COMMENTARIUS IN EVANGELIUM SECUNDUM JOANNEM

• 297A

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Therefore he came unto his own, that is, he was incarnate in human nature. And his own received him not. This is said of the faithless Jews and of all the impious, who would not receive the Word of God, that is, who would neither believe in him nor understand him. And lest anyone should think that all men had failed to receive him, for from the beginning of the world there was no time in which there were not receivers of the divine Word, he therefore added:

But as many as received him, that is, whoever believed in him, he gave them power to become sons of God. He did not say: he gave them power to be saved, 297Bor he gave them power to return to the former state and dignity of human nature, but, what is ineffable, and impossible to every nature by itself, he gave them through the sublimity of his grace to become sons of God. To them that believe in his name, that is, to those who believe that they will receive knowledge of him and understanding, through faith in this life, and through sight in the other.

Who not of bloods, that is, who not of seeds; nor of the will of the flesh, that is, nor of the female sex; for flesh often signifies the female sex; nor of the will of man, that is, nor of male seed. It can also be understood thus, nor of the will of the flesh, so that what follows, nor of the will of man, is its exposition. For there is no lack of those who attribute the irrational 297Cmotion by which men are conceived in the flesh to the flesh alone, as though nothing pertained to the soul, since the flesh without the soul prevails nothing in such things. And therefore there follows, nor of the will of man, that is, nor of the will of the whole man. Wise men are often accustomed to call the human being, homo, by the word vir, man. But are born of God, namely through the grace of baptism, in which those who believe in Christ begin to be born of God. But lest anyone should think it impossible that mortal, carnal, fragile, corruptible man be exalted into such glory as to become a son of God, the evangelist, as if drawing breath, and answering the hidden thoughts of the unbelieving, set down a most powerful argument:

And the Word was made flesh. As if he said: Do not 298Awonder that flesh, that is, mortal man, can pass over into a son of God by grace, since it is a greater miracle that the Word was made flesh. For if what is higher descended to the lower, what wonder if what is lower should ascend, by the grace of the higher working, into that which is higher, especially since it was to this end that the Word was made flesh, that man might become a son of God? For the Word descended into man, that through it man might ascend into God. For just as we say: the Word was made flesh, so we can say: and flesh was made the Word. And the Word was made flesh, this evangelical sentence recurs in the manner of propositions. And dwelt in us, that is, he lived among us men; the Word dwelt in us, that is, he possessed our nature. And we saw his glory; we, namely, whom he chose 298Bout of the world, saw his glory in most manifest miracles, in the transfiguration on the spiritual mountain, in the brightness of the resurrection; and not another glory, but the glory of the only-begotten from the Father. Full of grace, it is to be understood: we saw him full of grace according to humanity, and of truth according to deity.

John beareth witness of him, namely the Word, and crieth, or as is read in the Greek: and cried, saying: This was he of whom I spoke, or, as the Greek has it: of whom I was speaking, which is much more significant. For if he had put the perfect past, which is I spoke, he would signify the work of his preaching about Christ as already completed; but the imperfect past, which is I was speaking, signifies both the beginning of John's preaching of Christ, and his perseverance still in that same preaching. 298CThis was he; this is a demonstrative pronoun of a present person; and through this it is given to understand that Christ was present in that place in which John openly declared such a demonstration of him. Nor is this a wonder; for the Lord himself, still unknown to nearly all, before he was baptized and began to preach, was accustomed often to come to John. And therefore John says: This was he of whom I spoke. In this place, as frequently also in the foregoing, the verb which is was declares not a signification of time, but of substance, so that we understand this was he as if he openly said this is he, this one subsists, of whom I was speaking to you. To whom was he speaking? To his disciples, surely, to whom he both preached Christ absent and pointed him out present. 299AWhich is made manifest in what follows, where he says to his disciples: Behold the Lamb of God who is to come after me, [Vulg. Jn 1:29 Ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi, "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world"; qui post me venit is 1:15/1:27] or, as it is written in other codices: who cometh after me. For what is written in the Greek, ἐρχόμενος , is a participle both of past time and of future. He was made before me. As if he openly said: He who after me in the order of times came into the world in conception and nativity, was made before me, preferred to me in the order of dignity. For I am a pure and simple man, he more than man, composed of humanity and divinity; he the Lord, I the servant; he the king, I the forerunner. And therefore there follows: Because he was before me, not only by the eternity of divinity, but also by the dignity of humanity. But if anyone attentively inspect the Greek speech, he will understand in another way what he says: 299Bwho is to come after me, that is, who was to come after me, or who came after me into the world, was made before me, that is, appeared in my presence; and just as I prophesied and knew him with spiritual eyes while I was in the womb, so also now with carnal eyes I behold him made before me, that is, coming. For what is written in the Greek, ἔμπροσθέν μου , is properly interpreted: before me, that is, before my eyes. And what do I perceive in him, whether with spiritual or with corporeal eyes? Nothing else, but that he was before me, or, as more significantly in the Greek, that he was first of me. To this end therefore he was made in my presence, that I might know him to be first, that is, to precede me in all things. For he precedes me in the fullness of grace. Whatever I possess by grace, I receive from 299Cnowhere else but from the fullness of his grace. Therefore he consequently adjoined:

And of his fullness we all have received. What fullness does he mean? None other than that of which he spoke above: And we saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. For the fullness of grace according to humanity, and the fullness of truth according to divinity, dwells in Christ. Whence the Apostle says: in whom the fullness of divinity dwells corporeally, that is, truly. But how does the fullness of grace according to humanity dwell in Christ? Not otherwise than that he himself is the first and greatest example of divine grace, in that the man Christ, with no merits preceding, was assumed into the unity of substance, or, to speak in the more usual way, of person. 299DBut the fullness of truth is in him naturally, because he himself is the truth, as he himself testifies: « I am the way, the truth and the life. » Of his fullness therefore, according to humanity and divinity, we all have received. We all, he says, who from the Israelite people received him, and who from the other nations of the whole world believed in him, we have received grace, by which we believe in him, and truth, by which we understand him. And this is what follows: Grace for grace, so that it be understood: of his fullness we have received grace for grace; namely the grace of the contemplation of truth for the grace of faith in the confession of his inhumanation, 300Athat is, the grace of sight for the grace of faith, the grace of deification in the future for the grace of action and knowledge in the present. And lest any of those who glory in the law should think that they had received grace and truth from the law, he immediately subjoined:

Because the law was given by Moses. As if he had said: Therefore I say that of the fullness of Christ we all have received grace and truth, and not of the law, because the law was only given by Moses, which imparts no grace to those who receive it according to the letter, since it is nothing else but a certain shadow and symbol of the New Testament. Grace and truth was made by Jesus Christ. It can also be understood thus: because the law, while it is considered in Moses, that is, in the bare letter, 300Bis only law; but while in Christ, it is grace and truth. For the spirit of the law is grace and truth in Christ Jesus. The law therefore, considered in Moses, is not grace and truth, but in Christ it is grace and truth. The blessed Augustine thus distinguishes the Old Testament from the New; for he says: The law was given, that grace might be sought; but grace was given, that the law might be fulfilled. He proposes three things therefore: law, grace, truth; intimating three hierarchies, one indeed in the Old Testament, handed down in most obscure enigmas; the second, which we also call the middle, in the New Testament, in which there is abundance of grace, and a most open declaration of those things which were mystically both said and done in the law; the third, the heavenly I mean, already beginning in this life, and to be perfected in the other life, 300Cin which the contemplation of pure truth will be given, without any darkness, in those who are deified. The first hierarchy therefore is intimated by the name of law, the second of grace, the third by the appellation of truth. Whoever desires to know more fully of these three hierarchies, let him read saint Dionysius the Areopagite.

No man hath seen God at any time. To the heaping-up of the praise of the fullness of Christ is added what he says: No man hath seen God at any time, and as though, on this occasion of the divine invisibility, human nature would be deprived of all beatitude--for the contemplation of him is true beatitude--if the divine goodness had not come to its aid through the incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God, who in the flesh, that is, in the whole man whom he received, not only disclosed himself, but made manifest to men the altogether previously unknown 300DGod the Father, as he himself says: « I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given me » , and again to Philip asking and saying, « Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us » , it is answered: « Philip, he that seeth me seeth my Father also » ; and again: « No one hath seen [Vulg. novit, "knoweth"] the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal » . Nor is this to be understood of men only, but also of angels. For the angels too could not know their God, who surpasses every intellect, in his own nature, because he is invisible and unknown, but when the Word was incarnate they understood their Lord, 301Anamely the Son of God, and in him and through him the whole Trinity, removed from all things. Universally, therefore, the inhumanation of the Word of God profited both the rational and the intellectual creature, the rational namely for the freedom of its nature from death and diabolical servitude, and from ignorance of the truth, but the intellectual for knowing its cause, of which before it was ignorant. Hence the Apostle: « In whom all things have been restored, which are in heaven and on earth » . But it is not without reason asked why in the Old Testament and in the New it is frequently read of God that he appeared to men, whether visibly to carnal eyes, or invisibly in prophetic visions, while the Gospel says: « No man hath seen God at any time » . But if it were said of the Father alone that no one has seen him, the question would be most easily solved, 301Bso that the person of the Son and of the Holy Spirit would be understood often to have appeared visibly, but the Father alone to be removed from all vision. But since this is understood to be said not of one person, but of the Trinity alone, which is one God, « No man hath seen God at any time » , namely of the essence and substance of the one Trinity, since it surpasses every intellect of the rational and intellectual creature, it is not without reason to be investigated what appeared, when God is said to have appeared whether visibly or invisibly. Blessed Augustine unhesitatingly discloses that the Son appeared in the Old Testament, yet not in that substance in which he is equal to the Father, but in some subject creature, whether visible or invisible. Likewise when the Spirit is read to have appeared, for example 301Cin the form of a dove, it is to be thought that he appeared not through himself in that substance in which he is coessential with the Father and the Son, but in a subject creature. Understand the same of the Father. The visions of the prophets also, in which the prophets are reported to have seen God, were made of a certain subject spiritual creature; but that the divine substance through itself in no way appeared to them Dionysius unhesitatingly affirms, lest the invisible and incomprehensible be thought able in any way to be seen or comprehended. It is also asked whether this [is said of] men only who still live in this life, and not of the heavenly powers, which always abide in divine contemplation. To this it must be said that no partaker of human or angelic nature can contemplate God himself through himself in his own 301Dproper nature. For what is written in the Latin codex, « No man (nemo) hath seen God » , in the Greek is « None (nullus) hath seen God » ; for οὐδείς is interpreted both nemo and nullus. What then do the holy souls of men and the holy intellects of angels see, when they see God, if they do not see God himself, whom they are reported to see? For example, to set down a few examples out of many, Isaias saw the Lord sitting upon a high throne. The Lord says in the Gospel: « Their angels always see the face of my Father, who is in heaven » . Again: « He that loveth me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself 302Ato him » . John in his epistle: « We know that we are sons of God, but it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall see [Vulg. similes ei erimus: quoniam videbimus, "we shall be like to him: because we shall see"] him as he is » . Paul likewise: « We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face » , and the rest of that kind. What, I say, do men and angels see, or what shall they see, while both saint Ambrose and Dionysius the Areopagite most openly and without any hesitation insist that God, I mean the highest Trinity, has never through itself appeared to anyone, never appears, and never will appear? He will appear therefore in his theophanies, that is, divine appearances, in which God will appear according to the height of the purity and virtue of each one. Now theophanies are all creatures, 302Bvisible and invisible, through which God, and in which, has often appeared, and appears, and will appear. Likewise, by the virtue of the most purified souls and intellects there are theophanies, and in them, as they seek and love him, God manifests himself, in which, as in certain clouds, the saints are caught up to meet Christ, as the Apostle says: « We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ » , calling clouds the most bright heights of divine theoria, in which they will be always with Christ. Hence it is that Dionysius says: « And if anyone should say that he has seen him, namely God, he did not see him, but something made by him. For he himself is altogether invisible, who is better known by not knowing, and the ignorance of whom is true wisdom » . The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; or as is written in the Greek: who is 302Cinto the bosom of the Father, or in the bosoms of the Father. In certain codices of the Greeks the bosom of the Father is spoken of in the singular, in certain in the plural, as though the Father had many bosoms. He himself hath declared. The only-begotten Son therefore declared God, that is, manifested him in himself, not insofar as his divinity, which is altogether invisible, but insofar as the humanity which he received, so that he might manifest himself and his Father, and also his Holy Spirit, to men and to angels. For the human soul, while it is invisible through itself, manifests through its bodily motions not what it is, but that it is. And what is it that he says: « Who is in the bosom of the Father » or « in the bosoms of the Father » ? Is the bosom of the Father one thing, the only-begotten Son of the Father another? Not another, but the only-begotten Son 302Dhimself is the bosom of the Father. Now the Son is called the bosom (sinus) of the Father because he intimated (insinuavit) the Father to the world. The only-begotten Son is also the bosom of the Father, because he is always in the secret places of the paternal nature, as he himself says: « I in the Father, and the Father is in me » . Just as, therefore, the only-begotten Son is the house of the Father, as he himself says: « In the house of my Father there are many mansions » ; as if he said: In me, in whom the Father dwells as in his own proper house, there are many mansions; for in it each one shall possess his own reception according to his own merits and Christ's grace: so also the Son is the bosom of the Father; for in him the Father receives and gathers those whom he wills 303Ato receive and gather. He hath declared; that is, by the teaching and manifestation of his incarnation he has shown the invisible God, and shows him, and will show him; as he says in that very sentence which we introduced a little above: « He that loveth me is loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him » .

And this is the testimony of John. As if he said: All this which we have said, from that place « John beareth testimony » as far as that which is « he hath declared » , is the testimony of John the forerunner about him whose forerunner he is. Then, as though from another beginning of the narrative, he begins, saying: When the Jews sent from Jerusalem etc. And the order of the words is: And he confessed, and did not deny, when the Jews sent from Jerusalem priests and Levites, and the rest. 303BBut what did he not deny, and what did he confess?

That I am not the Christ. For the Jews thought that John the Baptist was the Christ, because it was foretold in the prophets that he would come into the world. They also thought him Elias the Thesbite, on account of his exceeding abstinence, and chastity, and solitary life, and most harsh reproof of offences, and most severe terror of the vengeance to come. And besides this they thought that he, John I mean, was some one of the prophets risen again, seeing that the greatest grace of prophecy had advanced in him. « I am not » , he says, « the Christ, because I am the forerunner of Christ and the voice of one crying in the desert » .

Art thou Elias? And he said: I am not. This denial is understood in two ways. I am not, he said, Elias, 303Cbut I came in the spirit and power of Elias. Again, I am not Elias; for he is only a prophet, but I not only a prophet, but also the forerunner. Not that all the prophets are not forerunners of Christ, but that none of the prophets was born together with Christ in one and the same year, so as to become forerunner with a small interval set between. Art thou a prophet? He answered: No. This too is understood in two ways: either, because he is more than a prophet, as Christ proclaims of him, he therefore denies that he is a prophet, or that he answered their opinion. For they thought that John was one of the dead prophets of past time. He says therefore: I am not one of those prophets from whose number you think I have risen, and am preaching to you in present time.

They said therefore to him: Who art thou? If thou art not the Christ, or Elias, 303Dor any of the prophets, say who thou art, lest we return to those who sent us without an answer and any knowledge of thee, and be able to give them no answer. What sayest thou of thyself? For we have heard that thou hast preached of Christ, but of thyself thou assertest nothing manifest. What then sayest thou of thyself?

I am the voice of one crying in the desert. If you ask, he says, what I put forth concerning myself, know that I am the voice. He did not say, « that I am a man » , 304Aor « I am John the son of Zachary » , but he said: « I am the voice » . For he did not consider in himself human substance, nor human generation, since indeed the forerunner of the Word was exalted beyond all these things. He forsook all things which are contained within the world, he ascended on high, he was made the voice of the Word, so that he confessed no substance in himself, except that which he received beyond every creature out of the abundance of grace, namely to be the voice of the Word. Now this name was imposed on him not by himself, but long before by Isaias the prophet, nay rather by the Holy Spirit through Isaias. Therefore I am the voice, not my voice, but the voice of one crying; for voice is said relatively. Of the crying Word, therefore, that is, of the Word preaching through the flesh, John is the voice. And where does the Word cry, whose voice 304BJohn is? In the desert. Many wish this desert to be understood of Judaea, and of all Israel. For Judaea was reduced to a desert, emptied of all divine worship, and defiled with the filth of idolatry, following only the legal letter, emptied of all spiritual sense, polluted with diverse superstitions; and she who before was called confession, for Judaea is interpreted confession Jerome: Juda, praise, confession. For (Hebrew) is said from the verb (Hebrew), Hiph. (Hebrew), that is, to confess., was turned into an utter denial of the truth. In this solitude, therefore, both the voice of the Word and the Word itself first preached. But why the forerunner of the Word is signified by the name of voice is not without reason asked. The voice, then, is the interpreter of the mind. For everything which the mind first both thinks and orders invisibly within itself, it brings forth sensibly through the voice into the senses of the hearers. The mind, therefore, that 304Cis, the intellect of all things, is the Son of God. For he is, as saint Augustine says, the intellect of all things, nay rather all things. His forerunner is beautifully named by the word voice, because through him he was first shown to the world, when he said « Behold the lamb of God » and the rest. But by a higher theoria the desert is understood as the ineffable height of the divine nature, removed from all things. For it is deserted by every creature, because it surpasses every intellect, while it deserts no intellect. And this is signified more clearly than light by the Greek name, which is ἔρημος . For Ἐρημία is interpreted removal and loftiness, which altogether befits the divine nature. In this very desert of the divine loftiness, therefore, the Word cries, through which all things were made. Hear Moses saying in Genesis: « God said: Be light made » , God said 304D: « A firmament » ; likewise in all the works of the six days there goes before: « God said » . Where by the name of God we understand the Father, but « said » signifies the Word of God. The Word of God therefore cries in the most remote solitude of the divine goodness. His cry is the founding of all natures. For he calls those things which are, as those which are not [Vulg. vocat ea quae non sunt, tamquam ea quae sunt, "calleth those things that are not, as those that are"], because through him God the Father cried, that is, created all things which he willed to be made. He cried invisibly, before the world was made, that the world be made. He cried, coming into the world, 305Avisibly that the world be saved. First he cried eternally through his divinity alone before the incarnation; he cried afterwards through his flesh. And what does that voice of his, that is, his forerunner, cry aloud? Hear. Make straight the way of the Lord. What is « Make straight the way of the Lord » ? Is it not what follows, « make the paths straight » ? Make straight therefore the way of the Lord, that is, rightly preach and believe the Lord, who is the way, as he himself says: « I am the way and the truth and the life » . It can also be understood thus: « Make straight the way of the Lord » , that is, rightly believe in the Lord. For the Lord enters the hearts of men by no other way than through faith, which is the way of the Lord. As said Isaias the prophet. The evangelist, seeing the sentence of Isaias about the forerunner of the Lord most fully 305Bwritten in the Gospel according to Luke, wished to leave off recapitulating the same sentence, lest it should seem superfluous. In this place it is not unfitting, as I think, to insert a few things about the mystical names of the forerunner. He is called voice because, just as the voice precedes the conception of the mind, so John preceded the Word of God. He is called Πρόδρομος, that is, forerunner, because John preceded the Lord not only in conception and nativity, but also in the mystery of baptism and of the preaching of penance. He is called φωσφόρος, that is, light-bearing, because he first brought the light of the world to the knowledge of the world, and carried it in himself. John is called the morning star, which the Greeks call ἄστρον πρωϊνὸν, because, just as that star which the astrologers call lucifer precedes the rising of the sun, so the forerunner of the Lord first 305Cappeared to the world, whom the sun of justice followed. Likewise by the Greeks he is called ἀκριδομελιτροφὸς, on account of his abstinence from the common foods of men. For Ἀκρὶς is interpreted locust, μελὶ honey, τροφὴ food; ἀκριδομελιτροφὸς therefore is interpreted eating locusts and wild honey.

And they who were sent were of the Pharisees. It is asked: why were Pharisees sent to John? But to this it must be said: The Pharisees especially, for this reason, hearing that the preaching of John had persuaded the people of the general resurrection of all from the dead, and most of all in that place where he says, « offspring of vipers, who will deliver you from the wrath to come upon you [Vulg. quis ostendit vobis fugere a ventura ira, "who hath shewed you to flee from the wrath to come"] » , namely in the judgement after the resurrection, desired to hear John; for they too most firmly 305Dbelieved and preached the resurrection of the dead, and through this they are reported to have agreed with Christ in many things, and also frequently to have helped Paul the apostle.

Why then dost thou baptize, if thou art not the Christ, nor Elias, nor a prophet? It is asked why the Pharisees attributed the authority of baptism to Elias, or to any of the prophets; for they had heard in the prophets that Christ would come into the world and would baptize. Knowing therefore that the Jordan bore the figure of baptism, and that Elias and Eliseus crossed it with dry feet, they did not doubt that the figure of baptism had gone before in Elias and Eliseus, or that those very men had risen 306Aand baptized. And through this they did not ask: « Art thou one of the prophets » ? but only: « Art thou a prophet » ? namely he who prefigured baptism. He answered them:

I baptize in water; as if he said: I dip in water only for the cleansing of bodies, prefiguring the sanctification of body and soul in him who truly baptizes. But he standeth in the midst of you, [Vulg. stetit, "hath stood"] that is, he appears present to you, whom you know not, because you do not believe in him, nor know who he is.

He it is who is to come after me. This is he who in the divine disputation and predication, before the world was made, was defined, that he would come after me into the world, so as to follow me his forerunner. Who was made before me; that is, who was made present before 306Bthe eyes of my mind and body. For I see him, and know him in the midst of you, but you know him not. There is also another understanding in these words, as pleases Maximus. John bears the figure of penance, since he preached penance; but Christ the figure of justice, not only because he judges the world, but also because he himself is eternal justice. Penance cannot come to be except after the transgression of justice; human nature therefore, which transgressed the divine laws in paradise, under the person of John preaches and does penance, and manifestly declares the substantial justice of the Word of God, which goes before it through divinity and is to come after it through the dispensation of the flesh, so that it might recall it, human nature I mean, living according to the divine laws which 306Cby pride it had spurned, to the pristine state of eternal justice. Whose I am not worthy, and the rest. The shoe of the Word is his flesh, which he had assumed from the virgin, which is intimated through the figure of the shoe. For as a shoe is made from the hide of dead animals, so the flesh of Christ was made mortal for our sake, that by his death our death might be altogether destroyed. For the flesh of Christ was not made mortal by the desert of its own sin, as our flesh is, but it was passible by condescension to our nature after sin. For he did not refuse to undergo death for our sake, but the cause of death, sin I mean, he did not receive. And therefore death could not hold him, because he was not a debtor of death. Death could not hold as captive him whom it had not found guilty. 306DFrom the first man before sin, therefore, he received to be without sin; from the same after sin he received to be able to die; by which two he restored our whole nature in himself. For he altogether destroyed our death in himself, and restored eternal life. But in that he lacked sin, he manifested in himself our nature, before it sinned. If therefore the shoe of the Word is the flesh of the Word, not unfittingly understand the latchet of his shoe as the subtlety and unsearchable perplexity of the mysteries of the incarnation. The height of which mystery the forerunner judges himself unworthy to loose. 307AIt is to be noted, however, that he did not say, « the latchet of whose shoe I will not loose » , but he said: « I am not worthy that I should loose the latchet of the shoe » . For he did loose the mysteries of the incarnation of Christ, when he most openly manifested him to the world, and disclosed many things about his divinity and humanity. Yet he rates himself unworthy to do this. By the shoe of Christ can also be signified the visible creature and Holy Scripture; for in these he fixes his footprints as it were his feet. For the visible creature is the garment of the Word, which openly proclaims him, manifesting its beauty to us. Scripture also was made his garment, which contains his mysteries, the latchet of all of which, that is, of the creature and of the letter, that is, the subtlety, the forerunner deems himself unworthy to loose. 307BThere are two feet of the Word, of which one is the natural reason of the visible creature, the other the spiritual understanding of Holy Scripture. The one is covered by the sensible forms of the sensible world, the other by the surface of the divine letters, that is, of the Scriptures. For in two ways the expositors of the divine law intimate the incarnation of the Word of God. Of which one is that which teaches his incarnation from the virgin, by which he coupled human nature to himself in the unity of substance. The other is that which asserts the Word itself as it were incarnate, that is, thickened in letters and in the forms and orders of visible things. The latchet of this twofold shoe is the diligent inquiry after truth in all these things and the very perplexed tracing of it, of whose loosing the forerunner judges himself unworthy.

These things were done in Bethania beyond the Jordan, where 307CJohn was baptizing. These things, he says, which have been said thus far by the forerunner about the divinity and humanity of the Word of God, and about the preaching of the forerunner himself, and the answer to the Pharisees, were done in Bethania, beyond the Jordan, that is, across the Jordan. Bethania is interpreted house of obedience Jerome: Bethania, house of his affliction, or house of obedience. Bethania is derived from the verb (Hebrew), to answer, to obey, to be brought low.. Now there are two Bethanias, of which one is across the Jordan, where John was baptizing, the other on this side of the Jordan, not far from Jerusalem, where the Lord raised Lazarus. But these things are most full of mysteries. Bethania beyond the Jordan, therefore, mystically prefigures human nature, which was made a house of obedience before it sinned. For it was created to this end, that it should obey the divine commandments delivered to it within the enclosures of paradise, that is, within its own natural goods, lest it should withdraw from the contemplation and love 307Dof its Creator, to whose image it was created, but should always cleave to him. Beyond the Jordan Bethania, human nature, was abiding across the streams of divine grace which after the incarnation of the Word were poured into it, as though worn out with want of divine goods and with the dryness of the infusion of wisdom. But Bethania in Judaea on this side of the Jordan near Jerusalem, the same nature, set free through the incarnation of the Word of God, and led across through the streams of divine grace, which are first distributed through the sacraments 308Aof baptism, as into Judaea, that is, into the true confession of faith and action and knowledge, and into the house of obedience, that is, into the unity of the Church obedient to the divine laws, has been placed near Jerusalem. For Jerusalem is interpreted vision of peace St Jerome: Jerosolyma, vision of peace. J. Scotus interprets the word below as temple of peace. The word is derived from (Hebrew).. Which signifies the heavenly city, to which human nature has not yet altogether arrived, which we believe will be after the general resurrection of all, when human nature will be brought into the entire and most full one of divine speculation. Yet it is still not far distant from the heavenly fatherland, while it still tarries in the flesh in the house of obedience. For in part it knows the truth, illumined by the grace of its redeemer; in part it prophesies, signifying by invisible symbols and mystical doctrines 308Bthose things which it does not understand purely. And through this, in this one sentence of the evangelist, three hierarchies, that is, three priesthoods, are mystically intimated. For the first priesthood, which was under the law, is set, like Bethania, beyond the outpourings of grace and truth through Christ in the New Testament. Which, the priesthood I mean, was far distant from Jerusalem, that is, from the vision of peace, on account of its obscure mysteries and most difficult to understand, and on account of the most dense darknesses of its commandments, and very remote from the light of truth. The second priesthood is in the New Testament; which begins from the preaching of the forerunner, and will be ended at the end of the world, as Scripture says: « The law and the prophets until John, and from him the kingdom of heaven [Vulg. ex eo regnum Dei evangelizatur, "from that time the kingdom of God is preached"] » . Which priesthood 308Cpartly shines with the most clear knowledge of truth, partly is obscured in symbols. Now the principal symbols of the New Testament are three τελεταί, that is, three mystical victims, of which one is of baptism, the other of συνάξεως , that is, of the communion of the body and blood of the Lord, the third in the mystery of chrism. The third priesthood will be celebrated in the future life, in which no symbols, no obscurity of figures, but the whole most clear truth will appear. And therefore the priesthood of the New Testament holds a certain middle place between the past of the law and the future of the blessed life. For in some things it contemplates the truth as future, in some it celebrates it in ministries as past. Bethania beyond the Jordan, therefore, prefigures the priesthood of the law, Bethania on this side of the Jordan, not far from Jerusalem, 308Dthe priesthood of grace, Jerusalem the future life of the blessed. In the priesthood of the law, therefore, as though beyond the Jordan, under the law of nature and under the written law, human nature itself was instructed and corrected, which after the transgression darkened the image of God in itself through ignorance of the truth, and defiled it through desire of temporal things. In the priesthood of the New Testament under Christ the same nature was illumined, and brought up under the law of grace, and made, to the future priesthood, 309Aas it were near and perfect, illumined indeed through faith, but brought up through hope, and made near to the divine vision through charity, insofar as, still placed in the flesh, it is permitted to penetrate the sublimities of divine things to be understood. But if thou seekest the difference of these three laws, of nature I mean, and the written, and of grace, know it briefly. The law of nature is that which commands all men to love one another equally, so that, just as one and the same nature is the same in all, so also there may be a common love of all by all. The written law is that which forbids the law of nature to be violated, and discerns between virtues and vices, and bears the figure of the law of grace. And I say that the written law itself is a help of the law of nature, so that, since the law of nature by itself alone was not able to correct human 309Bnature, it might by the force of the written law restrain what is to be forbidden, and teach what is to be fulfilled. For so far has the law of nature been almost abolished in men, that it neither knew its founder, nor could hold any difference between virtues and vices. The law of grace is that which teaches men not only to love one another, and discerns virtues and vices, but also, above these things, what is possible to divine grace alone, to die for men not only good but also evil, if it is necessary. Which law Christ fulfilled in himself, when he suffered not only for all men, but also for all the impious. Where John was baptizing. John was baptizing beyond the Jordan, deservedly, because he did not yet have the true baptism, 309Cwhich frees the whole human nature not only from original sin, but also from personal offences in those who undergo it, but only, as it were under a certain figure of the perfect baptism which followed in Christ, he baptized in water alone. He baptized, therefore, beyond the Jordan, that is, beyond the streams of divine gifts, which had not yet begun in Christ to descend into human nature. John was beyond the Jordan, since John bore the figure of the law of nature, and also of the written law. For the law of nature was prefigured in John. For those who live under the law of nature piously and chastely, with all contagion of carnal conversation removed, ought to live as it were in a certain solitude of divine virtues, like John. John also signifies the written law, 309Dsince he is its end; « for the law and the prophets until John » . But since he was made not only a prophet, but also the manifester of Christ, he signifies not only the law alone, but also the Gospel and grace. And therefore there follows: « And from him the kingdom of heaven [Vulg. ex eo regnum Dei evangelizatur, "from that time the kingdom of God is preached"] » ; as if he had said: In John, as in a certain boundary, both the law is ended, and the manifestation of grace, which he calls the kingdom of heaven, is begun from him.

On the second day, or, as is written more significantly in the Greek, on another day John seeth Jesus coming to him. On another day, he says, that is, by another knowledge. For the first knowledge was when he made him manifest to the peoples who had flocked together in that 310Aplace, saying: « This was he of whom I was speaking to you » . But now, as by a second acquaintance, the next day, or on another day, John sees Jesus coming to him. With a twofold beholding, namely of mind and of body, John the forerunner knows his Lord, whom he was running before, coming to him, not only by the steps of the body, but by the approaches of his own inner contemplation. Jesus comes to John. Jesus therefore comes to John, that is, he deigned to be known by John according to his divinity and humanity. And he says: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world. He openly preaches him to the peoples when he says: « Behold the Lamb of God » . The Word of God is named Lamb by John. For he himself was the one whom the mystical Lamb prefigured in the law. Nor is it a wonder 310Bif the shadow is predicated of the truth. The Lamb of the law was the shadow; the truth, and as it were a certain body of the shadow, was Jesus Christ. He is also named Lamb not irrationally. For a lamb ministers three things to those who possess it: milk, wool, and also the eating of its flesh. Our Lord provides to those who believe in him the garments of the virtues, nourishes them with milk, that is, with the simple teaching of truth, and leads them on to the perfect food of his divine contemplation. Christ is called the Lamb of God because he was sacrificed for the whole world, and therefore there follows: Behold him who taketh away the sin of the world. He takes away, he says, not from place to place, or from time to time, but takes it away altogether, so that it altogether is not, and through the slaying of his most holy flesh he altogether slays the whole sin of the world. The sin of the world is called the original 310Csin, which is common to the whole world, that is, to human nature; whose guilt is now remitted by the grace of baptism, but which itself will be altogether destroyed at the end of the world, in the resurrection of all. That, therefore, is original sin, by which the whole of human nature, created together and at once to the image of God, and in which all men from the beginning of the world to the end both are one and were created together according to body and soul, transgressed the divine laws through disobedience in paradise, not willing to keep the commandment of God. For not that first Adam alone, who out of the generality of human nature came into this visible world before the rest, sinned, but all sinned before they went forth into the world. For what the Apostle says: « for as 310Din Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive » , we do not understand of that one and first man himself, but we take it that by the name Adam all human nature in general is signified. For that singular Adam would not have been born into this corruptible world through generation, if the offence of human nature had not gone before. For the division of nature into a twofold sex, the male I mean and the female, and the generation from them, through corruption, of human procession and multitude, is the penalty of the general sin J. Scotus teaches most wrongly of all that the first man before the transgression was a simple man, and that only after sin was human nature divided into male and female; and that from this division of the sexes was born the multiplication of the human race, which comes about by generation through corruption. This error he set out more fully in the books On the Division of Nature. That doctrine is reviewed in the essay on J. Scotus placed above, Part II, § 50 ff., by which the whole human race together transgressed the commandment of God in paradise. This general 311Asin, therefore, is called original; and not undeservedly, since it is the sin of the common origin of all, by whose desert all of us men, the Redeemer excepted, are debtors to death and corruption; for our Redeemer alone was left without sin in that mass of the whole human race, for the medicine of the wound, that through him alone, ever sound, the wound of the whole nature might be healed, and through this the whole, which was wounded, might be restored to the former state of health. This original sin, therefore, and the offences of individuals after their generation into this world, are loosed by the abundance of the grace of baptism through our Saviour, so that they altogether are not. And this is what the evangelist says: « Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world » . This is the one and singular mystical Lamb, 311Bin whose figure the Israelite people sacrificed single lambs through the several houses at the paschal time. For we also, who after his incarnation and passion and resurrection were accomplished believe in him, and understand his mysteries as far as is granted to us, both sacrifice him spiritually and eat him intellectually, with the mind, not with the tooth Here are traces of the absurdities which, as Adrevald witnesses, J. Scotus taught concerning the Holy Eucharist. Against them Berengarius had to subscribe to the Roman formula: « that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are, after consecration, not only a sacrament but also the true body and blood of our Lord; and that they are handled by the hands of priests, and broken, and ground by the teeth of the faithful, sensibly, not only in sacrament but in truth » . These things indeed are said of the species; for no breaking is made of the thing itself. Moreover J. Scotus had taught above, in his expositions of the Celestial Hierarchy, that the most holy Eucharist is taken into the inward depths of our nature, unto our ineffable deification.. And so each one of those who believe in Christ, according to his own virtue, and the habit and quality of virtue subject to him, both is crucified and crucifies Christ for himself, being namely crucified together with Christ. One indeed is crucified to sin alone, when, at rest from all its operations in the flesh and through his flesh, he is made as if overwhelmed by a kind of death; and that, sin I mean, he mortifies, fastened with the nails of the fear of the Lord, 311Cwhen he curbs all its assaults, lest they have power to work anything in his flesh. Another is crucified to the passions, that is, to the infirm actions of the soul, by which it is first corrupted in itself before it operates through the body—for action belongs to the soul, but operation to the body—when he is healed through the powers of the restored soul. Another is crucified to the phantasies of the passions, that is, to the images of sensible things which are formed in the bodily senses, which the wise call passions, when his senses are stopped against them, the phantasies I mean, lest through them he be basely drawn into lust for any temporal thing. Another is crucified to the thoughts and conceptions of the mind which he had drawn through the bodily senses from sensible things, lest he linger longer in them, drawn back from divine contemplations. 311DAnother dies not only to the phantasies of the senses, but also altogether to all the senses themselves, lest through them he be seduced by any error. Another lays aside all familiarity and habit naturally, which he had possessed toward sensible things through the bodily senses, as one crucified to them all. 312AAnother universally extinguishes every sensible motion in himself, as on a kind of cross, so that he has altogether no natural act in himself. And each one of these crucifies Christ with himself. For each one of the faithful, such a disposition as he has in his soul through the increases of the virtues, such a faith concerning Christ will he have through the growths of understandings; and as often as he dies to the modes of the former and lower life, and is carried up into higher degrees, so often the opinions about Christ, although simple, will die in him and with him, and he will be advanced by faith and understanding into sublimer theophanies of him. And so in his faithful Christ dies daily, and is crucified by them, when they slay carnal thoughts of him, or spiritual ones, yet still imperfect, 312Bever ascending on high, until they come to the true knowledge of him; for the infinite is formed infinitely even in the most purified minds. Another rests perfectly from intellectual operation itself, as one perfectly dead; for he surpasses not only the natural acts of the soul, but also its intellectual operations. Another is crucified to active philosophy. Now active philosophy is that which is concerned with the unions and distinctions of the natural virtues. Active philosophy also considers, as far as it is able, the reasons of the inhumanated Word; all of which, that is, the whole of moral philosophy, concerning the virtues of the soul and concerning the flesh of Christ, the spiritual man surpassing, passes over to natural contemplation itself in the Spirit, as from a kind of flesh of the Word to its 312Csoul. Another dies to natural theoria. Now natural theoria is the speculative power of the rational soul which Christ received, to which the spiritual man dies, when he not only now denies that Christ is flesh, which he understands to be now turned into spirit, but also drives away that Christ himself is a rational mind. For as his flesh was exalted and changed into a rational soul, so his rational soul was both carried up and turned into intellect; and through this, he who ascends perfectly to him must be carried over to the uniform and simple induction of theoric knowledge into the mysteries, as from a kind of soul of Christ to his intellect. Another, from that same simple theological knowledge which revolves chiefly about the intellect of Christ, into the perfect and secret divine 312Dinfinity itself, by negation, dying to all things which are after God, mystically ascends as from a kind of intellect of Christ to his divinity. Thus the Lamb of God is slain in the hearts of the faithful, and by being slain is made alive; thus the sin of the world is taken away from all human 313Anature. Here a question not to be spurned whispers. For it is deservedly asked: how does the Lamb of God, that is, the Saviour of the world, take away the original sin of the whole of human nature, whether it has already been taken away in very fact, and purged from the whole nature, or is as yet in hope alone, but in fact will be taken away after the common resurrection of human nature? For if human nature has already been freed in very fact from original sin, why do those who are baptized in Christ daily receive, through the abundance of grace, remission of original sin and of their own offences, which flow from original sin as from a kind of spring? Why also can those who are born in the flesh not be born without carnal concupiscence, which is nothing else but the penalty of original sin No one fails to see that what J. Scotus argues about original sin and the rest, up to the end of the fragment, does not sufficiently agree with Christian truth. What his most false doctrine on these heads was is discussed more fully in the essay printed above, Part II, § 57 ff.? For if the cause, original sin I mean, 313Bhas been utterly rooted out, why does its effect, or rather its penalty, still remain, from which penalty those who are born of that carnal concupiscence are purged by the grace of baptism, beginning through the Spirit to be reborn in Christ, so that not only those who are procreated in the flesh through the concupiscence of the flesh need the indulgence of baptism for the offence of their parents by which they are conceived, but also for the common crime, namely of original sin, by which all men universally had offended in the first man? To this therefore it must be said that already from original sin human nature, neither in all in common, nor in individuals specially, in very fact abolition has been made and perfect slaying. For this is kept for the last victory at the end of the world, when, as the Apostle says, 313Cthe last enemy, death, shall be destroyed. For when death is universally destroyed, which is called by a masculine name the last enemy, since in Greek θάνατος , that is death, is of the masculine gender, of necessity its cause, original sin, will be altogether blotted out from human nature. For the abolition of the cause will go before the abolition of the effect, that is, the slaying of original sin in all and in individuals will go before the slaying of death; likewise in the whole and in the part, when that also shall be fulfilled which was said by the prophet: « I will be thy death, O death, and thy bite, O hell » . Nature, therefore, is as yet freed in hope, but in the future it will be freed in very fact. What then is given through the grace of divine generation, through baptism 313DI mean, if original sin is not altogether rooted out by the root? To this it must be said: only the guilt of original sin is loosed through baptism, original sin itself still remaining. For it is one thing to take the arrow out of the wound, another afterwards to heal the wound. This, therefore, is the whole that the grace of baptism confers on us. For it frees us from the guilt of sin, 314Aand exalts us into the grace of divine sonship, so that, the guilt having been remitted, the wounds of our offences may begin to be healed. For as long as the guilt, like a kind of iron, remains in the wound, it is possible for no wound to be healed; but when it is withdrawn, place is given to spiritual medicine. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There was a man of the Pharisees, Nicodemus by name, a ruler of the Jews. Pharisee is interpreted divided; Pharisees, divided ones St Jerome: Pherez(?)i, separating, or scattered, or bearing fruit. For that name is derived from the root (Hebrew), to separate, that is, to divide.. For their sect was divided from the rest of the Jews, that is, from the Scribes and Sadducees. For the Pharisees alone believed in the resurrection of the dead, the rest contending against it. Nicodemus 314Bis interpreted victory of the people, or victor people, bearing the figure of all who from the Jewish people believed in Christ. And everyone who believes in Christ conquers the world. A ruler of the Jews, that is, one of the rulers of the Jews, learned in the letter of the law, a master of Israel.

This man came to Jesus by night. According to Augustine, Nicodemus is set in the figure of the catechumens. For catechumens, that is, those instructed in the faith, yet not yet baptized, nor imbued with the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, having faith alone, come to Christ; still ignorant of the power of baptism, which they do not yet receive, they approach as in a kind of night of ignorance of the sacraments. But according to Gregory the Theologian, Nicodemus is taken as a kind of 314Cnight disciple, conforming those who believe most perfectly in Christ, so that nothing of the integrity of the catholic faith is hidden from them, yet they lack the light of perfect works; fearing the assault and envy of their carnal thoughts and actions, as of the faithless Jews, they enjoy converse with Christ by faith alone, not having the confidence of good works. Therefore the Evangelist says: « This man came to him by night » . And said to him: Rabbi, we know that thou art come a master from God; for no man can do these signs which thou dost, unless God be with him. From these words, with which Nicodemus is seen to have addressed Christ, it is given to understand that he himself, Nicodemus I mean, was one of those who had believed a little before, on the day of the Pasch, of whom it was said: « Now when he was 314Dat Jerusalem at the Pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did » . For to this he looks back when he says: « No man can do these signs which thou dost, unless God be with him »

Jesus answered, and said to him: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born anew [Vulg. renatus, "born again"], he cannot see the kingdom 315Aof God. It is asked: why did Jesus answer Nicodemus about the second nativity, which is according to the spirit, when he himself seems to have asked nothing about it? But it must be answered: since the Lord saw that he had believed, as the rest also believed who saw his signs, and had supposed that faith alone sufficed them, without the power and sacraments of spiritual generation, he at once began to teach him about the nativity which is according to the spirit. As if he openly said to him: It does not suffice thee only to have believed in me, unless thou receive the sacraments of baptism and understand the power of spiritual generation. It is to be noted that in the codices of the Greeks ἄνωθεν is read, where in the Latin codices denuo, "anew," is found, so that the sense is: unless a man be born ἄνωθεν , that is, from above, 315Bso that we say "from above" for "anew"; which is both more easily understood, and more fitting to the two nativities, namely the earthly and the heavenly. For the Apostle says: « The first man of the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly » . For there are two nativities, as Augustine says; of which one is from the earth, the other from heaven, that is, from above; one from parents, according to the flesh, the other from Christ and the Church, according to the spirit; one in the likeness of beasts of burden, through sin, unto death, the other in the likeness of the heavenly powers, through grace, unto life; one against nature through offence, the other according to nature through the remedy of offences. But Gregory the Theologian establishes four nativities, which our Lord Jesus Christ also deigned to undergo for the salvation 315Cof human nature. Of which the first is that nativity in which the whole human race was born together from nothing; of which it is written: « And God made man to his image and likeness » . The second, which, following upon the offence of man, is from both sexes, after the likeness of the other animals, of which the same Scripture says: « Male and female he made them » ; through which the whole human race is multiplied without limit by earthly succession. The third, which is according to the spirit, of which the Lord now says: « Unless a man be born anew » ; in which nativity human nature begins to return to its former seat, from which it fell. The fourth will be in the resurrection of all, when our whole nature will be born together, 315Ddeath having been slain, into life eternal. The first therefore is natural, the second on account of sin, the third through the grace of the Redeemer, the fourth according to nature and grace together. For the power of resurrection is naturally in human nature, since eternal death is altogether contrary to it. But what nature contributes to the resurrection, and what grace, is another place for discussion. He cannot see the kingdom of God. Of the kingdom of God the understanding is manifold. The kingdom of God is the church of the faithful, of which it is written: « The kingdom of God is among you » . The kingdom of God is the universe of corporeal and spiritual creation. The kingdom of God is the heavenly powers and the souls 316Aof the just. The kingdom of God is the Son of God, who « reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly » . The kingdom of God is the vision of truth. What therefore he says, he cannot see the kingdom of God, is not incongruously understood: he cannot know me, who am the kingdom of the Father. For I am not only the king of all, but also that kingdom and all things. Rightly therefore the vision of truth is both called and understood the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus saith to him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be [re]born? He understood carnally, who as yet had been born only according to the flesh, and therefore he answered carnally, since he had not been born of the sacrament of baptism and of the spirit. Yet he said truly that no one can be born twice 316Baccording to the flesh, just as no one can be born twice according to the spirit. For as a man is born once in the flesh from the flesh, so a man is born once from the spirit in the spirit. For the sacrament of baptism, once received, no one can repeat.

Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born of water and the spirit [Vulg. renatus … ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, "born again of water and the Holy Spirit"], he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Where it is given to understand that it is not one thing to see the kingdom of God and another to enter into the kingdom of God, but the very same. For he who sees the kingdom of God, he enters; and he who enters, he sees. For to see is to enter, and to enter is to see, that is, to know the truth. Unless a man be born of water and the spirit, that is, of the visible sacrament and the invisible understanding. As if he had openly said: Unless a man 316Creceive the symbol of baptism visibly, and do not perceive the spirit, that is, the understanding of that symbol, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. It can also be understood thus: of water, that is, of the visible sacrament, and of the Holy Spirit. It is asked for what reason the Lord established that the visible sacrament of baptism be done in water, since spiritual teaching alone through faith seems to suffice for the nativity of man from the spirit. But this also must be said: since man is constituted of a visible body and an invisible soul, a visible sacrament was necessary for the purification of the visible body, just as the invisible teaching of faith is necessary for the sanctification of the invisible soul. For although the visible sacrament of baptism seems to confer nothing as yet on the body in this life, yet in the future resurrection 316Dit will make of the mortal immortal, of the corruptible incorruptible, and the other things which will pertain to the glory of the future resurrection. Nevertheless, even in the present life the power of the sacrament sanctifies the bodies of the faithful, since they are made the temple of God, as the Apostle says: « Know you not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit » ? But if anyone desires to know fully the power of baptism, let him read saint Dionysius the Areopagite in the book On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.

There follows: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. He repeats the two nativities, 317Anamely from the flesh and from the spirit. That which is born of the flesh, that is, from the first man through the succession of the flesh, is flesh, that is, is carnal. It is to be noted that in this place by the name of flesh he signified not the flesh only, but the whole carnal man. For often the carnal soul is called by the name of flesh, whence the Apostle: « The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh » . It is also to be known that, just as the whole carnal man, in soul and body, is called flesh, so also the whole spiritual man, in soul and body, is called spirit, since men who are born in Christ through the Holy Spirit are made one with that Spirit according to body and soul. Where it is given to understand that the sacrament of baptism prefigures that the change of flesh into 317Bspirit is to come.

Wonder not that I said to thee: You must be born anew. As if he had said: let it not be a wonder to thee and incredible, that a man be born again from the spirit.

The Spirit breatheth where he will. Where the Holy Spirit wills to perfect the power of his sanctification, there he breathes, there he perfects sanctification. From this it is understood that the faith by which we believe in Christ, and the sacrament by which we are reborn, are gifts of the Holy Spirit, who breathes where he will, that is, works in those in whom he wills to work, dividing to each their own, as he will. And thou hearest his voice. Concerning the voice of the Holy Spirit it is enough to set down the words of saint Augustine. For he says: « No one sees the spirit; how do we hear the voice of the spirit? A psalm sounds: it is the voice of the spirit. The 317CGospel sounds: it is the voice of the spirit. The divine word sounds: it is the voice of the spirit. Thou hearest his voice, and knowest not whence he cometh and whither he goeth. If thou too art born of the spirit, thou wilt be this, like him. He who is not yet born of the spirit knows not of thee whence thou comest and whither thou goest; for this he said, following on: So is also everyone that is born of the spirit » . Thus far the words of Augustine. The voice of the spirit, therefore, is the voice of Christ, which Nicodemus heard. But since he was not yet born of the spirit, nor had known whence the spirit comes and whither it goes, although he had heard its voice, it is said to him: But thou knowest not whence he cometh and whither he goeth, because thou art not yet born of the spirit. And therefore, although thou hearest my voice while I speak of my spirit, thou knowest not whence that spirit comes, that is, on what occasion it wills that a man be born of 317Dit in the spirit, or to what perfection it leads the man himself who is born of it. For he who is born of it is made one with it. Just as that Spirit is holy by nature, so also it makes the one born of it a holy spirit by grace. So is everyone that is born of the spirit. Not as thou, O Nicodemus, who art not yet born of the spirit, knowest not whence the spirit comes and whither it goes, although thou hearest its voice: everyone who is born of the spirit both hears its voice, that is, understands, and for what cause it breathes in those in whom it will, and to what end it leads them. Yet to me it seems more easily understood if what the Lord says, so is everyone born of the spirit, is uttered interrogatively, so that the 318Asense is: the spirit breathes where it will, and thou hearest its voice, but knowest not whence it comes and whither it goes, since thou art not yet born of the spirit; is everyone so? As if he had said: dost thou think that everyone who is born of the spirit is so, that he hears the voice of the spirit, but is ignorant whence it comes and whither it goes? Do not suppose this. For if thou art born of the spirit, thou wilt not only hear its voice, but also know whence it comes and whither it goes. It comes from the Father through the Son, as is written elsewhere: « Whom the Father will send in my name, that believers in Christ may be born of him » . It returns to the Father through the same Son, leading back those born of it into divine sonship.

Nicodemus answered and said to him: How can these things be done? He still hesitates, who had read the letter of the law 318Bbut was altogether ignorant of its spirit. Which is what the Apostle says: « The letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth » . For the law read and not understood kills, but read and understood quickens. Accordingly, what the Lord was preaching about the nativity from the spirit had seemed impossible to Nicodemus. Ignorant of the spirit of divine doctrine, Jewish pride is refuted, which denies that there are higher things than the letter of the law, in which the divine mysteries breathe their fragrance. And through this Nicodemus is reproved by the Lord. The evangelist says:

Jesus answered and said to him: Thou art a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Where it is to be noted that the Lord said thou art a master of Israel not by insulting, but by crushing the pride which knew nothing beyond the letter and carnal nativity.

318CAmen, amen I say to thee, that we speak what we know, and we testify what we have seen, and you receive not our testimony. As if he openly said: Dost thou think, proud Jew, ignorant also of the power of the divine utterances, that we say what we do not know, or testify what we have not seen? It is not so; we speak what we know. Wisdom knows what it speaks, and has seen what it testifies; for he himself is wisdom, which neither deceives nor is deceived. He himself is the vision which saw all things before they were made. And that vision is the substance of the things which were seen, whose testimony is true, since he himself is the truth. And all that proceeds from the truth must be true. Moreover the Lord himself is the speech of the Father, and the word of the Father, and his Word. Of that word the Prophet says, « his word runneth swiftly » , 318Dand he himself says of himself: « The word which I have spoken to you is not mine, but of the Father who sent me » . Consider therefore the force of the words we speak what we know, since he himself is knowledge and speech; and we testify what we have seen, since he himself is vision and true testimony. But that he spoke in the plural suggests the mystery of the holy Trinity. And you receive not our testimony, because you do not believe in us, nor are you able to understand the things which we teach; for you are not yet born of the spirit.

If I have told earthly things, or, as is read in the Greek, I was telling you, and you believe not: how, if I shall tell you heavenly things, will you believe? Nicodemus asked, how can these things be done? supposing that nativity from the Spirit was impossible; but he hears from the Lord: if I was telling earthly things 319Ato you. It is asked: why, when he seems to have said nothing earthly in the foregoing discourse, for he said altogether spiritual things, teaching the spiritual nativity from the spirit, did he say: if I was telling earthly things to you? To this it must be said that the answer looks back not to the foregoing, but to those things which he had said above, on the day of the Pasch, to the Jews seeking a sign: « Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up » . He says therefore: If a little above I was telling you of my still earthly body that was to be destroyed, and you did not believe, how, if I shall tell you heavenly things, will you believe? that is, the spiritual nativity from the Holy Spirit, which is heavenly and divine? If therefore you did not believe the destruction of my earthly body in the passion, and its resurrection on the third day, why do you ask of me to open to you the mysteries of spiritual 319Bnativity, which, since you are not reborn of the spirit, you are altogether unable to believe? Yet I will tell heavenly things, although you cannot understand.

And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven. Hath ascended: it is ambiguous of what tense the verb is, whether past or present. But in the Greek it is not ambiguous; it is of past time. In this sentence it is asked: what is the descent of the Son of man, and what the ascent; and what heaven is it into which he ascended, and from which he descended, and in which he always remains, while he ascends and descends? But lest we make delays by telling the senses of many on this, it is enough to say what seems more likely. In Holy Scripture the heavenly Father, who is the principle of all things, is frequently named by the name of heaven. 319COften it is read in the Gospel that the Lord rose into heaven, that is, into the Father. For it is not to be believed that he raised his eyes to this starry, corporeal, circumscribed, mortal heaven. Into the Father therefore he raised his eyes, so that those who beheld him might believe without doubt that he had always been in the Father, toward whom he was gazing. What therefore he says, no man hath ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the son of man, who is in heaven, is beautifully expounded in other words: no man hath ascended into the Father, but he who descended from the Father, the son of man, who is in the Father. But of what kind his descent and ascent are, he himself expounded openly elsewhere, saying: « I came forth from the Father and am come into the world, and again I leave the world and go to the Father » . His going forth from the Father, therefore, is humanation, and his return to the Father 319Dis the deification of the man whom he received, and his assumption into the height of divinity. He alone descended, because he alone was incarnate; but, if he alone ascends, what hope is there for those for whom he descended? Great indeed and inexplicable, since all whom he saved ascend in him, now through faith in hope, but at the end through sight in reality, as John says in his Epistle: « We know that we are sons of God; it hath not yet appeared what we shall be; but when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is » . He alone therefore descends, and he alone ascends, because he with all his members is one God, the only Son of God. For in him all who believe in him are one; one Christ therefore, the body with the members, ascends into the Father.

320AAnd as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that everyone believing in him may not perish, but may have life eternal. The truth itself expounds its own figure; the body itself lays claim to its own shadow. The divine history relates that the people of God was afflicted by serpents in the desert, and that there was a great slaughter from their frequent bites; but Moses, at the Lord's command, had made a brazen serpent, which he had hung on a high tree, and had commanded the people that whoever had been bitten by the dragons should look up at the brazen snake, and be healed, and be freed from the serpent's wound. All this is the shadow of what was to come, that is, the figure of Christ who was to die for the salvation of all whom the serpents of their offences slay with venomous bites. Moses therefore is Christ himself; the brazen 320Bserpent, the death of Christ: the wood on which the serpent was hung, the cross of Christ, on which he underwent death for the salvation of all who believe in him. Beautifully also is the death of Christ figured by the serpent, by the form in which the cause is put for the effect. For the serpent was the cause of the death of Christ. And through this the serpent also figuratively held forth its effect, that is, death, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have life eternal. Great is the distance between the letter and the spirit, between the figure and the truth, between the shadow and the body. The letter is the deed which holy history relates; the spirit is the death of Christ, which the Gospel hands down; the serpent is figured hung on the wood; to those who looked upon it, it afforded temporal life; the death of Christ affords eternal life to those who believe in him. 320CBut what have these things to do with the second nativity from the spirit, it is not undeservedly asked? It is very easily solved. No one ascends in Christ to the Father but he who is born of the spirit, that he may be made conformable to the image of the Son of God, that is, that Christ may be formed in him, and he be one with Christ. Likewise no one is saved through the death of Christ but he who is born of the spirit; no one is born of the spirit through baptism but in the death of Christ, as the Apostle says: « We are buried together with Christ through baptism, unless into death, that, as Christ rose from the dead into the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life » .

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son. He opens the cause of human salvation, namely the heavenly Father, from whom is all the salvation and restoration 320Dof human nature through his only-begotten in his Spirit. The love of the Father, therefore, is the cause also of human salvation, who loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, that is, handed him over to death, that everyone beholding his death may not perish, but may have eternal life. But it is asked: what world did God love? For it is not to be believed that the Father loved this world, that is, the universe, which consists of heaven and earth. For that was made not for its own sake, but for the sake of the higher world. The higher world, therefore, which he established after his image and likeness, that is, human nature, the Father so loved as to hand over his Son for it. 321ABut it is to be noted that the world which the Father loved, that is, man, is not called world on this account, that it consisted of the four elements, which is considered to come about only according to the body, in man while he is still earthly; but man is called κόσμος for this reason, because he is adorned after the image and likeness of God, which is understood either solely or chiefly in the soul. For Κόσμος in Greek is properly interpreted adornment, not world. And what creature is so adorned as that which was established after the image of the Creator? To this end, therefore, God loved the world, and handed over his Son for it, that everyone believing in him may not perish, but may have life, not temporal, but eternal.

For God sent not his Son into the world, that is, into human nature, to judge, that is, to condemn 321Bon account of its sin, the world, namely man, but that the world of human nature may be saved by him.

He that believeth is not judged, but he that believeth not is already judged. But he who believes in the Son of God is not judged, because all the sins for which he would be judged are forgiven him. He who does not believe, the judgment concerning him is finished, because he does not believe; and through this he has sins for which he is judged, since he neither believes, nor wills to forgive him his sins. Where it is to be noted that each one judges himself or does not judge himself. He does not judge himself who considers his offences forgiven him, and there does not remain in him that which should be judged; but he who does not believe judges himself, since he retains in himself things worthy of judgment. Already is he judged. Already he said, while still in the present time. For although the judgment by which 321Che judges himself to be condemned is still hidden in this life, yet in the future it will be made manifest. Why is he already judged? Because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Judgment, therefore, that is, eternal condemnation, is nothing else but not to believe in the Son of God, just as blessedness and life is nothing else but to believe and to know the Son of God; as he himself says: « And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the true and only God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. » It follows:

And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world. If the light did not come into the world, there would be no judgment concerning the world, as the Lord says: « If I had not come and spoken, they would not have sin. » The light therefore, that is, the incarnation of the Word of God, and his teaching and passion and resurrection, judges the world. He who wills to approach the 321Dlight, that is, the Son of God, that he may believe in him and know him, is not judged; but he who neither believes in him nor understands will remain in his own darkness, in which he will be condemned, that is, will be judged, being unwilling to approach the light. And men loved darkness rather than light. Beautifully he says men, that is, the carnal, the impious, the unbelieving, not the spiritual; for these ascend beyond man and surpass their own nature through the grace of him who illumines them. But why men loved darkness rather than light, he consequently 322Asubjoins, saying: For their works were evil. What are those evil works? None other than impiety and unbelief and hatred of the eternal light, and to be unwilling to behold it, but to will to remain in the darkness of sins.

For everyone doing evil things hateth the light, nor cometh to the light, that his works may not be reproved. Therefore the impious man flees the light of truth, lest his impiety be made manifest, in which all evil works are contained. For as piety lacks no good work, so impiety lacks no evil one.

But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God. Who is he that does the truth, that is, who is he that accomplishes the good works which the truth commands, but he who believes in Christ? And who is he that comes to the light, that is, to Christ and his teaching, that 322Bhis good works may be made manifest, because they are done in God, but he himself who believes in Christ, and keeps his commandments?

After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea, and the rest. It is not to be supposed that Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judaea immediately after the disputation with Nicodemus, which took place in Jerusalem, but that after a space of time had passed they returned from Galilee into Judaea. In the moral sense the land of Judaea is the heart of the faithful. For Judaea is interpreted confession On this interpretation of the word Judaea see above, col. 303.. But confession is twofold. For there is the confession of sins, and there is also the confession of the divine praises. In whatever heart, therefore, that twofold confession shall be, namely both of sins and of the divine praises, thither come Jesus and his disciples, that is, his teaching and illumination, and there he tarries and purges 322Cit from all offences. And this is what follows:

And there he tarried with them and baptized. [Vulg. baptizabat, "was baptizing"] According to the letter, Jesus tarried with the disciples or with the believing Jews in Judaea. For what he says, he tarried with them, is ambiguous: whether with his disciples, or with the Jews believing in him, or, which is more likely, with both. And baptized. Where it is asked, if Christ himself baptized, how the evangelist says in what follows: « Though Jesus did not baptize, but his disciples. » But to this it must be said that Christ himself baptized his disciples first, then the disciples themselves were baptizing those believing in Christ. Although some suppose that he baptized no one by himself, but that he is said to have baptized who commanded his disciples to baptize. It follows:

322DAnd John was baptizing in Αἰνὼν near Saleim, because there were many waters there. John was still baptizing in the Jordan, while Christ in Judaea had begun to baptize both his disciples and, through them, others. For the forerunner, a disciple, ought not to have broken off the mystery of his forerunning before he himself, whose forerunner he was, should begin to show the truth. The shadow still remained, because the light had not been wholly laid open. In Aennon, that is, in waters J. Scotus rightly interprets waters. For (Hebrew) is derived from (Hebrew), spring, well. St Jerome: Aenon, eye, or their spring.; for in Hebrew water is called enos; therefore, following on, he said, as if 323Aopening the interpretation of the name: because there were many waters there. But concerning Saleim they hand down various accounts. Some would have it taken of Jerusalem, which is not far distant in extent of place from the Jordan. For at first it was named simply Saleim, as they say; then Ebussalem, because it was possessed by the Ebusites; then Jerusalem, that is, temple of peace, on account of the most glorious fame, spread abroad to the ends of the world, of the most noble temple built by Solomon St Jerome: Jerusalem, vision of peace, shall fear perfectly. The derivation of the word from (Hebrew) and (Hebrew), that is, house of peace, is to be preferred to the other, from (Hebrew) and (Hebrew), that is, possession of peace.. But others, to whom, as I judge, more faith is to be given, say that Salem is a town situated beyond the Jordan, at the place where the Jordan enters the lake of Asphalt, that is, the lake of bitumen, and that in that town Melchisedech once reigned, and traces of that town still remain. Near it John was baptizing, because there were many waters there.

323BFor John had not [yet] been cast into prison. For after he was cast into prison, he immediately ceased to baptize, the baptism of Christ beginning. It is asked: what did the baptism of John profit those who were baptized by him? For in no way is it to be believed that it conferred the remission not only of original sin, but also of personal offences. What then did it confer? Something great indeed. For as much as the teaching of the faith profits catechumens not yet baptized, so much did the baptism of John profit those baptized in it, before they underwent the baptism of Christ. For John preached penance, and foretold the baptism of Christ, and drew them into the knowledge of the truth which appeared to the world. Do not the ministers of the Church do likewise daily? They instruct first those coming to the faith; 323Cthen they reprove their sins; then they promise the remission of all sins in baptism; and thus they draw them to the knowledge and love of the truth. It is added to the heap of praise and usefulness which the baptism of John accomplished. For the forerunner ought in all things to fulfil the effect of his forerunning, so that, just as he preceded Christ in nativity and in preaching, so also in the likeness of baptism. For as the dawn precedes the rising of the sun, so the sacraments of John preceded the works of Christ, and just as the dawn in a certain manner to shake off the shadows, so the teaching and mystery of the forerunner began to shake off the darkness of the ignorance of the whole world. And so, lest the true baptism of Christ should appear suddenly to the world, a figured baptism went before, that the truth might shine forth more highly and 323Dmore clearly, if the figure had first smiled upon those sitting in darkness. Likewise it is asked why Christ was baptized by his own servant. To which it must be said: Christ deigned to be baptized by a servant for this reason, that he might both honour the office of his forerunner, and make it known to all the Jews and to the whole world that it had been true. But if this was the sole cause of the Lord's being baptized by his servant, why was not Christ alone baptized by John? For the humility of the Lord sufficed for the praise and testimony of the servant's baptism. But to 324Athis it must be said that, if Christ alone were baptized by John, the baptism of John would seem to confer more on the baptized than that of Christ. For the single baptism by which the Lord was baptized could be thought much better than the baptism by which many were baptized by the Lord himself and his disciples. But lest this be thought, many were baptized by John. But if it is asked whether it profited the Lord himself in anything that he was baptized by his forerunner, some answer, not absurdly, that Christ effected a certain sanctification of John. But that baptism conferred nothing on Christ. We know, however, that the authors of the Greeks confidently assert that the sanctification of the humanity of Christ was increased through the sacrament of the baptism of John. This they argue chiefly from the descent 324Bof the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove upon him when he had been baptized. Nor is it a wonder, since the evangelist says: « But Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men. » What wonder, if Christ received a certain increase of his humanity through the sacrament of his forerunner's baptism, for example by the merit of his humility, by which he did not disdain to undergo the baptism of his servant? He received grace, that by the power of his baptism all who believe in him might receive the remission of all offences, both original and personal. Augustine also adds another cause of the Lord's being baptized by his servant: lest catechumens, living chastely and piously after receiving the faith, should grow proud, supposing that the mystery of baptism could add nothing to them, since they live according to 324Cthat faith with which they have been imbued. But lest they should err in this, and labour in vain, the Lord willed to give them an example from his own baptism, so that none of them should dare to be puffed up, seeing that their Lord had undergone the baptism of his servant. For if the Lord would not despise the baptism of his servant, by what reasoning would they be unwilling to undergo the baptism of their Lord?

There arose therefore a question on the part of the disciples of John with the Jews concerning purification. The disciples of John, seeing that many of the Jews had believed in Christ, and had been baptized by his disciples, moved by envy, questioned the Jews themselves concerning purification, that is, concerning baptism. For they wondered that others could baptize besides John and his disciples, supposing John to be greater than Christ, since they had seen not long before 324DChrist himself baptized by John in the Jordan.

And they came to John, wishing to accuse Christ and his disciples, as presuming to baptize to his injury, and said to him: Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond the Jordan, who seemed to be thy disciple at the time when he was baptized by thee beyond the Jordan, to whom thou gavest testimony, by saying: « Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world » , behold he baptizeth, now in Judaea, at which we greatly wonder, and all come to him. We wish therefore to ask thee 325Awhat seems good to thee concerning this presumption.

John answered and said: A man cannot receive anything, unless it be given him from heaven. In certain codices of the Greeks it is read: unless it be given him from above from heaven. Humbly did the servant answer those accusing his Lord. A man cannot, he says, receive anything. As if he said: You think me greater than him whose servant and forerunner I am; you err, not believing in him, and not knowing what he is and whence he came, and you think me to be what I am not. But that you may know what he is, and what I am, hear my answer: A man cannot receive anything. I am a man and not God, but he is both God and man. He it is of whom I bore testimony, saying: « Of his fullness we all 325Bhave received. » I am therefore a man; from myself I have received nothing, who have nothing to receive from myself. Whatever I have received, I have received from him. If I have received the grace of a forerunner, I have received it from him. You suppose that I am beyond human nature. Because you have heard that I was born not without a miracle of divine power, namely of parents of advanced age, and was born as it were beyond the custom of human nature, on this account you think that I am beyond man. Not so; I am only a man. If you had known what I am, you would not exalt me beyond what I am; and if you knew what he is, in no way would you compare me to him. For I am man, he God; whatever I have received, I have received from him. The most wise forerunner of Christ separates nature and grace in himself, attributing to himself that he is man, that is, that he is 325Cmortal, that he is a sinner, that from the first earthly man he was made earthly, and the other things which he considered in himself and in other men concerning the infirmity of human nature and sin and the penalty of sin, setting apart from himself the grace which he had received not from merits, but from the abundance of the fullness of him whose forerunner he was. Two things are considered in man: namely the given and the gift. The given is referred to nature, the gift is referred to grace. And although none of these is except from God, as the Apostle says: « O man, what hast thou that thou hast not received » ? yet Scripture is accustomed to ascribe the given of nature as it were to man himself, but the gift to none but God. For to this end God gave nature, that he might adorn it through grace. And this is what he says: A man cannot, that is, human 325Dnature, receive anything of grace, unless it be given him from heaven. John has put given in this place for gift, which is very often found in Holy Scripture. For given can be taken for gift, and gift for given. For the givens of nature and the gifts of grace are so joined that they seem to become inseparable. For there is no rational nature which is wholly without the gift of grace. Unless it be given from heaven. From what heaven? From the Father, namely. Hear James the apostle saying: « Every best given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. » With which words what John says wholly agrees: 326AA man cannot receive anything, unless it be given him from heaven, that is, from the Father, who is the principle of all good things; and, if from the Father, surely first through the Son, of whose fullness we all have received.

You yourselves bear me witness. This alone in your words agrees with me, you who not only do not believe in him who sent me, but even think his baptism void, that you bring testimony for me. That I said: I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. You heard these words from me when I was speaking of him beyond the Jordan; you heard them surely, since you say: « He that was with thee beyond the Jordan, to whom thou gavest testimony » ; and if you heard, why do you accuse to me him of whom I bore such testimony, as if 326Bto my injury he had baptized many? I said: I am not the Christ, but a simple man; I am not anointed by the Father with the fullness of the spirit, but he is anointed; and of his fullness I have received. But that I am sent before him, I was sent into the world first, by being born before him. He, before all ages, God with God the Father; I, a man sent in the flesh at the end of the age, before he was born in the flesh.

He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. The forerunner, seeing the thoughts of his disciples, who were putting forth such things about Christ and his baptism, and were hearing their master's answer concerning himself and his baptism, saying: « A man cannot receive anything » , humbling himself, and truly pronouncing concerning himself that he is an earthly man, and they wished 326Cto ask: If thou art only a man, and hast not greater power and grace from thyself, besides what thou hast received from him who now baptizes in Judaea, and thou sayest that he is sent before him, tell us, we beseech thee, what thou art besides a man, or how great, and what grace thou hast received from heaven; he answered: He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. He who came for the sake of the Church came that he might have a bride, whom he now begins to call from the Jewish people, baptizing many of the Jews. He is the bridegroom. But I, as you suppose, am neither the bridegroom, nor have the bride, but I count myself in the number of the bride. But that you may know what I am, and what grace I have from that bridegroom who has the bride, hear: But the friend of the bridegroom. I am not the bridegroom, but I have great grace of the bridegroom, 326DI am his friend. Who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth with joy. I am the friend of the bridegroom, and I stand in his grace; I abide in his friendship; I do not fall; he guards me, lest I fall; he grants me not to desert his grace, but always to stand and to hear him, to hear his teaching, not only outwardly with the ear of the body, but also inwardly with the ear of the heart, and more inwardly than outwardly. His voice is his testimony, by which he declares himself the Son of God and the bridegroom of the Church; and because I hear his word, I rejoice because of the bridegroom's voice. Of himself therefore John utters what he says: But the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and heareth with, rejoiceth with joy 327Abecause of the bridegroom's voice, that his disciples might openly know what he himself was, and what Christ was, in whom they had not yet believed, nor received his baptism. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. As if he said: In this my joy is fulfilled, in this, that I have been made the friend of the bridegroom, and stand in his grace, and hear the voice of the bridegroom, now calling the bride in Judaea out of the Jews, and beginning by himself both to preach and to baptize; which you do not now perceive, who do not believe in him. And do not wonder that he baptizes, and all come to him, that they may believe and be baptized, and that he has more disciples than I:

He must increase, but I must decrease. He must increase in your minds, whom 327Byou still suppose to be only a man and of no power; but he must increase, that you may know him to be not only true man, but also true God, and equal to his Father. He must therefore increase in your thoughts, but I decrease. You think [me] greater than I am, but him less than he is. Your opinion of me will be diminished in you, your opinion of him will be increased in you. Which if you knew, you could have been increased from visible signs. I shall be beheaded, he will be exalted on the cross, that through this you may know that he must increase above all things in the minds of those who believe perfectly in him, but I decrease, that no one may think of me beyond what I am and have received from him. The very same is signified by this, that he was born with the light beginning to increase, 327Cbut the darkness to decrease; but I was born with the light beginning to be diminished, but the darkness beginning to increase. It can also be understood otherwise. John bears the figure of the law, but Christ his own figure, that is, of the truth. The truth therefore appearing in the world, the law began to decrease, that is, carnal works. Knowing these things, the forerunner and prophet and more than a prophet says: He must increase, but I must decrease. He, because he is the truth, will increase in the world, that is, will be most clearly known by those who believe and who will believe in him. But the law, whose figure I bear, will decrease, as the truth increases.

He that cometh from above is above all. Again the servant returns to the comparison of himself and his Lord. He that cometh from above, that is, he who came from the Father into 327Dthe world, that he might save the world, is above all, not only surpasses me, his servant and forerunner, but also all men, and not only men, but also all the heavenly powers, and all things which are, and which are not. Nor is this according to divinity, but according to humanity; for he is man and more than man. His divinity surpasses nothing, because it is all things. He that is of the earth is earth, and speaketh of the earth. [Vulg. de terra est, "is of the earth"] Of himself he says this, as if he said: I, who am of the earth, that is, of earthly parents, born of him to whom it was said, « Earth thou art, and into earth thou shalt go » [Vulg. pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return"], that is, of the earthly man himself, from whom 328Aall the earthly drew sin and the penalty of sin, that is, death, from thence am I. And therefore I am earth, because I was born of the earth, nor do I judge myself to be anything else. If I have anything above these things, I receive it from the fullness of him before whom I was sent. And speaketh of the earth, that is, I speak of the frailty of my nature, knowing it to be nothing, if it did not receive from above. And do not wonder that John spoke of himself as of a certain third person, nor without reason, since he shows in himself the person of every earthly man. He that cometh from heaven is above all. The words are the same, except that before it was cometh from above, but now cometh from heaven. And what is this repetition, and what does it mean? Or perhaps « cometh from above » is one thing, « cometh from heaven » another? Christ cometh from above, Christ 328Bcometh from heaven, and therefore is above all men, and above all things. Such a distinction, therefore, can be understood between « cometh from above » and « cometh from heaven » , that in what he said, « cometh from above » , we understand the height of human nature before the offence of the first man, from which height we do not doubt that Christ came as man. For if he came from man after sin, perhaps he would not be without sin; but since he was without sin, he is rightly to be believed to have received man before sin. For our Lord Jesus Christ, the founder and saviour of human nature, received both from the first man before sin, and as it were from a second man after sin. What did he receive from man before sin? To be without sin, because human nature, before it sinned, 328Cwas wholly without sin. What did he receive from man after sin? To die for sin, without any guilt of sin. What he said first, therefore, « he that cometh from above » , is rightly understood as he who came from the sublimity of human nature, made after the image of God, before it sinned. For no one came from there, except he himself alone. For as many as have come into the world have come from sinning man; he alone, without sin, proceeded from man before sin. But what he said in what follows, he that cometh from heaven is above all, there we understand the Father signified by the name of heaven, by whom Christ was sent into the world, as he himself says: « I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world » . In two ways, therefore, the only-begotten Son of God is to be believed to be above all things: first, because he is exalted above all humanity, 328Dwho came from it before it sinned; second, because according to the height of divinity, in which he is equal to the Father, he surpasses every creature.

And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth. What is it that the Son of God saw? Nothing other than that he knew himself to be in the Father, and to be his equality. And heard. What did he hear? He heard from the Father: « This day have I begotten thee » . He saw himself, therefore, according to his divinity in his Father, and heard from his Father that he had begotten him equal to himself. That he testifieth. What does he testify? That he is the Son of God. And where does he testify it? Go back to what is above, where he himself says of himself: « For God sent not his Son 329Ainto the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him. He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that believeth not is already judged, because he believeth not in the name of the only-begotten Son of God » . This, therefore, is what the Son of God saw, and testifies of himself. And no man receiveth his testimony. If no man receives his testimony, why did he come, and what usefulness did he confer on the world? John the forerunner, full of the grace of divine prophecy, foresaw those who would believe in Christ, receiving his testimony, and those who would not believe in him, rejecting his testimony. Of those who do not believe nor will believe, prepared by themselves [for] destruction, no one received the testimony of the Son of God. But of those who believe and will believe, there is no one who does not receive his testimony, 329Band through this, who is not saved. And therefore there follows:

He that receiveth his testimony hath sealed that God is truthful, that is, he has made it firm in his heart, and as with an unchangeable seal of perfect faith has concluded, that God is truthful. Which is more easily understood if the Greek speech is read: That God is true, so that the sense is: He who receives the testimony of the Son of God concerning himself, that he is the Son of God, and that his Father sent him for the salvation of the world, firmly believes that God is true, who bore testimony of himself that he is true God, the Son of the true God.

For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. This he says of the Son of God only, who, since he was sent by God the Father, speaks the words of God. Were not the prophets also sent by him? Were not the apostles also sent by him, 329Cand did they not speak the words of God? Why then was it said of Christ alone: He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God? For he seems to have said: He whom God sent speaks the words of that God who sent him; which the prophets did, and likewise the apostles. What great thing then is given to Christ, which was not given to others? Attend to the words: He whom God hath sent, the Father namely, speaketh the words of God; since he too who was sent is God, therefore he speaks the words of God, so that the sense is: He whom God sent is surely God, and through this his words are the words of God; therefore the words of the Son concerning himself, bearing testimony that he is God, are the words of God. The words of the prophets and apostles are the words of God, because they spoke the words of God. For the Holy Spirit spoke in them, and yet those words are not referred to 329Dthem, so as to be their words, but the words of the true God. The words of Christ are referred to himself, and are deservedly called the words of God, because he is God by nature, and wholly God, and wholly wisdom, and in him is the fullness of the gifts of God. Therefore there follows: For God giveth not the spirit by measure. As if he had said: God gives his spirit by measure to individual men, as the Apostle says: « To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge » , and the rest of the division of spiritual gifts. By which words it is shown that the Holy Spirit is given by measure to the members of the Church. Which the Apostle says consequently, saying: « But one and the same Spirit worketh, 330Adividing to each severally his own, as he will » . But to Christ, who is the head of the Church, God gives the spirit not by measure, but just as he begot his Son whole from his whole self, so to his incarnate Son he gave his whole spirit, not by participation, not by subdivisions, but generally and universally.

The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into his hand. He renders the cause why God gives the spirit by measure to other men, but to his Son not by measure, but gives the spirit from the whole. Why? For no other reason but because the Father loveth the Son, therefore he gave him his whole spirit, and gave all things into his hand. What all things? Perhaps all things that were made in him? For in the beginning God made heaven and earth; and the psalm, 330B« In wisdom thou hast made all things » . All those things therefore which were made in the Son, the Father gave into his hand. More deeply, hath given all things into his hand, that is, all things which the Father has substantially he gave to the Son, by begetting him from himself equal to himself in all things.

He that believeth in the Son hath life everlasting. Why? Because the Son himself is life everlasting, as he himself says: « I am the truth and the life » . Rightly therefore he that believeth in the Son hath life everlasting. As if he had said: He who believes in the Son has the Son himself, and through this has life everlasting, because the Son himself is life everlasting. But he that believeth not in the Son shall not see life everlasting. By the same kind of locution: but he who believes not the Son shall not see the Son, who is life. But the wrath of God abideth upon him. He does not say: the wrath of God will come 330Cupon him, but he says: abideth upon him. What is that wrath of God? Nothing else but that curse by which God cursed the sin of the first man, who transgressed his commandment, saying: « Cursed is the earth in thy works » . The effect of that wrath is death, and corruption, and altogether ignorance of the truth, all which abide upon him. Of that wrath the Apostle says: « You were once children of wrath, even as the rest » . The wrath of God can be understood as original sin, since that original sin provoked the wrath of God against human nature; which original sin remains in those who will not believe in him who died for them.

When therefore Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus maketh and baptizeth more disciples than John, although Jesus himself baptized not, but his 330Ddisciples. [Vulg. quamquam Jesus non baptizaret, "though Jesus did not baptize"] Christ baptized and did not baptize. He baptized, that is, he cleansed in the spirit those whom not he himself, but his disciples dipped with water in the body.

He left Judaea, and went again into Galilee. After the Lord, to whom all hearts are known, knew that the Pharisees had heard that more disciples had come to him than to John, and that he had baptized more than John, he left Judaea. For the Pharisees, moved by envy against Christ and his disciples, seeing the baptism of John grow a little cheap, since the disciples of John were mostly from the Pharisees, as then also those of Christ, 331Abut the baptism of Christ growing, and the number of his disciples, and moreover also knowing that through the doctrine of Christ the law was being made void, and the ceremonies of the Old Testament, which they had not been able to know in the doctrine of John, disturbed therefore by such zeal, were thinking to persecute Christ and his disciples and all who believed in him. On this occasion Jesus left Judaea, that is, the unbelieving Pharisees, who were thinking to persecute him. But this he did not as one fearful or powerless; for he could have remained in Judaea unharmed by the persecution of the carnal and impious Pharisees; but that he might leave an example to those who would believe in him, giving them by his example the power of fleeing from the face of those who persecute them, and of deserting them for a time, lest before the time pleasing to God and foreordained they should be 331Bseized by them; and through this he would have remained longer in Judaea, if he had known that those whom he left would believe. But according to the laws of theoria Jesus left Judaea after he had taken up from the Judaic people the beginning of the Church in those who believed in him; he left the carnal and faithless Jews, who follow the letter of the law and are unwilling to approach the spirit of that letter, which is Christ. The Lord therefore tarried in Judaea, that he might save whom he would; he left Judaea, deserting those whom, by the desert of their pride, he neglected to save. He deserted the letter of the law, which leads no one to the perfect; for the law led no one to the perfect; and from them he again [went away] into Galilee, that is, into the spiritual understanding of that letter, which is symbolically figured through Galilee. Nor is it idle that he says: 331CHe went again into Galilee. For from Galilee he came into Judaea, as was written above: « After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea » . Galilee bears the figure of the heavenly life and of divine goodness, from which the Lord, being born in the flesh, came into into Judaea, that is, into the sacraments of that law which was first given to the Jews, as the Apostle says: « But when the fullness of times came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law » . But since he would not remain under the law, nor those who were to believe in him, he left the law, that they might not be under the law, but under the spirit. And this is what the Apostle says, « that he might redeem those who were under the law » , that is, recall them from the servitude of the carnal law into the liberty of the spirit. And this is: he went into Galilee.

331DBut it behoved to pass through Samaria. Between Judaea and Galilee Samaria is set, that is, between the law of the letter, which is signified by Judaea, and the eternal divine laws revolving about God, of which Galilee bears the figure, the natural law is set in the middle. Since therefore Christ first took the foundations of his Church from the law of the letter, 332Ait behoved him to pass through the nations set under the law of nature, that from them likewise he might call stones chosen through faith into the structure which he had begun. For Samaria was possessed by foreigners, that is, by those who used, or abused, both the legal letter, which [was] imposed on carnal Israel alone, and the natural law, so that with the universal Church, gathered and built both from the Jews and from the Gentiles, the builder himself might return into the Galilee of eternal beatitude. But that Galilee signifies eternal life can be conjectured not only from its interpretation, but also from the divine deeds which were accomplished in it. For Galilee is interpreted transmigration accomplished or revolution Saint Jerome: Galilee, that may be rolled, or transmigration accomplished, or wheel. J. Scotus rightly derives the word from (Hebrew), to roll; the interpretation transmigration looks to (Hebrew), Gilgal, Josua V, 9.; but the transmigration of human nature was accomplished in its Saviour, first from the carnal law into the natural laws, 332Band from these again beyond nature into the eternal laws. In Galilee also, according to the faith of the things done, the transformation of Christ took place, by which is signified the transmutation of human nature into the pristine glory which it deserted by sinning. In Galilee he went up into the mountain, on which he delivered the eightfold doctrine to his disciples, through which those who believe in Christ will pass over to the beatitude of the future [life], which is intimated by the number eight.

But Jesus came into a city of Samaria, which is called Sichar, near the estate which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Samaria, as we said before, is the type of the Gentile people set under the natural law; the city of Samaria, which was called Sichar, [the type] of the gathering of the faithful of that people receiving the faith of Christ. For Sichar 332Cis interpreted enclosure or branch Thus saint Jerome: Sichar, enclosure or branch.. The people of the Gentiles was enclosed. Scripture hath enclosed all things under sin. He is the branch cut out of the wild olive and grafted into the olive whose branches were broken. It is to be noted that Sichar is put corruptly for Sychem. Sychem is interpreted numbers Saint Jerome: It is corruptly for Sichem, which is rendered "shoulders"; usage has obtained that Sichar should be read. J. Scotus seems to have read numeri, numbers, for humeri, shoulders; but the interpretation numbers is not accurate enough; for Sichem is derived from (Hebrew).: an investigation awaits the chosen numbered from among the Gentiles. And since natural reason itself rises from nowhere else but from the cause of all good things, from God namely, it is beautifully called Jacob's fountain, that is, infinite reason, proceeding from the height of the Father. Jacob's fountain also not unfittingly signifies this lowest part of the universe, that is, all visible things confined within the bounds of this sensible world. Briefly, therefore, it is to be gathered: Jacob's fountain is the symbol either of sensible nature or of intelligible reason.

332DJesus therefore, wearied with the journey, sat thus upon the fountain. The weariness of Jesus is his incarnation. For he received our nature, wearied, by the desert of original sin, with the labours and hardships of this world. His journey, the descent of his divinity to take up the likeness of our nature. Without labour he created us through divinity, with labour he created us through 333Ahumanity. Remaining eternally and immutably in himself and in his Father, he moved himself as by a certain journey of temporal dispensation through the flesh. He sat upon the fountain. The sitting of Christ, the possession of his incommutable divinity in our nature. But our nature is twofold: for it consists of a visible body and an invisible soul. Which two the twofold interpretation of the fountain itself indicates. For it was said before that the fountain figured both the rational soul and the visible creature. But since the humanity of Christ surpasses not only every visible but also every intellectual creature, for he is called man and more than man, he is fittingly related to have sat upon the fountain, although wearied from the journey. For the infirmity of his humanity is stronger than every creature, deservedly, 333Bbecause assumed into God. It was about the sixth hour. The sixth hour prefigures the sixth age of the world. Whose first age is reckoned from the expulsion of the first man from paradise up to the altar which Noe, going out of the ark after the flood, had built. The second, thence up to the altar on which Abraham [was] commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac. The third, thence to the altar of king David on the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. Then the fourth, up to the altar of Zorobabel in the rebuilt temple. Then the fifth, up to the baptism of John, or, as seems to many not unreasonably, up to the true altar, that is, up to the cross of Christ, which all the aforesaid altars typified. From here the sixth age extends to the end of the world; it is now in course. For the seventh age is perfected in the other life, in souls released from the body; 333Cwhich age begins with the martyrdom of Abel, and will be ended at the end of the world by the resurrection of all. After which the eighth will begin to appear, which will be circumscribed by no end. The perfect brightness of heavenly grace, which, Christ being inhumanated, shone most fully upon the world, can also be understood as typically figured in the sixth hour. For the number six is perfect.

A woman came out of Samaria to draw water. Samaria, as we said before, suggests the figure of the Gentiles. The woman gone out of Samaria is the Church, gathered from those very Gentiles, which, having received the faith of truth, desires to draw its fountain, that is, Christ. Likewise the woman gone out of the city indicates human nature, which naturally seeks the fountain of reason, whence it may be able to satisfy its thirst, that is, the appetite for true knowledge implanted in it; 333Dwhich before the incarnation of its maker, who is the fountain of life, it had not been able to fulfil. Yet it drank laboriously from the natural fountain of reason implanted in it, tracking the nature of things by physical motion, and the creator and cause of that nature. Jesus saith to her: Give me to drink. For his disciples were gone into the city, to buy meats. Jesus, sitting upon the fountain, asks of the primitive Church, which he had chosen from the Gentiles, the drink of faith, by which he is believed in. He asks of nature the drink of reason, by which its maker and redeemer is searched out. The disciples going away into the city to buy meats are the apostles sent into the world to buy 334Aspiritual foods, that is, faith and action and knowledge, with which the spiritual masters of the Church are satisfied. For first they ask faith of those to whom they preach, then actions befitting that faith, lastly the knowledge of truth, for the sake of which both faith is preached and action and knowledge are perfected.

Then the Samaritan woman saith to him: How dost thou, being a Jew, ask to drink of me, while I am a Samaritan woman? For the Jews do not deal with the Samaritans. That Samaritan woman, who bore the type of the Church or of nature, wonders at the Lord, whom she did not yet know, but had known only to be a Jew, why he should have asked to drink from her, since she was a Samaritan woman. For, as she says, the Jews do not deal with the Samaritans. 334BWhere according to the letter it is asked what it is that the woman says, for the Jews do not deal with the Samaritans, when the Samaritans both lived under the law of Moses and all its precepts and symbols, and dwelt together [with them], and through this, if they lived under one law, it must be thought that they also shared in foods. In what then did they not deal together? To this it must be said: The Jews and Samaritans, living under one law, adored one God, namely the Father, but contended about the place of prayer. For the Jews thought he was to be adored in no other place but in the temple which was at Jerusalem. But the Samaritans thought that God was to be worshipped on the mountain of Samaria, on which Jacob dwelt. In this therefore they did not deal together, disagreeing about the place of prayer. For if the Judaic law forbade the Jews to deal 334Cwith the Samaritans, perhaps Christ would not ask the figured drink from the woman, nor allow his disciples to buy foods from them, since it must be believed without doubt that he asked not the drink of bodily water, but the drink of spiritual faith.

Jesus answered and said to her: If thou knewest the gift of God, and who he is that saith to thee: Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked him, and he would have given thee water. [Vulg. tu forsitan petisses ab eo, et dedisset tibi aquam vivam, "thou perhaps wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water"] As if he had said: If thou, woman, knewest me, and believedst in me perfectly, and if thou knewest the gift of God, that is, the Holy Spirit, thou wouldst have asked of me to drink, and I would give thee, by the merit of thy faith, living water, namely the Holy Spirit.

The woman saith to him: Lord, neither hast thou a drawing-vessel, and the well is deep. How then hast thou living water? The woman, still carnal and not yet believing, 334Ddid not know the words of him who spoke with her; for she had thought that the Lord spoke of sensible water, when he was treating of intelligible water. The deep well, as we said before, signifies either the depth of human nature or the lowliness of the sensible and bodily creature, which is therefore called deep, because nothing in the universe of created things is lower than bodily nature. But the drawing-vessel, the study of wisdom, by which the wave of reason is brought forth from the inmost recesses of nature, while physical investigation treats of human substance or the sensible creature. Saint Augustine asserts that the deep well signifies the delight of bodily 335Athings, from which and in which, like flowing water, that delight itself rises; but the drawing-vessel, the cupidity of the carnal soul, which always desires to be satisfied with the delight of temporal and bodily things. There follows:

Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and himself drank of it, and his sons, and his cattle? The Samaritan woman was a foreigner; yet she calls Jacob her father. And not undeservedly, since she had lived under the law of Moses, and possessed the estate which Jacob had given to his son Joseph. What she says therefore, Art thou greater than our father Jacob? seems to mean this, as if she said: Art thou of greater power than our father Jacob, who had dug this well, and had a drawing-vessel, with which he supplied water both to himself and to his sons and 335Bto his cattle? But thou hast neither a drawing-vessel, nor any instrument for drawing water, and thou promisest to give me to drink; not yet understanding the words of him who spoke with her.

Jesus answered and said to her: Every one that drinketh of this water, which thou wishest to draw, woman, and thinkest that I ask of thee, shall thirst again, for it quenches a temporal thirst temporally. But whosoever shall drink of the water which I will give him, shall not thirst for ever. As if he said: To whomsoever, believing in me, I shall have given the gift of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father through me, [he] shall not thirst for ever. For he will say with the Psalmist: « I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear » .

But the water which I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into life everlasting. The spiritual water, that is, 335Cthe gift of the Holy Spirit, springs up into life everlasting. Bodily water flows downward, spiritual water springs upward, and carries up with it those who drink it in into eternal glory and beatitude.

The woman saith to him: Lord, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come hither to draw. Nature begins to know its maker; for there is in the rational creature an appetite for beatitude and for true knowledge, which was prefigured through the Samaritan woman. The Church begins to know more deeply the faith which before it began simply to draw, while it begins to enter into theological reasons.

Jesus saith to her: Go, call thy husband, and come hither. As if he said: Thou askest of me water springing up into life 335Deverlasting, namely the Holy Spirit, by whose gift I give life everlasting. Thou canst not drink such water unless thou call thy husband. Go therefore, if thou wilt drink, call thy husband, and come hither with him; that is: believe in me, that both thou and thy husband may drink in the Holy Spirit. In this place a transition of theoria from genus to species is understood. For it was said before that the Samaritan woman is the symbol both of the general Church gathered from the Gentiles and of general human nature. But now the same woman holds forth the figure both of each one set in the unity of the Church and of each soul 336Aparticipating in human nature. The woman therefore is the rational soul, whose husband is understood [as] the animus, which is named in many ways; for sometimes intellect, sometimes mind, sometimes animus, often also spirit. Of this husband the Apostle says: « The head of the woman is the husband, the head of the husband is Christ, the head of Christ is God » ; as if he openly said: The head of the rational soul is her husband, her intellect; but the head of the intellect itself is Christ. For this is the natural order of the human creature, that the soul be subjected under the governance of the mind, but the mind under Christ; and thus the whole man is joined through Christ to God and the Father. For the twofold sex also, namely male and female, which is seen outwardly in the body alone, holds forth the interior dispositions of the animus and the soul. 336BFor the division of the rational soul is threefold: into animus, and reason, and interior sense. The animus always revolves about God, and therefore is deservedly called the husband and ruler of the other parts of the soul, since between it and its Creator no other creature is interposed. But reason is occupied about the causes and knowledge of created things, and whatever the animus perceives from supernal contemplation it hands on to reason, and reason commends it to memory. The third part of the soul is the interior sense, which is subjected to reason as to a superior part, and through this is subjected through reason to the mind. But under that interior sense, by natural order, the exterior sense is placed, through which the whole soul quickens and rules the fivefold sense of the body, and vivifies the whole body. Since 336Ctherefore the rational soul can perceive nothing of the supernal gifts except through her husband, that is, through the animus, which holds the rule of the whole nature, the woman, namely the soul, is deservedly bidden to call her husband, her intellect, with whom and through whom she can drink the spiritual gifts, without whom she [can] in no way be a partaker of supernal grace. Therefore he says, call thy husband and come hither; do not at all presume to come to me without thy husband. Also, the intellect being absent, no one knows how to ascend to the height of theology, nor to participate in the spiritual gifts.

The woman answered and said to him: I have no husband. Jesus saith to her: Thou hast said well, that thou hast no husband. [Vulg. quia non habeo virum, "I have no husband", the woman's own words] Thou hast said well, he says; I praise what thou hast said, thou who hast said truly. For I know that thou hast no husband, nor do I know it for this reason, 336Dbecause thou hast said that thou hast none, but through myself, for whom there is leisure to know all things.

For thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband; this thou hast said truly. Concerning the five husbands of the mystical woman, that is, of the rational soul living carnally, the opinions of the authors vary. Some take them of the five books of the Mosaic law; whose opinion is not approved for this reason, that the Mosaic law was given to the Jews only, but this woman signifies generally every human soul. Augustine understands the five senses of the body [as] the five husbands, 337Aunder whom there is no doubt that every soul lives before it comes to the perfect age in which it can use reason. For sight flourishes in infants, likewise hearing, smell, taste, touch. Beyond these the soul, still carnal and infantile, can participate in nothing. But when it comes to adult age, it is joined as to a certain sixth husband, that is, to reason. Yet often the carnal and foolish soul, having neglected the rational motion, is subjected, as if to a natural husband, to error, by whom and through whom it is deceived, and, having abandoned the natural order, desires those things which are against its own nature. And therefore it is said of him, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband; thou hast deserted thy husband and wouldst not obey him, thou hast followed an adulterer, and through this hast been made an adulteress. But if thou wilt drink of the water 337Bwhich I will give thee, go, call thy husband, to whom thou oughtest to be made subject and to be joined in spiritual wedlock. Desert the adulterer, lest thou be an adulteress; desert the error by which thou hast been seduced; thou hast left thy husband, and hast violated the natural beauty of thy chastity. Thus far Augustine. Maximus asserts that the five husbands signify five laws given to the human soul. Of which the first was given to man in paradise before sin, concerning the unlawful and forbidden tree. The second after his prevarication and expulsion from paradise, concerning the multiplication of the human offspring. The third to Noe before the flood, concerning the building of the ark. The fourth after the flood, concerning the divisions of the nations. The fifth to Abraham, concerning circumcision and the sacrifice of his son. To these five laws, as to some five husbands, the human 337Csoul was subject from the beginning of the world up to the law of Moses. But the law of the letter, which was given through Moses, was not given to free or to justify the soul, but to convict it, and to press down the weight of the sacraments, which had conferred no salvation on it, unless it should flee for refuge to the grace of the New Testament. For the law was given that grace might be sought, but grace given that the law might be fulfilled. Since therefore the law of the letter conferred nothing on human nature for salvation, for the law led no one to the perfect, but availed for a heap of offences, as the Apostle says: « The strength of sin is the law » , and again: « But the law entered in, that sin might abound » , the Lord says beautifully to the Samaritan woman: And he whom thou now hast is not thy husband; let go the letter, it is not thy husband; go to thy husband, to 337Dthe spirit of the letter; call the law of grace, which is thy husband, from whom thou shalt conceive a spiritual offspring of virtues, with whom I will give thee the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by which thou shalt be able to believe in me. The sixth husband therefore, namely the carnal law, being repudiated, the rational soul is bidden to call her husband, that is, the New Testament, the law of grace, under which alone she could be saved.

The woman saith to him: Lord, I see that thou art a prophet. When the woman knew, from those things which the Lord [said] to her concerning the number of her husbands, and concerning her adultery with another's husband, that he was a prophet, forthwith 338Ashe proposed a question, as if she said: Since I see thee and know without doubt that thou art a prophet, solve for me the question about which the Jews and Samaritans contend, namely about the place of adoring God, on account of which the Jews themselves do not deal with us, that is, dissent from us.

Our fathers adored on this mountain. That is, Jacob, and his sons, and all the Samaritans who lived under the Mosaic law; and you, Jews, say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must adore. In this therefore we dissent, in this with one accord we do not deal together. On this mountain of Samaria we adore God, where Jacob [adored], you in the temple of Jerusalem. Since therefore I see thee a prophet, I do not doubt that thou knowest all things; and through this make me certain concerning this contention, that is, 338Byours and ours, where we ought to adore God, in this place or at Jerusalem.

Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe me, that the hour cometh when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you adore the Father. You adore what you know not, we adore what we know. By these words he crushes the boasting of the woman, the Samaritan, and of all the Samaritans. For the Samaritans thought that they were of no lesser religion than the Jews. He speaks therefore in the person of the Jews, not of the impious who did not receive him, but of the patriarchs and prophets, and of those who had believed in him a little before in Judaea. Therefore he says: You adore the Father whom you know not, but we adore the same Father whom we know. For no one can adore the Father unless he has first adored 338Cthe Son. He who believes in the Son, he knows the Son, and through this knows the Father also. For he says: « Philip, he who seeth me seeth my Father also » . Thou therefore, woman, with thy whole [nation], knowest not the Father whom thou adorest, because thou hast not yet believed in his Son, through whom one comes to the knowledge of the Father. And this is what follows: Because salvation is from the Jews. As if he openly said: Therefore we know what we adore, joining himself to the believing Jews, because salvation is from the Jews, because Christ, who is the salvation of the whole world, is from the Jews, not only by origin of flesh, but also by propagation of faith; for from them arose the faith and the primitive Church.

But the hour cometh and now is. He calls his presence in the flesh the hour. Thou, he says, woman, consultest me about the place 338Dof adoring; therefore I say to thee, the hour cometh, I am present, and now I am in the flesh. When the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and truth. Before I came, no one could adore the Father in spirit and truth, except the patriarchs and prophets, to whom my presence in the flesh was revealed through the Spirit before I came into the world. Not therefore, O woman, on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall the true adorers adore me and my Father, but inwardly, in the inmost temple of their heart and of their understanding. It will first be purged through faith, illumined through 339Aknowledge, perfected through deification. On the mountain of theology they will adore in spirit who shall have been illumined by the Holy Spirit. For the Father also seeketh such, adoring him, who adore him in their spirit and in the truth of their knowledge. What he said before he concluded by reason, saying:

God [is] spirit, and those that adore him must adore in spirit and truth. As if he said: If God were corporeal or a body, perhaps he would seek bodily places for adoring him. Now, since he is spirit, he seeks those who adore him in their spirit and in their intellect through true knowledge.

The woman saith to him: I know that the Messias cometh, who is called Christ. Since the Lord had said before, « the hour cometh and now is » , the woman thought that he had spoken of the Messias, that is, 339Bof the Christ who was to come, whom she did not yet know as present, as though of another. For she had heard from the prophets that Christ was to come. Therefore she says: I know that the Messias cometh. Cometh, she said, not « will come » , that she might compare her words with the words of the prophet with whom she was speaking; or in some way, illumined by the spirit, she understood Christ coming as present; or because it is a usage of speech that of one who is on the way it is said he cometh, when he has not yet come. Messias is a Hebrew name, which in Greek is interpreted Christ, that is, anointed. When he is come, he will announce to us all things. She did not yet understand Christ perfectly as present; yet she believed, taught by the prophets, the coming of Christ and his doctrine to come. He will announce to us all things, namely all things which pertain to the worship of him and 339Cof his Father.

Jesus saith to her: I am, who speak to thee. First the Lord opened the intellect of the woman, that she might believe, then he manifested himself to her. For she believed the prophets, who foretold the coming of Christ; and therefore she merited to speak with him whom she had believed to be to come, although she did not yet know him present. By the merit of which faith she came to the knowledge of Christ speaking of himself and saying: I am the Christ himself; whom thou knowest to be to come, now know present.

And forthwith his disciples came, and they wondered that he was speaking with a woman. Why did they wonder, when Christ very often spoke with women? They did not therefore wonder that their Lord spoke 339Dwith a woman, but this alone they wondered at, that with a Samaritan, that is, a foreign woman, not knowing the mystery of the Church that was to be from the Gentiles. Yet no one was saying: What seekest thou, or what speakest thou with her? For the disciples did not dare to question their Lord, fearing lest they be rebuked by him if they questioned him incautiously, being not yet able to know the mystery of the Church to come.

The woman therefore left her water-pot. After the Church, or human nature, knew the presence 340Aof the divine substance in the flesh, she left her water-pot, she left her carnal usage, she left the water and study of carnal knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . could not see the crowd coming to him, if he did not lift up his eyes, he who, before the world was made, had seen all things, and never needed the instruments of bodily eyes in order to see. He lifts up his eyes therefore, teaching us to lift up the eyes of our heart, and that the whole world from every side 340Bruns together to the faith of Christ. We are admonished also, by the example of Christ, to lift up the eyes of our heart, so that if perhaps, with him teaching us and illuminating us inwardly, we are permitted to ascend the height of action and of knowledge, and also of theology, the crowd of carnal thoughts that follow may not disturb us and cast us down from the height of contemplation, but that we may take care to feed them with spiritual foods, as much as they can take, satisfying them. He says to Philip. Philip, who is interpreted mouth of a lamp, A strange interpretation indeed; for he seems to derive the name Philippus from (Hebrew), mouth, and λαμπάς. bears the figure of those who preach the faith, to whom, set with Christ in the height of contemplation, the Lord speaks daily about the crowd of carnal thoughts that is to be fed: Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? And this he said tempting him, that is, consulting his faith about the miracle to come. God is the tempter 340Cof the wicked. But he tempts the elect for the sake of proving, not of supplanting. For there are two species of temptation, of which one proves the faith of the just, the other reprobates the faithlessness of the impious.

For he himself knew what he was going to do. For the sake of proving, he says, the Lord tempts Philip, not of learning what was to be done. For he knew, before the world was made, all the miracles which he would do in the world. For when he says, for he himself knew, he had known, not before some time, but before all times, what he was going to do.

Philip answered him: Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for these, that every one may take a little. Philip, still nourished on the milk of doctrine, 340Dnot able to take the solid food of true faith and knowledge, answered according to the capacity of his power as it then was, thinking it impossible that so great a multitude could be refreshed with a few loaves. And so, for the sake of instruction, the Lord plays with Philip, tempting the simplicity of his faith, that by this he might learn to ascend higher, and believe that no difficulty is in God. The order of evangelists therefore, which, as we have said, is intimated typically through Philip, answered the Lord who was tempting them, that is, proving their faith, and through this 341Aalso praising it: Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient. The number one hundred is perfect; for ten times ten make it up; and if this number be doubled, they make two hundred; beautifully bearing the type of the perfection of good action and of rational knowledge, which are not sufficient for those who are to be fed, that is, for those who are to hear in faith, unless the height of theology be added to them. For the action of the virtues only purges the souls of the faithful, while the knowledge of created things illuminates them; but that purgation and illumination is not sufficient for them, unless the habit of perfect contemplation be added, which alone leads souls to the consummate fullness of spiritual refreshments.

One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, saith to him: There is a little boy here, who hath five 341Bbarley loaves, and two little fishes, but what are these unto so many? [Vulg. puer, "a boy", and pisces, "fishes"] With the same simplicity as Philip, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter answered. Yet in that simplicity a manifold theoria is contained. This little boy, who according to the faith of things done is understood either as one of the disciples, or as some little boy from the crowd which was following them, mystically signifies the lawgiver, namely Moses, who is not unfittingly called as it were a little boy, because the law itself, which was given through him, led no one to the perfect age of justice. The lawgiver is called one little boy, because he prefigured by deeds, and prophesied by words, the unity of the Church to come. He said here, that is, in the Old Testament, which, now that the New shines forth, has begun to grow cheap, yet has still not altogether withdrawn. Who hath 341Cfive barley loaves; the five barley loaves are the five books of the Mosaic law, which are not undeservedly called barley, because carnal men were fed on them. For barley is properly the food of beasts of burden, not of men. The carnal people, still living under the letter, and not forsaking the oldness of the first man, of whom it is written: « Man, when he was in honour, did not understand; he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them », was counted in the number of brute beasts, and through this fed on the letter alone, as on a kind of barley bread mixed with chaff, but not on the spiritual marrow of the letter itself. For to the grains of barley the inner husks of chaff cling so naturally that they can scarcely be separated from their marrow, signifying the difficulty of understanding the legal sacraments 341Dand also the precepts. The fivefold number of the barley loaves is also not unfittingly understood to intimate the five bodily senses. For the more any of the faithful delights in those things which are received through the fivefold sense of the body, the more will he be counted among the brute animals that feed on barley. But when, forsaking them, the senses I mean, by the increase of action and of knowledge, he feeds on spiritual food, he is reckoned no longer among the brutes, but among the rational animals. Since therefore no one is permitted to ascend to the height of the virtues and of contemplations unless he be first nourished on the significations of sensible 342Athings, beautifully does the Lord distribute barley loaves to the crowd of the faithful following him, that he may lead those first filled thence, if they keep the faith which they had received, to the spiritual and higher foods of the rational creature, on which they cannot be nourished before they transcend the bodily senses and all things which they receive through them. What he says, then, but what is this unto so many? is such as if he said: The letter of the law, or the bodily senses and bodily things, what are they? what do they profit so great a multitude of the faithful, who are to believe in thee, and are to seek spiritual foods, which surpass every letter and every bodily sense? « For neither hath eye seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it ascended into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him ».

342BAnd Jesus saith: Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. Much grass signifies the letter of the law, which was manifold in symbols; it also not unfittingly signifies the much grass of carnal thoughts, which are thrust upon the soul through the bodily senses, and again slip away from it most swiftly. Beautifully also are the disciples bidden to make the men sit down, since the masters of truth cannot raise into the height of contemplation those whom they have nourished, unless they first begin to instruct them as it were in the lowest places, in the simplicity of the letter and of the visible creature. For the first step, for ascending the height of the virtues, is the letter of Holy Scripture, and the outward look of visible things, so that, the letter first read, or the creature beheld, they may ascend with the steps of right reason into the spirit of the letter, and into the reason 342Cof the creature. The men therefore sat down, in number about five thousand. By the same reason of theoria, just as by the five loaves the five books of Moses, as far as pertains to the letter, or the five senses of the body, are signified, so by the five thousand the multitude of those who lived under the law of the letter, or of those who are still subject to the carnal senses, is intimated by right reason. For the number one thousand is perfect and cubic. For ten times ten, ten times, make up the sum of the number one thousand. Which, when it is multiplied by the number five, intimates the fullness of those who live carnally. Who, as soon as they have been instructed by the holy history and the visible surface of things, are to pass over to the height of spiritual things.

342DAnd Jesus took the loaves, and giving thanks, distributed to them that were sat down, in like manner also of the fishes as much as they would. The Lord took the loaves, because he himself gave the law through Moses, so that the law is properly called his who gave it, not his through whom, as a minister, it was given. And giving thanks, distributed to them that were sat down; to whom did he give thanks, if not to the Father, who so loved the world as to give his Son, through whom he might feed the world with visible sacraments and sensible creatures, that through these he might lead and nourish it to the knowledge of himself? The two fishes intimate the two testaments, as far as they pertain to sensible symbols. For fishes in the water 343Aare sensible symbols, in a people still carnal, yet beginning to live perfectly. Which symbols, when they begin in some way to be understood more highly, are distributed to those who rightly desire, as much as they will. For to distribute is to discern visible symbols from their invisible understandings, and to share them out according to the capacity of each. Some will have it that by the two fishes two persons in the law are signified, namely of the king and of the priest; some, the prophets and the psalms.

And when they were filled, he saith to his disciples: Gather up the fragments that remain, lest anything be lost. [Vulg. ne pereant, "lest they be lost"] The simple crowd of the faithful is filled and content with the letter alone, the visible creature, and also the visible symbols; the spiritual understandings of the letter and of the creature and of the symbols, as certain remaining fragments, 343Bwhich the carnal cannot yet take up, the masters of the Church are bidden to gather, lest anything of those understandings be lost, not understood, but that from them the rational desire of spiritual souls may be satisfied in divine contemplations. The fragments, therefore, of the barley loaves are the subtle and difficult understandings of Holy Scripture and of the sensible sacraments, which the doctors of the Church gather into one, lest anything of them be lost, that is, lest anything of them remain which is not distributed to those capable of intelligible senses.

They gathered therefore, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over to them that had eaten. The twelvefold number of the baskets typically figures the capacity of the wise and of those who gather spiritual understandings. For the number twelve 343Cis most perfect, and, considered in many ways, signifies the intellects of divine men endowed in the action of the virtues, and in the knowledge of things, and in theology, which is concerned only with divine things. First indeed the perfection of twelve is considered in this, that it is the double of the number six. Now the number six intimates the perfection of good works in this life; which if it be doubled, grows into eternal contemplation, which is the fruit of all good working, as it were into the quantity of the number twelve. Again, twelve contains within itself the harmonies of all music. For it has the diatessaron He has in view the harmonies of the Greeks. in four compared with three; it has the diapente in three and two; it has the diapason between itself and six. Within eight 343Dalso is a whole diapason. It has the tone between nine and eight. All which numbers are contained within the bounds of twelve. And through this the harmony of all things visible and invisible, joined together, is figured by such a number. Which harmony is known and comprehensible, as far as is given to men, only to those who understand divine things. The number twelve is also divided into ten and two. Therefore it signifies both the law of the letter, which is tenfold, and the precept of charity, which is twofold in itself, and on which hang the law and the prophets. And therefore those who fulfil the law by the precept of charity are themselves the baskets in which 344Athe spiritual fragments of divine understandings are both gathered and kept safe, lest any of them be lost. The same number is divided into seven and five, which numbers are attributed to the music of the human voice, and it indicates the wonderful concord of all things returning to one end. For five multiplied by itself completes the number twenty-five. But seven is divided into two members, of which the greater is four, the lesser three. If therefore you multiply the number seven by its lower member, you will make twenty-one. To which number if you add the greater member, it will likewise be twenty-five; and through this five and seven, multiplied, are said to come to one end. Spiritual baskets therefore are those who by the power of action and of knowledge come to 344Bthe one end of eternal contemplation.

The men therefore, seeing that Jesus had done a sign, said: That he is truly the prophet, who cometh into the world. [Vulg. qui venturus est, "who is to come"] Again the imperfect crowd is reproved in this, that it was on account of the visible sign, not on account of the intelligible power of the sign, that they said: that he is truly the prophet, who cometh into the world. In this miracle of the fivefold quantity of the barley loaves it is not without cause asked what it means that the fragments of the five loaves only, and not of the two fishes, are gathered, from which twelve baskets are filled, since the Gospel relates that five thousand men were filled from five loaves and two fishes. The depth of this mystery seems to me obscure, so that it can scarcely be searched out. For Augustine in his exposition 344Con John treats nothing of it, but passed it over altogether. Although to many it may seem sufficient, what is read in Mark: « they took up of fragments twelve baskets full, and of the fishes », so that it be understood: and of the fishes they took up fragments, either other ones or the same. But if other ones, there were not XII, but XXIIII baskets; if the same, it had been sufficient to say: they took up twelve baskets of fragments. It seems not to be void of mystery that, as it were after the fragments of bread were gathered, he says « and of the fishes », absolutely, adding nothing. For Matthew and Luke mention the fragments without distinction, leaving it in doubt whether they were of the loaves only, as John has it, or of the loaves and the fishes together. Let us try therefore, as far as the light of minds shall give, to inquire, not prejudging the senses of others. For we have said before 344Dthat the five senses of the body, or the five Mosaic books, are intimated by the fivefold number of the loaves, and by the two fishes the symbols of each Testament. Where it must first be asked what difference there is between the mysteries of each law, namely of the letter and of grace, and the symbols. Mysteries, then, are properly those which are handed down according to the allegory both of deed and of word, that is, they were both done according to things done and said, because they are narrated. For example, the Mosaic tabernacle was both constructed according to the thing done, and said and narrated in the text of Holy Scripture. Likewise the sacraments of the legal victims were both done according to history, 345Aand are said according to narration. Circumcision likewise was both done in the flesh, and narrated in the letter. In the New Testament also the mysteries of baptism, and also of the Lord's body and blood, and also of the holy chrism, are performed according to things done, and are handed down and said in letters. And this form of sacraments is reasonably called by the holy Fathers the allegory of deed and word. The other form is that which has properly received the name of symbol, and is called the allegory of word, but not of deed, since it is constituted only in the words of spiritual doctrine, but not in sensible deeds. Mysteries, then, are those which in either Testament were both done according to history, and narrated according to the letter; but symbols are those which, only not done, but as it were done, 345Bare said by doctrine alone. For example, in the old law it is written: « Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of its mother ». That, indeed, is never read to have been done according to history, as Augustine witnesses; yet it was said and written, and is handed down as though done, though the truth of divine history is not found to narrate that it was done. Again in the Psalms: « The mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like the lambs of the sheep ». For in these places of Holy Scripture and in many like them the allegory of word alone, and not of deed and word, is understood. In the New Testament many things are narrated which according to the faith of history were not done, but only said, and as though done; which examples are found chiefly in the allegory of the Lord's parables, for example, the parable of the rich man and of Lazarus the poor man in the bosom of Abraham, 345Cand of the chasm set between, of the flame, of the tongue, of the finger, all of which no authority hands down to have been according to things done, but they were said altogether figuratively. Which form is recognized in almost all the parables, and is properly named symbolic; although it is the usage of Holy Scripture to put symbols for mysteries, and mysteries for symbols, by a certain nearness and likeness. Let us set down, then, a certain likeness, by which we may be able to persuade what we wish to assert. The people of the carnal faithful went before both in the old law and in the new. Now there is one who thinks that nothing exists outside the letter and the bodily senses, since he can[not] ascend higher beyond the letter of Scripture, and the things which are received through the senses. Likewise in the old law the perfect and wise in action 345Dand in knowledge of spiritual understandings, and in the New Testament, are narrated to have been, who, like the disciples, ascend with Christ into the height of contemplation, as into a certain mountain, the carnal being left behind, lying down under the letter and sense in the grass of temporal things. « For all flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof the flower of grass ». Let us therefore think in our mind of a certain multitude, as it were, of simple faithful, sitting on the sides of the mountain, or on the plain, that is, below the height of divine understandings. For from the text of the Gospel it is given to understand that the Lord fed the crowd not on the summit of the mountain, but on a certain plain, where there had been much grass. 346AWhere he says, « having returned into the mountain himself alone » [Vulg. fugit iterum in montem, "fled again into the mountain"]; so that according to things done we should take it that the Lord alone with his disciples first ascended into the mountain, and then again descended to the lower parts, and, the miracle being performed, returned alone again into the mountain. Before this multitude, hungering for the faith of Christ, are set five loaves and two fishes, that is, the sacraments, which were both done and written, and the symbols, which were only said, but not done. Christ, taking the five loaves and two fishes, and giving thanks, namely to the Father, who willed to feed his faithful with symbols and sacraments, delivers them to his disciples, his masters, his ministers; and they divide them to the crowd. The barley loaves are broken by the disciples when the mysteries of each law are divided by them 346Binto the things done and into their spiritual understandings. The carnal are fed with simple history; the spiritual gather the divine understandings of that history as certain fragments. The fragments which the carnal eat and are filled are the things done; the fragments which the spiritual eat are the divine understandings of the things done. For example, let the book of Genesis be read, at that place where the passage of carnal Israel through the Red Sea is narrated. The simple Christian, still lying as it were in the grass of temporal and carnal things, is fed with the history alone. For whatever was done there was known to the five bodily senses. For both the Israelites were seen to have crossed the sea with dry feet, and the Egyptians to have been killed. This also was heard by the neighbouring nations, the sea wave 346Cwas tasted, smelled and touched. All which things the soul of the faithful, still simple, handles and ponders with itself, and thence is filled, as with certain fragments of divine history. But the understanding of the letter itself it cannot take, and therefore it is gathered by those who savour spiritual things, lest it be lost, but that it may profit those who are able to understand. Behold the five barley loaves: namely the mysteries of things done, divided into letter and spirit, and, in so far as it is letter, they suit the fivefold bodily senses. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

« Abraham », he says, « had two sons, one indeed of the bondwoman, the other of the free woman ». Behold the first fragments of history, sufficient for the simple. Consequently he subjoins the spiritual fragments, saying: 346D« But these are the two Testaments ». Let the two fishes be set before the same multitude, that is, the spiritual doctrine alone of what was allegorically said, but not done according to history. Which is contained as it were in the number two, since it is perceived by two senses only, namely by sight and hearing, but cannot be perceived by the other senses. For it is read with the eyes, heard with the ears, but it is removed from smell or taste or touch. For example, to use the same examples, let that be read which is written in Exodus: « Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of its mother ». This symbol is both read through the eyes, and heard through the ears; but it 347Acannot be broken, because it is not received according to the faith of things done, but was only said allegorically. And since it is not divided, it is commended whole to the memory of the carnal faithful, that they may believe that a spiritual sense is in these words, although they do not understand it. It is gathered whole by those who spiritually know spiritual things. In symbols, then, that is, in the sayings of spiritual doctrine, which the allegory of deed alone, but not of word, [facti, non autem dicti; read dicti, non autem facti, "of word, but not of deed"] hands down, no fragments are gathered, since it is not divided into history and understanding. For only an understanding is thought of in it, but no deed. Likewise in the New Testament, that we may take an example from there too, the body and blood of our Lord is both performed sensibly as a mystery according to things done, and according to spiritual understanding 347Bits brain (?) is searched out. What is outwardly sensed and perceived by carnal men, subject to the fivefold bodily sense, is barley bread, because they cannot ascend the height of spiritual understanding; and it is as it were a certain fragment, by which their carnal thought is filled. 348AIt is a spiritual fragment for those who are able to know the height of the divine understandings of that mystery, and therefore it is gathered by them, lest it be lost. For the mystery, made up of letter and spirit, partly perishes, partly remains eternally. That perishes which is seen, because it is sensible and temporal; that remains which is not seen, because it is spiritual and eternal. Let an example of a symbol be given: « In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and God was the Word ». This is only said; in it no thing done is known, and therefore let it be received whole simply by the carnal, and whole uniformly by the spiritual. Nor can any fragments be made there, since there is nothing there which may be understood according to history, but the whole is referred to theology, which surpasses every sense and intellect 348B. It is read by the eyes of those who read, it is sensed by the ears of those who hear, and through this, like certain two fishes, the one and the same theology of the evangelist is received, suiting two senses. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The rest is lacking.