to answer. For there is a time for everything, a time to be silent and a time to speak. One must be silent when you find no hearer prepared; one must speak when the Lord grants the tongue of learning, that your speech may work upon the affections of the hearers. But how shall he hear you who slanders you for the very reason that he is unwilling to hear your wholesome speech? Or how shall he be satisfied with you, who is a persecutor and wishes to claim you as his own, or, as Aquila or Symmachus rendered it, to avenge himself and to punish in you the fact that the inheritance of Christ seems to have been transferred to the gentiles?
Far, therefore, is this kind of shame from the shame and reproach of the sinner. For the conscience of this man is enlightened, who has not forgotten his God; but the conscience of those is confounded whose understanding is darkened and disturbed by the recollection of their sins. And therefore those of good conscience say: 「All these things have come upon us, and we have not forgotten you, nor have we dealt unjustly in your covenant; and our heart has not turned back, and you have made our paths to decline from your way.」 The last little verse seems not to agree with the foregoing. For how did those decline upon whom no forgetfulness of the Godhead crept, nor any awareness of iniquity, nor any sloth?
But if you consider that the righteous man is scarcely saved, you will surely understand that even his own steps sometimes waver, and that God seems to be the author of their declining, because he himself also permits the righteous often to be tempted, that they may be the more approved, being trained by temptations. But who is so strong that he is in no way moved in temptation, unless the Lord stand by as his helper? Indeed even the prophet David himself was troubled, since he said in his abundance: 「I shall not be moved forever.」 Or who is he whom the place of affliction and the corruption of the earth does not move, since the divine sentence has excepted no one who is free from the toil and weariness of this earth, to whom it was said: 「Cursed is the earth in all your works」?
「Thorns,」 it says, 「and thistles shall it bring forth.」 Indeed Paul himself, the Lord's vessel of election, though absolved from the curse of the old sentence by the passion of the Lord Jesus, nevertheless most vehemently lamented that he was led captive under the law of sin, and found no one but Christ by whom he might be set free, when the law of his body and the shadow of death pressed upon him. We have stated the meaning. But it befits us to consider more precisely what the place of affliction is: whether this world, which lies in the evil one, or rather our flesh, in which our soul is humbled while it descends into fellowship with this flesh, or the adversities by which we are exercised, set in this body in which we groan, being burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed upon.
For it is a heavy labor while we wait that the mortal may be swallowed up by life—this from which we ought to be divested; for it is divested with less labor than it is swallowed up. And see whether this be the difference between the one who divests himself and the one who waits to be swallowed up by life: grace divests, penitence swallows up; loftiness of mind divests, diligence swallows up. But how can you doubt that this is the place of affliction, when it is a body of death, in which even the shadow of death covers us? And therefore we ought always to look toward that lamp which is the word of God, that we may know how to direct the paths of our soul and the inner footsteps of the mind, so that the light of our souls may dissolve the bodily darkness.
Aquila's interpretation also beautifully expressed how we ought to understand the place of affliction, when he said: 「For you have humbled us in the place of the Sirens」—so that the flesh is not in fault by nature, but rather those things which have made the flesh corruptible. Now the Sirens, of which divine Scripture makes mention a second and a third time, gentile history handed down to be certain maidens who by the sweetness of their own voice, singing, by the allurements of the desire to listen would entice seafarers to bring their ship to shore; and ancient history handed down to posterity that these men, when they followed the charm of the voice, suffered shipwreck on a rocky place. The interpretation of these is this: the pleasure of the voice and a certain flattery.
So then the pleasure of the world delights us by a certain carnal flattery, in order to deceive. As therefore in that case the shore was not at fault, but the melodious sweetness, which caused the ruggedness of the shore not to be guarded against, so the flesh is not at fault, but those things by which this flesh is solicited and tossed about. Indeed the sea, when the storm is absent, is calm; if a tempest rages, it is dangerous. And the opinion of the Seventy men also seems to agree with these, when they say [for it is written]: 「For you have humbled us.」 The proofs of this interpretation must be fetched for us from the divine Scriptures. For it says in Deuteronomy:
「If you go out,」 it says, 「to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands, and you take spoils of them, and see among that spoil a woman beautiful in form, and you cohabit with her,」 and further: 「If afterward you no longer desire her, you shall send her away free, because you have humbled her.」 You see, therefore, that she is said to have been humbled not by her own nature, but by him who took from her the integrity of her chastity. The humiliation, therefore, belongs to the deed, through which this flesh has been made a body of sin and a place of affliction. Again elsewhere:
「If a virgin is betrothed to a man, and a man finding her in the city lies with her, both shall be led out to the gate of their city and stoned, and the young woman shall die, because she did not cry out in the city,」 nor call upon a man to help her, 「and the man,」 it says, 「because he humbled his neighbor's wife.」 And here the reason for this expression is the same, that she is said to have been humbled by the corrupter. You have also a third testimony on this matter, and more, if you seek. Yet from the same book hear: 「If anyone finds a virgin」 who is not betrothed, and using force upon her lies with her, and is found out, 「he who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty denarii, and she shall be his wife, because he humbled her;」
「nor can he send her away all his days, because he humbled her.」 The same expression is repeated, that you may understand that it is not the condition of the flesh that seems to humble us, but guilt. Yet we cannot deny that the flesh too is humbled in many ways—by the place itself, by the very allurements, and by the frailty by which it lay open to error. Although it was deceived by no mean adversary, the serpent, nevertheless it had no mean grace of its own before sin crept in: Adam was in the sight of God, he flourished in paradise, he shone with heavenly grace, he spoke with God. Have you read anywhere that he was humbled before his own transgression humbled him?
The inheritance of this fault he certainly transmitted to us, so that, set in this body, we are unwilling to journey forth from the body and to be present with God. And therefore we humble our soul, which longs to lift itself up to God; but the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses upon it, so that the mind devoted to God is often bent down and cannot subject itself to God, since the wisdom of the flesh, which entangles our affection, knows not subjection to him. Saying these things about ourselves, what do we say about the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ? He certainly took up the reality of this flesh, and therefore he humbled himself even unto death, the death of the cross. Attend diligently and consider each detail.
See that he took up this form of our body willingly, and the service of bondage that was your due, being made in the likeness of men—not in the likeness of flesh, but in the likeness of sinful men; for every man is under sin. Therefore also being found in fashion as a man—as it is written of him: 「And he is a man, and who shall know him?」 a man according to the flesh, but beyond man according to his working—「as a man,」 it says, 「he humbled himself,」 because God came to those who had been humbled, to set them free. He therefore humbled himself for our sake.
Therefore his body is not a body of death, since it is a body of life; nor is his flesh a shadow of death, since it is the brightness of glory; nor is there in it a place of affliction, since in that body there is for all the grace of consolation. He humbled himself, that you might learn what humility is. Indeed hear him saying: 「Learn of me, for I am most gentle and lowly in heart.」 He humbled himself, that you might be exalted; for whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. But not all who are humbled shall be exalted; for crime humbles many to their ruin. But the Lord was humbled even unto death, that he might be exalted from the gates of death. Behold, see the grace of Christ, see his benefits.
After Christ came, this flesh which was a shadow of death began through the grace of the Lord to shine and to have its own light, whence also it was said: 「The lamp of your body is your eye.」 But see of what eye he speaks: not of the outer, but of the inner. 「If your eye,」 he says, 「is single, your whole body will be full of light.」 It is certainly the inner eye that illumines the whole body of man, and it is also the inner eye that brings blindness to the whole body, for it is written: 「But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness.」 You see in one man how, from the very source whence darkness is born, thence light also may rise.
You yourself, therefore, are to yourself either darkness or light: the darkness of iniquity and the gloom of sins, the light of innocence. You yourself, therefore, are to yourself either the author of injury or of grace; the divine working errs in nothing. The light is in your very self, because innocence is your infancy, the pure mind of a man before the slippery ways of adolescence and the error of youth. You therefore have made into darkness for yourself that which is light. Indeed the same eye, that is, the sense of man, is dark in the sinner, radiant in the innocent. Nor let us pass over what Symmachus says: 「You have afflicted us in a desert place.」 We are afflicted for this reason, that sometimes we are forsaken by heavenly protection, and that this region is under a curse or in worldly slipperiness.
Our Lord Jesus Christ had not yet blessed his land, and therefore men labored, nor was the gaze of their spiritual eyes directed toward the light of his godliness. Then, because the pleasure and delight of the world frequently creeps in, hence we ought not to let it bind us with the bonds of that man, nor to stop our ears with wax, but to turn away the ear whenever anyone judges it fitting to speak things alien to faith and contrary or adverse to our welfare, lest in that speech the shadow of death cover us. And if any such thing is brought forth, we ought nevertheless to insert the word of God, which may illumine the eyes of our mind with the brightness of discourse. There follows: 「If we have forgotten」...
「the name of our God, and if we have spread out our hands to strange gods, shall not God require this?」—Aquila: 「shall he not search this out?」 Symmachus: 「shall he not find this out?」—for he himself knows the secret things of the heart. 「Because for your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.」 What is it that he says, 「God shall require」? As though, if he did not require it, he would be ignorant of it. And so God will require your forgetfulness which has crept in, that he may take away every trace of it. Whence also Aquila said: 「he shall search out.」 For how does he, who knows the secrets of the heart, search it out—he to whom even the inner things are manifest, since before God each one's conscience betrays itself, and the thought of man before him either condemns or acquits him.
Indeed Aquila said 「the visions of the heart,」 because he sees our heart, and every thought of our heart is ready and open before God, and the image of our thoughts shines back to him. Aquila well said: 「For you we are put to death,」 since in Christ to die is glorious, and in him he dies who, for his name, has been crowned by a holy passion. But why do you wonder that this little verse declares God to require the secret things of the heart, when elsewhere you have read that God is the searcher of the heart? Why also do you wonder if the majesty of the divine substance cannot be explained in our words, when the Apostle says: 「Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will illumine the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of hearts;」
「and then each shall have praise from God.」 We often read the darkness of the heart in place of crime—indeed almost everywhere. See therefore whether these be the hidden things of darkness which are the hidden things of the heart, and have therefore received the name of darkness because they are not detected by others but lie concealed. And therefore the Lord is asserted to be about to illumine the hidden things of darkness in the day of judgment, because each one's heart will be made manifest which was before hidden, known indeed to Christ alone, who, knowing the grace of his own judgment, said: 「There is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest.」 But there are many things which we suppress for modesty's sake, and, that we may fulfill the heavenly command, we hold...
...with silent affection within ourselves, lest we seem to glory in those things which are ours, and by publishing them begin to lose their fruit. But there are also the hidden things of wisdom, which the Apostle Paul, caught up into paradise, heard, and, because it was not lawful for a man to utter them, kept within himself—not because he grudged the use or grace of them to others, but because what was not lawful for a man to utter perhaps was also not profitable for a man to hear, which things the Lord will illumine when the time has come for the secrets to be illumined. See whether even in the Gospel you may find some difference, where he said: 「There is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest, nor anything covered that shall not be revealed.」
Yet that agrees with the foregoing interpretation, so that we believe both refer to good things, because it is written: 「The Lord knows those who are his.」 He therefore knows his own, and he knows those who know God; but he is ignorant of those who are ignorant of God; for whoever is ignorant shall be ignored. The Lord therefore recognizes the things that are good; the things that are full of divine knowledge, the things that are hidden things of wisdom, the Lord knows; but he turns away from those things that are full of iniquity and sin.
In short, if you consider the person of those whom no forgetfulness of divine worship separated, so that they should spread out their hands to a strange god, and who were unwilling to open their souls, you will understand that in their secret places there were no shameful deeds, but they contained those things that belonged to innocence, since they were put to death for the worship of God, and were engaged in death all the day long, as Paul was engaged, who says: 「I die daily, by your glory.」 And truly Paul died daily according to the flesh, in fastings, in shipwrecks, set in diverse perils and miseries, but he did not wholly die.
His outer man died, but the inner was renewed, and therefore he did not faint when pressed by so many perils, because, although his outer man was being corrupted, the inner was renewed day by day, since the faith and grace of each one's work illumines for him his own day. Whence Paul the Apostle knew no night, because he who is renewed is always in the light. Or does he not seem to you to be in the light who contains within himself the love of Christ? And therefore, secure in his immolation, he did not flee hardships, nor can any persecution or famine or sword separate from Christ the Lord one whom the bonds of divine love bind fast. Meanwhile, however, even in good works the human mind is troubled and shaken by temptations.
Yet this too belongs to the righteous, that, when they see themselves tempted, they seek help, as the apostles in the Gospel, when Christ was sleeping in the boat, dreading the storm of the waves, awoke the Lord Jesus that he might drive their dread from them. Do not the holy apostles seem to you to have spoken these little verses: 「Arise, why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise, and do not cast us off forever」? Surely, even if the letter seems to differ, the meaning agrees. Nor indeed, even set in the body, did our Lord Jesus Christ sleep in such a way as to be ignorant of the storm of the sea, or that the knowledge of the risen tempest of the winds escaped him through the depth of his slumber. He slept in body, but in power he kept watch.
And that arrangement was made, that the Son of God, the Word of God, should go up into the boat, and that his disciples should also go up together with him, whom he would not suffer to be remiss and negligent—as though secure of the Lord's presence and favor—and so he composed himself in bodily sleep. Therefore by that appearance of sleep the Word of God showed the apostles that he slept to this world. Yet his power and providence kept watch, which stirred up the tempest in the sea, that the boat might be all but covered by the surging waves, by which tempest, the disciples being troubled, it might be known whether they would support themselves by the foresight of wholesome counsel or rather exceed the remedy. But for those for whom Jesus was not sleeping, faith kept watch, and therefore rising they awoke the Lord Jesus, saying:
「Lord, save us, we perish.」 See whether that also differs from the Gospel which we read about Jonah, who was sleeping in the belly of the ship and snoring, in which the figure of the holy passion went before. For just as Jonah was sleeping in the ship and snoring securely, as though not fearing to be caught, so our Lord Jesus Christ, who fulfilled that figure by the sacrament of his death, in the time of the Gospel slept in the boat; and just as that one was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth in the passion of his body. And when he roused himself from death and relaxed the sleep of his body, that he might rise again for the salvation of all, he visited his disciples.
This, therefore, is the true Jonah, who offered his soul as a redemption for us. For this reason he was taken up and cast into the sea, that he might be received and swallowed by the whale, so that, placed within the belly of the whale, he might empty out its inner parts. Concerning this whale—hear Job saying: 「Who is able to render the great whale captive.」 Who this is, you certainly recognize, when you have read that our Lord Jesus Christ led captivity captive; for, the adversary and enemy being overcome, we who were captives began to possess liberty through Christ. In short, the very prayer of holy Jonah teaches that they are mysteries of the Lord's passion; and he said:
「I cried,」 he says, 「to the Lord my God in my tribulation, and he heard me from the belly of hell.」 You see that he said the belly of hell, not of the whale. But the Lord descended not into a whale, but into hell, that those also who were in hell might be loosed from their everlasting bonds. Indeed many even rose again. But what rivers surrounded Jonah, or of what abyss did Jonah speak: 「The lowest abyss surrounded me, it drowned my head in the clefts of the mountains; I went down into the earth whose bars are everlasting barriers」? This surely does not square or agree with the person of Jonah. But the Son of God descended into the clefts of the mountains when he descended into the tomb.
For Joseph himself, as the Gospel teaches, laid him in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock, and rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb. Indeed in another book also it says: 「He laid him in a tomb hewn out, in which no one had yet been laid.」 But who is he who, with the voice of praise and confession, sacrificed to the Lord, except the Prince of all priests, and vowed and paid vows on behalf of all? For he alone had power over his own effecting. As therefore Jonah was cast into the sea and the sea rested from its commotion, so our Lord Jesus Christ came into this world, that he might gain the world for himself and by his blood make peace with all things, whether earthly or heavenly.
By his coming, therefore, he redeemed all men and provoked them to the worship of God by his works; when he raised the dead, healed the sick, he poured the fear of God into human affections. He it is who sacrificed to the Lord a saving sacrifice for us, and offered to God worthy victims of our conversion; he it is who slept and awoke. We must beware, therefore, lest he fall asleep to sinners; for he seems to fall asleep to those for whom he will not have risen and whom he has cast off to the end. But who is he that is cast off, except him who is a stranger to the Lord, because he is not a stranger to the body? For how can those who are in the flesh please God?
And therefore let us not be in the flesh, but let us cleave in spirit to the Lord Jesus, who in the eighty-eighth psalm says that he was cast off for us: 「But you have cast off and brought to nothing, you have deferred your Christ; you have overthrown the covenant of your servant.」 And so, being cast off for us, he became a reproach to his neighbors; for he took up the reproach of the cross, that he might clothe us with the glory of his resurrection. He seems cast off as one dead, and overwhelmed with confusion as one crucified, but blessed forever is he who bore the curse and procured the grace of blessing. There follows: 「Why do you turn away your face?」
We think that God turns his face away from us when we are set in any afflictions, so that darkness is poured over our affection, hindered by which we are unable to drink in the brightness of truth with our eyes. For indeed, if God should attend to our nature and deign to visit our mind, we are certain that nothing could draw a mist over us. For if the face of a man shines more than the other parts of his members, and whomever we behold we either recognize though unknown or know again though known—him whom our gaze does not permit to lie hidden—how much more does the face of God illumine the one upon whom it looks!
Concerning which—as his other sayings are, so this excellent one of the holy Apostle, who is truly the interpreter of Christ, that he might pour him into our minds with a fitter sense and speech. Whence he says: 「For God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the face of Christ Jesus.」 Where therefore Christ may shine again in us, we have heard. For he is the eternal brightness of souls, whom for this reason the Father sent into the earth, that, enlightened in his face, we might be able to behold things eternal and heavenly, we who before were held by earthly darkness. Why should I speak of Christ, when even Peter the apostle said to that lame man from his mother's womb: 「Look on us」?
He looked on Peter and was enlightened by faith and grace; for he would not have received the remedy of healing, had he not faithfully believed. Whence, since there was such great glory in the apostles, Zacchaeus, hearing the Lord Jesus pass by, climbed up into a tree, because, being short and small, he could not see him in the crowd. He saw Christ and found light; he saw him, and he who before seized the goods of others bestowed his own. Rightly therefore do these say: 「Why do you turn away your face?」 Or perhaps it is said for this reason, that the coming of Christ delayed for those who longed for it; for he himself is the face of the Father, who is the image and glory of God. Surely, if we do not take this as referring to the sacrament of his incarnation, the saints rightly use that saying too: