ADNOTATIUNCULAE IN JOELEM

321C(JOEL. I.) The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Phatuel. HISTORICALLY. In a word three things are attended to: noise, form, meaning. The noise of persecution, the form of the voice, the meaning of the utterance. The striking is referred to vengeance, the voice to gladness, the utterance to grace. Since indeed vengeance strikes, the voice consoles, the utterance instructs. It instructs the son, it consoles the hired servant: it instructs the son who thirsts eagerly for his father's teaching; it consoles the hired servant who labors anxiously under judgment. The grace of obedience instructs the son, the wage of justice consoles the hired servant, the penalty of malice afflicts the slave. The noise is referred to punishment, the voice to reward, the meaning to grace. These three things, then, are considered in the word that came to Joel: because in the outcome of the prophecy that follows, 321Dboth the vengeance upon enemies, and the consolation of the afflicted people, and the instruction of the elect are foretold. The noise of the sound, then, is made toward the adversary; the form of the voice toward the afflicted people; the meaning of the word is made toward the prophetic mind and the choir of the elect. For whence the adversary 322Cis afflicted, thence the people is consoled: in that the mind of the elect, understanding, glories in the Lord. The noise, then, is made to the carnal, the form is directed to the animal, the meaning to the spiritual. Now this word is the Lord's. In the Lord also three things are considered: vengeance, zeal, retribution. The vengeance of fault, the zeal of discipline, the reward of obedience. Therefore the word of God is living, and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword (Hebr. IV). Piercing, because it destroys malice; living, because it leads back to grace; effectual, because it brings through to glory. It is piercing in judgment, living in deed, effectual in promise. Piercing, because judgment is hidden. Living, because its deed bears fruit. Effectual, because its promise is not denied. Piercing, because it destroys mightily; living, because it quickens 322Dpowerfully; effectual, because it repays effectually. This is the word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Phatuel.

First it must be seen that the construction suffers an ellipsis. For in saying: the word of the Lord that came 323Ato Joel the son of Phatuel, something must be supplied for the completeness of the sense, either thus: This is the word that came; or thus: The word that came shows these other things. There follows:

Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land: whether this hath been done in your days, or in the days of your fathers. Tell ye of this to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to another generation. From the greatness of the coming calamity he turns to the stupor of wonder. But lest these things seem to be held cheap, he calls together the authority of old men; lest they be thought of little moment or slight, he rouses the inhabitants of the land, saying: Hear, ye old men, etc. The wisdom of the old men gives authority to the wonder, the concern of the inhabitants gives credence to the stupor — namely, that of the misfortune to come it may in no way 323Bbe possible to doubt: to which the authority of the wise and the concern of the common people seem publicly to bear certain witness. There follows, expressing the parts of the misfortune, saying:

What the caterpillar hath left, the locust hath eaten: and what the locust hath left, the grub hath eaten: and what the grub hath left, the rust hath eaten. Awake, ye that are drunk, and weep: howl, all ye that drink wine in sweetness, for it is perished from your mouth. The upper part of the misfortune having been shown, and the voice of lament having followed after, he undertakes to show another kind of misfortune, and strives to descend to that form of lament. For he says:

For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number. Its teeth are as the teeth of a lion: and its molars as a lion's whelp. It hath laid my vineyard into a desert: and hath barked my fig tree. Stripping it bare it hath despoiled 323Cit, and cast it away; its branches are made white. Behold the lament. Now he subjoins the misfortune, saying:

Lament, like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. And so, alternating misfortune with lament, he runs on as far as that place: To thee, O Lord, will I cry. Where there is made a suppliant invocation to God, and a pitiable setting forth of the calamity, and a humble and affectionate entreaty that it be blotted out. According to some he designates the terrible coming of the Babylonians into Judaea, their hostile onset, their fierce spirit: raging everywhere, laying all things waste, destroying all things. Or, what is truer, the pride of the Assyrians, and the bold ferocity of that nation, greedy for blood, 323Dcovetous of glory, exposed to disasters, prone to victory. Who under Sennacherib, laying waste all Judaea, besieged Jerusalem. And because they ascribed the fortune of the affair not to divine judgment but to their own strength, the king fleeing with a few, all perished in one night, struck by the angel. Joel designates by the caterpillar the Assyrians; by the locust the Babylonians; by the grub the Persians and Medes; by the mildew the Macedonians. All these, through the succession of the times, laid waste the people of God: and if one of them had left anything flowering, or green, or by chance unconsumed, at the coming of another it was trodden down and reduced to nothing. Let him read the ancient Josephus, and the traditions of the Jews, and the other histories pertaining to this, who desires to be made certain about the matter.

324AAllegorically, however, he speaks of the general persecution of the Church, which is read to be fourfold: because it is read to have been assailed first by idolaters, secondly by heretics, thirdly by false Christians, and fourthly to be assailed by Antichrist. Which Joel, foreseeing with a prophetic eye, on account of the greatness of the persecution calls the old men and the inhabitants of the land into fellowship of wonder. As if he said: I see the misfortunes to come upon the bride of Christ, I behold her calamities, I look out upon her various toils: but I call to witness the wisdom of spiritual men, and the concern of carnal men too, that they may pour on what they have heard, by succession, into after times: until the dawn arise from heaven, the bride of the Lamb come, the Church spring forth: that, forearmed by our oracle, she may remain firm: lest she receive a rival in place of a husband, lest, deceived, she choose a flower without 324Bfruit, coin without silver, a sheaf without grain, a shadow without a body. By the caterpillar he designates idolaters; by the locusts, heretics; by the grubs, false and carnal Christians; by the mildew, the malicious solicitude of Antichrist: the first on account of the filthiness and the variety of idolatry; the second on account of the flight of knowledge, the agility of wit, the elation of pride; the third on account of the heat and the uncleanness of carnal concupiscence; the fourth on account of the monstrousness of its savagery. For after the Church escaped the shipwreck of idolatry, it fell into the waves and storms of the heretics: but while, with a spiritual west wind blowing, the storm was turned into a gentler breeze, again it labored long in enduring the heat of carnal men: at last, by the son of perdition, who shall be lifted up above all 324Cthat is called God (II Thes. II), or that is worshipped: wearied in many ways, variously tormented, most grievously distressed: at length, fair weather being restored, it will return to the harbor of liberty: it will enter the dwelling of peace. And this is what he says: What the caterpillar hath left, the locust hath eaten, etc. This is the nation which is said to have come up upon the land, that is, upon the Church, strong and without number: strong in greatness, without number in multitude; strong in cruelty, without number in persistence; the lion is the devil, or a prince highest in earthly power: as some heresiarch, or Antichrist himself. The teeth are his satellites. The whelps, the nobles, or the petty kings. The molars, the executioners. That which above he called the land, he now calls the fig tree and the vineyard, that 324Dis, the Church. The land, on account of the stability of faith: the vineyard, on account of the austerity of penance; the fig tree, on account of the sweetness of love. Or the land, on account of the firm ground of justice. The vineyard, on account of the gladness of spiritual understanding. The fig tree, on account of the sweetness of heavenly teaching. Or the land, on account of the fruit of spiritual exercises: the vineyard, on account of the grace of heavenly gifts; the fig tree, on account of the sweetness of eternal joys. These things Christ the Lamb conferred upon his bride, namely the Church. The first in the garden; the second in the storeroom; the third in the bed. For in the garden she is exercised; in the storeroom she is gladdened; in the bed she is made happy. First by the works of penance; secondly by the gifts of grace; thirdly by the kisses of wisdom. But the aforesaid nation barked it, stripped it cast it away. The bark 325Ais the exercises, the leaves the words, the fruit the merits. The exercises of grace, the words of teaching, the merits of glory. But the aforesaid nation barked it, stripped it, cast it away, because, as the persecution grew heavier, the exercises of religion grew lukewarm, the words of preaching fell silent, the merits of the virtues were thinned in many.

Tropologically, however, the prophet speaks of the temptations of the soul. He shows that a spiritual nation has come up upon it, that a troop of vices has by the just judgment of God invaded it, trodden it down, stormed it, saying: What the caterpillar hath left, the locust hath eaten: and what the locust hath left, the grub hath eaten: and what the grub hath left, the rust hath eaten. I know that certain men before me have said that these four signify the four perturbations of the mind, and have referred the caterpillar to fear, the locust to hope, the grub to joy, 325Bthe mildew to grief. Of which is that verse of Boethius: Drive off joys, and fear, and put hope to flight, and let not grief be present. Clouded is the mind, and bound with reins, where these reign. But we leave them their own interpretation, and hasten on to other things which seem more fitting. What the caterpillar hath left, the locust hath eaten, etc. The caterpillar, then, is lust; the locust, cenodoxia, that is, vainglory; the grub, gastrimargia; the mildew, anger or impatience. What the caterpillar leaves is chastity; what the locust leaves, humility; what the grub leaves, sobriety; what the mildew leaves, gentleness of mind, and patience. What the first leaves, therefore, the second eats; what the second leaves, the third; what the third leaves, the fourth: because it very often happens that from continence empty glory arises, that drunkenness and surfeit follow humility, and anger or 325Cimpatience follow sobriety. For not seldom it happens that the mind, still imperfect, while it reckons that it has conquered and has come to the summit of justice, falls from its victory; and while it sees that it has overcome one of the enemies, it reckons that it has sustained the whole business of the war, and supposes that it has overcome the whole army. But while the deceived mind exults over the triumph of one, it does not see, wretched thing, that another draws his sword and threatens death at close quarters. Hence it is that, insulting over the slaying of lust, now as it were secure and less provident, it is struck by the sword of cenodoxia. But if it should chance to have overcome this by humility of mind, gastrimargia at once thrusts itself in. For while the incautious soul sees chastity restraining the flesh, while it beholds humility repressing the mind, it straightway hastens to condescend to pleasure, speaking thus: 325DSince neither does the wind of empty glory stir the mind, nor does the enticement of carnal concupiscence tickle the flesh, it would be a kind of cruelty if I tortured my fellow citizen with the goads of dire necessity. The peace restored to me in both admonishes me, and allows me to minister pleasant things. Thus surfeit is brought in, and the citizen is slain. Further, if it happens to have overcome this too by divine help and its own zeal: now supposing that it has wholly escaped shipwreck, it falls back into that misfortune. For because the soul considers that continence is rising in the flesh, humility in the mind, abstinence in the body, now presuming upon perfection, and despising the rest in comparison with itself, if ever its endeavor is resisted, its onset opposed, its desire thwarted: straightway 326Ait loosens the reins to anger, it leaps out into words of impatience, saying: Thou wast born wholly in sins, and dost thou teach us? (Joan. IX.) The order of things requires that the prior things hold the prior place, and that the lower lie lower. It is written: The spiritual man judgeth all things; and he himself is judged by no man (I Cor. II). And in the law the mouth of the leper is commanded to be shut (Levit. XIII). First, then, learn rightly, that you may teach soundly; first live well, that you may reprove justly. Hence the Lord through Job: Remember the battle, and add no more to speak (Job XL). As if he said: The mind must show itself the more solicitous against the spiritual things of wickedness (Ephes. VI), the more subtle their arms prove to be. Nor ought you to become impatient over the grace of triumph, or elated over the victory over some few enemies, you who lie open to the ambushes of many and are hemmed in by many. 326BWhence Joel: What the caterpillar hath left, the locust hath eaten; and what the locust hath left, the grub hath eaten; and what the grub hath left, the rust hath eaten. There follows:

ALLEGORICALLY. Awake, ye that are drunk, and weep. Howl, all ye that drink wine in sweetness, for it is perished from the mouth. As if diecret: The day of perdition is at hand, and the times of temptation hasten to be present. Awake, therefore, from the sumno of deadly negligence, from the bed of carnal concupiscence, because you are made drunk with the prosperity of a passing pleasure; pour out the tears of compunction, utter the howl of confession, you who burn with the wine of a passing delight. For it is perished, he says, from your mouth. Hence James: Let the brother of low degree glory in his exaltation, and the rich in his lowness, for 326Che shall pass away as the flower of the grass. For the sun is risen with a burning heat, and hath dried up the grass; and its flower is fallen; and the beauty of its countenance hath perished; so also shall the rich man wither away in his ways (Jac. I). Awake, unto penance; weep, unto pardon; howl, unto grace, you who drink wine in the sweetness of a passing pleasure, you who are made drunk with the glory of a momentary vanity; because it is written: They have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands (Psal. LXXV). There follows: For it is perished from your mouth. Hence James: Go to, he says, now, ye rich men, weep, howling in your miseries which shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is rusted: and their rust shall be for a testimony 326Dagainst you; and shall eat your flesh like fire. Ye have treasured up indeed for yourselves wrath in the last days (Jac. V). The wine, I say, is perished from your mouth, because it is written: For laughter shall be mingled with sorrow, and mourning taketh hold of the end of joy (Prov. XIV). Whence there follows: For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number. Their teeth are as the teeth of a lion; and its molars as a lion's whelp. It hath laid my vineyard into a desert, and hath barked my fig tree. Stripping it bare it hath despoiled it, and cast it away: its branches are made white. That nation is the throng of iniquity, the multitude of superfluity, the troop of curiosity, the cohort of pleasure, the people of vanity. Strong is that nation in the storming of the virtues, without number in the persistence of temptations; strong 327Ait is by the victory of wickedness without number, by the insistence of suggestion.

The lion is the devil, and his teeth are the depraved motions of the soul; the molars, consent; the whelps, acts; the land is the soul: which is also a fig tree by the sweetness of heavenly contemplation. Or it is a land by the humility of penance, a vineyard by the subtlety of understanding, a fig tree by the sweetness of eminent grace. Or it is a land by the rigor of abstinence, a vineyard by the fervor of justice, a fig tree by the sweetness of heavenly wisdom. But the aforesaid nation barked it, stripped it, cast it away. It barked it in act, stripped it in sense, cast it away in affection. In the act of uprightness, in the sense of honorableness, in the affection of goodness. Or in the act of justice, in the sense of continence, in the affection of mercy. The branches are the desires of the soul, by which it is stretched out as far as 327Bworks: which are made white when they do not lose the native color of virtue. There follows:

Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of thy youth. The sacrifice and the libation is perished from the house of the Lord. The priests, the ministers of the Lord, have mourned. The country is laid waste. The ground hath mourned, for the wheat is destroyed. The wine is confounded, and the oil hath languished. The husbandmen are confounded, and the vinedressers have howled over the corn and the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished. The vineyard is confounded, and the fig tree hath languished. The pomegranate, and the palm tree, and the apple tree, and all the trees of the field are withered, because joy is confounded from the sons of men. HISTORICALLY. He names the Synagogue a virgin, on account of the faith of the one God, which she received. But the nations were harlots and fornicators, on account of the varied worship of idolatry. 327CThis Synagogue, namely, he invites to lamentation and to sackcloth over the husband of her youth: because, namely, before the multitude of the disaster, and before the fury of the enemy's devastation, the rite of the ceremonies and the worship of the law ceased. For the worship of the law was the Synagogue's husband. Whence the Apostle: The woman is bound to the law of her husband as long as her husband liveth. But if he be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband (I Cor. VII). The Synagogue too, until Christ, held the worship of the law as a debt. Whence Christ himself: The law and the prophets until John (Matth. I). But at the coming of Christ she hears: If you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing (Galat. V).

ALLEGORICALLY. He calls the Church a virgin, on account of the faith of the one God and the integrity of the sacraments. A virgin 327Dis the Church, a virgin is her husband Christ. Who is deservedly called the husband of her youth, because it is thus read of him in Jeremiah: The Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth. A woman shall compass a man (Jer. XXXI), and that other place: A man of sorrows, and acquainted with bearing infirmity (Isa. LIII). Likewise in Isaiah, in the person of the Father: I, he says, am the Lord calling a bird from the east, and from a far country the man of my own will (Isai. XLVI). The husband, assuredly, of her youth. Whence the bride in the Canticles: I am, she says, my beloved's, and his turning is toward me (Cant. VII). As if she said: As I alone am his, so he alone is mine; and as I am his alone, so he is mine only. This virgin is called forth to lamentation and to sackcloth over the husband of her youth, because on account of the misfortunes contained below the Church is worthily warned to weep. For, 328Asins requiring it, the order, the state, the splendor, the worship of the Church is neglected, altered, deformed, darkened. The order of the precepts, the state of the counsels, the splendor of the judgments, the worship of the sacraments. The order through negligence or heedlessness, the state through concupiscence, the splendor through avarice, the worship through irreverence. Whence the Church is most worthily incited through Joel to lamentation over the contempt of her husband: Lament, he says, like a virgin girded with sackcloth over the husband of thy youth, for the sacrifice and the libation is perished from the house of the Lord. That is called a sacrifice which is offered of a solid thing, and a libation what is of a liquid. By these the sacraments of the Church are designated, which are handled partly in a solid, partly in a liquid. But both perish from the house of the Lord: not in substance, but in reverence, 328Bbecause, with the malice of the vices prevailing, one is scarcely found in the Church who worthily handles or receives the sacraments. Whence there follows also: The priests, the ministers of the Lord, have mourned. They are called priests, because they give the sacraments; ministers, because they minister the word of life. The priests mourn the contempt of their subjects in the precepts, or their disobedience, and also the irreverence toward themselves in the sacraments, which they justly deserve. Hence the Lord through Malachi: Behold, he says, I come to you, O priests, that despise my name, and offer polluted bread upon my altar, and say: Wherein have we polluted thee? (Matth. I.) In that ye say (that is, ye cause it to be said) the table of the Lord is polluted. If therefore, since thou art a minister and a priest, and restest in the law, and gloriest in God, and knowest his will, and approvest the more profitable things, being instructed 328Cby the law, thou art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, having the form of knowledge and of truth in the law. Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest not thyself? Thou that sayest men should not steal, stealest. Thou that preachest men should not commit adultery, committest adultery. Thou that abhorrest idols, committest sacrilege. Thou that gloriest in the law, by transgression of the law dishonorest God. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you (Rom. II). Hence Jeremiah: From the priests, he says, iniquity is gone forth (Jer. XXIII). And Sophonias: The priests, he says, have polluted thy sanctuary; they have done unjustly against the law (Sophon. III). And Malachi: But you, he says, have departed out of the way, and have caused very many to stumble at the law; and 328Dyou have made void my covenant, saith the Lord (Malach. II). Behold their depraved deservings. There follows concerning their mourning and their irreverence, of which the Lord through Malachi: I will send, he says, want upon you, and I will curse your blessings, and I will curse them, because you have not laid it to heart (ibid.). Likewise through the same: Behold, I, he says, will cast the arm at you, and I will scatter upon your face the dung of your solemnities (ibid.). Likewise the same: Wherefore, he says, I have made you contemptible, and base before all people, as you have not kept my ways, and have accepted persons in the law (ibid.). There follows:

The country is laid waste, the ground hath mourned, for the wheat is destroyed. The wine is confounded, and the oil hath languished. The husbandmen are confounded, the vinedressers have howled 329Aover the corn and the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished. The vineyard is confounded, and the fig tree hath languished. The pomegranate, and the palm tree, and the apple tree, and all the trees of the field are withered. The country of the Church is the breadth of obedience; the ground, the humility of penance; the wheat, the soundness of teaching; the wine, the subtlety of spiritual understanding; the husbandmen and the vinedressers, the priests and the preachers. But they are called husbandmen because of the shaping of morals, vinedressers because of the gladness of eternal things which they pour into the minds of their hearers; husbandmen, because they shape men toward the action of justice; vinedressers, because they stir up the souls of their hearers to the love of wisdom; or husbandmen, because by their teaching they overturn earthly works and desires; vinedressers, because they promise spiritual gifts, and bring the gladness of eternal things into the minds of their hearers 329B. The barley is plain and historical teaching; the harvest for the fields, the fertile simplicity of good works; the vineyard, the abundance of divine knowledge; the fig tree, the sweetness of contemplation and the pleasantness of eternal things. The pomegranate is the fervor of martyrdom; the palm, contempt of the world; the plain apple, the work of faith; all the other trees are the works of penance or of mercy. But hastening on to other matters we leave off fitting each thing to its own place: which, as easy and useful, we leave to the reader's exercise. There follows:

Because joy is confounded from the sons of men. Deservedly is joy said to be confounded from the failure of the things preceding: because from the want of them the people is endangered, the priests are despised, the churches are made weak.

329CIt is also to be known that joy is divided in four ways. For there is a joy of iniquity, one of vanity, one of charity, one of felicity. Of the first it is read: Who are glad when they have done evil, and rejoice in most wicked things (Prov. II). Of the second: They take the timbrel and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ (Job XXI). Of the third: The saints shall rejoice in glory; they shall be joyful in their beds (Psal. CXLIX). Of the fourth: Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord; they shall praise thee for ever and ever (Psal. LXXXIII). The joy of charity, therefore, and the reward of felicity is confounded from the sons of men: because, when the aforesaid virtues fail, where the knowledge of truth and the love of virtue do not go before, merits ceasing, no rewards of salvation follow either here or in the 329Dtime to come.

Tropologically, however, those things which we have said allegorically of the Church we can interpret of the state of the soul. For the soul is a virgin by the condition of nature: a virgin by the privilege of grace, a virgin also by the reward of glory. Disordered concupiscence indeed makes the soul a harlot: manly penance restores chastity to her: wise innocence, virginity. For the soul is as it were chaste while, through the works and the affection of justice, she has entered upon the torment and the fear of penance, and yet is not yet lifted up to the summit of innocence. The soul, then, is a fornicatress in the brothel: a wife in the courtyard, continent in the house: a virgin in the bridal chamber. In the first her concupiscence is set forth: in the second she does the works of penance: in the third, lamenting her husband, she is moved with the desire of justice: 330Ain the fourth she is delighted with the virginal embraces and kisses of wisdom. The soul, then, is a fornicatress through the iniquity of concupiscence: chaste through the humility of continence: continent through the purity of justice: a virgin through the sublimity of contemplation. The husband of her youth is Christ, the espouser of virginity. But because she departed from him through the vice of depraved concupiscence, she is warned to return to him through the mourning, and the works, and the habit of penance. And this is what he says: Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth, etc.

The sacrifice is the mortification of the flesh: the libation, the weeping of compunction: the country, the serenity of conscience: the ground, the humility of self-knowledge. The wheat, the love of justice: the wine, the fervor of wisdom: the oil, the odor of mercy: the fig tree, the sweetness and pleasantness of contemplative 330Bgladness. The barley, the abjectness of penance. The husbandmen, the groanings and motions of contrition. The vinedressers, the desires of compunction and the sighs of contemplation. The palm, contempt of earthly things. The pomegranate, the ardor and thirst for the rewards. The plain apple, good affection. The other trees are the desires of the remaining virtues: or rather their works and advances. When these are lost, joy is confounded; when they are possessed, an ordered and glorious reward is appointed. There follows:

Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar. Go in: lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God, for the sacrifice and the libation is perished from the house of your verstri God. Sanctify a fast: call an assembly. Gather together the ancients, all the inhabitants of the land into the house of your God: and cry ye to the Lord. Ah, Ah, Ah, for the day: 330Cbecause the day of the Lord is near, and it shall come like destruction from the mighty. Truly the water is dark in the clouds of the air (Psal. XVII), because knowledge is hidden in the prophets. The Lord indeed made darkness his hiding place: because he hedged the prophetic utterance, in which food lies hidden from many, about with great and many obscurities of words and with wrappings of speech. Behold, Joel pursues the order of the calamity with a wonderful artifice of speaking, and with a polished and colored kind of oration strives elegantly to move the judge. For first from the manner and the order of the misfortune: then from the dignity, and the habit, and the order of supplicating, he leans upon the remedy of mercy. The order of the misfortune is this. For first he shows the things lacking sense laid waste, then the things having sense only afflicted 330Dthen the things using reason led captive: namely, that the order of mercy may accompany the order of calamity: first sparing the condition: secondly sensuality: thirdly reason, To the condition as creator, to sensuality as ordainer, to reason as saviour. First to nature, secondly to glory, thirdly to grace. First sparing, lest he corrupt nature; secondly, lest he blot out the form; thirdly, lest he withdraw grace. As if he said: Justly do we make supplication to thee, O Lord, for nature, because thou didst create it: justly for the form, because thou didst form it with senses: justly for grace, because thou didst freely enlighten it with reason. Preserve therefore, O Lord, in the rational creature the grace of virtue and the light of reason. guard in the sensual the gift of form and the habit of composition. Preserve in the natural the work and the safeguard of its founding.

331AIn the manner of supplicating also, he uses the dignity of virgins, the order of priests, the habit of penitents: namely, that both the servant may move the Lord by the humility of penance, and the priest may move God by the reverence of holiness, and the virgin bride may move her husband by the affection and the union of wedlock, unto pardon, unto grace, unto glory. The servant supplicates for pardon: the priest for grace: the bride for glory. For the pardon of sins, for the grace of gifts, for the glory of rewards. And this is the most perfect kind of supplication: in which supplication is made for the driving off of infirmity, for the restoration of health, for the preservation of liberty — namely, that he may apply a remedy to the disease, a guard to the gift, a protection to the good. This we have said by way of digression; now let us return to the exposition of the letter.

331BHISTORICALLY. Let him show the aforesaid misfortune under another type of words. He calls together the priests, the ancients and the inhabitants of the land to lamentation, and sackcloth, and fasting: if perhaps God may be turned, and pardon.

ALLEGORICALLY. He signifies the spiritual misfortunes and losses of the Church: showing in her the failure of religion, the contempt of holiness, and the peril of order. Whence he first invites the priests to penance: through whose negligence especially both the worship of justice, and the rigor of discipline, and the form of teaching, and the face of the Church have fallen into irreverence. Whence the people also, running about through the various lurking places of the vices, has perished. Whence also Jeremiah: The kings of the earth did not believe, nor the inhabitants of the city, that the adversary and the enemy should enter in by the gates of Jerusalem. For the sins of her prophets, 331Cand the iniquities of her priests, who have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her. They have wandered as blind men, they are defiled with blood (Thren. IV).

Gird yourselves, he says, and lament, ye priests. Since mention of girding has brought itself in, let us see what division can be made out of it. For in the divine utterance we read of some as girded, of not a few as girded about: and of certain as girded about the loins, but of others with a golden girdle at the breasts. Humble penance makes men girt up; a manly one, girded; and constant obedience, perfect patience, girded about. Girded about the loins, the continence of the body, or holiness; about the breasts with a golden girdle, the perfect cleanness of the inner man, or divine knowledge. This is the order of perfect 331Dconversion. This is the rite of devout religion: that first the perverse man turn back through humble penance: then that the adverse man be converted to obedience: thereafter that the converted man ascend to the splendor of holiness: at last that, constant and patient, he fly up to purity of mind, to the summit of heavenly wisdom. Gird yourselves therefore and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar. Go in and lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the sacrifice and the libation is perished from the house of your God. Here is handed down the order of perfect penance, by which the priests are commanded to return to the state of obedience. For three things indeed are necessary to perfect penance: namely, compunction of mind, confession of mouth, mortification of flesh. Compunction for offenses, confession of sins, mortification of vices. Compunction 332Afor vanity, confession of iniquity, mortification of superfluity. These things the prophet designates in the present page, referring the lamentation to compunction, the howling to confession, the sackcloth to mortification. But in that he commands them to go into the sackcloth, he hints that in the mortification of the flesh one ought not to pour oneself out at random, but that our reasonable service should be made very profitable. Hence the Apostle also: I beseech, he says, you by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service (Rom. XII). And so one enters into the sackcloth as often as the flesh is mortified purely, devoutly, discreetly. He does not enter the sackcloth, but unstitches the sackcloth, as often as anyone, exceeding measure, torments and wears down his flesh. He does not go into the sackcloth, but anoints the sackcloth, who unlawfully pampers the flesh 332Band cultivates its desires. But whoever devoutly embraces the yoke of abstinence goes into the sackcloth. Whoever delights in the mortification of the flesh lies in the sackcloth. Whoever pursues abstinence as forced labor is tormented in the sackcloth. The house of God is the Church: the sacrifice and the libation are the twin sacraments. The sacrifice pertains to those things which are made of a solid: the libation to those which are made of a liquid. Solid are those things which pertain to oblations, whether spiritual or bodily. Liquid, to baptism and the anointings. Or the sacrifice pertains to action, the libation to contemplation. For in action there is affliction and anxiety: in contemplation sweetness and pleasantness. In the sacrifice of action a man is wholesomely afflicted. In the libation of contemplation 332Cthe soul is happily soothed and sweetly refreshed. There follows:

Sanctify a fast, call an assembly. Gather together the ancients, all the inhabitants of the land into the house of your God: and cry ye to the Lord: Ah, Ah, Ah, for the day: because the day of the Lord is near, and it shall come like destruction from the mighty. After the priests are purged through penance and set in order through obedience, they rightly call the assembly to the Church, they fittingly gather the ancients and the inhabitants of the land to wring out pardon, to appease the wrath of the judge on high, to obtain mercy — because it is written: He that stoppeth his ear that he may not hear the law, his prayer shall be an abomination (Prov. XXVIII). Whence it is said also elsewhere: Cease to do perversely, learn to do well, seek judgment, 332Drelieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow: and come, and accuse me, saith the Lord (Isa. I).

Behold, reader, the order of obtaining mercy, of importuning the divine clemency: the manner of going to the throne of grace. For first it is to sanctify a fast: afterward to call an assembly: then to gather the ancients and the people: then to cry to the Lord in common. The Saviour shows us how to sanctify a fast, saying: But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face (Matth. VI). In the face, operation; in the washing, compunction; in the anointing, compassion; in the head, the devotion of the mind. All these things the sanctification of the fast requires: namely, that compunction purify the abstinence, that compassion order it, that devotion sustain it, that operation shape it. Compunction 333Afor oneself, compassion for one's neighbor, devotion toward God. But action refers its business to the one or the other. The assembly is properly of the wise. The ancients are the prudent. The inhabitants of the land are the searchers of the law. The cry to the Lord is the supplication for a remedy against the misfortune. But what manner of supplication ought to be made, the Prophet shows in the present passage, saying: Cry ye to the Lord: Ah, ah, ah, for the day: because the day of the Lord is near. We ought not to press down in silence what we have received from a certain Jew, eloquent and skilled after the ditties of Gamaliel. For he says: Joel, foreseeing the imminent ruin of the captivity to come, and striving to extinguish the onset of the judge on high by the affection of one lamenting ( sic ), calling back past things to memory, busies himself to circumvent the judge and hastens to bend him to mercy, saying: Ah, ah, ah, for the day; 333Bbecause the day of the Lord is near. Three times he set down Ah, because there were three misfortunes especially of the Jewish people. The first when they were held by the Egyptians: the second when by the Assyrians: the third when by the Babylonians. Ah is the interjection of one lamenting, and of one setting forth wondrously a pitiable deed. He says therefore: Ah, Israel went into Egypt; Jacob was a sojourner in the land of Cham (Psal. CIV). Ah, as whirlwinds come from the southwest, they come from the desert: they come from a horrible land (Isa. XXI). Ah, a great eagle of great wings; with a long stretch of limbs, full of feathers and of variety, came to Libanus and took away the marrow of the cedar (Ezech. XVII). As if he said: Ah, we gave the hand to Egypt, and thence sorrow. Ah, and to the Assyrians, that we might be filled with bread, and thence grief. Ah, the 333CLord hath cast off his altar, and hath cursed his sanctuary (Psal. LXXVI), and thence terror. As if he said: Ah, will God cast off for ever, or will he add no more that he should again be more favorable? Ah, how long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psal. XII.) Ah, thou arising, O Lord, wilt have mercy on Sion, because it is time to have mercy on her, for the time is come (Psal. CII).

Otherwise, he set down Ah three times: because there are also three evils: ignorance, concupiscence, and misery. The transgression of the natural law brought in ignorance. The transgression of the written law propagated disordered concupiscence. The contempt of prophecy furnished misery. Let it be said, therefore: Ah, the natural law was transgressed: thence sorrow, but it was avenged in that Egyptian captivity. Ah, the written law was transgressed, thence grief: 333Dbut it was avenged in that captivity, the Assyrian. Ah, prophecy is despised, thence terror: but this too thou dost appoint to avenge, by the Babylonian captivity. Ah, we fell into misery, which thou hast avenged. Ah, we fell down into concupiscence, which thou hast punished. Ah, we shall fall into a dreadful misery, which thou hast appointed.

Otherwise, what we have said about the threefold captivity we can refer to the last. For there were three most wretched misfortunes of the Babylonian captivity: namely, the overthrow of the temple, the destruction of the city, the deportation of the people. As if he said: Ah, thy people shall be led in deportation into captivity: but have mercy, O Lord, upon thy people, upon whom thy name is invoked (Eccles. XXXVI), and upon Israel, whom thou hast made equal to thy firstborn. Ah, the city is destructur; but have mercy 334Aupon the city of thy sanctification, Jerusalem, the city of thy rest. Ah, the temple shall be overthrown: But hear, O Lord, the hymn (III Reg. VIII), and the prayer which thy servants pray before thee this day: that thy eyes may be open (ibid.) upon this house day and night. These things are said historically.

But allegorically they can be expounded otherwise. For Joel, foreseeing the ruin of his people at the coming of Jesus Christ, laments in compassion: and lamenting exhorts them to be on their guard, saying: Ah, ah, ah, for the day, because the day of the Lord is near: and it shall come like destruction from the mighty. As if he said: Ah, he shall come who shall turn away impiety from Jacob, and shall take away the yoke from Israel. Ah. And there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we saw him, and there was no sightliness (Isai. LIII). Ah. And his face was as it were hidden 334Band despised. Whence neither did we esteem him. Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows (ibid.). Ah. And we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and humbled (ibid.). Ah, because we saw and did not know; Ah, because we heard and despised. Ah, because we received him working good things and slew him praying for us. We heard the words, we received the benefits, we saw the miracles. But Ah, we despised the words. Ah, we were ungrateful for the benefits. Ah, we disparaged the miracles. We heard him teaching on the mountain: but Ah, we passed these things by with a deaf ear: thence sorrow. We saw him feeding the crowds beside the sea, but Ah, we cared not: thence grief. We saw him hanging on the cross: 334Cbut Ah, we despised him, and thence terror. We heard his teaching, we received his life, we saw his death. But his teaching enlightened our blindness, Ah, which we did not obey. His life shaped ours, Ah, which we did not receive. His death took our death captive, Ah, which we despised, nay rather which we wrought.

The day, etc. According to the laws of allegory, it signifies the time of the incarnation of the Word, and the day of the Lord represents that time: which is rightly called the Lord's, because then the judgment of the world was made, according to that word of the Gospel: Now is the judgment of the world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out (Joan. XII). The day of the Lord is taken in three ways: namely, either the time of the incarnation, or the day of a man's death, or the day of the last examination. 334DWhich is rightly called the Lord's alone: because his power alone is known therein; because his wisdom in the first makes the examination of judgment, in the second discerns merit, in the third varies the reward. There follows:

Is not your food perished before your eyes: joy and gladness from the house of your God? The beasts have rotted in their dung. The barns are demolished: the pledges are scattered: because the wheat is confounded. Why hath the beast groaned: have the herds of cattle lowed? Because there is no pasture for them. Yea, and the flocks of the cattle [pastorum vel porcorum] are perished. To thee, O Lord, will I cry: because fire hath devoured the beautiful places of the wilderness: and a flame hath burnt all the trees of the country. Yea, and the beasts of the field have looked up to thee, as a threshing floor thirsting for rain, because 335Aall the fountains of waters are dried up, and fire hath devoured the beautiful places of the wilderness. After the manner of the supplication itself has been handed down, he attaches the cause of the sorrow, that, while many and great losses lie open, the supplication may be extended devout and enkindled. And the losses are these: the foul rotting of the beasts; the anxiety of the animals; the perishing of the cattle; the demolition of the barns; the scattering of the storehouses; the emptying of the pasture. And the cause is this: the burning up of the beautiful places, the kindling of the trees, the drying up of the fountains. As therefore bodily foods are agreed to be of three kinds, so also are spiritual ones. For some are for health, and not for strength: some for strength, and not for health: and not a few for both health and strength. From the first is born an elegant and fitting form: from the second 335Ba manly and constant boldness: from the third the beauty of form and the fruitfulness of power. But since we have touched upon carnal things, now let us return to spiritual ones. For there are four: namely, precepts, exercises, virtues, charisms. Now the precepts are for health: the exercises for strength: the virtues for form: the charisms for boldness. Joy is about passing things: gladness about eternal ones. But these foods, which are gladness and joy, have perished from the house of God, that is, from the Church, because the precepts are trodden underfoot, the virtues are despised, the exercises are perished, the charisms have withdrawn. Whence the Saviour: The Son of man coming, thinkest thou he shall find faith upon earth? (Luc. XVIII.) Likewise the same: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests: but the Son 335Cof Man hath not where to lay his head (Luc. IX). And Paul: In the last, he says, times there shall be men lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful: wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, lovers of pleasures more than of God: having indeed an appearance of godliness, but denying the power thereof (II Tim. III). The beasts are the lustful, the herds the curious, the swine [pecora] the gluttonous, the animals the wanton and the greedy. The barns, the authentic writings. The storehouses, the volumes of the expositors. The pastures, the passions and deeds of the saints, in which are found both the form of life and examples of decency of manners. The wheat is spiritual teaching: the dung is vices and sins. 335DBut hastening to other things I commit the fitting of each item to the reader's wit. There follows: To thee, O Lord, will I cry, because fire hath devoured the beautiful places of the wilderness, etc. The prophet makes the fire an occasion for turning to the Lord, showing the cause of all the aforesaid unfitting things: namely, that while the examples of the virtues cease, while the teaching of life falls silent, while the fervor of religion grows lukewarm, while the rigor of perfection grows numb, virtue flees, the vices succeeding; the light of knowledge is quenched, darkness arising; the beauty of religion turns black, negligences increasing; in the mind joy and gladness are punished with the ruin of penalties, anguishes swarming up. Hence Isaiah: Therefore, he says, is my people led away captive: because they had not knowledge. Their nobles have perished with famine, and their multitude was dried up with thirst. 336ATherefore hath hell enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds: and their strong ones, and their people, and their high and glorious ones shall go down into it (Isai. V).

But allegorically, the field is the secular life; the country, the ecclesiastical but common life; the wilderness, the perfection of religion: the beautiful places of the wilderness are the most adorned hearts of monks and anchorites; the trees of the country, the ranks of the prelates of the Church: the beasts, the simple and the unlettered the fountains of waters; the teachers of the peoples a fire, covetousness, a flame, lust. There follows:

JOEL. XI. Blow ye the trumpet in Sion: howl in my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land be troubled: because the day of the Lord cometh, because the day of darkness 336Band of gloom is near, a day of cloud and of whirlwind. As the morning spread upon the mountains, a people numerous and strong, etc. After the invocation and the manifold setting forth of the misfortune, the prophet returns to the exhortation of the people, showing the greatness of the disaster to come, of the captivity at hand, of the imminent destruction: namely, that he may move the people to the terror of the divine judgment, may wholesomely move them to the sorrow of compunction, may usefully gird them to the love of obedience. And he does this from the multitude of the disaster, from the quality of the enemy, from the kind of victory, from the weight of the misery, from the ease of the triumph, from the zeal of evil, from the fear of the besieged princes and the cowardice of the beleaguered people. But to fit each thing to its own place is not for a mind hastening to the explanation of what follows. 336CWherefore we leave these things, as also the others, to the reader's exercise. The prophet therefore exhorts them, hyperbolically, to sing in Sion, to howl in the holy mountain, and all the inhabitants of the land to be seized with fear. He exhorts them, I say, all in common to be prostrated at the feet of the divine judgments, if in some way God may look down from his prepared dwelling upon the sons of men: if at some time he may turn the storm into a breeze, if at length he may lead them back from the shipwreck of captivity to the harbor of consolation, saying: Blow ye the trumpet in Sion, etc. By Sion understand the citadel of the temple: by the mountain, the city: by the land, the suburbs. In Sion, the king and the princes: in the temple, the prophets and the priests: in the land, the people and the lower ranks. The day of the Lord, the coming of the army of Babylon. Which is deservedly 336Dcalled the Lord's, since by the divine nod it avenges the injury done to the Lord through the disobedience of the people. On which day darkness and gloom, cloud and whirlwind are inflicted upon the Jewish people. Darkness, because they did not know his counsel: gloom, because they did not fear his judgment: cloud, because they did not deserve his help: whirlwind, because, provoking him wickedly, they fell into the shipwreck of so great a disaster. Which day comes as the morning spread upon the mountains: because they did not contemplate God's counsel and prudence, and in the time of their blindness, suddenly forestalled by the straits of necessity, they justly fell: losing the foresight of affairs.

But it must be known that Joel in the present passage speaks historically of the Babylonian captivity: which is plainly gathered from the words that follow. For he says:

337AAs the morning spread upon the mountains, a people numerous and strong. The like to it hath not been from the beginning, and after it there shall not be, even unto the year of generation and generation. Before its face a devouring fire, and after with a burning flame. The land is before it as a garden of pleasure; and behind it the solitude of a wilderness: neither is there any that can escape it. Their appearance is as the appearance of horses: and they shall run like horsemen. Like the noise of chariots they shall leap upon the tops of the mountains: like the noise of a flame of fire devouring the stubble: as a strong people prepared for battle. At its face the peoples shall be tormented: all faces shall be brought into a pot. They shall run like valiant men: like men of war they shall scale the wall. The men shall march in their own ways: and they shall not turn aside from their paths. No one 337Bshall press upon his brother; every one shall walk in his own track. Yea, and they shall eadent through the windows, and shall not be broken; they shall enter the city; they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up the houses; they shall come in at the windows like a thief. This is by no means rightly understood of the Egyptian servitude or the Assyrian captivity. For in those the people only is taken captive; but in this, namely the Babylonian, the whole country is laid waste; the ground is wholly desolated; the city is destroyed; the kingdom is broken up; the temple is overthrown from the foundations; the priesthood is taken out of the midst. And Joel diligently pursues the order of the Babylonian army, and its manner and rite and business, commending it from its multitude, from its strength, from the monstrousness of its cruelty, from the onset of its devastation, from the ferocity of its pride, from the belt of its glorious 337Cwarfare, from the prudence of its watchfulness, from the terror of its savage rule, from the subjection of its enemies, from the fear and dread of those who succumb, from the ease of its victory, from the strength of its constancy, from the foresight of its concord, from the guarding of itself, from the guarding of its business, from the despoiling of the enemy. There follows:

At its face the earth trembled; the heavens also were moved. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. The earth is the people; the heavens, the priests and the just; the sun, the king; the moon, justice; the stars, the prophets. At its face, he says, the earth trembled; because, when the misery of the captivity came on, both prophecy fell silent, and the royal majesty perished, and the worship of justice vanished, and the people, oppressed by misfortune, sank down in fear. 337DThere follows:

And the Lord hath uttered his voice before the face of his army; because his camps are exceeding many; because they are strong and execute his word. ALLEGORICALLY. The voice of the Lord, the inspiration of the people: the face, the army was, order, worship, splendor, rite, form, manner. The order of the standards, the worship of the gods, the splendor of the arms, the rite of their affairs, the form of their governance, the manner of their march. Thence strong, thence executing his word. These things we have tasted beforehand historically; now let us discuss them allegorically. Certain men refer that captivity to the last judgment, interpreting that ruin comes about in it on account of the aforesaid crimes. And these things seem to be confirmed by the Psalmist saying: He sent upon them the wrath of his indignation, indignation, and wrath, and tribulation, sendings in by 338Aevil angels (Psal. LXXVII). But how certain things serve this understanding I do not see. For how, in that examination, shall the appearance of them, namely of the demons, be as the appearance of horses? and how shall they run like horsemen? how shall they leap upon the tops of the mountains? how shall they scale the wall like men of war, since even of the good angels it is read against them: When he shall be taken away, says Job speaking of the apostate angel, the angels shall fear, and being terrified shall be purified? (Job XLI). But we leave the obscurity of this explanation to a more perceptive wit, hammering out perhaps another, clearer and more nearly following the letter, without prejudice to a better opinion. Joel the prophet, then, foreseeing with the eye of prophecy the spiritual Babylonian, laying waste the whole world tyrannically, 338Blording it cruelly over the human race, swallowing up the river, is not unmanned, but has confidence that the Jordan may flow into his mouth. He sees the Gentile people devoted to idols, defrauded of the grace of prophecy, widowed of the privilege of grace. He contemplates also the coming of Christ, the incarnation of the Word, the sending of the Paraclete, the preaching of the apostles, the corner of the two peoples, the taking up of the Gentile people, and of the smallest part of the Jewish, but the contempt of the greater remnant. For the grace, therefore, of the Jewish part taken up, he exhorts them to sound the trumpet in Sion; for the wrath against the reprobate remnant, to howl in the mountain, saying: Blow ye the trumpet in Sion: howl in my holy mountain. But because it is written: In that day there shall be two in the field, in the bed, at the mill: one shall be taken, and the other left 338C(Matth. XXIV). He commands those to be taken up to sound the trumpet in Sion, and those to be left to howl in the holy mountain. Sion is the Church, set as a watchtower at the coming of her bridegroom. The holy mountain is Christ, of whom the Psalmographer: The mountain in which it hath well pleased God to dwell (Psal. LXVII). Some, then, sing, and some howl, in this Emmanuel. Whence Simeon: Behold, this one is set for the ruin, and for the resurrection of many in Israel (Luc. II). But these things are said of the Jewish people. There follows concerning the Gentile: Let all the inhabitants of the land be troubled, etc. The Gentiles are deservedly called the inhabitants of the land, because they sought earthly things only, and loved earthly things only. Of whom the Lord through the Psalmist: But they, he says, have sought my soul 338Din vain; they shall go into the lower parts of the earth, they shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes (Psal. LXII). Further, of the Gentiles, at Christ's coming, some were troubled unto salvation, but others unto death. For there is a certain confusion that brings death, and there is a confusion that brings glory. Of those troubled unto salvation it is read in the psalm: They themselves seeing it so wondered, they were troubled, they were moved: trembling took hold of them (Psal. XLVII). Of those troubled unto death, Isaiah: With breaking, he says, shall the earth be broken; with crushing shall the earth be crushed, with commotion shall the earth be shaken, with tossing shall the earth be tossed like a drunken man, and it shall be taken away as the tent of one night (Isai. XXIV).

The day of the Lord is the coming of Christ. And this was a day of darkness to the reprobate Gentiles, and of gloom 339Ato the heretics, and of whirlwind to the faithless Jews, and of cloud to Catholics. The Gentiles indeed, blinded, not being able to attain the power of the holy sacrament by the incarnation of the Word, used to say: Mary either bore a child, or she did not. If she bore, she lay with a man. If she lay with a man, that which was born came forth of a sinful lump. But what is born of a sinful lump has succumbed to sin. And since this does not fall upon God, the son of Mary was not God. Likewise Avicenna: Two contraries cannot be at once in the same thing; further, if the son of Mary is God and man, since God is impassible but man passible, and the passible and the impassible are contraries, two contraries are found at once in one. Thus, thus, O Lord, in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee (Psal. LXV). But if Mary 339Bdid not bear a child, God did not come forth a man. And if that is true, the doctrine of Christians is utterly false. These are the darknesses of the Gentiles, of which Isaiah says: Behold, the spirit of Egypt shall be broken in its bowels, and I will cast down its counsel (Isai. XIX).

Gloom also seized the heretics. For he whose sight is dimmed sees indeed the matter from afar, but does not mark the form. So also very many heretics had indeed the matter of believing, but lacked the form of faith. For some believed rightly the unity of person, but did not soundly believe in the incarnate Word the unity of substance. Others, on the contrary, soundly believed in the same a diversity of nature, but not rightly a diversity of person. Not a few believed in the divinity a unity of Deity, but an unlike power into an equal dignity. Very many believed the equality of all 339Cthings, but denied the unity of nature. Others impiously divided what is one; others madly confounded what is divided, This was the gloom of the heretics, of which the Psalmographer: And gloom under his feet (Psal. XVII), namely, because he called back not a few of the heretics through mercy from the shipwreck of faithlessness; but he permitted very many to go into destruction by a just judgment. To the Jews also the incarnation of Christ was a whirlwind. Of whom, in the voice of the Psalmist: According to, he says, the multitude of their impieties drive them out, for they have provoked thee, O Lord (Psal. V). Which indeed came to pass when the people of the Jews was partly cut down by the Romans, partly bound in chains, partly banished into exile, partly scattered most wretchedly through the whole world 339Dof lands. Further, to Catholics the incarnation of Christ was a day of cloud, which afforded them both the shade of grace, and the rain of teaching, and the sweetness of conscience, and the security of glory. Shade against the burning of temptation, rain against the dryness of baereticae perversity or persuasion, sweetness against the sting of inward reproach, security against the shipwreck of despair. He gave them rain on the mountain, he showed them shade on the cross, sweetness in the sepulchre, security in the resurrection. Whence also Isaiah: And a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for a covert from the whirlwind, and from the rain (Isai. IV).

Otherwise. There are four kinds of men: the first is of those who never believe; the second of those who believe, 340Abut scarcely and slowly; the third easily and in due season; and the fourth easily and not in due season. To the first kind the incarnation of the Word was a day of darkness; to the second a day of gloom; to the third a day of cloud; to the fourth a day of whirlwind. And this day was as the m ne spread upon the mountains. The mountains are the apostles, the morning the illumination of faith, the spreading is love working through faith. As the morning spread upon the mountains, therefore, was the coming of Christ, the incarnation of the Word, because it is written: His going forth is prepared as the dawn; and he will come to us as the early and the latter rain to the earth (Oseae. VI). Or by the mountains may be understood the powerful of this age, the philosophers of this world, whom the incarnation of the Word suddenly covered: by which the wisdom of the age was made foolish, the prudence of the world was confounded, the power of the age trodden underfoot. 340BWhence the Apostle: That which is weak of God is stronger than all men; and that which is foolish, wiser. And God hath chosen the weak things, that he might confound the strong (II Cor. I). There follows: A people numerous and strong. He calls the choir of the apostles and the Church of the newly baptized a people. But that people was numerous, not in the quantity of number, but in the dignity of merit; strong, not in the vigor of body, but in the strength of mind. Numerous, therefore, not in number, but in merit; strong, not in the onset of the flesh, but in the counsel of the mind. Numerous, because it is written: Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world (Psal. XVIII). Strong, because it is written: They went, the apostles, rejoicing from the presence of the council, because they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach 340Cfor the name of Jesus (Act. V). Numerous, whence impenetrable; strong, whence also unconquerable. There follows, in pursuing its praises: The like to it hath not been from the beginning, and after it there shall not be, even unto the years of generation and generation. Which indeed the Saviour plainly says in the Gospel, declaring: Blessed are the eyes that see what you see? for many kings and prophets have desired to see what you see, and have not seen; and to hear what you hear, and have not heard (Matth. XIII). Whose glorious life Isaiah admires, saying: Who are these that fly as clouds, and as doves to their windows? (Isai. LX.) In the dove is the simplicity of the senses, in the cloud the building up of morals. Namely, the rain of saving teaching, and the purity of conscience. In the flight, the twin wings of love, and the going out of heavenly contemplation. 340DThere follows: Before its face a devouring fire, and after it a burning flame. The devouring fire is fiery preaching consuming sins, devouring vices. The burning flame is the flashing of miracles: through which there comes about in the heart of the rebellious a wholesome burning up, and a fiery compunction. There follows: The land is before it as a garden of pleasure: and behind it the solitude of a wilderness, nor is there any that can escape it. The garden of pleasure is the land of curiosity. The garden of pleasure is the mire of welcome superfluity. The garden of pleasure is the theatre of worldly pleasure. The solitude of the wilderness is the mortification of the flesh, contempt of the world, the casting down of self. And the apostles made the garden of pleasure a solitude of the wilderness, because they reduced the vanity of that same wilderness into contempt of the world, curiosity into abasement, superfluity into mortification. 341AThere follows: Nor is there any that can escape it: because of necessity a man either, by imitating the apostolic life and teaching, earns the reward; or, by despising it, incurs punishment.

Their appearance is as the appearance of horses, and they shall run like horsemen. In the first is marked the neighing and the fervor of preaching; in the second the struggle for the faith and the labor of the encounter. There follows: Like the noise of chariots it shall leap upon the tops of the mountains, like the noise of a flame of fire devouring the stubble: as a strong people is prepared for battle. Here is briefly inserted the labor and the victory of the evangelists, who by their life, by miracles and by teaching broke the elation of the proud. The chariots are the evangelists, and the mountains the proud, the noise the preaching of faith, the flame 341Bthe miracles, the stubble sins. There follows: At its face the peoples shall be tormented; all faces shall be brought into a pot. The tormenting of the peoples is its wholesome compunction; the bringing of the faces into a pot is a man's own and sincere knowledge of himself. There follows: They shall run like valiant men, like men of war they shall scale the wall. In the first is marked the prosperity of preaching, in the second the victory of the contest, and, for the faith, the obedience of mortification. There follows: The men shall march in their own ways, and they shall not turn aside from their paths. In the first is marked the concord of the preachers, in the second the perseverance of the virtues and of faith. There follows: No one shall press upon his brother; every one shall walk in his own track. The prophet still pursues the unanimity of the apostles, and their most concordant will, who so sowed 341Cthe Gospel in the world that no one should usurp for himself another's seed. Hence the Apostle: I dare not speak of any of those things which Christ worketh not by me, unto the obedience of the Gentiles, by word, by deeds, by the virtue of signs and wonders, in the powers of the Holy Ghost, so that from Jerusalem round about as far as illyricum I have filled up the Gospel of Christ (Rom. XV). The same, in the same place: And I have so preached this Gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation (ibid.). There follows: Yea, and they shall fall through the windows, and shall not be broken. There are five windows: the dispensation of the incarnation, or the five modes of divine contemplation. The first mode of contemplation is the consideration of fault and of hell; the second, the contempt of present things and the hope of things to come; the third, 341Djudgment and the kingdom; the fourth, the state of the body and its glorification — the state, according as it will be passible or impassible; the glorification, according as it will be of ineffable beauty, or of most resplendent brightness; the fifth, of one spirit with God, which is conformity in all things. Through these windows the apostles and apostolic men wholesomely fall, when, by the devout consideration of these things, they humbly prostrate themselves before their Creator. Falling thus they are not broken, but rather are raised up and made firm, according to that word: Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled (Luc. XIV). Whence in the Apocalypse: And when, says John, those four living creatures gave glory, and honor and blessing to him that sitteth upon the throne, that liveth for ever and ever, the four 342Aand twenty ancients fell down before him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever. And they cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honor, and power (Apoc. IV), etc. There are five windows of the incarnation: namely, the nativity, the manner of life, the teaching, the resurrection, the ascension. Through which those five things which have been said about contemplation are seen. For through his nativity, sins and hell were made manifest to many. His manner of life openly taught men to despise present things and to direct their hope to eternal ones: his teaching indeed deals sufficiently with judgment and the kingdom; in the resurrection the state of the body and its glorification were shown, because as he himself rose into glory, so also do we through him; and in the ascension it was in some measure made known to us how 342Bour spirit is to be united with God. For the human body could not be lifted upward or carried across without any vehicle except through the divinity united to itself. Through these windows also apostolic men fall, because by the careful meditation of the aforesaid things they humble themselves utterly and wear down their flesh, they mortify their members while they truly and particularly desire them. But they are not broken, because in him on whom they lean kindness knows not how to injure, nor truth to deceive, nor justice to despise, nor chastity to corrupt; and in him to whom they are joined wisdom knows not how to be deceived, nor strength to be weakened, nor power to be overcome, nor eternity to be changed. There follows:

They shall enter the city, they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up the houses. The city is in this place the gathering of men assembled to 342Clive in common. The wall is the obstinacy of the mind; the houses, the consciences of individuals hardened by sins. So great will be the grace and the fortitude of the apostles and of apostolic men that they will storm even the gathering of malicious men, dissolve their obstinacy by the spirit of fortitude, and obtain the consciences of individuals, the spirit of grace and of prayers. There follows: They shall come in at the windows like a thief. The windows are in this place fear, namely of eternal punishment, sorrow for the present exile, hope of the heavenly reward, the shortness of this life, the mutability of fortune. The first looks to the west, the second to the north, the third to the east, the fourth to the south, the fifth considers the center of this world. Through these they enter 342Dstealthily the consciences of individuals, which they easily overcome while they gather the aforesaid things before the eyes of the mind. For fear pricks, sorrow drives out, hope draws, shortness urges on, the instability of fortune puts to flight; and so the mind of the newly baptized, fleeing, hastens to its homeland. There follows: At its face the earth trembled, and the heavens were moved. The earth is sinners, the heavens the just. But the earth trembled at the presence of the apostles unto penance. The just, as many as were in the world, hearing their teaching, their life, their fame, were moved, accounting their own justice as nothing. There follows: The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. The sun is the wisdom of the age; the moon, the power of this world; the stars, the sects of the philosophers; the shining of the stars, the cultivation and the fame of the sects. But the sun and the moon were darkened 343Aat the face of the apostles, because through the foolishness of God the wisdom of the age was destroyed, and through the weak thing of God the power of the world was trodden underfoot; and through the virtue of signs, through the brightness of miracles, through the naked truth of words, the composition of the colors of rhetoric was blotted out, the rhetorical splendor of discourses was darkened, the cultivation and gleam of empty sects was made void. Hence the Psalmist: Thou hast broken up the fountains and the torrents; thou hast dried up the rivers of Etham (Psal. LXXIII). By the fountains the philosophers are understood, by Etham the devil, which is interpreted strong, and his flame are the kinds of perverse sects. There follows: And the Lord hath uttered his voice before the face of his army: because his camps are exceeding many: because they are strong and execute his word. The voice of the Lord is the divine inspiration. The voice of the Lord, I say, 343Bis that heavenly unction which teacheth of all things. Of which it is said through the Psalmist: The voice of the Lord breaking the cedars. The voice of the Lord preparing the stags. The voice of the Lord coming between the flame of fire. The voice of the Lord shaking the desert (Psal. XVIII). This voice makes camps, because it joins and orders the companies of the saints. Which indeed are many, and strong, and executing his word. They are many in the dignity of their merits, strong in the virtue of signs and the power of miracles, executing his word through the obedience of his commandments, through the eminence of their exercises, through the excellence of their counsels. There follows: For the day of the Lord is great, and terrible. Because the coming of Christ magnified believers and the just; it terrified and condemned the unfaithful 343Cand the reprobate. Great indeed, because whom he predestinated, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he glorified (Rom. VIII). Terrible, because it shall be more tolerable for the Ninevites in the day of judgment than for this most wicked generation (Luc. XI). For they believed at the preaching of Jonas: and behold, more than Jonas here. There follows: Who shall bear it? For who will be able worthily to receive into himself the Founder of nature, the fountain of life, the bridegroom of grace, the coming of the Saviour? Or who will be able to bear, the weight of wrath, the burden of misery, the punishment of vengeance, the worm that dieth not; the fire that is not quenched? (Marc. IX.) There follows:

Now therefore, saith the Lord, be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning; and 343Drend your hearts, and not your garments. And be converted to the Lord your God, because he is gracious and merciful, patient, and of much mercy, and prevailing over malice. Who knoweth whether God will turn and forgive, and leave a blessing behind him, sacrifice and libation to the Lord our God. HISTORICALLY. Under the person of the Lord the prophet exhorts his people to importune the divine mercy, to beat upon the ears of the highest clemency with laments and tearful cries, saying: Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning, etc. As if he plainly said: Since the time of the captivity draws near, and the Babylonian presses on, do you then press on in supplication, apply yourselves to prayer; be converted to me, that the Babylonian may be turned back upon himself; return to 344Ame, that the enemy may be turned back. For with the holy thou wilt be holy, and with the elect elect, and with the perverse thou wilt be perverse (Psal. XVII). But allegorically, under the person of the Lord he admonishes in common every rank of the Church to flee from the wrath to come, to quench the flood of sins with the tears of penance, to appease the wrath of the judge on high with works of mercy, saying: Now therefore saith the Lord: Be converted to me, etc. As if he said: Since the day of perdition is at hand, and the times hasten to be present; since a day exceedingly terrible and great presses on; since scarcely will anyone flee from the wrath to come; since the strict judge cannot be conquered, because he is power; cannot be deceived, because he is wisdom; cannot be corrupted, because he is justice; cannot be outlasted, because he is eternal; 344Bcannot be avoided, because he is everywhere. Yet he can be entreated, because he is mercy; he can be appeased, because he is kindness; he can cleanse, because he is the fountain of grace; he can satisfy, because he is the bread of life; he can calm, because he is unction; he can adorn, because he is fullness; he can make happy and blessed, because he is beatitude. Therefore, you who are turned away, fearing his justice, be converted and flee to his mercy. From him flee to him; from the rigor of justice to the bosom of mercy. The Lord, who is to be feared, speaks: he who is truth commands that which is just, which is useful, which is honorable. Be converted, he says, to me, etc. There are four things, two evils and two goods, the one evil, the other worse, the one good, the other better. Turning away and overthrow, lo, two evils. Conversion and returning, lo, two goods. Turning away 344Cfrom God through negligence, overthrow by the Devil through malice. Conversion to God through penance, returning to him through innocence. And turning away comes about in three ways: by vanity, by pleasure, by curiosity: by the vanity of the world, by pleasure in oneself, by curiosity about one's neighbor. Overthrow also in three ways: by headlong falling, by malice, by despair: by the headlong falling of fault, by the malice of envy, by despair of pardon. But conversion comes about in three ways: by confession, by compunction, by mortification: by confession of the mouth, compunction of the mind, mortification of the flesh — namely, that in the mouth there be truth, in the mind purity, in the flesh a chaste sobriety. Returning also comes about in three ways: by devotion, by love, by contemplation: by the devotion of grace, the love of justice, the contemplation 344Dof glory. You therefore who have turned away from God through the vice of negligence, who have been overthrown and drowned in the flood of malice, be converted, he says, to me with all your heart. There is a conversion of the heart, and there is also a conversion of work. And of the conversion of the heart, one kind is with the whole heart, another is in part. But the Lord seeks that which is with the whole heart, because it suffices for salvation. But he rejects the other, which is in part, because it is feigned, and far from salvation. Hence it is written: The Holy Spirit will flee from the feigned of discipline (Sap. I). For in the heart there are three things: reason, will, memory: reason of things to come, will of things present, memory of things past. For reason seeks things to come, the will loves things present, memory retains things past. Reason enlightens, the will loves, memory preserves. When therefore reason 345Aseeks and finds the highest good, the will receives and loves it, and memory carefully keeps it and binds it more tightly; then the soul converts itself to God with its whole heart. But when reason, laid to sleep, forbears to seek heavenly things, or the lukewarm will cares not to love them, or the sluggish memory despises to guard them, then the soul becomes feigned, falling first into the vice of ignorance, secondly into the offense of negligence, thirdly into the sin of malice. In either case it is agreed that the soul is feigned, because otherwise ignorance could be driven off by the light of reason, and negligence shut out by the zeal of the will, and malice lulled to sleep by the diligence of memory. Reason, then, in seeking, brings forth instruction; the will, in embracing, love; memory, in binding fast, edification. The first brings forth the light of knowledge, the second the affection of justice, the third preserves the treasure 345Bof grace. This is the conversion of the heart which God requires. This is that which altogether suffices for salvation, There follows the conversion of work. In fasting, he says, and in weeping, and in mourning. The mourning is referred to confession, the weeping to compunction, the fasting to mortification. There follows:

And rend your hearts, and not your garments. The rending of hearts is the scattering of depraved affections. The garments are the examples of the saints, And so we are commanded to rend our hearts, but to keep our garments unharmed, because both the impure will is to be chastised and purified by the austerity of penance, and the examples of the saints are to be taken as a lesson of justice. Hence Job: Thou renewest, he says, 345Cthy witnesses against me, and multipliest thy wrath upon me, and pains war against me (Job X). Likewise the same: He shall look upon men, and shall say: I have sinned, and indeed I have offended: and I have not received as I deserved. Then shall he see the face of the Lord with jubilee, and he will render to man his justice (Job XXXIII). Of great usefulness indeed are the examples of the saints: which instruct us unto knowledge, draw us to pardon, approach [ an accendunt?] unto grace, shape us unto justice, advance us unto glory. Hincvoce in the voice of the Psalmist: He hath made a remembrance of his wonderful works (Psal. CX), etc. There follows: And be converted to the Lord your God. The Lord, he says, who is to be feared; God, who is to be loved. Your own, who is the Founder. Your own, he says, because he is the founder of nature; God, because he is the giver of grace; Lord, 345Dbecause he is the avenger of fault. There follows: Because he is gracious and merciful, patient, and much in mercy [multae misericordiae], prevailing over malice. He is gracious, bearing with the sinner's wrath; merciful, bearing with his savagery; patient, bearing with his contempt; much in mercy, bearing with his hatred; prevailing over malice, bearing with the shipwreck of his despair. Gracious, I say, because he turns the wrath of enemies into meekness; merciful, because he turns savagery into piety; patient, because he turns contempt into compunction; much in mercy, because he turns hatred into love; prevailing over malice, because he advances the abyss of despair into the grace of contemplation. These things have been set forth in the natural order; now let them be set forth in the artificial order. He is prevailing, therefore, over malice, 346Awhile he draws despair to penance; much in mercy, while he draws hatred to pardon; patient, while he draws contempt to grace; merciful, while he draws cruelty to innocence; gracious, while he draws wrath and rancor to the glory of kisses. There follows: Who knoweth whether he will turn, and forgive, and leave a blessing behind him? Who, in this place does not signify doubt, but charity. As if he said: Who knoweth whether a man will be converted, and God forgive? Only let the conversion go first, and no delay of pardon follows. But of the day and hour of conversion no one knoweth but the Son alone, and he to whom the Son shall be willing to reveal it. For the Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest his voice, but thou knowest not whence he cometh, or whither he goeth (Joan. III). There follows: And leave a blessing behind him. There are three kinds 346Bof divine blessing: the first he gives before him; the second he ministers beside him; the third he leaves behind him. There are also three kinds of good men: the first are the innocent; the second those who at once come to themselves again; the third those who at length repent. The innocent are those who always live without crime, who stand constantly before God, who walk continually in his presence. Those who at once come to themselves again are those who indeed fall, but soon the divine hand is stretched out to them, and they at once rise again. Those who at length repent are those who, resting long in their own dregs, at length by the divine nod rise up to penance. To the innocent the Lord gives the blessing before him; to those who at once come to themselves again, he ministers it beside him; to those who at length repent, he leaves it behind him. To the innocent 346Che gives the firstfruits of the blessing; to those who at once come to themselves again, its riches; to those who at length repent, its leavings. There follows: Sacrifice and libation to the Lord our God. These are the leavings of the blessing, namely the works of sacrifice and of libation. The sacrifice looks to the mortification of the flesh, the libation to the compunction of the mind. But because we have committed the wicked works of the flesh, because we have followed the unlawful joys of the mind, let us render contraries to contraries, so that we may both extinguish the works of the flesh through mortification, and the unlawful joys through compunction.

Otherwise: The sacrifice can be understood as right working, the libation as holy contemplation. In which sense the libation is attributed to God, the sacrifice to the Lord. For one must act rightly because the Lord is to be feared: of God 346Dthere is a tasting, whence he is also to be loved. There follows:

Blow the trumpet in Sion; santificate a fast, call an assembly, gather together the people, santificate the Church, assemble the ancients, gather together the little ones and them that suck the breasts. Let the bridegroom go forth from his bed, and the bride out of her bridal chamber. Between the porch and the altar the priests, the ministers of the Lord, shall weep, and shall say: Spare, O Lord, spare thy people: and give not thy inheritance to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why do they say among the peoples: Where is their God? The prophet still charges his people to press on in devout prayer, and every age, order, sex, condition humbly to apply itself to supplication, showing that they are subject to peril. Whence he counsels also that supplication be made in common. ALLEGORICALLY. The perils of the Church having been shown, 347Ahe exhorts them to hasten to the harbor of penance, lest perhaps they feel the hand of the Lord grow heavy upon them, For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hand of the living God (Hebr. X). He says therefore: Blow the trumpet in Sion, etc. The exposition of these things we leave aside, because we have said a good many things about them elsewhere. The ancients are those perfect in virtue; the little ones, those endowed with simplicity and innocence; those that suck the breasts, the unlearned set under teaching. The ancients are assembled, inasmuch as they use reason; the little ones are gathered together, and those that suck, inasmuch as they are set under teaching, and serve under the rod.

The bridal chamber is love, the bed is contemplation. And the same soul becomes, in different respects, bridegroom and bride. A bride, while, united to the Word by love, she conceives in secret with a certain — so to speak — and ineffable sweetness, 347Bwhich she shows by certain heavenly tokens breaking forth outwardly. And she becomes a bridegroom while, joined to wisdom and devoted to it alone, she brings forth offspring through a spiritual partnership, by the mastery of teaching. And so the teaching of wisdom makes the bridegroom, the prerogative of grace the bride. But in the time of affliction let the bridegroom go forth from his bed, that is, from the study of wisdom; and the bride from her bridal chamber, that is, let her come down from the privilege of contemplative grace: and let them enter upon the squalor of penance, for the sake of seeking pardon. For when the heavenly Bridegroom sees his bride weeping and groaning, anxious and supplicating, bearing the burden of the day and the heat with others and for others, at once he is turned from wrath, he suffers with her who suffers, and, impatient of delay, he is soon appeased by the sweetness of a heavenly kiss and pardons, 347Cand grants to his only one the favor of the people. Hence Moses supplicates for the people in the place of the bride, saying: I beseech thee, O Lord, this people hath sinned a great sin: and they have made themselves gods of gold; either forgive them this noxum; or if thou do not, blot me out of thy book which thou hast written (Exod. XXXII): to whom the Lord: I, he says, will pardon for the present; but in the day of vengeance I will visit (Ibid.) Hence it is frequently read in the old wheel that, for the sake of Isaac, for the sake of Jacob, very many sins were pardoned to the transgressing people, and many misfortunes ceased.

Otherwise. The bed is carnal will, the bridal chamber curiosity. In the time therefore of mourning and of penance to be done, curiosity is to be shut out, and carnal will is to be driven off, so that by the sacrifice of continence and mortification 347Diniquity may be expictur and the Divinity be made propitious. Whence Isaiah also: O Lord, he says, in distress they have sought after thee; in the tribulation of murmuring thy teaching was to them (Isai. XXVI). There follows: Between the porch and the altar the priests, the ministers of the Lord, shall weep, and shall say: Spare, O Lord, spare thy people, etc. The porch is the fear of God, The Holy of Holies the contemplation of the bridegroom, the altar perfect love. In the porch is the people, about the altar the high priest: in the midst of the temple the priests mourn, the ministers groan; all with equal right discharge the office of reconciliation. Between the porch and the altar the priesthood supplicates for the people, because it is both pressed by fear lest the divine mercy forsake the people, and is governed by love, so that it may presume to approach the throne of grace with a humble conscience. Between the porch 348Aand the altar God is appeased, because he whom fear guards from unlawful things, and whom love raises up on high, is reconciled entirely. Between the porch, I say, and the altar there comes about a fruitful and humble penance, which fear pricks, lest it grow numb; which love kindles, lest it grow lukewarm. Useful, I say, and fruitful, because fear has shut out rash presumption, and love has cast off the confusion of faintheartedness. They say therefore: Spare, O Lord, spare thy people, etc. There are three chief judgments of a man: the first about himself, the second about his neighbor, the third about himself and his neighbor. In the first he ought to be strict, in the second kindly, in the third just. For each ought to accuse himself strictly, to judge his neighbor kindly, to examine himself and his neighbor justly. Since therefore we are slack and kindly to ourselves, but to our neighbor 348Bstrict and harsh, we say: Spare, O Lord, our own slackness; spare our strictness toward our brother; spare, I say, us for what we have done unjustly; spare what we have wickedly done in our neighbor. Or, because there are two places, and two perils joined to them: the places, the world and hell; the perils, vanity and calamity. It is said therefore: Spare, O Lord, from the vanity of the world, spare from the calamity of the pit; spare, I say, from the first, lest it affect us, spare from the second, lest it swallow us up. Or, because the person of man consists of a twofold nature, namely body and soul,--in which nature indeed we have frequently sinned, for in the soul we have acted impiously, in the body we have done wickedly,--let us therefore say: Spare, O Lord, the impiety of the mind, spare the iniquity of the body. Or, because a twofold law has been given us, namely the law of nature and 348Cthe written law; and we are transgressors of both; let us therefore say: Spare, O Lord, the first transgression, spare the second breach. Or, because action is given us for the perfecting of the present life, and contemplation as a pledge of beatitude for the foretaste of the life to come; and we have been slack in action, and puffed up out of contemplation; let us say: Spare our slackness, spare our elation. Spare thy people: the people, namely, the gathering of men assembled for thee unto living justly. Thine: founded by thee, redeemed by thee, in either case to be set by thee. There follows: And give not thy inheritance to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. As if he said: Deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to thee; and forget not to the end the souls of thy poor (Psal. LXXIII). There follows: 348DWhy do they say among the peoples, Where is their God? As if he said: When thou desistest from the counsel of thy people, and they, oppressed by the impious, are as it were without help; thou art judged by the unbelieving to be impious, or powerless. But in this I have known that thou hast had a good will for me, because my enemy shall not rejoice over me (Psal. XL). There follows:

The Lord hath been zealous for his land, and hath spared his people. Zeal is the fervor of a mind bent upon compassion for nature, and upon the punishment of fault, and upon devotion to grace. And so zeal usefully scourges the slave, wholesomely corrects the son, and carefully and faithfully preserves the marriage. The slave by punishment, the son by compassion, the marriage by devotion. The land is historically the Synagogue; allegorically, the Church, morally, the faithful soul: the first on account of earthly cupidity; the second on account of 349Athe stability of faith; the third on account of the virtue of humility and the dryness of abstinence. There follows: And the Lord answered, and said to his people: Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil: and you shall be filled with them; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations. And the rest that follows, as far as that place: And it shall come to pass after this: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.

Truly a contrite and humbled heart God despiseth not (Psal. L). Truly at a fitting time he looks upon the quiet and humble man who trembles at his words. Truly, the valleys abound with corn; truly he wills mercy more than sacrifice, and the knowledge of Del more than holocaust. Which the prophetic utterance shows in the present passage. For above, in 349Bthe sequence of the supplication, he lamentably set forth in lamentation the coming and the cruelty of the enemies, the crushing of the land and the wasting of the animals, the pestilence and the destruction, the confusion of the people, the affliction of the ancients the squalor of the virgins; and he proclaimed the rigor of penance, the dryness of abstinence, the depth of sobs and groans, and discipline. She acted, she received, she returned. She did penance, she received mercy, she returned to grace. O fruitful and manly penance! O heroine, amplectanda, most faithful mediatrix of sinners! O second plank after shipwreck! O refuge of the poor, help of the wretched, hope of exiles, kindling of the weak, light of the blind, solace of the bereaved, rod of the wanton, bar of the vices, storehouse of the virtues — thou who alone dost bend the judge, 349Caccuse the Founder, lay low the Almighty; while thou art conquered thou conquerest, while thou art tormented thou tormentest, while thou woundest thou healest, while thou wholesomely succumbest, thou gloriously triumphest! Thou alone, while the rest are silent, boldly mountest the throne of grace. Leading David by the hand thou reconcilest him, thou restorest Peter, thou enlightenest Paul, thou confidently insertest into the choir of the apostles the publican taken from the toll booth. Thou raisest Mary from the brothel into the upper air and joinest her to Christ; the thief fastened to the gibbet, still fresh with blood, thou insertest into paradise. What more? The heavenly court is under thy jurisdiction: which the prophetic page plainly teaches in the present passage, since through labor and the fruit of penance the people not only escaped the shipwreck of misfortune, 349Dand not only returned to the former state of grace; but rather, rejoicing at the coming of the Saviour, enlightened by his teaching, shaped by his life, healed by his passion, made firm by his resurrection, glorified by his ascension, endowed in the present with the same Paraclete Spirit, it doubled its crown and carried off double. Let the dogged fluency, secular eloquence, be struck dumb, which asserts that the divine utterances are rustic and uncultivated. Behold, in the present passage a sentence is set down with color, by the law of antithesis rendering contraries to contraries. For against the wasting of the land he sets its abundance; against famine, plenty; against reproach, the security of glory; against the incursion and the credulity of the enemies, their own stench and destruction; against the barrenness of fruits and 350Athe dryness of trees, their buds and abundance; against the famine of the word and the thirst for teaching he brings in the fountain of life and the teacher of justice; against sadness, joy; against confusion, comfort; against reviling, glory; against death, life; against ashes, a crown. The fitting of each of these to each I leave to the reader, because I hasten to unfold the winding folds of the allegory. But it must be known that in the present passage there is a plain prophecy about the coming of the Saviour: through whom the spiritual enemy is quenched, the spiritual famine is cast out, abundance is restored, grace is given back. Behold, he says, I will send you corn, and wine, etc. The corn is the teaching of life; the wine, the fervor of spiritual understanding; the oil, the sweetness of conscience. Or the corn 350Bis the grace of the Eucharist; the wine, spiritual gladness; the oil, which floats above all liquids, the grace of contemplation. Or by the wine are understood the works of penance: by the corn, the works of wisdom; by the oil, because it anoints, the works of mercy; because it shines, the works of grace; because it feeds, the works of justice. There follows: And you shall be filled with it. He by no means remains fasting, in truth, who fills his inward parts with such banquets. And I will no more make you a reproach among the nations. Namely, because with the zeal and love of such things no one incurs reproach, but is crowned with glory and honor. There follows:

And him that is from the north I will remove far from you, and I will drive him into a land unpassable and desert. His face toward the eastern sea, and his hindmost part 350Ctoward the utmost sea. And his stench shall ascend, and his rottenness, because he hath done proudly. HISTORICALLY. According to some, he speaks of Sennacherib and his army: who did proudly when he blasphemed God; who was driven into a land unpassable and desert when, in Persia, fleeing through the desert, he was slain by his own sons in the temple of Nesroch his god. But what he says, his face toward the eastern sea, and his hindmost part toward the utmost sea, is of this sort. His intention was to cross the Jordan and to storm Jerusalem; but the end fell out otherwise, because he fell near the Euphrates in Persia. For the Hebrew tongue called gatherings of waters seas. Whence here by the eastern sea he hints at the Jordan; 350Dby the utmost, he means the Euphrates. But what he said, His stench and his rottenness ascendeth, looks to the destruction of his army. Of which Isaiah says: And an angel of the Lord went out and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And he arose in the morning; and behold, all were the corpses of the dead (Isai. XXXIII). According to others, who judge more soundly, the discourse is about Nabuchodonosor, who was driven into a land unpassable and desert when, being made mad, he dwelt long among brute beasts; whose face was toward the eastern sea, and his hindmost part toward the utmost sea, because his intention was, as the histories assert, first to storm the eastern region; then to subjugate the western to himself. But what he says, that 351Ahis stench and rottenness ascend, is of this sort. Hebrew tradition teaches that, when Nabuchodonosor was dead, Evilmerodach his son, fearing lest his father should come to life again, drew his body out of the sepulchre, burned it, and reduced it to ashes. Which, being distributed into four pouches, he ligagavit to the necks of four eagles, and having disposed them toward the four regions of the world, he let them fly away.

ALLEGORICALLY. The discourse is of the ancient enemy, of the apostate angel, who by the incarnation of Christ, by the word of faith, by the grace of baptism was driven out into the dryness of the Gentile and of the Jewish people. The eastern sea is the elect; the utmost, the reprobate; the face, the intention; his hindmost part, the shutting-in. Or the eastern sea is the first-fruits of the election of the Gentiles; the utmost, the belief 351Bof the Jews; his stench is the death of Antichrist; his rottenness, the sentence of judgment upon him.

MORALLY. The land is the reprobate soul; pathless, that is, without the visitation of the elect angels; deserted, without the fruit of the virtues and the seed of good behavior. The casting out of the demon is the confession of sin; the eastern sea is the mind made bitter by compunction, made a rising sun by the devotion of contemplation. The utmost sea is the mind made bitter by the stench of conscience, swallowed up by the despair of pardon. Its face is the cunning intention of doing harm; its hindmost part, the fury and madness of triumphing. Its stench is the hatred of sin; its rottenness, the contempt of the world. There follows:

Fear not, O land (behold the consolation of the land), rejoice, 351Cand be glad; for the Lord hath magnified, that he should do. Rejoice, O Judaea, over the confounding and the death of thine enemy. Rejoice, O Church, over the coming of thy Savior into the flesh. Rejoice, O faithful soul, over the coming of thy bridegroom into the mind. Be glad in the merit of the virtues; rejoice in the reward of things heavenly; be glad in the gifts of grace; rejoice in the crowns of glory. There follows:

Fear not, ye beasts of the country; for the beautiful places of the desert have sprung forth; for the tree hath brought forth its fruit: the fig tree and the vine have yielded their strength. HISTORICALLY. After the destruction of the enemy, after the shipwreck of the captivity, Judaea received back the face of the sun's former serenity, the covenant of plenty. But ALLEGORICALLY 351Dthe tree of the Lord's passion brought forth its fruit; the fig tree, the strength and sweetness of the resurrection. At the coming of the Paraclete the vine of the apostles gave its fruit of propagation. Thence the beautiful places of the desert sprang forth, because out of the imitation of the passion, out of the hope of the resurrection, out of the apostolic teaching and life of religion, glorious assemblies were propagated. The beasts of the country are men of the secular life. Let the beasts of the country therefore not be afraid, because the beautiful places of the desert have sprung forth, since through the teaching and the holiness of religious men secular men are drawn to reverence for the sacraments, to obedience to the precepts, to innocence of behavior, to eminence in counsels, to the imitation of the Lord's passion, to the hope of the heavenly resurrection, 352Ato the solicitude and the fruit of religious propagation. There follows:

And, ye daughters of Sion, rejoice in the Lord your God; for he hath given you a teacher of righteousness, and he will make the early and the latter rain to come down to you, as in the beginning. And the floors shall be filled with wheat, and the presses shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years which the locust, the grub, the mildew, the caterpillar hath eaten: my great strength, which I sent upon you. And ye shall eat, feeding, and shall be filled; and ye shall praise the name of the God of Israel, who hath done wondrous things with you; and my people shall not be confounded for evermore. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel. I am the Lord your God, and there is none besides, and my people shall not be confounded for ever. HISTORICALLY. 352BAfter the consolation of the land, of the fruits, of the trees, of the beasts, he passes over to the consolation of men, saying: And ye daughters of Sion, rejoice, etc. For I have given you a teacher of righteousness. The Hebrews assert that the teacher of righteousness is Hezekiah, of whom it is written: He destroyed the high places, and broke the statues; and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent which Moses had made (IV Reg. XVIII). And so after him there was none like him among all the kings of Juda, nor yet among those who were before him. And he clave to the Lord, and departed not from his footsteps, and did his commandments which the Lord had enjoined. Others of the Hebrews say Josiah, of whom it is written: He did that which was right before the Lord, and walked in all the 352Cways of David his father: and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left (II Par. XXXIV).

ALLEGORICALLY. The teacher of righteousness is Christ; a teacher, who teacheth man knowledge; a teacher indeed, who found out all the way of discipline, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Of righteousness, whence it is written: Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, and thou carest not for any man: for thou dost not regard the persons of men (Matth. XXII). Of righteousness assuredly, because he shook his hands from every bribe; of righteousness truly, because he rendereth to every man according to his works (Matth. XVI). Of righteousness, I say, because he justly blinds, justly justifies, justly reprobates, justly glorifies, justly damns. The early rain is the spiritual knowledge of the law; the latter, 352Dthe grace of the Gospel. Or the early rain is the utterances of himself and of his apostles; the latter, the expositions of the spiritual Fathers, the canons and the decrees; the floors are the minds of the faithful, made used to the yoke of discipline, worn by the paths of religion, polished by the traditions of regular discipline. The presses are those hearts which are set between hope and fear, having constancy below and patience above; constancy in temptation, patience in tribulation — in the temptation of vices, in the tribulation of scourges. For constancy presses down and holds off from above; patience lies beneath and bears the weight. Constancy holds off vices, patience bears up under conflicts. Between these two the holy mind, set as it were in a press, is pressed, is purged of dregs, is strained out: it is pressed by scourges, 353Apurged of vices, strained free of idleness. It is pressed by calamity, purged of iniquity, strained free of vanity. For hence is drawn out the groan of pure confession, hence flow the tears of anxious compunction, hence stream the sighs of joyful devotion, hence the desires of the sweetest love are melted, hence are drawn out the droplets of the clearest contemplation. The wheat is the perfection of righteousness; the wine, the brightness of spiritual understanding; the oil, the sweetness of the purest conscience. There follows: And I will restore to you the years which the locust hath eaten, etc. For at the coming of Christ there are restored to us the years which the aforesaid pest had devoured; because in him he gave us, against the locust, true humility, saying: Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Matth. XI). Against 353Bthe grub, perfect sobriety, saying: Take heed lest your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life (Luc. XXI). Against the mildew, perfect patience, saying: If any man strike thee on thy right cheek, offer him the other also (Matth. V). Against the caterpillar, perfect chastity, saying: Let your loins be girt and lamps burning (Luc. XII), etc. The locust therefore he exterminated, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they that mourn (Matth. V). The grub, saying: Blessed are the merciful (ibid.). The Rubignem, saying: Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the meek (ibid.). The caterpillar, saying: Blessed are the clean of heart (ibid.). There follows: My great strength, which I sent upon you. Great indeed was the strength of Christ, whom the Father sent into the world, since he is reaching from end 353Cto end mightily, and ordering all things sweetly (Sap. VIII). Who overcame the devil, despoiled hell, blotted out the handwriting, brought back the captive, led the servant by the hand, kept his very self unharmed. There follows: And ye shall eat, feeding, and shall be filled, etc. Ye shall eat assuredly the food of sweetness, namely the teaching of righteousness; the food of strength, namely the bread of life. There follows: And my people shall not be confounded for ever. As if he should say: Because with me in the present they bear confusion and reproach, everlasting gladness shall be upon their heads: hence the Savior to his disciples: You are, he says, they who have continued with me in my temptations; and I dispose to you, as my Father hath disposed to me, a kingdom (Luc. 353DXXII), etc. There follows:

And it shall come to pass after this, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Moreover upon my servants and my handmaids in those days I will pour out my spirit. And I will show wonders in heaven and in earth, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come; and it shall be: whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Here let the Jew Apella blush; here let him blush for his blindness and his madness, so that he who boasts himself a leader of the blind and to hold the lamp of the law may in this place catch out the darkness of his own error and the gloom of his own ignorance. Let my ass 354Alay down his packs for me; let him wait until we go up to the mountain, and after we have worshipped we shall return to him; and seeing rest, that it is good, and the land, that it is very good, let him bow his shoulder to carry. Let him tell me, I say, where the Lord poured out his spirit; let him tell where the sons, the old men, the young men saw prophecies, dreams, visions. But since he will somehow be able to unroll these things, let him at least tell where the Lord gave blood, fire, and vapor, where the sun was turned into darkness and the moon changed into blood. And when he shall not be able to show it, let the wisdom of Christ reign, glorified by her sons. Of the coming of Christ, therefore, the present letter is properly understood; the prophecy, closed as to the sending of the Spirit the Paraclete, is clearly unloosed. But first we must see what is said: And it shall come to pass 354Bafter this. What is after this? For what had he said above, to which what is subjoined ought to be referred? We must see, therefore, how the letter hangs together. For the prophet had above set forth in many ways the common misfortune of the human race; he had foretold the vows of the people, the laments of the priests, the squalor of the virgins, the sighs of the fathers. Then he set beneath the coming of Christ, the incarnation of the Word, the dispensation of the mystery for the liberation of the people, for the removal of the misfortune; and afterward he subjoined, for the illumination of the Gentiles, for the perfection of all things, saying: And it shall come to pass after this: I will pour out my spirit, etc. We read that the Lord took away of the spirit of Moses, and set what had been taken away upon the seventy elders. We read likewise that Elisha received the double spirit 354Cof Elijah; but thus far we do not read that Christ poured out his Spirit. Here indeed he poured out; he did not take away from Moses, nor snatch the double portion from Elijah, but distributed his own bountifully. But it is to be noted what is said: He poured out. For first he poured, secondly he poured in, thirdly he poured out. He poured in paradise, he poured in in the desert, he poured out in the upper room. In paradise by giving the law of nature, in the desert the precepts and ceremonies of the written law, in the upper room the fullness of grace. Whence of the first it is said: The Lord breathed into Adam (Gen. II). And of the second: God called Moses out of the midst of the darkness (Exod. XXIV), etc. Whence infula is so called as though intus fula; because the spiritual understanding was shut up within the veil of the law, and overshadowed by the gloom of the rind. 354DBut in the third, the Holy Spirit came down in tongues of fire, because of his fullness we all have received (Joan. I). First then he poured, watering the floor of nature; secondly he poured in the torrent of teaching; thirdly he poured out the river of grace.

Otherwise, these three can fittingly be referred to the incarnation of the Word. For he poured before the resurrection, by teaching openly, by working miracles, by bestowing benefits. He poured in after the resurrection, by manifesting himself as it were secretly to those whom he willed, by breathing the spirit upon the disciples as they sat in the chamber, saying: Receive ye the Holy Spirit (Joan. XX), etc. He poured out on the day of Pentecost, by bestowing the fullness of grace. He poured out, I say, not by diminishing anything of the divine wisdom, but by bestowing more abundantly than was wont the charisms of grace. As 355Aif he should say: In the beginning of the world I watered dry nature; in the squalor of the desert I distilled teaching for Moses into the bosom of the law; in the fullness of time I shall pour out the richness of grace. This outpouring was assuredly necessary and fitting in the last time. For there were three things: ignorance, concupiscence, malice — ignorance of the good, concupiscence of evil, the malice of impenitence. The Son therefore came, the wisdom of God and his power; the Paraclete was sent, his kindness. Wisdom poured purged the blemish of ignorance, power poured in the filth of concupiscence. The outpouring of the Spirit cleansed away the dregs of malice. For wisdom illumined, power healed, kindness calmed. Which the Psalmist foreseeing, and stretching out the eye of prophecy into what was to come, says: According to the multitude of thy mercies blot out my iniquity. 355BWash me yet more, O Lord, from my iniquity; and cleanse me from my sin (Psal. L). As if he should say: Blot out by pouring, wash by pouring in, cleanse by pouring out. By pouring wisdom, blot out ignorance from the eyes; by pouring in power, wash concupiscence from the inmost parts; by pouring out kindness, drive out malice from the whole body. There follows: Upon all flesh. It is said hyperbolically, upon all flesh. Or, upon all flesh, that is, upon flesh of every kind. What is of every kind, universal? namely of age, of every condition, of every profession, of every order. Note the colored richness of the divine utterance. To be preferred to the flowers of Quintilian and the colors of Tully. Note, I say, these three set down in succession: prophecy, dreams, vision. 355CNote next another three: sons, old men, young men. The sons prophesy, the old men dream, the young men see. The sons prophesied — as Agabus concerning the chains of Paul; Paul too concerning the destruction of the Roman empire and concerning the coming of Antichrist. So too the four daughters of Philip, etc. The old men too dreamed — as Paul, to whom the Lord appeared, saying: Passing over into Macedonia, help us (Act. XVI). The young men saw — as Paul, who was caught up into the third heaven, and thence into paradise; Peter too, the angel of the Lord leading him out of prison; John too, the Lord speaking with him and saying: « Come, my dear one; it is time that thou shouldst feast in my sight with my brethren. » But mystically, humble penitence makes the servant and the handmaid; steadfast obedience makes 355Dthe young men; just innocence, the old men; perfect love, the son and the daughter. There are also three kinds of visions. The first is material, the second spiritual, the third intellectual. The first is with matter and form; the second without matter, but with form; the third without matter and without form. The first conceives things composed of the elements, the second things imagined, the third is a stranger to every circumscription, conceiving God in whatever way, and the virtues also and the vices.

There are also three kinds of dreams: one of a mind full of dregs, another of a sober mind, the third of a mind purged of dregs. The first kind is a slave to falsehood; the second serves either the one or the other, either truth or falsehood; the third contemplates truth. And, that I may insert something out of the secrets of natural science, 356Athe first kind is before the digestion of real phantasms, the second in the digestion of them, the third after their digestion. In the first kind the soul is overwhelmed by the mass of phantasms: thence the error of falsehood. In the second, because the soul begins to be purged of dregs, it begins to contemplate some light; yet because for the greatest part it remains full of dregs, it quickly yields, deceived, to falsehood. In the third the load of dreggy phantasms is strained away to purity: thence the splendor of truth. The first kind of dream, therefore, is deceptive, the second revelatory, the third contemplative. There are also three kinds of prophecy. The first is admirable, the second doubtful, the third lowly. Prophecy is a divine inspiration, declaring with unmoved truth the outcome of hidden things. That prophecy therefore is lowly 356Bwhich is made concerning the elements and things composed of the elements; doubtful, that which is made concerning the manners of men and their counsels; admirable, that which is concerning the truth of God's judgments and his own secrets. That is lowly which is concerning what is near and known; doubtful, which is concerning what is near and unknown; admirable, which is concerning what is hidden and unknown. The first therefore and the second belong to the daughters, the third to the sons. At the coming of the Paraclete, therefore, sons and daughters prophesy with every kind of prophecy; the old men dream with the contemplative kind of dream; the young men see with the intellectual and revelatory kind of vision. Servants too receive the outpouring of the Spirit. But since there are three kinds of servants, we must see who are the servants of God that receive the outpouring of the Paraclete. The first are servants of nature, the second of guilt, the third of grace. The first are servants of the world, the second 356Cof sin, the third of Christ. Upon these last the Paraclete is poured out. But the servitude of Christ also has three differing degrees according to three fears. The first is the fear of punishment, by which evil is avoided: this is good. The second is the fear of losing the reward, by which one labors anxiously in the vineyard of the Lord: this is better. The third is the fear of giving offense, by which a man dreads all his works, knowing that God spareth not him that offendeth (Job IX): this is best. The servant in the first degree receives the pouring, in the second the pouring in, in the third the pouring out. There follows:

And I will show wonders in heaven above, and in earth beneath: blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, etc. In heaven the Lord gave wonders, 356Dbecause in his passion the sun hid the rays of its light. We believe also that the moon was turned into blood, although we read this in no history, because this was said by the prophet; and since it was asserted by the apostles, there is no ground at all for doubting of it. In earth he gave wonders, because with so violent and unwonted a movement the earth trembled that the tombs were opened and the rocks rent (Luc. XXI). He gave blood, when Christ, praying more at length before the passion, and being in an agony, drops of blood ran down upon the ground. The vapors are the flowing of his tears. The fire is the Holy Spirit.

Allegorically. The sun is Christ; the moon, the Church. The sun turned into darkness, Christ fastened to the cross. Whence Jeremiah, speaking of the blindness of the Jews: Thou shalt give, he says, 357Athem, O Lord, the sculum of heart, thy labor (Thren. III). The moon turned into blood is the Church imitating the passion of Christ. The blood designates the profession of the martyrs. The fire, the choir of virgins burning with the ardor of love. The vapor is the frequent and devout compunction of the continent. These things indeed followed, so that the moon was turned before the great and dreadful day should come. The great and dreadful day is the day of the passion and of the resurrection: great to the faithful, dreadful to those who believe not; dreadful to those who said: His blood be upon us, and upon our children (Matth. XXVII); great to those who said: Indeed this was the Son of God (Marc. XV). Otherwise. The sun turned into darkness is Christ darkened in the hearts of the elect at the moment of death. Whence also in the Gospel certain men said of him: 357BBut we hoped that it was he that should have redeemed Israel (Luc. XXIV). Hence through Job: My brethren have gone far from me, and my acquaintance have departed from me as strangers (Job XIX). The moon turned into blood is the Synagogue blinded in the passion of Christ, condemned for ever by the blood of its own testimony. Blood, fire, vapor signify the threefold plague of the Jews: the blood, the putting to death of their bodies; the fire, the burning of their goods and possessions; the vapor, their banishment across the seas and to the islands. But if anyone doubts of these things, let him read Josephus in the book of the Antiquities, and Hegesippus. So much for the coming of Christ in the flesh; now let us speak morally of the coming of the Paraclete into the mind. For when the Paraclete deigns to visit a faithful soul, he first finds it swarming with vices; 357Cpresently, through the spirit of fear, he pricks it to penitence, and so makes it his handmaid. Which handmaid he permits step by step to grow up through the works of penitence; then through devout obedience to the precepts she begins to become a young woman; thereafter, through innocence of behavior and eminence in counsels, to come to maturity; at last, through the privilege of love, she is taken into the fellowship of the inheritance. According to the laws of tropology, vision is the proper knowledge of oneself; the dream, the going out of the mind; prophecy, the contemplation of the bridegroom; heaven, the mind; earth, the flesh; or heaven, the contemplatives; earth, the actives. The vapor, compunction of mind; the blood, mortification of the flesh; the fire, the fervor of love. The sun turned into darkness is the mind confounded into the knowledge of itself; the moon into blood, 357Dthe flesh into its own mortification. There follows: Before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come. The day of the Lord is the illumination of God through the going out from the charity of the bridegroom. Great is the Lord, because he despises all earthly things: dreadful, because he beholds things fearful and astounding. Great, because he shows eternal things. Dreadful, because he promises things incomprehensible. Dreadful is here set down not for the horror of confusion, but for the veneration of wonder. Great is said not for a vice, but for a virtue. Now the four aforesaid things go before this day; because when the knowledge of self earns the judgment of guilt; compunction of mind, the gift of pardon; mortification of the flesh, the counsel of righteousness; the fervor of love, the privilege of grace — at once there follows the day of glory, 358Anamely the going out of the mind and the contemplation of the bridegroom. There follows: And it shall be, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whatever things we have interpreted of the coming of Christ up to the sending of the Paraclete, the Jews refer to the coming of their Messiah. In which, as they themselves say, the worship of the law will be repaired entire, and the former felicity restored. The Jewish people alone will receive the Messiah; it alone will call upon him, and he will hear. But certain of the doctors transfer the interpretation of the aforesaid prophecy to the last judgment, in which whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved; because then the elect alone will call upon him, while the reprobate, astonished before the face of the Lord's dread, will be silent. For this is to call upon him: out of the security of conscience and the strength of merits to call him into oneself. But we, without prejudice to anyone's 358Bopinion, refer this also to the coming of Christ into the flesh and of the Paraclete into the mind, where it is said: Everyone, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. Whence Jerome also: What follows, he says — Everyone, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved — is better taken of the day of Christ's passion or of his resurrection; and the calling upon him, in which salvation consists, stands not of speech only, but also of heart and of work. Whence the grace of this threefold calling is to be believed to belong not to the foolish, but to the perfect: because what the heart believes the mouth confesses, and the hand fulfills in work. Nor let this calling upon him be thought of light moment. For although it be said by the Apostle: No man saith, the Lord Jesus, but in the Holy Spirit (I Cor. XII): nevertheless this very saying 358Cis to be weighed not by speech only, but by affection also. Whence also of Samuel we read: And Samuel among them that call upon his name (Psal. XCVIII); hence of Moses and Aaron: They called upon the Lord, and he heard them (Ibid.). On the contrary, of the reprobate: Not everyone that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matth. VII).

MORALLY. After the wonders given in heaven, after the light of the knowledge of oneself, after the smoke of devout compunction, after the blood of just mortification, after the fire of perfect love, there remains only the sweetness of contemplation. He says therefore: And it shall be — then, namely — everyone, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved: because on the flowering little couch of contemplation the calling upon the name of the Lord is nothing else than the longed-for 358Dattaining of salvation, the most desired uniting of bridegroom and bride. So had the bride been saved, so had she called upon the name of the Lord, who said: Thy name is oil poured out (Cant. I). The oil, I say, of the name poured out the bride had received: which, because it is light, she had been illumined by its presence; because it is an unction, she had stood healed by its touch; because it is the bread of life, she had been satisfied by its embrace. Illumined by the knowledge of the spirit, healed from the vanity of the world, satisfied by the kiss of the Word. And this is the calling upon the name. This is the attaining of salvation, the receiving of kisses, the sharing of the little couch, the uniting of the Word and the soul. In which indeed everyone is saved; because with this light no one is blinded, with this strength none is made weak, with this salvation no one comes into peril. There follows:

359AFor in mount Sion and in Jerusalem shall be salvation, as the Lord hath said, and in the residue whom the Lord shall call (Joel. III). For behold, in those days and in that time, when I shall have turned the captivity of Juda and of Jerusalem, I will gather together all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat: and I will plead with them there for my people and for my inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and have divided my land, and have cast lots upon my people. And they have set a boy in the brothel, and have sold a girl for wine that they might drink. Let us discuss this chapter first morally; then let us pass over to the dark places of allegory and the pleasant things of tropology. The Jews in this place promise themselves — nay rather, they dream — that in the last time they will be gathered by the Lord and led back into Jerusalem. And not 359Bcontent with such felicity, they assert that God himself will deliver into their hands the sons and daughters of the Romans, so that they may sell them, not to the Persians and the Ethiopians and the other nations which are near, but to the Sabaeans, a most remote people, because the Lord has spoken that he will avenge the injury of his people. So they, and our judaizers, who promise themselves a kingdom of a thousand years within the borders of Judaea, and a golden Jerusalem, and the blood of victims; and sons and grandsons, and incredible delights, and gates picked out with a variety of gems.

This place is most difficult according to anagogy, and admits of a manifold explanation, so that under tropology we refer all those things which have been said to what the apostles Peter and Paul referred them, that is, to when the Lord suffered and rose again. For it cannot 359Cbe that we should understand what goes before of the time of the passion and what follows of the day of judgment: especially since there follows, For behold, in those days and in that time,--and this little verse, joining what is below to what precedes, says that all things are to be accomplished in one time. Let it be said therefore: In mount Sion and in Jerusalem shall be salvation, as the Lord hath said, etc. The residue are the Apostles and the other disciples. Whence Isaiah: Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us seed (Isai. I), etc. As the Lord hath said. Where, or through whom, did the Lord say it? Through Isaiah: Out of Sion, he says, shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem (Isai. II). And through the Psalmist: The Lord loveth, he says, the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob (Psal. LXXXVI). There follows: For behold, in those days, etc. For in the days 359Dof the passion and of the resurrection, when the Lord turned the captivity of Juda and Jerusalem; when, that is, choosing out for himself some of the sons of Abraham he called them, and by calling justified them, and by gathering them together brought down all the nations into the valley of Josaphat; because, that is, by a just and gratuitous mercy he made some vessels of mercy unto glory; others vessels of just wrath unto destruction and dishonor (Rom. IX). For he said to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will show mercy to whom I shall be merciful (Exod. XXXIII). Josaphat is interpreted the judgment of the Lord, by which the damnation of the reprobate is designated. In the time therefore of the conversion of the elect the multitude of the ungodly is reprobated; because in the moment and mystery of the Lord's passion stands both the cause and the sum of salvation and of perdition. 360AWhence the Apostle: Whosoever we are that have been baptized in Christ Jesus, we have been baptized in his death (Galat. VI). Likewise the same: For I, he says, bear about the marks of Jesus Christ in my body (Ibid.). Here the Lord to Moses: When the angel shall see, he says, the blood upon the lintel and upon both the door posts, he shall pass over the door; and shall not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses and to hurt (Exod. XII). Hence the Lord through Ezekiel: Everyone, he says, upon whom thou shalt see Thau, slay not (Ezech. IX). And the Apostle: All things, he says, are almost cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission (Hebr. IX).

There follows: And I will plead with them there, namely in the valley of Josaphat. For his people and for his inheritance, for the causes subjoined, the Lord pleads against the nations; 360Bbecause thence the nations receive the judgment of damnation, whence they fell into the crimes that followed. This testimony looks to idolaters and heretics, who, seducing the people of the Lord, divided that people, and, dividing his land and parting it among themselves by many errors, compelled it to the culturom of idols, so that some worshipped Jupiter, others Phoebus, others Juno, others Minerva, Rubigo, Anubis, the crocodile, and the ibis, owls, hawks, and storks. The heretics too divided the land of the Lord, that is, the Church, and cast lots upon the ecclesiastical people, when, seducing them and leading them away into the error of heresies, Arius made Arians, Sabellius Sabellians, Manes Manichaeans, and others made others disciples of their own error. There follows: And they have set a boy 360Cin the brothel, and have sold a girl for wine that they might drink. Here he convicts each of them otherwise, namely the heretic and the idolater, upon three counts: of avarice, of lust, and of gluttony. Of avarice, because he cast lots upon the people of the Lord. Of lust, because he prostituted the boy. Of gluttony, because he sold the girl for wine.

ALLEGORICALLY. Each of them, deceiving the boy — that is, the ecclesiastical people, pure in faith, upright in hope, sincere in charity — by malignant persuasion and fraudulent promise, the idolater set him in the brothel of idols, and the heretic shut him up in the hovel of errors. And they sold a girl for wine that they might drink: because the soul still tender in faith and delicate in behavior, the idolater corrupting her by gifts and promises, the heretic 360Dcircumventing her by the poisoned coloring of words and seducing her by sophistic arguments, they made her over as chattel to heresy or to idolatry, receiving from her defeat the wine of gladness.

MORALLY. There are two spiritual captivities: namely the captivity of Juda, that is, of confession; and the captivity of Jerusalem, that is, of contemplation. When contemplation is taken captive, at once the soul is assailed by cares, occupied with business, harassed by tumults and unlawful desires. But when confession goes into captivity, then, unhappy, it goes down into the darkness of vices and the calamity of despair. Then the demons divide the land of the Lord, that is, the faithful soul, by vices; they cast lots upon the people of the virtues, the lots of sins. Then they prostitute the boy, that is, the purity of the mind, 361Ato unlawful desires. Then the pucilam, that is, the innocence of the heart, they sell for wine, that is, for temporal gladness and earthly delight. But when in the dic of salvation and in the acceptable time the Dayspring from on high deigns to visit, he pours in the knowledge of truth, and then confession is called back; he bestows the love of virtue, and contemplation is brought back. And then the nations of the vices are led down into the valley of judgment: and because they acted wickedly against the choir of the virtues, they snatch up the road of destruction. We can refer the foregoing to the day of judgment; but since we hasten on to other matters, it seems good to leave these things to the reader's own discretion. There follows:

But what have I to do with you, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coast of the Philistines? Will you render vengeance to me? And if you shall avenge yourselves against me, quickly and speedily 361Bwill I return your recompense upon your own head. For you have taken away my silver and my gold: and my desirable things and most beautiful you have carried into your temples. And the children of Juda and the children of Jerusalem you have sold to the children of the Greeks, that you might faceritis them far from their own borders. Behold, I will raise them up out of the place wherein you have sold them, and I will turn your recompense upon your own head. And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Juda; and they shall sell them to the Sabaeans, a far-off nation, because the Lord hath spoken. These things they judge to be said for the Jews against Tyre and Sidon and the coasts of the Philistines, because in the time of the Jewish captivity, when they were conquered by the Romans, they persecuted the people of God — nay rather, in that people God himself, who was set over the people. I therefore, he says, will render 361Cto you what you have done to my people, nay rather to me, because you have taken away my silver and my gold, that is, the vessels of the temple, and whatever was most precious, and have consecrated them to your idols. But history relates that the Chaldaeans did this rather, who set the vessels of the temple of the Lord in their own temple. Whence Belshazzar afterward drinks out of the bowls; and straightway his kingdom is transferred to the Medes and the Persians. But since these things are said to be about to come to pass after the great and dreadful day of the Lord, which the apostles interpret of the resurrection of the Lord, and the Hebrews defer to the future time of judgment, it is rather to be understood of the Romans: that Vespasian and Titus, having built at Rome the temple of peace, consecrated in its shrine the vessels of the temple and all the offerings: 361Dwhich the Greek and the Roman history relates.

But mystically the matter is of the coming of Christ into the flesh. By Tyre and Sidon and the Philistines may be understood idolaters and heretics; if it be of his coming to judgment, demons; if of his coming into the mind, vices and carnal passions. And to all of them the Lord will speedily and quickly render their recompense, since of the first coming too it is read: He that believeth not is already judged (Joan. III). Likewise: Now is the judgment of the world (Joan. XII), etc. And of the second: Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire (Matth. XXV). And of the third: O poor little one, tossed with tempest, without any comfort. Behold, I will lay thy stones in order, and will lay thy foundations with sapphires (Isai. LIV), etc. The silver is eloquence; the gold, wisdom; the desirable things, the most religious; 362Athe most beautiful, the most honorable. What is honorable looks to reputation, what is religious to conscience. The temples are the worships of idols, or the sects of heretics, or the habits of vices. The children of Juda, the actives; the children of Jerusalem, the contemplatives. The Greeks, liars, that is, men who speak falsely, or the motions of the mind. For the Greeks are interpreted is and is not, by which are signified deceit and lying; and by these things which we have said above, their company, or the choir of the virtues, is set far from its own borders. But God, the Lord of vengeance, will quickly and speedily render the recompense: he who turns back the retribution of his enemies. Whence there also follows: Behold, I will gather them together, etc. And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Juda; and they shall sell them to the Sabaeans, a far-off nation. The children of the aforesaid, 362Ballegorically, are the disciples of the Gentiles or of the heretics; morally, the motions of the vices. The hands of the children of Juda are confessions and the works of penitence. Wholesomely, therefore, are the aforesaid delivered into these hands: because both these return through the confession of faith to the grace of baptism, and those, through the confession of sin and the works of penitence, fly up to the pardon of guilt, to the grace of obedience, to the purity of innocence. And hence they sell them to the Sabaeans, a far-off nation, because they apply the aforesaid, purified in the aforesaid manner, to the hatred of sin, to the abjection of self, to the contempt of the world. For Saba is intepretatur captivity. First then iniquity is taken captive by the hatred of sin, secondly curiosity by the abjection of self, thirdly vanity by the contempt of the world. Otherwise, the aforesaid sell the aforesaid, when they have been exercised, to the Sabaeans, because after the works of penitence, after the devotion 362Cof obedience, after fruits worthy of righteousness, they lift up the aforesaid to the rest of contemplative gladness. Saba is called a far-off nation. Whence also the contemplative household is called a remote nation: because it is set apart far from the crowds of vices, from the cares of business, and from the exercise of actions. There follows:

Proclaim ye this among the nations: Sanctify a war, rouse up the strong. Let all the men of war draw near and come up; cut your ploughs into swords and your mattocks into spears. Let the weak say: For I am strong; break forth, and come, all ye nations round about, and gather yourselves together. There the Lord will make thy strong ones to fall. Let the nations arise and come up into the valley of Josaphat, for there I will sit to judge all nations round about. 362DPut ye in the sickles, for the harvest is ripe. Come and go down, for the press is full. The presses overflow, for their malice is multiplied. Peoples, peoples in the valley of destruction, for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of destruction. The sun and the moon are darkened; and the stars also have withdrawn their brightness. The Jews refer this place to Gog and Magog, most savage nations (of whom we have spoken above), thinking that in the last time, when Jerusalem shall have been restored under the empire of a thousand years, they will come against the people of God, and will fall in the valley of Josaphat, which is situated toward the eastern quarter. For they say that the time of their slaying has come, and that the vintage of the shedding of blood is at hand. These things the Jews dream in vain. But let us, laying open the truth 363Aof the matter, pursue these things allegorically, and then pass over to searching out the pleasant secrets of tropology. If the present passage treats of the coming of the Lord into the flesh, the letter is fittingly read thus. The prophet, then, in the present passage exhorts the divine seers and his fellow-prophets to declare from day to day the salvation of the Lord, to announce among the nations his glory, among all peoples his wonders: to announce, I say, the incarnation of the Word, the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ; upon the apostles the coming of the Paraclete, their preachings, the power of signs, the grace of miracles, the conflicts of words, the struggles of contests, the sufferings of bodies: in all things a manly constancy, and a swift victory over the nations. And this is what he says: Proclaim ye this among the nations. As if he should say: 363BSpare not, be not silent. Thus for the nations to be conquered will be glory: to succumb in this way is indeed a glorious victory. Sanctify a war. For if that whose end is good is itself also good, this war too is without doubt holy, whose end is holy. And to sanctify this war is to endow the war with holiness. Is not a war sanctified where virtue triumphs and vice is slain? Is not, I say, a war sanctified where the victory is reckoned to the vanquished, the crown to him that succumbs, where the prize is ascribed to him that flees, the kingdom to him that is overcome? Rouse up therefore the strong, namely the apostles and apostolic men. What is it to rouse up, but to stir upward? What is it to stir upward, but to announce men lifted up on high, fortified with virtues, adorned with miracles? Let the men of war therefore, namely the preachers 363Cof the word, the leaders of the heavenly warfare, draw near to preaching, and come up upon the necks of the nations. Let them come up, I say, upon the yoke of the nations' faith through the power of prodigies, through the flashing of miracles. Then the prophetic discourse turns to them, saying: Cut your ploughs into swords, and your mattocks into spears. What are the ploughs, but mortified members? What is it to cut ploughs into swords, but often to set mortified members against death for the care of the faith, for the power of the word? This those men had done of whom it is read in the Acts of the Apostles: The apostles went rejoicing from the presence of the council, because they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus (Act. V). Hence the Apostle: For I think that God hath set forth us apostles the last, and as it were appointed to death, 363Dbecause we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men (I Cor. IV). Likewise, the same: Even unto this hour, he says, we hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and are unsettled, and we labor, working with our own hands: we are cursed, and we bless; we suffer persecution, and we bear it; we are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now (ibid.). Behold how the plough is cut. Now let us see how it is turned into a sword: It is good, he says, for me rather to die, than that any man should make void my glory. For if I preach the Gospel, it is no glory to me: for a necessity lieth upon me. For woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel! But if I do this willingly, 364AI have a reward. But if against my will, a dispensation is committed to me (I Cor. IX). The mattocks are the various compunctions of the mind. The spears are severe threatenings. And what is it to cut mattocks into spears, but out of the various compunction of the mind to conceive the ardor of faith, the power of the word, the force of sentences? Hence the Bridegroom to the bride in the Canticles: Thine eyes, he says, are as the fishpools in Hesebon, which are in the gate of the daughter of the multitude (Cant. VII). The eyes of the Bride are the brightness of faith and the understanding of the divine utterance. Hesebon is interpreted the girdle of grief: the fishpools of Hesebon are the different kinds of compunction. The eyes of the Bride therefore are as the fishpools in Hesebon: because they are the more made bright from that source in which they are the more frequently washed in the aforesaid pools. The sword is a manly conception 364Bconcerning the present: the spear, a wholesome threatening concerning the future. Teachers therefore, through contempt of self and mortification of the flesh, receive from God the confidence of fraternal reproof. Through devotion: the power of compunction and the grace of threatening There follows: Let the weak say: For I am strong. Because it is written: When I am weak, then am I stronger and powerful (II Cor. XII). Likewise it is said: Strength is made perfect in weakness (ibid.). The prophet, foreseeing the election of the Gentiles, the glory of the faithful, their conversion to the faith, vice made weak in them, virtue triumphing, says:

Break forth from the lurking places of the temples, from the corners of the idols, and come by the steps of faith and the fruits of penitence, out of the circuit in which you have walked as ungodly men: you who, despising the truth, have long groped after falsehood. Gather yourselves together 364Cwithin the nets of the divine word, within the sheepfolds of faith, within the enclosures of the Lord's eye. There the Lord of faith will make his strong ones to fall, because, that is, through the ardor and the power of the divine utterance, teachers will subject to themselves kings, magnates, wise men, philosophers. Hence Isaiah: All the flocks of Cedar, he says, shall be gathered together to thee: the rams of Nabaioth shall minister to thee (Isa. LX). Hence elsewhere: The glory of Libanus is given to him, the beauty of Carmel and of Saron (Isa. XXXV). Likewise another: The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish (Jer. XXVII). But Isaiah: The glory of Libanus shall come to thee, the fir tree, the box tree, the pine together, to adorn the place of my sanctification (Isa. LX). The same in the same place: There shall come to thee bowed down the children of them that humbled thee, and shall adore the steps of thy feet, all 364Dthey that detracted thee (ibid.). Since then it is of such moment to yield to the victor, of such profit for men of war to succumb, let the nations therefore arise and come up into the valley of Josaphat, that is, into the lowliness of judgment. For Josaphat is interpreted the judgment of the Lord; for there I will sit, saith the Lord, to judge all the nations round about (Joel. IX). Hence he himself in the Gospel: For judgment, he says, I came into this world, that they who see not may see, and they who see may become blind (Joan. IX). There follows the voice of the Savior exhorting his apostles to the gathering of the new crops, to the conversion of the nations, and saying: Put ye in the sickles, for the harvest is ripe. See how great is the agreement of the prophecy with the evangelical sentence. For the Savior in the Gospel speaks thus to the apostles: The harvest indeed is great, 365Abut the laborers few (Matth. IX). Likewise in the present prophecy: When the harvest shall be ripe, put ye in the sickles. For there are three sickles of those who take up peoples into the faith of the Trinity, who send new crops into the Lord's barns. The first is the preaching of the word; the second, the manner of catechizing; the third, the sacrament of baptism. As if he should say: Preach, instruct, wash. Preach the rule of faith, instruct unto penitence, wash unto pardon. There follows the voice of the Lord himself exhorting his disciples, in the care of faith and the teaching of the word, to the struggle of martyrdom. Come, he says, and go down. Come with the steps of preaching, go down to the labor and the humility of a most fruitful passion, because through the suffering of their bodies and the power of miracles many thousands of neophytes 365Bwill receive with you the gloriossima rewards of the glorious contest; and they who shall be sharers of the sorrow shall be made partakers also of the joy. And this is what he says: For the press is full: the presses overflow. But what he says, Their malice is multiplied, if it is a matter of the neophytes, is rightly understood thus, as if he should say: Malice is multiplied, and carried through even to its end, beyond which it ought not to have gone: for which a different sentence has here set a limit. But if it is of the reprobate, thus: Malice is multiplied, that is, brought to its heap and to its point, so that, namely, they may be cast out from the glory of the kingdom and from the sheepfold of faith; so that the elect, harassed by the malice and cruelty of these men, may be brought into joys, crowned with glory and honor through the merit of martyrdom. Behold the agreement of the Gospel and the prophecy. The Savior says to the apostles in 365Cthe Gospel: Lift up your eyes, and see the countries, for they are already white unto the harvest (Joan. IV). He himself in the present passage through the prophet: Come, he says, and go down, for the press is full: the presses overflow, etc. There follows: Peoples, peoples in the valley of destruction. The repetition of peoples is an urging of the work, a commending of the business. As if he should say: Peoples, peoples in the valley of destruction, that is, in the lowliness of judgment, in the discernment of faith, life is to be sought, the cause of salvation, the sum of righteousness. And this is what follows: For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of destruction: for the lowliness of right confession is followed by the prosperity of eternal retribution and the brightness of blessed contemplation. There follows: The sun and the moon are darkened, and 365Dthe stars have withdrawn their brightness. The sun is the philosophy of the world; the moon, secular power; the stars, the other powers The sun and the moon indeed are darkened in the lowliness of judgment: because from the moment when the wise of this world and the powerful of this age came to the brightness of faith, they at once acknowledged the darkness of their own error. And the stars withdrew their brightness, because when they beheld the disciples of Christ, in the cause of faith, snatching up contempt of the world, abjection of themselves, thirsting for the struggle of martyrdom; when they beheld them shining with signs, adorned with prodigies, glorious with miracles, then at once, turned from their elation, cast down from earthly dignity, following the humility of Christ, they gave their necks to the faith. And this is for the stars to withdraw their brightness: for the powerful of this age, the magnates of this world, by embracing the humility 366Aof faith, to despise in every way the flower of the world. So much for the coming of Christ in the flesh. But if it be read of the last coming, as it pleases some, the interpretation will in part be easy: but the assignment made by certain men will be difficult, and absurd, and unfitting. For in that strict judgment what will the ploughs be? what the swords? what the mattocks? what the spears, the sickles, the presses? But those who assert this run to the place of allegory. We, however, that we may humor them, say that the aforesaid nations are for this reason brought down into the valley of judgment: that they may be slain and fall, that they may be judged by the Lord. The sorrow of which day, and the torments of those who perish, neither the sun nor the moon nor the other stars will be able to look upon; but they will withdraw their brightness, and will not dare to look upon the severity of him who judges and renders each man's work upon his own 366Bhead. Not because they are more merciful than the judgment of God, but because every creature, in the torments of others, is greatly afraid concerning its own judgment. There follows:

And the Lord shall roar out of Sion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall be moved. And the Lord is the hope of his people and the strength of the children of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, etc. Let us follow up the vengeance begun, and the explanation concerning the last coming. When the brightness of the sun and moon and of all the stars shall have been exchanged for darkness, the Lord will roar out of Sion after the manner of a lion, or will cry out, and his voice will be so lofty and so terrible that the hinges of the heavens and the foundations of the lands are shaken. And although he will be so severe toward those who are to be punished, he will nevertheless be merciful toward his own people, and will give them 366Cstrength — those who are called children of Israel, namely as seeing God with the mind: who have not walked by crooked ways, but, walking in the way of Christ, have done all things aright. Then both those who will be punished in Gehenna and those who will be taken up into glory will know that the Lord dwells in his watchtower Sion, and in Christ his holy mountain: namely in him who had prepared himself a dwelling worthy of God.

But if it be read of the first coming, the explanation will be easy and fitting, thus. It is no wonder if in the lowliness of judgment, through the power of the word and the discernment of faith, the nations subject themselves to the Son of God, who is the living word of God, and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword (Hebr. IV). Living, because he is not changed: effectual, because 366Dhe does not fail: piercing, because he is not deceived. He is not changed in his promise: he does not fail in his deed: he is not deceived in his judgment. His promise does not die by forgetfulness, his working is not overcome by difficulty: his judgment is not deceived by ambiguity. He promises truly, he acts mightily, he discerns subtly. He is living, that thou mayest believe: effectual, that thou mayest hope: piercing, that thou mayest fear. He is living in precepts and prohibitions: effectual in promises and threatenings: piercing in judgments and condemnations. Since therefore the word of God is living, it must be believed that he promises true things: since he is effectual, it must be believed that he brings his promises to fulfillment: since he is piercing and cannot be deceived, it must be mourned that one has offended him, and for the rest one must beware of offending. In that word three things are to be considered: sound, voice, 367Aunderstanding. In the sound, the noise; in the voice, the sense; in the understanding, the perfection of the intellect. The noise looks to threatening: the voice to consolation: the understanding to the perfection of knowledge. The noise therefore to the torment of penitence, the voice to the grace of pardon, the understanding to the brightness of glory. And this is what he says: The Lord shall roar out of Sion, etc. The Lord's roaring is the noise of the word. Whence these three: roaring, voice, knowledge. The roaring is made by threatening, the voice by consolation, the knowledge by contemplation. By threatening he draws to penitence, by consoling he calls back to grace, by contemplating he raises up to glory. Through the roaring the earth is moved to penitence, through the voice the heavens are moved to grace, through the understanding we know thee, the one only and true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. 367BAnd this is what is said: And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in my holy mountain.

But if the present prophecy be understood of the coming of Christ into the mind, this will be the sum of the tropology. One must go into the valley of judgment; there the cause of salvation, the form of penitence, the rule of righteousness must be sought. There the enemy is destroyed, the citizen set free, he that is raised up is exalted, he that is exalted is made perfect. There are indeed three judgments: namely one's own, the human, and the divine. One's own is made out of compunction of heart and human penitence: the human out of public discipline, the divine making manifest things hidden and secret. Through one's own the enemy is destroyed and the citizen set free. Through the human he is polished and exalted. Through the divine he is perfected to a nicety. Each of these judgments is deservedly said to be set in 367Ca valley, because each presses down and humbles the mind, each strikes the heart of man with fear and torments it in various ways. The first humbles the mind by the terror of Gehenna, the second presses down the spirit by the weight of discipline, the third lays the soul low by the love of righteousness. In the first judgment, therefore, comes the victory of the nations and the death of the strong; in the second, the abundance of the presses and the grace of gifts; in the third, the hope of the people and the strength of the children. The day of the Lord is said to be near the valley of judgment. The day of the Lord is the day of penitence, the day of discipline, the day of glory. Near the first valley is the day of penitence, near the second the day of discipline, near the third the day of glory. Hence the Psalmographer: Show forth from day to day his salvation (Psal. XCV). 367DFrom the day, namely, of penitence, the day of discipline: from the day of discipline, the day of glory. And this is what is said: And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Sion my holy mountain. There follows:

And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall pass through it no more. And it shall come to pass in that day: the mountains shall drop down sweetness, and the hills shall flow with milk. And through all the brooks of Juda waters shall go: and a fountain shall come forth out of the house of the Lord, and shall water the torrent of thorns. These things the Jews and our judaizers refer to the fables of the thousand years: when they suppose that Christ will dwell in Sion, and that in a golden and jewelled Jerusalem the peoples of the saints will be gathered together, so that they who in this present age have been oppressed by all the nations may in this same age rule over all nations. This the fable of the Jews 368Adreams: while the truth furnishes us with something far otherwise. Jerusalem signifies the Church of this present time: it signifies also the faithful soul: and also that which is above, free, our mother (Gal. IV).

The letter can be taken of the threefold coming, and what is said can fittingly be understood of each one. For after the sending of the Paraclete, after the preaching of the apostles, after the conversion of the nations in the valley of judgment, through the discernment of faith, Jerusalem becomes holy: and strangers shall pass through it no more. Strangers are said to be idolaters, heretics, schismatics. All of whom, at the beginning of the primitive Church, came with one accord to assail her, but did not pass through her, because, although they strive to assail the chastity of her faith, 368Bthey can nevertheless in no way break her unity, nor violate her charity. They came indeed armed with phantasmal reasonings, with sophistic arguments: but they were unable to pass through, driven back by the truth of the word, overcome by the reason of judgment, laid low by the testimonies of the Scriptures and by the heat of faith. They came indeed prepared to engage, but did not pass through, being compelled to go back. And from the very name of holiness her manifold power is shown, and the kind of her holiness. What is called sanctum in Latin is called ἄγιος, that is agios, in Greek. Agios is a name compounded of α and γῆ, that is gi Gi, means earth, a without. Whence that too is called holy which comes to be without earth, and is lifted up from earth. Holy were they of whom it is written: Our conversation is in heaven (Philipp. III). Holy too were those of whom 368Cit is said: Among whom you shine as lights in the world: holding forth the word of life (Philipp. II). Jerusalem then is holy in her sacraments, in her precepts, in her judgments, in her counsels, in her promises. For her sacraments are without dregs, her precepts without burden, her judgments without strife, her counsels without envy, her promises without the paint of deceit — without the envy of jealousy, without the strife of controversy, without the burden of forced service, without the dregs of concupiscence. She is therefore holy, whose understanding is contemplative, whose affection is heavenly, whose sense is spiritual, whose act is angelic. Whence John in the Apocalypse: I saw, he says, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband (Apoc. XXI). There follows: And strangers shall pass through 368Dher no more. Hence Nahum: Keep, he says, thy festivals, O Juda: and pay thy vows, because Belial shall no more pass through thee: he is utterly perished (Nahum I). There follows: And it shall come to pass in that day: the mountains shall drop down sweetness, etc. That day is the coming of the Paraclete; the mountains, the apostles; the hills, the disciples; the little brooks, the subject peoples; the sweetness, wisdom; the water, teaching. There are three kinds of teaching: the contemplative, the allegorical, the moral. The contemplative pure, the allegorical bare, the moral alone. Alone, from matter; bare, from form; pure, from every kind of circumscription. For the moral kind forms life without matter. The allegorical illumines knowledge without form. The contemplative, without phantasy, raises up to wisdom. Otherwise: Water is the historical condition; 369Amilk, moral teaching; sweetness, spiritual edification. They shall drop down from the higher places, they shall flow in the level places, they shall go in the valleys. The higher things of God are his invisible judgments: the level places, his manifest counsels; the valleys, humble penitence, obedience to the precepts, works of mercy. There follows: And a fountain shall come forth out of the house of the Lord, and shall water the torrent of thorns. The house of the Lord is the beauty of the primitive Church: the fountain, the fullness of evangelical teaching; the torrent of thorns is the onrush, the heat, the cruelty of the nations. Further, the fountain that came forth from the house of the Lord watered the torrent of thorns when, through the apostles and their successors, evangelical teaching initiated the Gentile people unto the end, converted it to belief, and led it to the grace of baptism. There follows:

369BEgypt shall be in desolation: and Idumaea in a desert of destruction: for that which they have done unjustly against the children of the Jew, and have shed innocent blood in their own land. And Judaea shall be inhabited for ever; and Jerusalem from generation to generation. Nothing on earth comes to pass without a cause: nor does the Lord without desert rain upon one city, nor without reason leave another unrained-upon. For behold, on the one hand Egypt and Idumaea remain desolate for the causes subjoined; on the other, Judaea and Jerusalem, for that they lived innocently, continently, obediently, are inhabited for ever, and rejoice. Egypt is the portion of the Gentile people that is reprobate and blinded through ignorance. Idumaea, the portion of the Jewish people that is reprobate and deserted by God through depraved and unclean concupiscence. Judaea is the wife of the Lamb, the bride of Christ, 369Cconfessing her ignorance, pricked with compunction and wearing herself away because of disordered concupiscence. Confessing to herself the darkness of ignorance, the filth of concupiscence, the horror of malice. Confessing to God the grace of pardon, the purity of innocence, the sublimity of glory. There follows:

And I will cleanse their blood, which they had not cleansed [quem non mundaveram]; and the Lord shall dwell in Sion. Here there is secretly brought in, through the coming of Christ, the remedy of grace against the shipwreck of original sin. For that blood, namely original sin, could in no way be cleansed or blotted out by anyone's righteousness or power, save by the blood of the immaculate Lamb, who knew no sin. Whence 369Dthe Apostle: Without the shedding of blood there is no remission (Hebr. IX). Likewise the same: For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens (Hebr. VII). And this is what in the present passage the Lord says through the prophet: And I will cleanse their blood, which they had not cleansed, that is, which they had not been able to cleanse. And then the Lord shall dwell in Sion. Then, namely, when all things shall be subjected to him, and he himself shall subject the kingdom to God and the Father. Then he shall dwell in the watchtower, because the sight of him shall be ministered to the elect unto glory. Then he shall be all in all (I Cor. XV): life, strength, bread, drink, form, salvation, light, fountain of life, leader, law, medicine. So shall he be all in all, according to that word: I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear (Psal. XVI). 370AHence is that word: This is, he says, life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent (Joan. XVII). Hence is that word of the wise man: To behold thee is the end, the beginning, the bearer, the leader, the path, the same the term. So much for the coming of Christ in the flesh; now let us speak of his coming to judgment.

And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall pass through her no more. After the sentence of judgment has been duly given, after the separation of the elect from the reprobate, the assembly of the saints shall be joined to the angelic choirs; and then Jerusalem, the wife of the Lamb, shall be lifted up from earthly things: Then God shall wipe away every tear from the eyes of the saints; and now there shall be no more either mourning or crying; nor any sorrow, for the former things are passed away (Apoc. 370BXXI). There shall be, I say, no more the crying of suggestion, the sorrow of temptation, the mourning of compunction; for the former things are passed away. What are the former things? The serpent's suggestion, the woman's delight, the man's consent. But the suggestion has passed away, impassibility being given; the delight, charity being made perfect; the consent, felicity being made full. Hence Isaiah: Arise, he says, arise, put on thy strength, O Sion; put on the garments of thy glory, O Jerusalem, city of the holy one, because the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no more pass through thee (Isa. LII). There follows: And it shall come to pass in that day: the mountains shall drop down sweetness, etc. By the mountains and the hills and the brooks the diversity of merits is shown. By the sweetness, the milk and the water, the variety of rewards. And that a fountain comes forth out of the house of the Lord watering the torrent of thorns, 370Cthat is what is said elsewhere: Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads (Isa. XXXV). And that: The Lamb, who is in the midst of them, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life (Apoc. VII). Then Egypt and Idumaea shall be in a desert of destruction, and Jerusalem with Judaea shall be inhabited unto the years of generation; because to those it shall be said: Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire (Matth. XXV); and to these: Come, ye blessed of my Father; receive the kingdom (ibid.). And then the Lord shall cleanse the blood of the elect, which they had not cleansed before; because, as the doctors assert, the elect, seeing the apostate angel punished by an irrevocable sentence, bound fast in an indissoluble chain, condemned to a horrible penalty, shall be shaken with fear, and by that very fear shall be purged of that which they had cleansed only with difficulty. 370DAccording to that word of Job: When he shall be taken away, he says, speaking of the apostate angel, the angels shall fear, and being terrified shall be purified (Job XLI). And after these things the Lord shall dwell in Sion, that is, in the watchtower of vision; because then he shall gird himself, and shall make them sit down, and passing shall minister unto them. Morally, concerning the coming of the Bridegroom to the bride of Christ, to the dove, to the only one, the beloved and faithful soul. When the Lord, dwelling in Sion, in the holy mountain, in the height, namely, of contemplation, enters more closely with the bride into the bond of union, when the bridegroom also proffers heavenly kisses, when with angelic service he ministers to her the dishes of paradise, then Jerusalem becomes holy — holy indeed, because lifted up from earthly things. Lifted up, I say, from iniquity, lifted up from curiosity, 371Aheld back from pleasure, set apart from vanity. Then strangers pass through her no more, because neither the suggestion of the evil one, nor the elation of the spirit, nor the titillation of the flesh, nor the harassment of the world dare in any way to provoke her, whom the felicity of the Bridegroom, shut up in the bridal chamber of contemplation, sets in the little couch of union. Strangers do not transcunt, I say, through her any more; because she who is joined to the impassible and set within the blessed is not struck by any trouble of things, even for a moment. By the grace of the Bridegroom, I say she is made impassible, not created so substantially. There follows:

And it shall come to pass in that day — that is, in that brightness of contemplation — the mountains shall drop down sweetness, and the hills shall flow with milk, and through all the brooks of Juda waters shall go. The mountains are the sublime things of contemplations; the hills, 371Bthe works of innocence; the brooks, the exercises of penitence; the sweetness is perfect love; the milk is holy devotion; the water, devout compunction. In that day, therefore — that is, in that felicity of union — the bride, through the joy of contemplation, receives the sweetness of perfect love: descending from which, and returning to herself, she flows with the milk of devotion. Whence, crucifying herself out of love for the things above, she is plunged into the waters of compunction, and coming forth thence is exercised in harsh penitence; after these things she is drawn to the works of innocence, and at last she flies away to those of contemplation, saying. For what have I in heaven? and besides thee what have I desired upon earth? (Psal. LXXII.) Likewise: My soul hath chosen hanging (Job VII). Then the fountain comes forth out of the house of the Lord, and waters the torrent of thorns; because the abundance and the privilege of spiritual 372Agrace flows out of the secret joy of a most pure conscience, blunting the stings of vices, restraining the movement of temptations, calming the gust of desires, and polishing the seat of the affections. Then ignorance is put to flight, then carnal concupiscence is brought to ruin; because the mind is illumined by the brightness of contemplation, and concupiscence is healed by the perfection of love. For Egypt is interpreted darkness, by which ignorance is designated: Idumaea, earthly things, by which carnal concupiscence is designated. But Judaea and Jerusalem shall be inhabited for ever. Judaea, confession; Jerusalem is called the vision of peace. For the devout and perfect mind, either descending to the knowledge of itself, confesses its offenses to God through the humility of compunction; or, ascending to the knowledge of God through the grace of contemplation, 372Bis raised up to the vision of peace, and then in the voice of exultation and of confession there comes to be in her the sound of one feasting. Never does the faithful soul forsake Judaea; because either, pricked with compunction, she confesses her crimes, or, devout, she gives thanks for the gifts of grace, or, raised on high, she pours forth a hymn as she receives her rewards. Then too the Bridegroom cleanses the blood which hitherto could not be cleansed, because through the fellowship of union the Bridegroom bestows upon the bride the privilege of perfection, so that nature may feel against nature, that which nature naturally withstands. And then the Lord of nature, by the privilege of grace, dwells in Sion, that is, in the watchtower of glory. May he deign to purge our nature, and to bestow upon us his own grace, unto the glory of that same sublimity. Who, three and one, liveth and reigneth Amen.