Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Chapter Four. Synopsis of the Chapter.
He continues to prefer the chaste and pious offspring over the unchaste and impious, because the former is often long-lived, honored and prosperous, while the latter is short-lived, infamous and unfortunate. For even though the chaste and just are sometimes overtaken by an early death and cut down like a crimson flower by the plow, yet a better life receives them, along with greater fame and glory. Therefore the age of old age is an unblemished life, and the just man perfected in a short time fulfilled many years.
1. Oh how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory! For its memory is immortal, because it is known both by God and by men. 2. When it is present, they imitate it; and they desire it when it has departed, and crowned forever it triumphs, winning the prize of undefiled contests. 3. But the manifold multitude of the ungodly shall not be profitable, and spurious shoots shall not take deep root, nor shall they establish a sure foundation. 4. And if they sprout in branches for a time, being insecurely set, they shall be shaken by the wind, and by the force of winds shall be uprooted. 5. For the imperfect branches shall be broken off, and their fruit shall be useless, and sour for eating, and fit for nothing. 6. For children born of unlawful beds are witnesses of wickedness against their parents at their examination. 7. But the just man, if he be overtaken by death, shall be at rest. 8. For venerable old age is not long-lived, nor is it measured by the number of years; but the understanding of a man is gray hairs, 9. and a spotless life is the age of old age. 10. Being made pleasing to God, he was beloved, and living among sinners he was translated. 11. He was taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. 12. For the bewitching of vanity obscures good things, and the inconstancy of desire perverts the innocent mind. 13. Being made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled a long time; 14. for his soul was pleasing to God; therefore He hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities. But the people seeing, and not understanding, nor laying such things to heart: 15. that the grace of God and His mercy are upon His saints, and His regard upon His elect. 16. But the just man who is dead condemns the wicked who are living, and youth quickly perfected condemns the long life of the unjust. 17. For they shall see the end of the wise man, and shall not understand what God has devised for him, and why the Lord has set him in safety. 18. They shall see and shall despise him; but the Lord shall laugh them to scorn; 19. and they shall after this fall without honor, and be a reproach among the dead forever: because He shall burst them, puffed up and speechless, and shall shake them from the foundations, and they shall be utterly laid waste; and they shall be in sorrow, and their memory shall perish. 20. They shall come with fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them.
1. OH HOW BEAUTIFUL IS THE CHASTE GENERATION (
that is, the chaste nation, namely chaste people, for he opposes these to the wicked nation spoken of in the preceding chapter, last verse; therefore it signifies all those begotten, or born) WITH GLORY! — In Greek, it is "better is childlessness with virtue"; that is, better is bereavement or lack of children with virtue; it is better to be without offspring, that is without children, and endowed with virtue, namely than to have children from adultery, illegitimate and wicked, as was said before. Hence St. Ambrose, Book I On Virgins, reads, "better is barrenness with virtue"; St. Jerome on Hosea chapter 9, "it is better not to have children with virtue"; St. Cyprian, Book On the Singularity of Clerics, "it is better to be without children with glory"; the Syriac, "it is better to be without children with glory"; the Arabic, "an excellent thing is the privation of children with virtue." "Integrity," says Blessed Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 146, "is a heavenly fellowship; virginity joined to Christ is a bond of virtue." Virgins therefore are earthly angels and heavenly men, and thus brides of Christ. Our translator, instead of the Greek word for "childlessness," seems to have read a word meaning "chaste generation," or the generation of chastity, or of chaste people; for although this compound word is not sufficiently in use among the Greeks, the simple words from which it is composed
are in common use; for the author of this book coins many words and creates new compounds. Indeed, our translator seems to have had a different Greek exemplar from the modern ones, for the modern ones do not have the exclamation "oh" nor the phrase "how beautiful."
Or rather, our translator skillfully understood by the bereavement of children not bare bereavement and barrenness — for that is not beautiful, but rather deformed — but prudently observed barrenness flowing from virtue, namely from beautiful chastity. Hence he translated, "Oh how beautiful is the chaste generation," that is, the chaste nation, as if to say: Oh how beautiful are chaste people! Oh how beautiful is chastity and its company, whether they be married, or celibate and virgin! For the Wise Man here by antithesis opposes and prefers the chaste who are childless to adulterers abounding in offspring; for the chaste, with virtue — that is, from virtue, namely from the love of chastity, whether conjugal or virginal — prefer to be bereft of children rather than to lose their virginity or defile themselves with adultery, even though they could hope for children from it; for their virtue, namely chastity and virginity, is more brilliant and illustrious than any praise and glory they could hope for from children. The sense therefore is, as if to say: It is better — that is, more excellent, more praiseworthy and more glorious — to lack children, if you lack them from virtue, namely from the love of chastity by which you do not wish to be defiled by adultery or to lose virginity, than to have an abundant, adulterous and wicked offspring. So St. Ambrose, Book I On Virgins, where, applying this maxim to virgins, he seems to explain it thus, as if to say: Better is barrenness, that is, better is virginity:
For in that age of the old law, because of the expectation of the Messiah, whom each person hoped would be born from their own lineage, barrenness was a disgrace and was considered a curse and infamy; while fertility was esteemed a blessing and glory. Hence many who had barren wives, being unable to raise children from them, turned to others, even foreigners and idolaters, to beget offspring from them. The Wise Man here rebukes the folly and perversity of these, and teaches that any chastity whatever, even childless and bereft, is far superior to any fertility and offspring, especially spurious, adulterous and wicked ones, because chastity is a virtue and an excellent one, while adulterous fertility is a great vice and crime. Hence the Egyptians denoted chastity and purity hieroglyphically by fire and water, because by these elements all purification and expiation is performed, as Horus Apollo says, Book II of Hieroglyphics, chapter 41. Now as much as chastity illumines and, as it were, silvers a person, so much does lust defile and disfigure: for as glorious as purity is, so disgraceful is impurity, which makes swine and pigs out of men, as St. Basil teaches on Psalm 1. The sense therefore is, as if to say: A son or daughter is beautiful in face, but one who is chaste and a virgin is more beautiful in virtue; a daughter is fair of countenance, but often immodest and shameless in mind; while a virgin is both comely in face and far more beautiful in the virginity of the mind. A handsome father often begets a handsome son like himself, according to that saying of Virgil, Aeneid VI: "The fairest offspring of Teucer." And in Book VII: "Born of fair Hercules." And in Book IV: "Than whom none was fairer among the sons of Aeneas."
But this beauty of body is often disfigured by the deformity of lust; for "there is a great quarrel between beauty and modesty," as it disfigured the daughters of the emperor Augustus, of whom Suetonius says in his Life: "His happiness was made unhappy by his daughters, granddaughter and grandsons; so much so that he himself, at the mention of them, used to exclaim that it would have been better to remain unmarried and to die without children; and he also called them his abscesses and tumors." For this reason Euripides said that being childless was to be "happy in misfortune." Reuben, Genesis 49:3, is called the beginning, or the chief and head of his father's sorrow, because he was the violator of his father's bed.
Hear Tertullian, Book On the Good of Chastity, chapter 1: "Chastity," he says, "is the flower of morals, the honor of bodies, the beauty of the sexes, the integrity of blood, the trust of family, the foundation of holiness, the prejudgment of every good mind; although rare, not easily perfected, and scarcely perpetual, yet it will remain to some extent in the world, if nature has laid the groundwork, if discipline has persuaded, if censure has restrained."
Following Tertullian as his master in his usual fashion, St. Cyprian, Book On the Good of Chastity, says: "Chastity is the honor of bodies, the ornament of morals, the sanctity of the sexes, the bond of modesty, the fountain of purity, the peace of the home, the head of concord, etc. Chastity seeks no adornments; it is its own glory. This commends us to the Lord, connects us to Christ; this conquers all the unlawful battles of desires in our members, and brings peace to our bodies: blessed itself, and making others blessed." And shortly after he gives these epithets to impurity: "The hostile rage of lusts, the burning of a good conscience, the mother of impenitence, the ruin of a better age, the disgrace of family, destroying the trust of blood and family, inserting its own children among foreign affections, introducing into foreign wills the offspring of an unknown and corrupt lineage."
St. Gregory of Tours, Book On the Glory of Confessors, chapter 106, relates that he was called to the funeral of St. Radegunde, then deceased, and says of her: "The holy face of Radegunde shone from the bier so that it surpassed the beauty of lilies and roses." And in chapter 51, he relates that a lily offered by St. Severus the priest to the temple, though it had been dry for a whole year, nevertheless each year on the anniversary of his passing in spring used to grow green again and bloom anew.
Moreover, since chastity is threefold — namely conjugal, widowed and virginal — each is superior to fertility and adulterous and infamous children. For conjugal chastity is beautiful, widowed more beautiful, and virginal most beautiful. Lyranus and Holcot take this maxim as referring to conjugal chastity; the rest refer it to virginal chastity, such as St. Cyprian (or rather Origen, as Pamelius judges), treatise On the Singularity of Clerics, St. Ambrose, Book I On Virgins, St. Bernard, Epistle 42, Peter of Blois, Epistle 36; indeed, the Church itself in the Office of Holy Virgins; so also Cantacuzenus and other interpreters here.
Hence St. Aldhelm, Book I On Virginity, relates that an angel distinguished the threefold chastity — namely virginal, widowed and conjugal — by these degrees: "Let virginity be gold, chastity silver, and the married state bronze; let virginity be riches, chastity moderate means, and the married state poverty; let virginity be peace, chastity redemption, and the married state captivity; let virginity be the sun, chastity a lamp, and the married state darkness; let virginity be day, chastity dawn, and the married state night; let virginity be a queen, chastity a mistress, and the married state a handmaid; let virginity be the homeland, chastity a harbor, and the married state the open sea; let virginity be a living person, chastity half-alive, and the married state a body; let virginity be purple, chastity revived cloth, and the married state wool."
Cyril graphically represents this maxim with a notable apologue of the rose, the lily and the fig tree, Book IV of Moral Apologues, chapter 8: "A rose and a lily," he says, "sprang up next to a fig tree. When they had spread out their flower-laden leaves shining with brilliance, dripping with the dew of sweetness and pouring forth the fragrance of aromatic scent, the fig tree — deprived of the light of flowers and having likewise put forth a bitter fruit, itching with the milk of envy — soon proposed an attack, saying: After such a pleasant and blooming radiance, where are your fruits? For it is vain to bloom without fruit. Indeed, shrewd nature binds the fruit in the flower, and germinates for the sake of that very vernal flower. But they, soon detecting the root of the speech, said in a peaceable manner: We know well that because of the itch of generation you have lost the glory of the flower, and therefore you are now stripped of leaves while you speak thus. Indeed you bear a very sweet fruit, but you suffer a bitter itch in the root, by which you sent forth your flower. But for us, from the full purity and sweetness of our substance, the flower itself is the fruit; hence in us flower and fruit are by no means distinguished, because with the overflowing flower of purity and the moisture of fragrant sublimity, in us flower and fruit have become one and the same. Does not the purest vapor of the earth entirely congeal into a flowery gold, and the sweetest dew of heaven form into a pearl while virginity blooms? Therefore the rose and the lily are both fruitful flowers and flowery fruits."
Then, adding many more things in praise of virginity, he compares it to the lily, the rose, the magnet, the sapphire, and the emerald: "The fruit," he says, "is most sweet, the beauty most excellent, the fragrance most pleasant, the value total; indeed it is the most brilliant gem of nature and virtue, the highest temperance, perfect victory, spirit above the sprout, complete glory. Therefore, like a fragrant rose and a gleaming lily, holy virginity is both flower and fruit; to whose fragrance the unicorn, attracted, runs sweetly; by whose sweetness its ferocity is tamed; by whose purity its most powerful strength, delighted and as if conquered, reverently lies prostrate and reclines in the shining virginal lap. O magnetic power of virginity, drawing nature to itself! O wondrous sapphire of chastity, putting to flight and destroying all venomous fame! O gleaming emerald of perpetual greenness, the purity that loves inviolate integrity, in no way tolerating the foul corruption of Venus! At this the fig tree, stupefied, fell silent."
Do you want a specimen and mirror of the beauty of holy virginity? St. Pulcheria Augusta, daughter of the emperor Arcadius, was a perpetual and glorious virgin, who raised her younger brother the emperor Theodosius in piety and every virtue for governance, and when he died, succeeding him in the empire, she married Marcian and made him Augustus, so that she might administer the realm with greater authority. But the virginity she had previously vowed to God she preserved in marriage, and devoted herself entirely to defending the faith and uprooting the heresy of Eutyches. For this reason the entire Council of Chalcedon acclaimed her: "A new Helena, the bulwark of the Orthodox, and the glory of the Churches." Finally, which is rare among emperors, by her chastity, justice and holiness she merited being inscribed in the catalogue of Saints on the 10th of September.
Such also was St. Cunegunde, who likewise preserved her chastity with her husband the emperor Henry, and in testimony of it walked unharmed with bare feet upon glowing hot iron. After her husband's death, she entered a monastery she had founded, professed as a nun, and spent fifteen years in wondrous humility, abstinence and penance; hence she is recorded as inscribed in the calendar of saints on the 3rd of March. Indeed, in so great a pinnacle of empire, chastity shines more brightly than the sun upon the whole world.
St. Elzear, Count of Ariano, preserved his virginity intact with his wife Delphina. Wherefore Lady Mablina, illustrious in nobility and piety, saw in the spirit a holy young man splendidly dressed, carrying in his hands a bright and illustrious white banner across a broad plain, whose elegance and splendor illuminated the entire air and that plain; and there followed him an innumerable multitude of people of every age, sex and rank. And when she asked God for an explanation of the vision, she heard: "This is the virginity and holiness of Elzear, whom the whole world will venerate, and many will follow him." So his Life records, in Surius chapter 16, for the 17th of September.
St. Ignatius writes brilliantly, Epistle 13 to Hero: "Guard virgins as the precious jewels of Christ." And St. Cyprian, Book On the Dress of Virgins: "It is the flower of the Church's seed, the beauty and ornament of spiritual grace, the joyful character of praise and honor, a whole and uncorrupted work, the image of God corresponding to the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious portion of Christ's flock. Through them, and in them, the glorious fecundity of Mother Church abundantly flourishes, and the more that abundant virginity adds to its number, the more the joy of the Mother increases."
Thus the virginity of the Vestal Virgins was a source of admiration for the Romans, although it was purchased, temporary and full of pride, as St. Ambrose says against Symmachus. For as Naumachius, an illustrious but pagan poet, says: "It is beautiful to have a chaste body, and to remain an untouched virgin, and to always delight in pure thoughts, etc. To remain as a queen among feeble women, raising a bright eye to that life in which there are glorious and true nuptials, where, mingled with divine words, she brings forth meditations full of light."
Enkindled by these praises of virginity, St. Casimir, son of the King of Poland, loved it so much that, even though physicians asserted he could not be freed from the disease from which he suffered unless he took a wife, and his father and the nobles of the kingdom pressed him to do so, he nevertheless steadfastly replied: "I prefer to die a virgin than to live not a virgin." He said it and did it, and therefore, as a sacrifice of virginity, he was inscribed by the Church in the register of holy virgins on the 4th of March.
He was therefore like the ermine, which, when surrounded by a muddy rampart by hunters, prefers to be caught and die rather than go out and be soiled. Hence his Lithuanian citizens gave him this anagram: "Casimirus — I am and a rainbow" — into which, that is, the Sun of Justice, shining upon him, breathed the splendor of His chastity. And this epitaph: "You fall willingly, but you fall for love of modesty, Casimir. Wondrous one, you fall while Christ makes you wondrous."
Among the first fathers of our Society was Fr. James Ledesma, a distinguished theologian, conspicuous for the religious holiness of his conduct. When he was fearful at the beginning of his vocation about preserving perpetual chastity, at Brescia the Blessed Virgin, more beautiful than the sun, appeared to him, accompanied by St. Mary Magdalene, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Catherine of Siena, and promised him the gift of chastity for his whole life. As she was returning to heaven, her three companions just mentioned were sweetly singing this song: "Oh how great is the gift of chastity, which God bestows on piety!" So our Fr. Francis Sacchini reports, Part II of the History of the Society of Jesus, Book I, number 63.
Read the Life of St. Julian and Basilissa, married yet virgins, and you will find wondrous things on this subject; it is found in Surius, on the 9th of January. See St. Athanasius, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Basil On the Praise of Virginity, as well as Climacus, Step 15, and Cassian, Conference 12.
Symbolically, how beautiful is the generation of Christ, both the eternal and divine, and the temporal and human! For both are chaste and virginal, because the eternal was made without a mother, and the human without a father, from the Holy Spirit. Hence Christ in heaven is "without mother," and on earth "without father." Both are equally glorious, indeed most glorious; hence of the former it is said, Psalm 109: "With You is the principality in the day of Your strength, in the splendors of the saints; from the womb before the daystar I begot You." So Angelus de Paz, Exposition on the Creed, chapter 14.
"With glory." — In Greek, "with virtue"; and since charity stands out among virtues, hence St. Bernard and Peter of Blois, Epistle 36, read "with charity." Hear St. Bernard, Epistle 42 to Henry: "Chastity without charity is a lamp without oil; take away the oil, the lamp does not shine; take away charity, chastity does not please. But oh how beautiful is (as the Wise Man exclaims, Wisdom 4:1) the chaste generation with charity! With that charity, I say, which the Apostle describes, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith." Our translator rendered it "with glory," because the Greek word for virtue, and the Latin word "virtus," often signify strength, power, excellence, preeminence, fame, and glory; hence that saying of Virgil: "Then shame kindled their strength, and conscious valor." Therefore "with glory" can be taken first as meaning the same as the Greek "with virtue," for virtue alone begets praise and glory; hence by the poets virtue is often called praise, as I have shown elsewhere. Secondly and properly, "with glory" means the same as "glorious," and is to be joined with "how beautiful," as if to say: Oh how beautiful and glorious is the chaste generation, or nation! For chastity is accustomed to associate with itself the other virtues; therefore it has the praise, beauty, glory and fame of the other virtues, because it is "virtue" — that is, martial strength and fortitude — which conquers all things and triumphs victoriously over all lusts; and this is indeed its great glory and fame.
Mystically, Lyranus takes this as the clarity of conscience which is given to the just, especially the chaste; and indeed experience confirms that chastity is the mother of wisdom, and that it causes the conscience, as well as the intellect and mind, to flourish and shine with wondrous charity.
Furthermore, the Greek word for "virtue" indicates that chastity requires great fortitude and military strength, and as it were, martial strength; for the Greek word for virtue is derived from Ares, that is Mars. Virgins therefore are like warriors, who continually wage a hard and difficult battle for chastity. Likewise "virtue" in Latin is derived from "force" and from "man," as if it were "manly"; for chastity makes women manly heroines, and as it were men, and with manly force resists all temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Children, surrounding their parents, are to them beauty and strength, and thereby fame and glory; but greater is the beauty, strength and fame of chastity and virginity, which chastity communicates to the chaste, so that by these three gifts it is celebrated and glorious, and makes the chaste glorious before God, as well as before all angels and all men.
This is what Ecclesiasticus says, chapter 44, verse 14: "Their name (of the just, especially of heroes, such as virgins and martyrs) lives from generation to generation. Let the people declare their wisdom, and the Church proclaim their praise." And chapter 49: "The memory of Josiah was made like the composition of a perfume, the work of a perfumer; in every mouth his memory will be as sweet as honey, and as music at a banquet of wine." And the Psalmist, Psalm 111:7: "The just shall be in everlasting remembrance."
AND AMONG MEN — both the upright and chaste, and the wicked and unchaste, who look up to and admire virgins and the chaste life as angelic and divine, which surpasses and transcends the powers of themselves and of all nature, as St. Ambrose teaches, Book II On Virgins, and St. Basil, On Virginity.
Symbolically, our Alvarez de Paz, Book IV On the Dignity of Perfection, Part III, chapter 37, expounds this whole passage concerning the just and the saints thus: The chaste generation, he says, is nothing other than the multitude of the just, which is beautiful in mind because it shines with the grace of beauty; and chaste in body because it gleams with the splendor of virtue; and bright with the light of wisdom because it shines with the knowledge of heavenly things. Its memory perishes neither before God nor before men; not before God, because He always has the saints with Him and never departs from His purpose of glorifying them; not before men, because they do not abandon the celebrated memory of those whom they always acknowledge as their patrons and mediators before God, so much so that — since the Church cannot celebrate the feasts of all the saints individually (for they are innumerable), nor can it know all the perfect and just by name, or maintain a special remembrance of each — it has established most celebrated feast days each year, on which (at God's command) it honors the choirs of all the saints and brings them to the remembrance of the faithful. It also frequently invokes them all, when in public prayers it sings: "All holy men and women of God, intercede for us."
FOR ITS MEMORY IS IMMORTAL: BECAUSE IT IS KNOWN BOTH BY GOD AND BY MEN
which therefore no passage of time, no vicissitude, no length of ages will erase in forgetfulness; but its memory and glory will flourish perennially as long as the eternity of God, of the angels, and of all men shall endure.
He proves the beauty and glory of the chaste generation, or nation and people, from the fact that its memory is immortal and its glory eternal before God and men, which he therefore opposes and prefers to the fleeting and perishable propagation of children, whose memory and fame last only a short time and perish with them. Those therefore err who seek immortality through children and strive to perpetuate their name and lineage, since true immortality is to be sought from virtue and chastity; for this has eternal praise and glory before God and men. Through generation the species of corruptible things is perpetuated, since individuals cannot be perpetuated, as Aristotle testifies in On Generation; but the memory of the just and chaste — indeed their soul, its happiness and glory — is perpetuated in the individual itself.
The Greek has it more expressively: "For immortality is in its memory" — that is, the memory of virtue, which was mentioned before; virtue, I say, by which one prefers to be barren and childless, out of love of virginity or conjugal chastity, rather than to beget children with other women or foreigners.
Finally, St. Cyprian (or Origen, as some maintain), treatise On the Singularity of Clerics, shortly before the end, cites this entire passage and proves from it that clerics and those devoted to chastity cannot dwell with women. For he says: "It is better to be without children with glory; there is nothing without children with glory except the solitary life alone, which not only one's conscience stains with no defilements, but which no suspicious opinions of cohabitation defame. For if chastity, which is difficult, preserves a man and a woman equally in virginity, it does not have glory, because the common life itself cannot but obscure things with certain shadows of disgrace; but the solitary life is so bright and evident to all, that it is manifested to everyone as pure and luminous with the splendor of its whiteness."
2. WHEN IT IS PRESENT, THEY IMITATE IT; AND THEY DESIRE IT WHEN IT HAS DEPARTED. — S
t. Cyprian reads, "when it has brought itself," namely when through the martyrdom or death of the chaste or of virgins, chastity or virginity has withdrawn itself with them into heaven. In Greek it is: "they desire it as it departs," and therefore as absent. The sense is, as if to say: Chastity is so beautiful that when it shows itself present in chaste people, it draws many to love and imitate it; but when it is absent, it sharpens the desire for it. For we often grow weary of good things when present, but desire and earnestly seek absent ones, according to that saying of Horace, Odes III, 24: "We hate virtue while it stands unharmed; taken from our eyes, we seek it enviously." And that saying: "Presence diminishes fame." But to upright men, chastity when present is admirable and worthy of imitation; when absent, desirable. An example
is in St. Augustine, who, bound to a concubine, freed himself from her through the examples of holy virgins. Hear him, Book VIII of the Confessions, chapter 11: "There was opened to me," he says, "from the direction toward which I had turned my face and where I was trembling to pass, the chaste dignity of continence, serene and cheerful without wantonness, virtuously enticing me to come without hesitation, and extending pious hands full of flocks of good examples to receive and embrace me. There were so many boys and girls; there was a great multitude of youth, and every age, and dignified widows, and aged virgins; and in all of them continence herself was by no means barren, but the fruitful mother of children of joys, from You, her spouse, O Lord. And she smiled at me with an encouraging smile, as if to say: Can you not do what these men and women do? Or can these men and women do it of themselves, and not in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in yourself and not stand? Cast yourself upon Him; do not be afraid; He will not withdraw so that you fall. Cast yourself; He will receive you securely and will save you. And I was deeply ashamed."
Therefore St. Basil, in his Homily on St. Gordius the Martyr, says: "When in the sacred books we hear of the life of Moses, the gentleness of his character greatly desired by our nature, we immediately seek to emulate him. When we hear of Joseph, or read his life, we greatly desire to attain his chastity. And if the story of Samson is told, we are inflamed to imitate his fortitude."
AND CROWNED FOREVER SHE TRIUMPHS, WINNING THE PRIZE OF UNDEFILED CONTESTS. — I
n Greek it is: "having won the contest of undefiled prizes," that is, of incorruptible or imperishable contests, or prizes (for the Greek word, if derived from the masculine form, means "of contests"; if from the neuter, it means "of prizes," which contests merit); winning the contest, as if to say: Chastity, and especially virginity, because it generously wins the hard contest of struggles and temptations of lust — for which great and incorruptible prizes have been proposed by God — is therefore crowned with the crown of glory, and the laurel or aureole of virginity, and triumphs in heaven.
Hence St. Cyprian reads, "winning the battle of undefiled contests"; where note that undefiled contests can be taken as meaning unpolluted ones — namely those which, fought against the temptations of lust that pollute the bodies and minds of many, so that scarcely anyone escapes them unharmed and unpolluted, are so undertaken and overcome by the chaste that they remain entirely untouched and undefiled by them. But if you translate it as "of undefiled prizes," by these understand the incorruptible crown of glory proposed by God for the chaste, which never withers, and is stained, polluted or blemished by no sorrow, pain or fear. Peter Faber adds, Book II of the Agonistics, chapter 12, and Book III, chapter 4, that the contests of holy virgins are called uncontaminated because they are dedicated to God, to distinguish them from the contaminated contests celebrated by the pagans in honor of the gods — that is, of demons.
It could also be explained by hypallage thus: "Winning the prize of undefiled contests" or "battles" means winning the contest or battle of undefiled prizes. So in Psalm 18:6 it says: "He has placed His tabernacle in the sun," meaning He has placed the sun in His tabernacle. And Psalm 32:7: "Laying up the depths in treasuries," meaning laying up treasures in the depths. So elsewhere it says: "He sent the city into fire," meaning He sent fire into the city; and: "You shall have sandals on your feet," meaning you shall have your feet in sandals — that is, shod, Exodus 12. However you turn it and explain it, the sense always comes back to the same thing. On the crown or aureole of virginity, see St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure and the other Scholastics on Book IV, distinction 33.
Our translator, for the Greek word meaning "contest" — that is, battle — rendered it "prize" by metonymy, because in the contest the judge of the games proposed a prize to the one winning the contest or battle, in place of the trophy. As if to say: The chaste person and the virgin, winning the battle in so perilous a contest of the temptations of the flesh, carries off the prize — namely the crown of glory — with which he or she triumphs forever.
Hear St. Ambrose celebrating the glorious crowns and triumphs of virgins and therefore of martyrs, Book III, Epistle 25 to the Church of Vercelli, near the end: "Among us," he says, "even girls, sublime in their desire for death, have raised up steps of virtues all the way to heaven. What shall I say of Thecla, of Agnes, of Pelagia, who, springing up like noble shoots, hastened to death as if to immortality? A virgin exulted among lions, and fearlessly awaited the roaring beasts. And, to compare our own with the gymnosophists of India, what that man boasted of in words, St. Lawrence proved by deeds — that he was burned alive and, surviving the flames, said: 'Turn me over and eat.' Not unworthy was the contest of the children of Abraham and the Maccabees, of whom some sang over the flames, others, while being burned, did not ask to be spared, but protested that the persecutor should be inflamed more. Thus the wise man is free." He then adds the rare fortitude of St. Pelagia: "And what was more sublime than St. Pelagia, who, surrounded by persecutors, before she even came into their sight, said: I die willingly; no one shall touch me with a hand; no one shall violate a virgin with an insolent eye! I shall carry modesty with me, I shall carry unharmed modesty with me; the robbers shall gain no profit from their insolence. Pelagia will follow Christ; no one will take away her liberty; no one will see as captive her free faith, her distinguished chastity, and her lineage of prudence. What is servile will remain here, owed to no purpose." She said it and did it; for before she could be seized by the soldiers, throwing herself from a height, she flew to heaven as both virgin and martyr, as the same St. Ambrose relates, Book III On Virgins, St. Chrysostom and others.
Hear also the triumphs of St. Victoria, virgin and martyr; for St. Anatolia urged her to preserve her virginity with these words: "O Victoria, conquer the devil and be a true victory! On the day when I
you shall be shown." St. Basil has similar words in On Sacred Virginity. Moreover, Charles Paschasius teaches that virgins used to be crowned by the pagans with a floral crown or with pine branches (for the pine is a symbol of virginity), Book II On Crowns, chapter 15, and Book VI, chapter 28.
Finally, a threefold crown is owed to virgins: the first, of virginity; the second, nuptial, because they are wed to God — for in ancient times virgins, when they married, were crowned; the third, athletic, because like athletes they undergo and overcome the difficult and hard contest with lust. Hence nearly all nations crown virgins with roses and flowers when they die; for a virgin is a tamer of lust, a vanquisher of demons, a conqueror of passions and senses. To the virgin in every respect applies that famous praise of the Maccabee, 1 Maccabees 3:4: "He was made like a lion in his works, and like a lion's cub roaring in the hunt. And he pursued the wicked, seeking them out; and those who troubled his people, he burned with flames; and his enemies were driven back, and all the workers of iniquity were confounded; and salvation was directed by his hand."
3. BUT THE MANIFOLD (
in Greek, meaning "manifold, multiplied, many") MULTITUDE OF THE UNGODLY SHALL NOT BE PROFITABLE. — This is an antithesis, as if to say: The pious and chaste, by their virtue and chastity, earn for themselves eternal crowns and triumphs; but the crowd of the impious, however great, is useless — indeed, by its impiety it is harmful to itself and to its neighbors; for it brings upon itself the fires and torments of hell.
You will ask: Why then does God create men whom He knows will be impious, and why does He tolerate them? I answer: First, so that He may show in them His vindicative justice, just as He shows in the pious His mercy through the grace and glory He bestows on them, as the Apostle teaches, Romans 9; and so that through justice exercised upon the impious, the pious may better recognize the mercy shown to them, and give God greater thanks. Second, so that through the impious, the pious may be exercised, purified and perfected: thus Cain exercised Abel, Ishmael Isaac, Esau Jacob, Pharaoh Moses, Saul David, Haman Mordecai, etc.
Hear St. Augustine, Sermon 52 on the Gospel of St. John: "Clearly," he says, "you see therefore that the wicked also are necessary for the good. We are in a kind of goldsmith's furnace — that is, in this world. If you are not gold, you burn together; but if you are gold, the wicked man is your chaff; and if you are also in the chaff, you will together become smoke." And on those words of Psalm 51: "Like a sharp razor you have wrought deceit: Behold," he says, "what the wicked do to the good — they shave their hairs," that is, as he soon explains, the wicked man is going to offer temporal goods.
Third, the impious render many services to the pious in the mechanical arts, commerce, and other temporal matters in which they excel, since they are wholly intent upon profits, craftsmanship, governance, etc.
AND SPURIOUS SHOOTS SHALL NOT TAKE DEEP ROOT, NOR SHALL THEY ESTABLISH A SURE FOUNDATION. — A
s if to say: Just as spurious plants do not put down deep roots, and therefore quickly dry up and perish, so the illegitimate and impious children of adulterers and the ungodly quickly fail, and do not propagate their line or family; for spurious plants are illegitimate and bastard children.
Hence the Syriac translates, "and those who are from foreign seed shall not give roots in the depth"; the Arabic, "the roots of their sprouts shall not be deep." Spurious shoots therefore are adulterous plantations; so St. Bonaventure, Lyranus, Hugo, Holcot and Dionysius read here, for these are what the Greek means — that is, bastard or spurious and adulterous plants. For the word "vitulamina" is found in no dictionaries or classical authors at present. Hence St. Augustine, Book II of On Christian Doctrine, chapter 12: "Because," he says, "the Greek word means 'calf,' some did not understand that the Greek derivative means 'plantations,' and translated it as 'vitulamina' [calf-shoots]. This error has taken hold in so many manuscripts that one can scarcely find it written otherwise; and yet the meaning is perfectly clear, because the following words make it plain. For 'adulterous plantations shall not put down deep roots' is more fittingly said than 'vitulamina' [calves], which walk on the ground with their feet and do not adhere by roots. In that passage the rest of the context also supports this translation."
Jansenius follows St. Augustine, and rejects the Vulgate reading which has "vitulamina" as corrupted or less fitting, as do St. Bonaventure, Hugo, Vatablus, Clarius and Polydore Virgil in Sacred Adages, Book II, adage 379.
But "spurious shoots" (vitulamina) is what all manuscripts of the Vulgate edition read here, which, since the Council of Trent approved it as authentic in Session 4, no Catholic may any longer reject. So also Optatus of Milevis, Book IV Against Parmenian, reads "spurious shoots" and "children of adulteresses," and explains it of heretics: "Among whom," he says, "there are false marriages of the sacraments, and in whose beds iniquity is found, where the seeds have been corrupted for the destruction of the faith." It seems therefore that the word "vitulamina" was in accepted use in that era.
Furthermore, a person is called "spurious" who is born of a known mother but an unknown or ignoble father; hence the ancients designated a bastard by the letters S.P., as if to say, "without a father." Moreover, "spurius" is derived from the Greek word for "seed," because he has nothing from his father except the seed; for he does not succeed to his father's family, status and inheritance. So St. Isidore, Book IX of Origins, chapter 5, Plutarch in his Questions, Sigonius On Roman Names, and others. St. Isidore adds that "spurius" is said as if meaning "outside of purity" — that is, unclean. Others think "spurius" means the same as "spurcus" (filthy); but the first etymology is the genuine one.
I say therefore that our translator aptly rendered it "vitulamina" (shoots): first, because he imitates the Greek, which from the word for "calf" derives the word for "shoots" — that is, from "calf" comes "calf-shoots." These Greek "shoots" are cuttings which are taken from a tree and planted, so that they grow into a shrub or tree; likewise tender branches which are brought down from a tree to the ground, like a slip or cutting from an olive, or a layer from a vine. For the Greek verb means the same as "I plant cuttings taken from a tree, I plant the most tender branches plucked from a tree, I establish nursery plants or living roots." So St. Bonaventure says that St. Ambrose wrote in a certain letter, "you are noble shoots"; and he says they are named from the vine, which is a noble planting. Furthermore, the root of a tree is called "taurus" (bull) — why not also "vitulus" (calf) or "vitulamen" (shoot)? Hear Quintilian, Book VIII, chapter 2: "Just as in words called homonyms — whether 'taurus' means an animal, or a mountain, or a sign in the sky, or a man's name, or the root of a tree — it is not understood unless distinguished." So the Greek word signifies both a calf, and a tendril, and a living root — that is, a plant which is set with a living root, as if having a living root. Hence the derivative is called a sucker, a tender plant, a young branch, a vine-layer, a living root.
Second, because "vitulamen" is a Latin word and aptly signifies the wandering, wanton, and calf-like frisking and wantonness of spurious plants, as well as of adulterers. For in Latin, "vitulari" means the same as to rejoice, to leap about, to frisk like a calf; hence "vitulamen" is wantonness itself, as Festus, Nonius and others say. Now just as men are said metaphorically to frisk and cavort, so too plants when their branches luxuriate; for there is an analogy and similarity between the propagation of plants, beasts and men. Hence just as men are said to "cavort" when they leap and frisk in the manner of calves, so too plants; therefore our translator aptly named the foolish and wantonly luxuriating plants, or suckers, "vitulamina" from the foolish and wanton frisking of a calf.
Cervantius explains somewhat differently: The word "vitulamina," he says, signifies degenerate, unfruitful, foolish, and luxuriating plants, which are accustomed to grow at the trunk of the vine, from which they take their name, and harm the vines, and are brought forth from the earth as fodder for calves — that is, from land plowed by oxen. Thus the impious are ignoble, degenerate, barren, foolish and soft in adversities, so that they easily succumb to them; and they love and burn to bring harm, as far as they can, to Christ the Lord, "the true vine," John 15, and His "branches" — that is, the Church, a vineyard most pleasant, most beautiful and most precious to God. But they will not thrive for long, nor will they ripen so as to match their talent; certain punishments await these plants, Isaiah 5; Jeremiah 12; Ezekiel 15.
And so others derive "vitulamina" not from "vitulus" (calf) but from "vitis" (vine); but in that case they should rather be called "vitilamina," as one says "vitiligo" — not "vitulamina" — unless you say that "vitulamina" alludes to both the calf and the vine.
But why are "vitulamina" — that is, plants or branches — called "spurious" which do not put down deep roots? I answer first: Spurious herbs and plants are those which degenerate from the genuine ones, and likewise false ones which have the appearance of the genuine but not their power and character. Thus an olive tree on barren soil grows wild and degenerates into a wild olive. Therefore a spurious branch of a wild olive, if grafted onto a cultivated olive, either does not grow together with it and does not thrive, or certainly does not take on and absorb the character and goodness of the olive. Hence Theophrastus, Book I On the Causes of Plants, chapter 7, says that cultivated trees are to be grafted by budding onto wild ones, but not wild ones onto cultivated — namely, the olive is to be grafted onto the wild olive, not the wild olive onto the olive: "Wherefore," he says, "they prescribe afterwards to graft or bud onto wild olive stocks; for they grow together and take hold more strongly, and the root, drawing more nourishment, causes the tree to bear good fruit. For if on the contrary you plant the wild in the cultivated, although there will be some difference, nevertheless a tree of good fruit is never truly produced."
Second, by spurious shoots — that is, spurious plants and cuttings — can be understood the many thick branches which a tree or vine, luxuriating in moisture, produces at its roots, but then, when the moisture and sap fail, cannot nourish; hence it kills them with its own shade. Hear Pliny, Book XVII, chapter 10: "Nature has also demonstrated nursery plants, with a dense offspring sprouting from the roots of many trees, and the mother producing what it will kill; for the undigested crowd is pressed down by its shade, as in laurels, pomegranates, planes, cherries and plums. In few of this kind do the branches spare the offspring, as in elms and palms; and no such shoots arise except from trees whose roots wander on the surface of the earth for love of sun and rain. It is not the custom to place all of these immediately in their permanent location, but first to give them to a nurse, and to let them grow in nurseries, and then to transplant them again. This transition wonderfully softens even wild ones — either because the nature of trees also, like that of men, is eager for novelty and travel, or because in departing they leave behind their bitterness and are tamed by handling (like wild beasts), while the plant is torn from the root." Pliny calls the young shoots "chicks" — tender branches that are soft and delicate, like chicks and young boys. In a similar way, the lustful and adulterers beget a large spurious offspring, but, because of strength exhausted by lust, a weak and feeble one, which they then feed reluctantly and neglectfully; hence all of it easily fails and dies, and scarcely leaves a long-lived offspring after it.
Third, plants degenerate from their native goodness and character and become spurious if they are transferred and transplanted to another place unlike the former one, or less suitable for them; and then they easily wither. Hear Columella, Book III, chapter 5: "Cuttings placed in strong soil, although they take hold and spring up quickly, yet when they have been made into living roots before being transplanted, they wither and cannot grow." And more clearly in chapter 9: "It will be sufficient to observe, in transplanting seedlings, a similar condition of climate and location, and the habit of the vine itself; because a cutting generally degenerates if the position of the field or the quality of the air is unfavorable, or even if it is brought from a tree to a trellis. Therefore we shall transplant from cold to cold, from hot to similar conditions, from vineyards to vineyards."
Fourth, spurious plants are those which, eaten by worms, or consumed by decay, or struck by blight or some other disease, have lost their vigor, and therefore wither and waste away. Such branches are foolish suckers, like a cutting or slip from an olive tree, or a vine-layer, which therefore cannot be planted so as to take root and sprout.
Fifth and best, spurious plants and branches are those which grow upon branches of another species when a seed is cast into them; because they cannot put down deep roots in them, they therefore cannot grow, but quickly wither. So Theophrastus, Book On the Causes of Plants, chapter 33, relates that a terebinth was seen growing in an olive tree, and polypody in trees, and laurel in a plane tree and in an oak, and adds the reason: "For when," he says, "a seed has fallen into a part of a tree almost converted to earth by decay, it sprouts and lives, drawing nourishment from the tree beneath it." But because this is scant, it likewise lives and grows only scantily.
Again, there are certain plants which by their nature grow only upon the branches of another tree; if you tear them away and plant them to become living roots, they wither and die. Such is mistletoe, which is a shrub from which birdlime is made. For this shrub, clinging to the branches of certain trees, stays green through winter, bearing berries in autumn on which thrushes, blackbirds and pigeons feed. It grows on oaks, apple trees, pear trees, linden trees, birches, willows, medlars, quinces and other trees. If planted in the earth, it does not sprout; it is the companion of the tree alone, and is not born except from a seed passed through the bowels of some bird. It is said, as Athenaeus relates in Book IX, that if a bird eats the seed of mistletoe, upon whatever tree it voids its bowels, mistletoe will grow. Hence Virgil, Aeneid VI: "As mistletoe is accustomed in the woods in winter's cold to flourish with new foliage, which its own tree does not sow, and to encircle the smooth branches with its golden fruit."
Theophrastus teaches the same, Book II On the Causes of Plants, chapters 23 and 24: "Hyphear," he says, "and stelis grow on firs and pines, mistletoe on oaks, terebinths," etc. And in chapter 25 he teaches that certain plants need others to lean upon, and therefore grow upon them, such as smilax, thyme and ivy, which accordingly, if separated, cannot stand by themselves but wither. And Pliny, Book XVI, chapter 44: "Some things," he says, "cannot grow in the ground and are born on trees; for since they do not have their own seat, they live in another's, like mistletoe." Such properly are adulterers, who beget illegitimate children from another man's wife, like spurious shoots, which therefore do not put down roots in this land of generation and lineage.
Pliny adds: "There is also in Syria an herb called 'cadytas,' which winds itself around not only trees but even thorns. Likewise around Tempe in Thessaly there is what is called polypody, and dolichos, and thyme; and also on a pruned (lopped, cut back) wild olive, what
grows they call 'phaunos'; and what grows on fuller's thorn, 'hypophaeston,' with empty calyxes, small leaves, a white root, whose juice is considered very useful for treating the falling sickness. There are three kinds of mistletoe: for on the fir and the larch, Euboea says 'stelis' grows, Arcadia says 'hyphear'; but most say that mistletoe grows on the oak, the hard oak, the holm-oak, the wild plum, the terebinth, and on no other trees. It is most abundant on the oak, which they call 'oak-hyphear.' In every tree except the oak and holm-oak, the smell and pungency make a difference; and the leaf is of unpleasant odor in both, bitter and sticky in the mistletoe."
And these are the bitter fruits which the Wise Man adds here, saying: "And their fruit is useless and sour for eating."
Pliny concludes regarding mistletoe: "But when planted deliberately, it absolutely does not grow, nor except when passed through the bowels of birds, especially pigeons and thrushes. Such is its nature, that unless ripened in the stomachs of birds it does not come forth." Therefore, just as mushrooms and mistletoe grow upon a foreign tree and do not allow themselves to be torn from it — but if you tear them away and plant them, they do not take root; indeed they die and wither, and their fruit is tasteless and bitter — so in exactly the same way the impious and adulterous offspring of the ungodly and of adulterers is born only in adultery, as in foreign soil; hence it is not vital by itself, nor can it stand by itself, or propagate its line, or found its own family, but it withers and perishes; and their fruit also is bitter and sour, as I shall soon show.
Let Augustus Caesar serve as an example, who, devoted to lusts and debaucheries, left no offspring except those like himself — namely his two Julias, his daughter and his granddaughter from her — both unchaste, to his own disgrace; and in them his line was extinguished. The same happened to Julius Caesar, Gaius Caligula, Nero, and the other emperors given to adultery and luxury, who left no offspring as heir to so great an empire. Read Suetonius and the others who wrote the lives of the Caesars.
St. Augustine had one son from a concubine, named Adeodatus; but death took this boy away, God so providing lest he create any shame or hindrance for one who was to become so great a doctor of the Church. Augustine himself writes about this in Book IX of the Confessions, chapter 6: "I acknowledge Your gifts to You, O Lord my God, creator of all things, and mighty to reform our deformities; for in that boy I had nothing besides the sin, etc. Quickly You took his life from the earth, and I remember him with greater security, fearing nothing from his boyhood, or his youth, or for the man at all."
So God struck down the small child born to David from his adultery with Bathsheba. Theodoret in Book II of Kings, Question 26, asks the reason and answers: "Had he lived, he would have been the evidence of the father's crime; therefore God, taking care of the pious king who was also a Prophet, did not allow him to live."
4. AND IF THEY SPROUT IN BRANCHES FOR A TIME (
that is, temporarily; for in Greek it is "for a season"), BEING INSECURELY SET (in Greek, meaning "rising, growing up"), THEY SHALL BE SHAKEN BY THE WIND AND UPROOTED BY THE FORCE OF WINDS. — As if to say: Even though spurious plants — that is, spurious and illegitimate children — may grow and prosper for a short time, nevertheless they will soon be shaken and shattered by some wind of adversity, and as it increases, they will be uprooted, especially when they see and reflect that they were begotten from the infamous lust of their parents, are neglected by them, and despised by others. This causes them in turn to look down on their parents, and not allow themselves to be corrected by them, but freely, just as their parents did, to indulge their own concupiscence and lust, and so to shorten their lives, and to lose their wealth, reputation, life and soul — and this by God's just retribution, Who uproots the impious with their seed and progeny utterly, often in this life and always in the next, according to that saying, Isaiah 64:6: "We have all fallen like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have carried us away."
Following the Wise Man as usual, Sirach pronounces this from God concerning illegitimate children: "His children shall not take root, and his branches shall not bear fruit; he will leave behind his memory as a curse, and his disgrace shall not be blotted out," etc., Ecclesiasticus chapter 23, verse 35. See the commentary given there.
5. FOR THE IMPERFECT BRANCHES SHALL BE BROKEN OFF, AND THEIR FRUIT SHALL BE USELESS AND SOUR (
in Greek, meaning untimely, unripe, raw fruit, not yet ripened by the heat of the sun, and therefore bitter) FOR EATING, AND FIT FOR NOTHING. — He says the same thing and amplifies it with ever new words; for from the preceding chapter, verse 16, until this point he repeatedly presses and drives home the worthlessness, infamy, barrenness and brevity of life of illegitimate children. Hence he calls them "imperfect branches" — that is, those which do not reach their perfection and completion — and their fruit "sour" — that is, their offspring are wicked and malicious, for they imitate their parents, and are therefore plucked and torn away before maturity, like unripe fruit. Again, their fruit — that is, their works, plans and schemes — are bitter to others, meaning harmful and destructive. The word "broken off" signifies that they die a violent death, as being premature, and sometimes inflicted by force.
Here applies what is said in Job 22:16 concerning the impious: "Who were carried away before their time, and a flood overthrew their foundation." Alluding to this maxim of the Wise Man, St. Paulinus, Epistle 35 to Desiderius, prays thus piously: "Then let me, roused to the vigilance of solicitude, stand ready at every hour, and be trembling while the Lord is absent, so that I may be secure when He arrives. At every time, every day, let Christ find me fruitful for Him — that is, let me never appear unripe for any work of His will. But if perchance in a time of wrath He demands His peace from me, let my mind not be unripe for concord through the bitterness of wrath, and let me not wait for the sun to set upon my anger,
lest my life expire, if evening closes the day before peace has extinguished my fury." And he adds the reason: "And this is what He intended us to understand by indicating through the Evangelist that He sought fruit from the tree not at its own season, so that man might recognize that he owes fruit to God at all times. Because the good Lord, Who prepares mortal man for immortality, even in this age wants him to put on the appearance of perpetuity, so that He may not receive fruit from a particular time, but may be about to harvest at every time from him, with whom He will remain forever in an age without time."
so that virtue may be transfused from him into many ages. This kind of lineage will certainly be most worthy of all praise and devotion; for very many men will become devoted if the human race is such — for in horses too and dogs and other animals the same principle applies." I have said more on this matter in Proverbs 30:16.
6. FOR CHILDREN BORN OF UNLAWFUL BEDS (
many wrongly read "all" instead of "beds"; for in Greek it is the word for "beds" — that is, sexual unions) ARE WITNESSES OF WICKEDNESS AGAINST THEIR PARENTS AT THEIR EXAMINATION. — As if to say: Children born of unlawful intercourse (which usually takes place at night, at the time of sleep; so in chapter 7, verse 2, the author says he was conceived with the pleasure accompanying sleep — where there is more on this — and this is a decent circumlocution for a shameful thing, for by "sleep" he rightly denotes intercourse) are witnesses and indicators of wickedness — namely, of the lust and adultery of their parents — and they silently but in reality accuse them at their examination, that is, in their inquiry or scrutiny. As if to say: If anyone inquires, examines or questions the illegitimate children — "Who is your father? Who is your mother?" — he will understand that they were fornicators or adulterers, and therefore criminals and infamous. Illegitimate children therefore are witnesses of wickedness — that is, of the lust and illicit intercourse of their parents. Hence parents who wish to protect their reputation hide their illegitimate children and send them away, and arrange for them to be raised secretly; for those who glory in them glory in their own disgrace and infamy.
Again, illegitimate children are witnesses of the wickedness of their parents because they often contract through the tainted seed of their parents their lust, fickleness, anger and other vices, and display them openly; for bad fruit is the indicator of a bad tree. Hence we see that not infrequently bastards are lustful, cunning, deceitful and vicious; for which reason, as well as on account of their infamous birth, they are barred from the priesthood and sacred orders. Adulterous offspring is therefore ill-fated, and labors under a disgrace that is never washed away. Hence Job rightly said about adultery, chapter 31, verse 12: "It is a fire that devours even to destruction, and roots out all increase." Legitimate children therefore are more upright than bastards, because the former share in the virtue of their parents, the latter in their vice. Aristotle gives this reason, Politics III, chapter 6.
The same author says in Stobaeus, Sermon 88: "We have already stated the causes — namely, that nobility is the virtue of a lineage; and virtue is something praiseworthy and worthy of devotion. Likewise a lineage in which many have been devoted and good merits praise and devotion; and such a lineage comes about when its beginning has been praiseworthy. For the beginning has this capacity, to produce many things like itself. This is the work, this is the power of the beginning — to render very many things similar to itself. When therefore one such person has been in some lineage, and so good
7. BUT THE JUST MAN, IF HE BE OVERTAKEN BY DEATH, SHALL BE AT REST. — H
e meets a tacit objection; for he had said that the impious and adulterers, and their children, are snatched away by a premature death, like unripe fruit. Someone will object that the just also, and their children, sometimes die prematurely. He meets this and responds that their death, although it may seem premature with respect to nature and age, is nevertheless mature for them: both because it transfers them to eternal rest and glory, and because it was foreseen by them — indeed, expected and desired. Therefore death finds them prepared and awaiting it, as a passage to a better life. "At rest" — in Greek, "in rest he shall be"; for in purgatory also there is rest, says Dionysius, on account of the certainty of salvation, the prayers of the living, and the consolation of the angels. Death therefore for the just is rest, sleep, a cessation from labor and sorrow, refreshment — and therefore not premature, but maturity itself. Hence from the Greek it can be rendered: "the just man, if he shall have anticipated or hastened to finish" (namely, his life and the labors of life; or) "the just man, if he attains what he strives for" (if he achieves his desire, if he arrives where he longs to be — namely, to end the labors of life), "shall be at rest."
The just man, therefore, in this sense is not overtaken by death, because he himself mentally anticipates, forestalls and preempts death. For when he rises in the morning, he has already meditated on that saying of Anthony: "Consider this day to be your last." So act, so live, as if you were going to end your works and merits with your life today. And that saying of St. Jerome: "Live as though you were going to die every day; study as though you were going to live forever." Therefore the just and wise man does not put off until tomorrow the good he plans, but carries it out on the same day if he can; if he cannot, he offers to God his good will and his resolution to carry it out when he may. For he is mindful of that saying, Ecclesiastes 9:10: "Whatever your hand is able to do, do it earnestly; for there will be neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge in the netherworld, where you are hastening." Our Fr. John Maldonatus did this — the oracle of France in his day — who four times daily made an examination of death: for he examined his conscience to see whether there was anything in it that could cause him anguish or distress at the hour of death, and if he found anything of the sort, he immediately removed it. Therefore he settled his accounts daily as if he were going to die that day; for as Climacus says, Step 6: "One does not pass through the present day piously unless one considers it to be the last of one's entire life."
He passes from the specific to the general, from a particular case to a universal principle — namely, from the chaste person to the just person; for one who is chaste is easily just as well, while one who is unchaste is unjust. The first reason is that among all the parts and virtues of Christian justice, chastity is the most difficult; hence, in order to defend and preserve itself, it needs the protection of all the other virtues. Therefore whoever has it must also have the others; but whoever does not have them and is therefore unjust, it is difficult — indeed impossible — for him to preserve chastity for long. The second reason is that chastity is the inseparable companion of wisdom (which is the Wise Man's subject throughout this whole book) — that is, of prudence and virtue — just as lust is the companion of folly. Third, because every good person is chaste, and every wicked person is an adulterer before God; for through disobedience and sin he violates the faith given to God in circumcision or baptism, or owed to be given, according to that saying, 2 Corinthians 11:2: "I have espoused you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." For this reason Solomon in Proverbs, especially chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7, laboriously dissuades his son or disciple, whom he is instructing in wisdom, from lust, as the greatest obstacle to wisdom.
Now hear St. Bernard, Epistle 105 to Romanus: "The just man, though he does not avoid death, nevertheless does not fear it. For if he be overtaken by death, he shall be at rest. The just man indeed dies, but securely, for his death, as it is the departure from this present life, is also the entrance into a better one. It is a good death if you die to sin, so that you may live to justice. This death must necessarily come first, so that the secure death may follow. In this life, as long as it lasts, acquire for yourself that life which lasts forever. While you live in the flesh, die to the world, so that after the death of the flesh you may begin to live for God. For what does it matter if death tears open the sack of your body, while joy thereafter surrounds you? Oh how blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, hearing from the Spirit, Revelation 14:13, that they may now rest from their labors. And not only that, but there follows joy from newness and security from eternity. Therefore the death of the just is good on account of rest, better on account of newness, best on account of security. On the contrary, the death of sinners is the worst, Psalm 33:22; and hear why it is the worst. For it is bad in the loss of the world, worse in the separation of the flesh, worst in the double anguish of the worm and the fire. Come then, hasten, go out, depart: let your soul die the death of the just, so that your last things may be like theirs. Oh how precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, Psalm 115:16. Flee, I beg you, do not stand in the way of sinners. How can you live where you dare not die?"
Hear also St. Augustine (or whoever the author may be), Book On the Christian Life, chapter 5, volume 9: "But someone will say: What is this, that we see good people also perishing with the wicked? They do not perish but escape — they are freed as from the company and persecutions of the wicked and are transferred to rest. Those truly die and perish whom, as they depart from this world, the punishment and penalty of a still greater judgment awaits. For the good are called before their time, lest they be vexed longer by the harmful; but the wicked and impious are taken away, lest they persecute the good any longer. The just are called from pressures, tribulations and straits to rest; but the wicked are snatched from their luxuries, riches and pleasures to punishment. The former go to judge; the latter, to be judged. The former, to be vindicated; the latter, that vengeance may be executed upon them, as it is written, Wisdom 4:7: 'But the just man, if he be overtaken by death, shall be at rest'; and again, verse 8 [10]: 'Living among sinners he was translated'; and again, verse 14: 'For his soul was pleasing to God, and therefore He hastened to snatch him from the midst of iniquity'; and again: 'When the impious go to death, they however are in peace.'"
Do you want examples? Take these. Robert Holcot relates in his commentary on this passage that a certain learned and upright man was found dead among his books, and when those arriving, struck by this incident, gazed at him more closely, they saw his finger pointing at this sentence: "The just man, if he be overtaken by death, shall be at rest."
Blessed Jordan, the next after St. Dominic as General of the Order of Preachers, while sailing to Jerusalem was swallowed and suffocated by the waves when the ship was broken by a storm, in the year of the Lord 1236. When many marveled and grieved at so sudden and sad a fate for so great a man, he himself appeared marked with a great light and a cross, and said: "I have departed from this world to the glory of the blessed, and have been raised up among the choirs of the apostles and prophets." And again: "Hold this firmly and do not doubt, that everyone who shall have served our Lord Jesus Christ to the end will be saved," by whatever death he may have died. So Leander has it in his Life, which is found in Seville, volume II, on the 13th of February.
Simeon Stylites (not the famous one of whom Theodoret and others write, but another, of whom John Moschus speaks in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 57) perished when struck by lightning, and Julian the Stylite saw his soul ascending to heaven with dancing and exultation.
So St. Fulgentius, Epistle 2, chapter 4, with this sentence — "The just man, if by death," etc. — consoles Galla on the death of her husband in the flower of his age, and adds: "By these words Sacred Scripture teaches us that in this world a long life does not profit faithful Christians, but a good one; and for knowing as far as possible the merit of any deceased person, one must look not at how long he lived, but how he lived. For just as a bad life, the more it has been prolonged in time, the more it multiplies punishment for sinners, so a good life, even though ended here in a short time, acquires great and everlasting glory for those who live well."
Add that the just are sometimes snatched away by a swift and violent death, so that through it, as through a purgatory, some slight faults of theirs may be expiated. Thus Nadab and Abihu were consumed by a sudden fire, so that their lighter failings might be consumed by this fire, Leviticus 10. The same is piously believed by many concerning Ananias and Sapphira, struck with sudden death by St. Peter, Acts 5.
There is a memorable example which Anastasius of Nicaea relates, Question 17 on Sacred Scripture. It happened, he says, that a certain anchorite's disciple, entering the city, saw its ruler, who had just died, being carried to the tomb with great pomp, ointments and incense. But when he returned to the desert, he found his master had been devoured by a hyena. He began therefore to be distressed in spirit, and to almost contend in judgment with God, saying: Where, O Lord, is Your just judgment? How is it that this wicked ruler, who so often provoked You to anger, died so gloriously? But this holy man, who served You greatly, was seized by a beast and perished? As he was thus arguing with God in these and similar words, an angel of the Lord stood by him and said: "That ruler, though he was utterly wicked, had one good work, and through the honor he obtained when he was carried to burial, he received the reward for this one good thing, and went there absolutely and completely condemned. But your master, though he had done all things pleasing to God, also had, as a man, some small fault, and through this death he lost it, and went there fully purged and expiated."
8 and 9. FOR VENERABLE OLD AGE (in Greek, meaning "precious, worthy, honored, reverend, venerable"; St. Jerome in Zechariah chapter 4 translates it as "honorable") IS NOT LONG-LIVED (in Greek, meaning "of many years"; St. Jerome, "of much time") NOR MEASURED BY THE NUMBER OF YEARS; BUT THE UNDERSTANDING OF A MAN IS GRAY HAIRS, AND A SPOTLESS LIFE IS THE AGE OF OLD AGE. — Vatablus renders it: "For honorable old age is not that which consists in length of time, or which you measure by the number of years, but wisdom bestows gray hairs upon men, and the age of old age is a life without blemish." The Syriac: "gray hairs and the understanding of a man; and the state of old age, a quiet dwelling." The Arabic: "the reverence of old age is not in the multitude of years, because gray hair is the wisdom of man, and the age of old age is seed in which there is no blemish."
This is another distinction between the just and the impious: that the just man, even if he is overtaken by death in his youthful age, is nevertheless already old in prudence and virtue, because old age is measured not by years but by virtues and merits. The impious man, however, even if he is old in age, is nevertheless truly a child on account of his foolishness and childish vices, and is to be counted among children, according to that saying, Isaiah 65:20: "A child of a hundred years shall die, and the sinner of a hundred years shall be accursed."
The a priori reason is that old age is venerable for two causes: the first is the experience of much time and the prudence thereby acquired; the second is the composition of the humors and consequently of the character. For in the elderly the fervor of the blood and of heat declines, and in its place cold succeeds, by which the heat of lust, anger and the other passions is extinguished. Therefore, if any old person lacks these two things — namely prudence and a well-ordered character — he has nothing from old age that is worthy of esteem, regard and veneration. But if any young person possesses these two things, he has everything that is esteemed, valued and honored in old age. Hence it follows: "But the understanding of a man is gray hairs," as if to say:
Gray hairs — that is, the hoary head of a man — is considered and regarded as being not the white hair itself, but the understanding and prudence itself. For in Greek it says: "Gray hair is prudence for men." And so St. Epiphanius reads, in Heresy 67. St. Jerome in Zechariah chapter 8 translates: "Gray hairs are the prudence of men." The same in Isaiah chapter 24 reads: "A man's gray hair is his wisdom." Others read: "A wise mind is gray hair for men" — that is, it makes them venerable, just as if they were old and gray-haired. This is what Solomon says, Proverbs 16:31: "Old age is a crown of dignity, which is found in the ways of justice." And Sirach, Ecclesiasticus 25:8: "The crown of the aged is great experience, and their glory is the fear of God." See the comments on both passages.
Moreover, historians report that some children physically turn gray, and are even born with gray hair. Hence Cassiodorus thinks Seneca is named from the gray hairs of old age, because the person to whom this surname was first given was born with gray hair, which is also reported of Numa Pompilius. But Strabo and others consider it fanciful that Tyrrhenus, from whom Tyrrhenia is named, turned gray from early childhood. I would readily believe it to be true, for I know that the same thing happened to my father in a single night's vigil while he was still a young man, says our Delrio in his commentary on Seneca's Hercules Furens, near the beginning of the first act. St. Isidore and Nonius Marcellus expressly say the same, as does Lipsius in his Life of Seneca, chapter 1, who all say that Seneca means the same as "old man" or "senecio."
This maxim is an axiom, received and approved by all the faithful as well as by the pagans.
Hear the faithful. St. Ambrose, Epistle 12 to the Emperor Valentinian: "Let old age that cannot amend itself blush," he says; "it is not the gray hair of years that is praiseworthy, but of character." The same, Book I of the Hexaemeron, chapter 8: "Praiseworthy is old age — sweeter in good character, more useful in counsel, more ready for the constancy of facing death, firmer in repressing lusts." Book III, Epistle 21 to Anysius: "Truly," he says, "that old age is venerable which grows white not with gray hairs but with merits; for the venerable gray hair of the soul is that which shines in gray thoughts and works. For what is the true life of old age except a spotless life, which is prolonged not by days or months but by ages, whose duration is without end, whose longevity is without weakness? For the longer it lasts, the stronger it is; and the longer one has lived that life, the more strongly one grows into the perfect man." The same, Sermon 55 on the Lord's Resurrection: "There are certain ages of merits," he says; "for the old age of character is found in children, and the innocence of infants is found in the elderly. Indeed, that there is a certain old age of virtue in younger people, the Prophet says: 'For venerable old age is not long-lived, nor measured by the number of years; for gray hair is wisdom in men.'" The same, Book X on Luke, chapter 24, near the end: "Good old age," he says, "is not that which is feeble with a long span of life,
prepared, which represses the wantonness of bodily pleasures, does not indulge desires, avoids everything sweet, and does not seek what is attractive. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and finds for itself crossways of various pleasures to walk wherever it wishes. But the good old age of the mind is that which chooses not what is pleasant to the body but what is useful to the mind, and is not carried away by the body's pleasure-seeking appetite, but is recalled, as it were to life, by the discipline of resistance." The same, Book I On Cain and Abel, chapter 3, preferring Abel the younger to Cain the elder: "The younger is preferred to the elder," he says, "because, although younger in time, he is superior in virtue. For innocence is later in time than wickedness, and of roughly the same age, but older in the nobility of merits. For venerable old age is not gray-haired with years, but with character. And, he says, the age of old age is a spotless life. Where therefore generation is expressed, let Cain arrive; but where instruction is proclaimed, let Abel go first."
St. Anacletus, the third Roman pontiff after St. Peter, from this maxim, as well as from a similar one in Proverbs 20:29 and from the deed of Moses in Numbers 11:25, proves that those to be chosen as elders should be older not so much in age as in wisdom. For he says thus, Distinction 84, final chapter: "Moreover, Moses is commanded to choose 'presbyters,' that is, elders. Hence in Proverbs it is said, chapter 20, verse 29: 'The glory of old men is their gray hair.' But here gray hair designates wisdom, of which it is written, Wisdom 4:8: 'Gray hair is the prudence of men.' And although we read that from Adam to Abraham men lived nine hundred and more years, no one else was first called a 'presbyter' — that is, an elder — except Abraham, who is shown to have lived far fewer years. Therefore they are called presbyters not on account of their described age or old age, but on account of their wisdom."
St. Gregory, Book II of the Dialogues, chapter 1, praising St. Benedict: "There was," he says, "a man of venerable life, Benedict by grace and by name, who from the very time of his boyhood bore the heart of an old man. Indeed, surpassing his age by his character, he gave his mind to no pleasure; but while he was still in this world, where he could have freely enjoyed temporal things, he already despised the world with its flower, as if it were withered."
St. Jerome, Epistle 13, to St. Paulinus, later Bishop of Nola: "Do not, dearest brother," he says, "judge us by the number of our years, nor consider gray hairs to be wisdom, but rather wisdom to be gray hairs, as Solomon testifies, Wisdom 4:8: 'A man's gray hair is his prudence.' For Moses too is commanded to choose seventy elders whom he himself knew to be elders — to be judged, that is, not by age but by prudence. And Daniel, still a boy, judges the aged, and a youthful age condemns shameless old men. Do not, I say, weigh faith by time; and do not think me better because I began to serve earlier in Christ's army. The Apostle Paul, the vessel of election changed from a persecutor, is last in order but first in merits; because, though the last, he labored more than all.
Judas, who once had heard: 'But you, a man who was my equal, my companion and my familiar friend; we walked in the house of God together in agreement,' Psalm 54:14, is convicted as a traitor of his friend and master by the voice of the Savior: 'And from a high beam he ties the knot of a shapeless death.'
On the contrary, the thief exchanges the cross for paradise, and makes the punishment of murder into martyrdom. How many today, by living long, carry their own funerals, and like whitewashed tombs are full of the bones of the dead! A sudden fervor conquers a long lukewarmness. And you too, having heard the sentence of the Savior, Matthew 19:21: 'If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give to the poor, and come, follow Me,' you turn words into works, and following the bare cross barefoot, you climb the ladder of Jacob more swiftly and lightly."
Cassian, Conference II, chapter 13: "The riches of the elderly," he says, "are to be measured not by the gray hair of the head, but by the industry of youth and the rewards of past labors. For what you did not gather in your youth, how will you find in your old age? For honorable old age is not long-lived, nor measured by the number of years. But the understanding of a man is gray hairs, and a spotless life is the age of old age," Wisdom 4:8. Hence shortly after he adds: "For there are some — and, what is more lamentable, their number is greater — who, growing old in the lukewarmness they conceived from youth and in sloth, acquire authority for themselves not by the maturity of their character but by the mere number of their years. Of these the Lord's reproach is properly said through the Prophet, Hosea 7:9: 'Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knew it not; gray hairs also were scattered upon him, and he was unaware.' These, I say, are put forward as an example to younger people not because of their upright life, nor any praiseworthy and imitable strictness of purpose, but by mere old age alone. The most cunning enemy, setting forth their gray hair as a prejudged authority for the deception of the younger, hastens with crafty subtlety to overthrow those who could have been stirred to the way of perfection by their own or others' counsel, and to deceive them by their examples, leading them either into harmful lukewarmness or into lethal despair through their teachings and practices."
Cassiodorus on the Psalms, Book 24, and Book IX of the Various Letters: "Certain old men," he says, "are stained by the levity of their character, while on the contrary many young people, mature in the gravity of their character, are adorned with the same." St. Bernard, Epistle 42 to Henry of Sens: "We see many younger people," he says, "understanding beyond the aged, and making their days old by their character, surpassing time by their merits, and compensating for what is lacking in age by their virtues."
You have heard the maxims of the Latin Fathers; now receive their counterparts from the Greek Fathers, which Antonius cites in the Melissa, Part II, chapter 18. St. Basil: "There is no difference between a childish age and a mind
esteemed, Wisdom IV, 8. Good was the boy Samuel, who was a ready listener when God spoke to him, saying, 1 Kings III, 9: "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears." As if he were saying: I am prepared, and I was not troubled, that I might keep Your commandments, Jeremiah I, 6. Good also was Jeremiah, who was sanctified before he was born, and when he excused himself on account of his youth, was nevertheless appointed over nations and over kingdoms. Good also was Daniel, whose spirit God stirred up, that he might convict unjust judgments and free innocent blood. Finally, "gray hairs are the wisdom of man, and the age of old age is a spotless life," Wisdom IV, 9. "Tobias grew white, not with gray hairs, but with merits," says St. Ambrose, Book III, Epistle 21. St. Agnes, at the age of 13, endured the contest of martyrdom with incredible wisdom as well as fortitude, about whom accordingly from St. Ambrose, the Church sings in her Ecclesiastical Office: "In years indeed she was reckoned as a child, but the old age of her mind was immense." In her therefore there was gray-hairedness, that is, whiteness — not of years, but of character: "for gray-hairedness," says St. Isidore, Book XI of the Origins, chapter II, "is named from whiteness, as if to say brightness, whence the expression: Blooming youth, milky (that is, white) gray hair." St. Alexander, a boy and martyr, the sixth son of St. Felicitas, responded to the judge who objected to his tender age that his mind was gray, as the martyrdom of St. Felicitas and her seven sons records. Macarius of Alexandria was called paidarigeron, that is, "boy-old-man" (that is, a Seneca, or gray-haired elder), because in his boyish age he appeared as an old man, and surpassed his age in wisdom and virtues, as Palladius testifies in the Lausiac History, chapter XVII. St. Dorotheus relates that Dositheus, his disciple, in a short time equaled the holiness of the elders, and that he had received this from a revelation of God. St. Bernardine of Siena as a boy was so grave and composed in his manners that he seemed an old man, so much so that at seeing him, all his fellow students would compose themselves to modesty and gravity, saying: "Be quiet, Bernardine is here," as his Life records.
From the pagans: "Demophilus, says Pindarus, Ode 4 Pythian, was among boys a young man, but in counsels an old man, having attained a century's span of life."
imitating boys. I have known some who, when they had fallen into vices of the flesh in youth, persevered in them through habit even to gray hairs." St. Gregory Nazianzen: "It is shameful that the vigor of age should have cooled, but lust not have cooled. Gray-hairedness itself learns something, nor should the old age of just anyone be deemed to have acquired sufficient prudence." St. Chrysostom: "Therefore when an old man labors under the same diseases as youth, it is the greatest fault, and he does not even have the excuse of youth: for youth cannot say, Psalm XIV, 7: 'Remember not the sins of my youth and my ignorances.' See therefore, lest by senile deeds you deprive yourself of pardon for the sins of youth." Philo: "Those who have wasted much of their life in vices of the body without any virtue and uprightness, we may call boys of long years, since they have been taught no disciplines worthy of old age. How long indeed shall we old men still be boys? Old in body on account of the length of time, but still boys in soul on account of ignorance and dullness."
Not only the Fathers but also the philosophers followed Solomon. Plato in the Timaeus calls the Greeks boys on account of their ignorance of antiquity, according to the saying: "Old men are twice boys." Zeno used to say it was shameful for an old man to be wise from a notebook, as Seneca reports, Epistle 33. Cicero, in his book On Old Age: "Not gray hairs, he says, not wrinkles can suddenly bring authority, but a life honorably lived in its earlier years reaps the final fruits of authority." Alexander the Great according to Curtius, Book IX: "I, he said, measure myself not by the span of age, but of glory," because glory extended the narrow span of his age: for he himself began to reign at the age of 20, and at the age of 32 subjugated nearly the entire world. Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, chapter VIII: "There is no reason, he says, to think that anyone has lived long because of gray hairs or wrinkles: he did not live long, but merely existed long. For what if you were to think that a man had sailed far, whom a fierce storm, having caught him from port, carried hither and thither, and drove through the same spaces in circles by the force of winds raging from different directions? He did not sail much, but was much tossed about." The same, Epistle 36: "A shameful and ridiculous thing, he says, is an old man still learning his ABCs: a young man should acquire, an old man should use," according to the saying: "Youth should gather, old age should spend."
If you want examples, take from the Old Testament Solomon, who at the age of twelve, as St. Ignatius holds, or twenty, that is when he was about twenty years old, as Pineda, Salianus and others more correctly judge, carried out the judgment of the prostitutes with astonishing sagacity and maturity beyond his years, 3 Kings, chapter II, 16. Take also Samuel, Jeremiah and Daniel, who prophesied as boys and condemned wicked elders, about whom hear St. Bernard, Epistle 42: "Better are youths of good character than those grown old in evil days. A boy of a hundred years is accursed, and on the other side there is a venerable old age, not long, nor reckoned by the number of years—
10. PLEASING GOD HE WAS MADE BELOVED, AND LIVING AMONG SINNERS HE WAS TRANSLATED. — T
he sense will be clearer if, following the Vatican manuscripts, you place a comma after "beloved" and after "sinners"; whence Vatablus translates: because he pleased God, he was held dear, and while he was living among sinners, he was taken away from their midst.
The meaning is, as if to say: Since the just man pleased God, or because through justice he pleased God, he was therefore beloved by Him, and thus while he was living among sinners, he was translated from them to the heaven of the patriarchs in Limbo, and after Christ to the assembly of the saints in heaven, lest, if he remained longer among sinners, he would be infected, corrupted, and stained by their wicked words and examples, as if by a contagion, and pass into their lot. That this is the meaning is clear from the Greek: thus also the Wise Man explains himself in the following hard
verse: "He was snatched away lest malice (of sinners, among whom he lived) should change his understanding." He alludes to Enoch, who, as Moses says, Genesis V, 21: "When he had lived three hundred and sixty-five years, he walked with God, and appeared no more, because God took him." Which words the Septuagint translated thus: and Enoch pleased God, and was not found, because God translated him; following which reading, Ecclesiasticus says, chapter XLIV, verse 16: "Enoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise, that he might give repentance to the nations." And Paul, Hebrews XI, 5: "Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God translated him: for before his translation he had the testimony that he pleased God." Tertullian, Book III of the Poem against Marcion, chapter II, writes that Enoch, inflamed with zeal for God, mourning the crimes of the most wicked race of that age, and especially of the giants, and striving to recall them from their crimes, when he saw that he was laboring in vain, at last with groans and tears petitioned and obtained from God that he be snatched from the company of the worst men into paradise. St. Ambrose thinks the allusion is to Enoch, in the Oration on the Death of his Brother Satyrus, and writing on Psalm XL and XLV, and Jansenius followed him. I said "alludes," for from what precedes and follows it is clear that the text strictly and properly speaks not of Enoch while living, but of the just man snatched away by death. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as Enoch, living among sinners, lest he be polluted by their contagion, was prematurely — if you consider the life span of others of that age — snatched by God and translated into paradise; so any just and elect person, lest he be stained by the vices and filth of his companions, is quickly snatched away by God, and before Christ was transferred to heaven [i.e., the Limbo of the Fathers], but after Christ is indeed transferred to heaven. There is a third difference between the sudden
death of the just and the impious, namely that the just man is snatched from the filth of the impious to the assembly of the saints, while the impious man is snatched from the filth of sinners to the dungeons of the damned.
11. HE WAS SNATCHED AWAY LEST MALICE SHOULD CHANGE HIS UNDERSTANDING (G
reek synesin, that is, his mind, intelligence, prudence; St. Ambrose reads "his heart"), OR LEST DECEIT (Greek dolos, that is, guile) SHOULD DECEIVE HIS SOUL. — The Syriac: he was snatched away lest malice should change his thought; the Arabic: he was translated and snatched away before contempt should change his intelligence, or fraud should cover his soul; Vatablus: he was snatched away lest his mind should be changed by malice, or his soul be circumvented by fraud, as if to say: The just man, beloved by God, was snatched away lest the depravity of the men of his age should imbue and corrupt his mind with wicked opinions, or lest he should consent to the wicked counsels of a perverse generation, or lest he should be deceived by their guile, but so that persisting in his justice and the grace of God until the end of life, he should die and be saved. Thus therefore the just man, quickly snatched before he was tempted, was predestined, says St. Augustine, On Correction and Grace, chapter VIII and following.
The reason is deceit, or as the Greek has it, guile: for the impious are accustomed to weave snares and frauds against the pious in order to pervert them, suborning men who appear upright; likewise women, who entice him to love of themselves and to sin. "Moreover, feigned equity is double iniquity," says St. Augustine, on Psalm LXIII; for there is iniquity, and there is also pretense. With this pretense and deceit the world is full; the wicked opinions of the world are that honors should be sought, that pleasure should be indulged, that if someone has injured you, vengeance should be taken, etc. Hear St. Cyprian, On Mortality: "But the Holy Spirit also, he says, teaches through Solomon that those who please God are taken away from here more promptly and freed more quickly, lest while they linger too long in this world, they be polluted by the world's contacts. He was snatched away, he says, lest malice should change his understanding: for his soul was pleasing to God, Wisdom IV, 10. By malice, understand malice properly so-called, that is, wickedness, with St. Ambrose on Psalm XLV, according to the saying, Isaiah LVII, 1: "The just man was gathered from the face of malice." Some however by malice understand affliction, labor, the troubles of this life, which often incite to sin: thus Judas Maccabeus, exhorting his men to battle, says, 1 Maccabees III, 59: "It is better for us to die in battle than to see the evils of our nation." Thus Possidius relates that St. Augustine was snatched from this life, wearied by the evils of his homeland, especially of the city of Hippo, when he had asked for his dismissal from this world from God. St. Jerome writes, Epistle 16, that Pope Anastasius was therefore snatched away and translated, lest the head of the world (Rome) should be truncated under such a bishop, and lest he should try by his prayers to bend the sentence once pronounced.
With this maxim St. Jerome consoles St. Paula mourning the death of her daughter Blaesilla, Epistle 24: "Why do we grieve, he says, at anyone's death? For we were not born for this, that we should remain forever. Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Peter, James, John, Paul the vessel of election, and above all the Son of God dies, and we are indignant that someone should leave the body: who perhaps was snatched away for this purpose, lest malice should change his understanding: for his soul was pleasing to God: for this reason He hastened to bring him out from the midst of iniquity, Wisdom IV, 9, lest on the long journey of life he should wander through crooked byways. Let the dead be mourned, but the one whom Gehenna receives, whom Tartarus devours, for whose punishment eternal fire rages. We, whose departure a throng of angels accompanies, whom Christ comes to meet, let us rather grieve if we dwell too long in this tent of death: for as long as we linger here, we are pilgrims from the Lord, 2 Corinthians V, 6. Let that desire, that desire hold us, Psalm CXIX, 5: 'Woe is me that my sojourn has been prolonged from me, I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Kedar, my soul has long been a pilgrim.' If Kedar is darkness, and this world is darkness, because the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it," John I, 5. Then applying these words to Blaesilla, he adds: "I rejoice
for our Blaesilla, who migrated from darkness to light, and amid the ardor of her beginning faith, received the crown of a completed work. Indeed, if an untimely death had snatched her while thinking of worldly desire, and — may God avert this from His own — the pleasures of this life, she would have been worthy of lamentation and of being bewailed with every fountain of tears. But now, since with Christ's favor, about four months ago, she washed herself with what was, so to speak, a second baptism of her resolution, and thereafter lived in such a way that, having trampled the world underfoot, she always had the monastery in mind; do you not fear that the Savior might say to you: Are you angry, Paula, because your daughter has become My daughter? Are you indignant at My judgment, and by your rebellious tears do you insult the One who possesses her? For you know what I plan for you and for the rest of yours."
Moreover, the commentators, among whom is Alfonso Curiel, writing on this passage of Wisdom, interpret it in such a way as to say that God knows future things not only absolutely, but also under a condition — for example, what Peter would have done if at such a place and time he were assailed by such a temptation of the flesh — whether he would have consented or not. For He knows, they say, what would be the outcome if the condition of the temptation were posited, even if it is never actually posited in reality. For this reason He snatches the just man, who is beloved and chosen by Him, from life, lest if he lives, he fall by temptation and perish. If you say: He snatches him on account of the danger of falling, in order to remove him from it; they respond that this is true, but not sufficient: for it is not said here that God snatches the just man in order to withdraw him from the danger of falling, but to remove him from a fall that would actually occur; for it says: "He was snatched away, lest malice should change his understanding, or lest deceit should deceive his soul." God therefore knew with certainty that unless this just man were snatched away, malice would in fact change his understanding, and deceit would deceive his soul, even though the common and ordinary aids of grace, which others have, would not have been lacking to him. For otherwise, if he were not going to be changed or deceived, God, judging and saying the contrary here, would have been false and mistaken in this His judgment, which God forbid: for God's knowledge is scientific, and therefore certain and infallible, whereas human knowledge is often conjectural, probable, and uncertain, and therefore fallible and erroneous.
Again, the certain providence of God concerning the just as well as the wicked, they say, which the Wise Man here describes, requires a certain foreknowledge of future things, even under a condition only: for it rests upon and relies upon this as upon a foundation — for example, God decrees to snatch the just man from temptation, or to give him such great grace by which He knows it will come about that he actually resists the temptation and conquers it; He must therefore first know this conditional: If I give Peter, thus tempted, such great grace, it will certainly be that he resists; I will therefore give him so much: for otherwise He would have decreed to give him another, greater grace. God wished to show His power and might against Pharaoh and the Egyptians, compelling him to dismiss the Hebrews, and therefore wished to multiply His prodigies upon him, and to add greater plagues to lesser ones up to ten. He knew
therefore, before He decreed to send the first plagues of frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts, that if He sent them, Pharaoh would not be bent by them to dismiss the Hebrews, and thus He Himself would have the occasion to send greater plagues of hail, pestilence, thunderbolts, and the death of the firstborn upon him, and to display His power to the whole world. For if Pharaoh had yielded to the first plagues and dismissed the Hebrews, God could not justly have sent the later and greater plagues upon him, which however He had intended to do, in order to strike terror of Himself into mortals. He foreknew, therefore, before He sent the first plagues, that Pharaoh's heart would not be bent by them, and thus that He would have the opportunity to inflict the rest. This is what God foretold to Moses before all the plagues, Exodus VII, 3: "I will harden" — that is, I will permit to be hardened — "his heart (Pharaoh's), and I will multiply My signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and he will not hear you," etc.; and chapter IX, verse 16, God says to Pharaoh himself: "But for this purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My strength in you, and that My name might be declared in all the earth;" and chapter X, verse 1, He says to Moses: "Go in to Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might show these My signs among them, and that you may tell in the ears of your son, and of your grandsons, how many times I have crushed the Egyptians, etc., and you may know that I am the Lord." For God knows every truth: and of contradictory propositions about the future, whether they are absolute or conditional, necessarily one or the other is true. God therefore knows determinately which part will be true, because He knows every truth.
The a priori reason, they say, is the immensity of the divine mind and vision: for its power of penetrating, discerning, and knowing is infinite in every direction, and therefore it fully penetrates, sees through, and comprehends to the very bottom all things and causes, even contingent and free ones. He knows therefore what the free will of any man or angel would do if this or that temptation or condition were posited: because He fully and completely sees through and comprehends the inclinations, movements, and even the hidden, latent, and most secret acts: just as a man of the sharpest sight sees through everything that is enclosed in a glass box.
are. Hence when David asked, 1 Kings XXIII, 12: "Will the men of Keilah surrender me and the men who are with me into the hands of Saul? The Lord said: They will surrender you," and yet in fact they did not surrender them, because David, hearing this from God, fled from Keilah, as is added there. So Christ says, Matthew XI, 21: "If in Tyre and Sidon the mighty works had been done which were done among you, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes;" and chapter XXIV, 22: "Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh would be saved, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened." Thus Alfonso Curiel and the commentators already cited; but the thorough treatment of the question just mentioned properly belongs to the scholastics: see Suarez, Vasquez, Molina, Gregory of Valencia, etc., Part I, Question XIV, Article 13, and Curiel here: for a great sea remains for me to plow, and therefore I must press on to further matters.
Finally, St. Augustine, Book I of On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter XIV, rightly and powerfully refutes from this passage the semi-Pelagians, who teach that each person is predestined by God and endowed with grace, or reprobated and deprived of grace, based on each one's merit or demerit — not absolutely, but conditionally foreseen — for example, that God predestined this infant who was to die in infancy, because He foreknew he would work well and use His grace rightly, if he had survived; but reprobated that one, because He foreknew he would work badly and use His grace badly, if life had remained to him. For the Wise Man here teaches the direct contrary, namely that the just man is snatched from life by God lest malice change him: therefore God foresaw that he would be changed, unless He first snatched him away; He snatched him therefore so that he would not be changed, but would persist in justice, and so be chosen for glory and saved; otherwise one thus snatched would have been to be reprobated and damned, not predestined and chosen, according to the teaching of the semi-Pelagians. Hear St. Augustine: "He was snatched away lest malice should change his understanding. For this was said according to the dangers of this life, not according to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew what was going to be, not what was not going to be — that is, that He was going to grant him an untimely death, lest he be drawn by the uncertainty of temptations, not that he was going to sin, if he were not going to remain in temptation. For of this life indeed it is read in the Book of Job, chapter VII, verse 1: 'Is not the life of man upon earth a trial?' But why is it granted to some that they be taken from the dangers of this life while they are still just; while other just men, until they fall from justice, are kept in the same dangers with a longer life? Who has known the mind of the Lord? And yet from this it is given to be understood that even those just who preserve good and pious conduct to the maturity of old age and the last day of this life should glory not in their own merits, but in the Lord: because He who by the brevity of life snatched away the just man lest malice should change his understanding, He Himself in whatever length of life guards the just man, lest malice change his understanding. But why He held this one
to be about to fall, one whom He could have taken away from here before he fell — His judgments are entirely most just, but inscrutable." And further on he proves this by the example of infants, "whose some, when baptized, others not baptized, reach the end of this life, sufficiently indicate mercy and judgment: mercy indeed gratuitous, judgment due: for if men were judged according to the merits of a life they would not have had, death intervening, but would have had if they had lived, it would profit nothing for the one who was snatched away lest malice should change his understanding; it would profit nothing for those who die after falling, if they had died before — which no Christian would dare to say." By the foreknowledge mentioned at the beginning, St. Augustine understands absolute foreknowledge, as is clear from the reason he adds, not conditional foreknowledge; that he acknowledged the latter is clear from the book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter III, and the Enchiridion, chapter XCIV, and On Correction and Grace, chapter VIII and following; St. Augustine therefore only means to say that merits conditionally future are not truly merits, and therefore are not absolutely foreseen by God, so that on account of them He might decree reward or punishment.
Tropologically, from this passage St. Cyprian, in his book On Mortality, which St. Augustine cites in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter XIV, teaches that death is useful for the just and to be desired, because it frees them from the dangers and temptations of this life, and makes them secure and impeccable. "Why not, says St. Augustine quoting St. Cyprian, since you are to be with Christ, and secure in the Lord's promise — you who are called to Christ, why do you not embrace it, and rejoice that you are free of the devil?" And in another place: "Children, he says, escape the danger of a slippery age;" and again in another place: "Why do we not, he says, hasten and run, so that we might see our homeland, so that we might greet our parents? A great number of dear ones awaits us there — parents, brothers, children; a large and plentiful throng desires us, already secure about their own safety, still anxious about our salvation." Properly, however, by this maxim we are taught to ask God to snatch us from life when we are in justice, that is, in a state of grace, and when temptations press upon us that create for us the danger of sinning and falling from grace: for in this timely snatching consists our predestination, election, and eternal salvation, as St. Augustine teaches, On Correction and Grace, chapter VIII. For the one whom God thus snatches has that great gift of perseverance, and with it he dies and is saved, which accordingly does not fall under merit, but must be humbly and constantly begged from God in prayer, as the Council of Trent teaches from St. Augustine, Session VI. How many are in heaven who, if they had not been quickly snatched from life and temptation, would now be in hell? And how many are in hell who, if they had been quickly snatched, would now be in heaven? A timely and fitting death, therefore, is a certain sign not of hatred, but of the highest love — indeed of divine predestination and election — indeed its proper effect.
Seneca himself saw the same thing dimly, who in
his Consolation to Marcia, chapter XXIII: "The journey to the world above, he says, is easier for souls dismissed quickly from human society: for they have taken on less dross and weight; freed before they could harden and conceive more deeply of earthly things, they fly back more lightly to their origin, and more easily wash away whatever taint and stain there is. Nor is the sojourn in the body ever dear to great minds; they long to go out and break free, they bear these narrow confines with difficulty, wandering through all that is sublime, and accustomed from on high to look down upon human affairs. Hence it is that Plato declares that the soul of the wise man projects itself wholly toward death, wills this, meditates upon this, is always carried by this desire as it reaches toward what lies beyond." Moreover St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his treatise On Infants Who Are Taken Away Prematurely, gives a beautiful comparison: Just as, he says, a wise tutor quickly takes a boy away from a long banquet, at which there are many dishes and fine wines, which insidiously tempt the appetite to excess, and thereby produce vomiting and nausea: so God quickly takes infants away from this banquet of life, lest they be intoxicated and maddened by its pleasures. Plutarch offers another similar comparison from fire, in his Consolation to His Wife: "For just as fire, he says, if you extinguish it and soon rekindle it, it is stirred up and catches flame more quickly: so the soul, if it flies hence as quickly as possible,
it instantly flies over the fierce thresholds of Dis,
before it is imbued and beguiled by a great love of human affairs, and, as it were, wastes away from the poison."
12. FOR THE BEWITCHING OF VANITY OBSCURES GOOD THINGS, AND THE INCONSTANCY OF DESIRE PERVERTS THE MIND WITHOUT MALICE — G
reek akakon, that is, free from malice, guiltless, innocent; Vatablus: for the spell of vanity obscures what is honorable, and wandering desire perverts the sincere mind. For "vanity" the Greek has phaulotetos, that is, of malice, wickedness, villainy, or of vileness, vanity, levity, foolishness; "vanity" therefore is trifling malice, that is, malice that entices, bewitches, and leads a person to ruin by its trifles; whence the Syriac translates: the jealousy of evil corrupts good things; the Arabic: because the body of malice darkens good things.
A fascinum is a kind of enchantment by which people are so bound that they are not free, nor of sound mind, and often waste away to extreme emaciation; likewise by which magicians dazzle the eyes and senses, so that people seem to themselves to see, hear, and taste the most beautiful things, which in reality they do not see, hear, or taste; whence the Greek baskaino, that is, "I bewitch," is said as if bazo kaino, that is, "I kill with the eyes by looking," according to that verse of Virgil, Eclogue III:
"I know not what eye bewitches my tender lambs."
Hence against the evil eye, the pagans worshipped and invoked the god Fascinus, about whom Pliny, Book XXVIII, chapter IV: "By religion, he says, it is changed, and
Fascinus, the guardian not only of infants but also of emperors, who as a god is worshipped among the sacred rites of Rome by the Vestals, and hanging beneath the chariot of those who triumph, defends them as a physician against envy, and commands them to return home." Now then:
First, Francisco Valesio, Sacred Philosophy, chapter LXVIII, considers that the evil eye is nothing but a false opinion of the common people, and a superstitious fear, by which from a received but false opinion among the uneducated, many fear being infected by the eyes of old women, or of blear-eyed people, or of the envious, when in reality these eyes cannot harm the one they look upon: the Wise Man therefore borrows his phrase and metaphor from the credulity of the common people, though it is false. "The bewitching" therefore "of vanity," he says, is called the concupiscence of the eyes, that is, avarice and desire for other people's property: for since this disease is conceived through the eyes, it is called by allegory a bewitching; and it is called "of vanity" because of deceptive goods, according to Psalm IV, 3: "Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after falsehood?" — that is, vain and false goods. And so the concupiscence of the eyes is the bewitching of vanity: this obscures good things, because, as is said in 1 Timothy VI, desire is the root of all evils; and as is said in the same place in Wisdom: "The urgency of desire perverts the mind without malice." Therefore that expression of Wisdom about bewitching is allegorical: but the allegory is taken from popular opinion. Thus far Valesio.
St. Jerome teaches the same in Galatians III, 1, and St. Chrysostom in the same place, and St. Basil, Homily 11 On Envy, and our Delrio in his work on Magic, Book III, chapter III, Question IV and following. Hence some derive fascinum from phthonein, that is, "I envy"; but this is the same as "I see too much": for the one who envies cannot turn his eyes away from seeing and envying.
But these things are true if you consider nature, for there is no natural bewitching; but not if you consider magic: for through magic the demon dazzles and bewitches the eyes, ears, and all the senses and limbs, and infects them, and not rarely afflicts them with disease and death, as is evident from the daily experience of witches. See Delrio on Magic, Book III, Part I, Question III, Section I, where he shows at length that the evil eye does not occur through nature, but through magic and the demon, and is his deception. Hence
Secondly, more fittingly our author a Castro attributes this bewitching to the persuasion and counsel of wicked companions, or teachers, or advisors, who recommend and advise evil things as though they were good, as if to say: The spell of malice, or wickedness, obscures good things, that is, it injures and corrupts them, just as one who casts the evil eye so infects the face of an infant that he looks upon with his eyes and gaze, that he sometimes kills it: so perversity, or rather a wicked man, injures and corrupts by his depraved opinions what is good, so that a simple man thinks evil things are good; and conversely thinks good what is truly evil. Our Delrio agrees with this at the passage already cited: "The spell of vanity," he says, is a cheap, trifling spell of no worth, in the Hebrew manner of speaking: for it signifies that by the vilest and most worthless earthly trifles, especially by trifling and flattering praise, we are so dazzled and mocked that we are utterly blind to true goods, so that we regard good as evil, and evil as good; we prefer earthly and perishable things to heavenly and eternal ones: he uses the name of bewitching because the common Jewish people believed that false bewitching really occurred, to such an extent that the impious circumcised did not hesitate to attribute such eye-bewitching to Sarah, whom Abulensis refutes in Genesis chapter XXX. St. Bonaventure, commenting on that verse 12, saw an allusion to bewitching, and therefore says: According to the way that malicious people are said to bewitch children by praising them, sufficiently indicating how much weight he gave it. Thus Delrio. Here belongs that saying of Festus Pompeius: "Fascinum and fas are named from speaking," because bewitching was done through words by speaking, and especially by praising: for the pagans believed that bewitching of children, or of beautiful persons, was caused by praise: so likewise praise bewitches and maddens many, so that they esteem themselves more than they are, and plainly consider themselves distinguished and outstanding above all others, which is great foolishness, both of the one praising, who maddens the listener with his flattering charm and jokes; and of the one who feeds on his praises, and willingly allows himself to be maddened. These praisers therefore are trifle-sellers, because they sell their trifling praises: so in old times a trifle-seller was the name for one who sold something to women, says Nonius: for all things that women use are regarded as vain and empty matters. Again, on the other hand, baskania, that is, bewitching, signifies envy, accusation, and detraction: for this often bewitches both the envious person and the one whom he envies, while it obscures and overturns his good works: for when the impious accuse them, the pious often cease from them out of human fear, lest they provoke upon themselves the slander of the impious.
One could, thirdly, call any concupiscence and enticement of sin the bewitching of vanity, because it covers over, conceals, and obscures reason, virtue, and honesty with its trifling and alluring show and paint of beauty and vanity: for the appearance of pleasure, with which the malice and vanity of sin covers itself, so bewitches and carries away the mind, that it does not see, does not consider the ugliness of sin lurking beneath it, much less the beauty and honor of virtue. Pleasures therefore are like sirens, which bewitch, bind, and kill a person by their alluring appearance and song. Again, the bewitching of vanity consists in the countless and vivid phantasms which anger, lust, envy, pride, and the other passions suggest to the mind: for these inwardly in the head make such a clamor with such force, confusion, and tumult, that they cloud the soul, bewitch it, and often lead it away from truth and right. What therefore Paul says to the Galatians, chapter III, verse 1: "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was set forth among you as crucified?" — as if to say: Who has enchanted you, and with the eyes' gaze
for thus it signifies that by the vilest and most worthless earthly trifles, especially by trifling and flattering praise, we are so dazzled and deluded, that we are utterly blind to true goods, that we regard good as evil, evil as good; we prefer earthly and perishable things to heavenly and eternal ones: he uses the name of bewitching because the common Jewish people believed such false bewitching really occurred, to such an extent that the impious circumcised did not hesitate to attribute such eye-bewitching to Sarah, whom Abulensis refutes in Genesis chapter XXX. St. Bonaventure, commenting on that verse 12, saw an allusion to bewitching, and therefore says: According to the way that malicious people are said to bewitch children by praising them, sufficiently indicating how much weight he gave it. Thus Delrio. Here belongs that saying of Festus Pompeius: "Fascinum and fas are named from speaking," because bewitching was done through words by speaking, and especially by praising: for the pagans believed that bewitching of children, or of the beautiful, was caused by praise: so likewise praise bewitches and maddens many, so that they esteem themselves more than they are, and plainly consider themselves distinguished and outstanding above all others, which is great foolishness, both of the one praising, who maddens the listener with his flattering charm and jokes; and of the one who feeds on his praises, and willingly allows himself to be maddened. These praisers therefore are trifle-sellers, because they sell their foolish praises: so in old times a trifle-seller was the name for one who sold something to women, says Nonius: for all things that women use are considered vain and empty. Again on the other hand, baskania, that is, bewitching, signifies envy, accusation, and detraction: for this often bewitches both the envious person and the one he envies, while it obscures and overturns his good works: for when the impious accuse them, the pious often cease from them out of human fear, lest they provoke upon themselves the slander of the impious.
has by sorcery, as if by an illusion, imposed upon you, so that what you see before you, you do not see, and what is not, you think you perceive? Say the same to the glutton, the lustful, the slothful, the wrathful, the proud, the avaricious: Who has bewitched you, fool, that on account of a feigned and deceptive appearance of pleasure, gluttony, lust, sloth, anger, pride, and avarice, you abandon and despise reason, virtue, law, heaven, and God Himself? Who has so maddened you with his deceptions, that for a little honey you purchase eternal gall? That for a drop of sweetness you bring upon yourself a sea of bitterness and sorrows? That for the slight titillation of taste and touch, you are willing to burn perpetually in the eternal fires of Gehenna? O stupor! O spell! O madness! O insanity! What error, what spell, what fury compels you to prefer childish, cheap, paltry trifles to true, solid, precious realities; earthly to heavenly things; a moment to eternity; Gehenna to paradise; the creature to the Creator? See what I said about trifles and triviality on Zephaniah III, 18.
AND THE INCONSTANCY (S
t. Fulgentius, Epistle II, chapter 17, reads "urgency," for desire urges, solicits, and presses a person to pursue the thing desired) OF DESIRE PERVERTS THE MIND WITHOUT MALICE. — For "inconstancy" the Greek has rhembasmos, that is, wandering, error (whence the French rêver and rêverie), agitation, whirlwind, vertigo, circling, gyration, spinning around: hence rhypter is a sling, which hurls a stone by spinning it. Kindred to this word also is rhombos, that is, whirlwind, rhombus, which is an instrument around which women wind the threads they spin: which likewise sorceresses, or witches, used for enchantment, namely to draw down the moon by twisted threads; whence that verse of Martial, Book IX:
"With which now to draw down the moon by the Thessalian rhombus."
And that verse of Propertius, Book II, Elegy XXI:
"The twisted rhombi fail beneath the magic spell."
Hence Cervantes translates: and the rhombus (spinning around) of desire undermines the simple mind. This wandering and spinning of desire, therefore, perverts the mind without malice, Greek akakon, that is, innocent, sincere, simple, pure. Desire therefore is a whirlwind, and like a whirlwind spins and whirls a person in a circle, so that now toward this, now toward that, now toward yet another thing to be desired, he is tossed and whirled like a whirlwind.
The reason is first, that desire is itching and impudent; whence it impudently dashes and leaps from one pleasure to another, to curiously explore where the greater pleasure may be. Second, that the same pleasure does not satisfy the soul, being cheap and meager, and therefore quickly creates disgust with itself; so the soul, to relieve itself of this satiety and boredom, seeks one and then another object of pleasure, saying: "Give, give," Proverbs XXX, 15. Third, that pleasures as well as vices are interconnected: for sloth draws and incites to gluttony, gluttony to
lust, lust to anger, anger to pride: and so transforms and transfigures into another form (for this is the meaning of rhembo), as our translator renders, chapter XVI, verse 25: Greek metaschematizo, that is, it digs out, hollows, and extracts as if mining metals, as our translator renders, Deuteronomy VIII, 9, as if to say: Just as miners by digging extract gold, silver, and other metals from the bowels of the earth, so desire digs out, extracts, and exhausts from the bowels of the mind all sense, all prudence, all sincerity, all innocence and virtue, and through vice inverts and perverts it: for this is precious as gold, indeed more precious than gold and silver; which therefore if it is exchanged for desire and vice, is utterly corrupted, vitiated, and perverted, just as if gold were turned and perverted into bronze, silver into lead, according to that saying, Jeremiah VI, 30: "Call them rejected silver:" see what was said there.
PERVERTS — that is, inverts, perverts, as Vatablus translates, transmutes from good to evil; see what was said on Lamentations I, 8. Hear Cassiodorus, tract. On Friendship: "When after obtaining the desired thing he feels himself laboring under a greater want, he begins to find distasteful what he had preferred, and his appetite is kindled anew for something else — yet not to be satisfied, but to be deceived by the image of another false happiness: this is the circuit of the wicked; this is the reproach of the many dwelling in a circuit; this is the millstone of Samson, which, with the locks of virtue cut off and the eyes of prudence dug out, he turns in circles, following the circuit of desires, having abandoned even the shortcut of charity. The head, he says, of their circuit, the labor of their lips shall cover them." This is what the Psalmist says, Psalm LXXXII, 14: "My God, make them like a wheel," which Origen explains thus: "So turn them and spin them around, that there be no rest, since this is the nature of a wheel, to be turned and spun around;" and Euthymius: "Make them, he says, continually unstable and driven around by frequent changes: for thus they can be compared to wheels." St. Augustine adds: "Make them like a wheel, because a wheel is raised up from those things which are behind, and cast down from those things which are before: so it happens with all the enemies of God's people." And St. Gregory, Book XVI of the Morals, chapter XXV: "The wicked are made like a wheel, because sent on the circuit of labor, while they neglect what lies ahead and pursue what should be abandoned, they are raised up by the things behind and fall in the things before." And Procopius on Isaiah LIV: "The heart of the erring, he says, is unstable, and like drunkards is agitated and shaken by desires; for it is driven about by any wind, and as the proverb says, they are carried away by the rhembasmos, that is, whirlwind of desires." See what was said on Isaiah LVII, 20.
Wherefore St. Chrysostom, Homily 7 on Acts: "The wicked man, he says, that is, the evil one is called homoic from para to ponein, that is, from laboring; thus indeed Scripture always calls wickedness labor, as when it says, Psalm X, 7: 'Under their tongue is toil and sorrow.'" Moreover Seneca, On the Happy Life, chapter XXVIII: "Is it not so, he says, even now, though you scarcely perceive it, that a kind of whirlwind spins and envelops your souls, pursuing and fleeing the same things; and now carries them bound aloft, now dashes them to the lowest depths?" They are therefore deluded by the faithless world and by the deceitful demon, just as parasites were by the emperor Heliogabalus, of whom Lampridius writes thus in his Life: "He tied parasites to a water-wheel, and with its turning sent them under the water, then revolved them back to the top, and called them his Ixionian friends."
Flattery therefore, as well as desire, is the wheel of Ixion.
The Wise Man therefore notes here two roots of evil and sin, namely the depravity of opinions and counsels in the intellect, which is the bewitching of vanity; and the wandering intemperance of desires in the appetite and will, which is the inconstancy of desire: with both the world is full, and therefore God in His provident goodness quickly leads the just man out of it by death, lest he fall into its snares, be captured, and perish.
13. HAVING BEEN MADE PERFECT IN A SHORT TIME, HE FULFILLED (S
t. Fulgentius reads "filled up") LONG YEARS. — Greek makrous, that is, long, as if to say: The just man who in a short time, through the grace of God and his own zealous cooperation with it, became perfect in prudence and virtue — this man is to be reckoned as having lived for a long time and through many years. The Greek is teleiotheis, that is, one who has reached completion and consummation, namely of virtue and of a just life: for to this as to its sole end, the span of life has been given and measured out to mortals by God; one perfected therefore in virtue is reckoned to have arrived at his measure of perfect age (that is, of virtue), even though he be young in age and years: for what others would have accomplished over many years, this man achieved in few, and attained in a short time the holiness which another would not have gained for himself in a long time, says Clarius. Whence St. Bonaventure explains, as if to say: "Perfected in grace, in a short time he fulfilled the merit which others acquire over many years:" for this maxim pertains to verse 8: "For the understanding of a man is gray hairs, and the age of old age is a spotless life:" for it comes back to the same point.
Conversely, of the wicked it is said: Isaiah LXV, 20: "A boy of a hundred years shall die." Therefore "made perfect" is not the same as "consumed, dead, departed," as Vatablus and Guarinus translate: In a short span of life, he says, having finished or departed, in few years he fulfilled long times; but rather "perfected in virtue," one who namely through frequent, intense, and heroic acts of virtue, in a short time reached the summit of holiness; whence St. Ambrose at the funeral of the Emperor Theodosius: "The age is perfect, he says, where virtue is perfect." Therefore those years are called many which are full of good works; but few are the years of others which are empty of them, according to that saying, Job III, 3: "So I too have had empty months." Where St. Gregory, Book VIII of the Morals, chapter V: "In this life, he says, some things are laborious, some are empty, but some are at once empty and laborious: for out of love of the Creator, to be exercised by the tribulations of the present life
is indeed laborious, but not empty; but to be dissolved in pleasures out of love of the world is indeed empty, but not laborious. But to suffer certain adversities out of love of the same world is at once empty and laborious: because the mind is afflicted by adversity, and is not filled with the reward of recompense. In these then the Holy Church, those who, already placed in her, still flow away in pleasures, and therefore are not enriched by the fruit of good works — she leads empty months, because she spends the time of life without the gift of recompense." You therefore who are wise, fill your empty years with virtues.
Thus Christ the Lord lived only 33 years, and St. John the Baptist about as many, and to what a heap of merits he arrived in those few years! St. Anthony of Padua, an ardent and apostolic preacher, lived only 36 years; St. Casimir, 25. There were three daughters of St. Sophia, all glorious virgins and martyrs, namely St. Faith at twelve, St. Hope at ten, and St. Charity at nine bravely endured martyrdom: the Church celebrates their triumph on the 1st of August. Thus Father Gaspar Barzaeus of Zeeland, companion and indeed vicar of St. Francis Xavier, an apostolic man, in the seven years he lived in the Society of Jesus, five of which he spent in India, namely at Goa and Hormuz, accomplished such things either in almost infinite multitude or in wonderful magnitude, that truly someone writing about him from India said that, made perfect in a short time, he had fulfilled long years, as our Trigault says in his Life, chapter XIV. Read his Life, and you will be astonished. The one he cites was Father Antonio Quadrio, provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in India, as is evident from the end of the Life. And to pass over others, Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga, a religious of our Society, was made perfect at the age of 24. Wherefore he himself, for this snatching away and passage from this
life to the heavenly one, he continually sighed: for when Cardinal Bellarmine, then his confessor, urged him to ask God for a longer life, since by his example others would be instructed, having asked pardon, he refused to comply: "Because, he said, no greater grace can be conferred on a person by God than to call him to Himself while he is found in grace," in whose grace he then hoped himself to be. The same, in a certain letter which Blessed Virgilio Cepari recounts in his Life, Book II, chapter VIII at the end: "I spend joyful days, he says, hoping that within a few days it will come about that I am called by God from the land of the dying to the homeland of the living; from the company of men to the society of angels and saints." For he himself was an angel in purity and holiness; whence deservedly the Auditors of the Rota, having examined his canonization process in Rome, gave him the title of Angelic: for at seven years old he began to serve God and to devote himself entirely to Him; at nine he dedicated and vowed his virginity to God and the Blessed Virgin. Never in his entire life did he sin mortally, never did he experience the stings of the flesh, never did he feel distraction in prayer, as the same [Auditors] testify from the testimony of his con-
fessors, and specifically of Cardinal Bellarmine and other serious men, attest.
Seneca himself saw the same thing dimly, Epistle 69: "The harbor must be sought, he says, never refused; and if anyone has been carried into it within his first years, he should no more complain than one who sailed quickly." Thus Homer calls Diomedes the youngest among the Greeks in age, but the greatest in prudence; Pindarus calls Demophilus young in years, old in counsels; Livy places Appius Claudius, the youngest in age, ahead of senators who were the oldest; the boy Ascanius is commended by Virgil, Aeneid IX:
"Bearing a mind and manly care beyond his years."
Hear St. Ambrose on Psalm CXVIII, Sermon 18: "It is clear therefore, he says, that it is not the longevity of old age that is chosen, but the keeping of the words of God. Finally, Moses himself approved Joshua [Jesus Nave] and Caleb, who were young, before the rest, whose counsel in the choice of the land both he himself followed and God preferred, over that of many elders."
Again, teleiotheis could be translated, first, as "immolated"; second, as "consecrated"; third, as "crowned with glory and honor," as if to say: The just man, offering, immolating, and consecrating all his actions and sufferings to God, through them, though modest and brief, is crowned with eternal glory after the likeness of Christ, of whom Paul says, Hebrews II, 10: "For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, who had brought many sons into glory, to make perfect the author of their salvation through suffering" — see what was said there. St. Bernard, Epistle 254 to Guarinus, explains this saying differently; namely, as if to say: The just man, though he lives for a short time, nevertheless fulfills and fills up long years, because in soul he embraces all eternity, so that if he were to live forever, he would always wish to serve God and to go from virtue to virtue; hear St. Bernard: "For how did he not fulfill all times, who passed over to eternity? However many years he was able to run through — not by longevity, but by magnanimity, that is, not by the succession of years or the number of days, but by the devotion of his mind and an unquenchable desire always to advance — so many he not undeservedly claimed for himself in merits. For he retains by virtue what he lost in time. Moreover true virtue knows no end, is not enclosed by time." And a little further on: "The just man never says: 'It is enough'; but he always hungers and thirsts for justice, so that if he were always to live, he would always strive to be more just as far as lies in him, and would always endeavor with all his strength to advance from good to better: for he binds himself to divine service not for a year or for a time like a hired servant, but for eternity." Whence he concludes: "The eternal hunger of the just man therefore merits an eternal refreshment, and although he is made perfect in a short time as regards time, he is nevertheless judged to have fulfilled long years on account of the perpetuity of his virtue."
14. FOR HIS SOUL WAS PLEASING TO GOD (
through inherent justice and grace infused in him by
God on account of the merits of Christ): FOR THIS REASON HE HASTENED (the Lord, who went before) TO LEAD HIM OUT FROM THE MIDST OF INIQUITIES. — St. Fulgentius reads, "from the midst of iniquity"; the Greek has only: therefore he hastened from the midst iniquity, namely the just man hastened to depart, as Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans, Lot from Sodom, Moses and the Hebrews from Egypt; but more correctly our translator refers "he hastened" to God, and therefore understands "to lead him out," for God snatched the just man, as was said in verse 11; the just man did not therefore rescue himself: God is the origin, source, and first and principal cause of all grace, liberation, perseverance, a good death, and salvation for us.
BUT THE PEOPLES SEEING AND NOT UNDERSTANDING, NOR LAYING SUCH THINGS TO HEART:
supply: they marveled and murmured, either against the just man, as if he by his crimes had merited a swift death; or against God, that He had punished a just and innocent man with sudden death. More simply and more naturally one may explain it as a Hebraism, as if to say: The unbelieving peoples, or the inexperienced and uneducated, seeing — that is, they saw — the swift death of the just man, and not understanding — that is, they did not understand — the reasons already stated, nor did they lay them to heart: for the Hebrews often use the benoni, that is, the participle, especially the past participle (for in the Greek here are aorists idontes and noesantes, which have the significance of the past tense, as if to say: When they had seen, they did not understand) in place of the past tense itself. A similar exchange of tense occurs in Romans XII, 11: "Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, instant in prayer," etc., that is: be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be instant in prayer; and 2 Corinthians X, 12: "But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing (that is, we measure and compare) ourselves with ourselves," etc. That this is the meaning is clear, because the Wise Man soon explains himself saying in verse 17: "For they shall see the end of the wise man, and shall not understand what God has planned concerning him," etc.
15. NOR LAYING TO HEART (G
reek, epi dianoia, that is, in the mind, understanding, thought, as if to say: They do not consider) SUCH THINGS (Greek, tade, namely what follows) THAT THE GRACE OF GOD AND HIS MERCY ARE UPON HIS SAINTS, AND HIS REGARD IS UPON HIS ELECT — as if to say: Unbelieving or uneducated peoples do not understand, nor consider, that the swift death of the saints is a remarkable grace and mercy of God, by which He snatches the saints from the dangers of this world, and looks upon and visits His elect, by transferring them from the labors of the present life to the eternal rewards which they have merited by their continence, mortification, and virtue; whence Vatablus, connecting this whole verse, clearly translates: but the common people seeing this do not understand, nor do they perceive that this very thing (that the just are quickly snatched from life) is a benefit and mercy toward his saints, and that regard has been had for his elect: for the common people think that a premature death is the greatest evil and misfortune for a youth who is handsome, rich, and noble, because they do not know the future and glorious life into which he is transferred. So today worldly people, who see noble young men quickly die in the religious life they have embraced, consider them unfortunate and miserable, because they do not know or consider that by this death the grace and eternal glory of God are secured for them; whence Cervantes thus expounds by amplification: "This was hidden from them, namely that the grace, benefit, and favor, and mercy, or the most tender and sweetest affection, the most merciful grace and most gracious mercy of God — for He is of all grace, liberation, perseverance, a good death, and salvation the origin, source, and first and principal cause for us."
Less correctly Hugo and others understand by "grace" justifying grace, and by "mercy" accompanying or subsequent grace.
AND HIS REGARD (G
reek episkope, that is, inspection, observation, regard, attention, care, visitation — for rewarding the labors and sufferings of the just man undertaken for God and piety, as I said in chapter III, 6) IS UPON HIS ELECT — whom God chose for Himself from eternity, before any foreseeing of works, through the grace of predestination, so that persevering through it for the whole time of life in justice, they might be chosen and destined by the same God for eternal glory, as if to say: God has a special regard for His elect, that is, attention, care, and providence, and therefore snatches them away before they fall into temptations and sin, so that He might reward their youth spent in piety with heavenly glory.
16. BUT THE JUST MAN WHO HAS DIED (G
reek, thanon, for which the Vatican reads kamon, that is, laboring) CONDEMNS THE LIVING WICKED, AND YOUTH QUICKLY MADE PERFECT CONDEMNS THE LONG LIFE (Lucifer, writing for St. Athanasius, reads "long-livedness"; Greek is polyetes geras, that is, the old age of many years; the Vatican: long-lived old age) OF THE UNJUST. — This condemnation is not verbal but real, through the comparison and example of their lives: "for the life of the just man rebukes the sinner, whom he condemns tacitly with greater authority than if he spoke with his voice," says St. Ambrose on Psalm XXXVI, as if to say: The just man who has died condemns the living wicked not by words but by deeds, because he preferred to die piously rather than to live impiously, which is what the wicked do. Their pious death therefore, undergone in youth, in reality condemns the impious life of the unjust old man, who defiles and stains his old age with vices and crimes: for the longer and worse anyone lives, the more he is to be blamed and condemned. He speaks in general of any just person, although the Glossa restricts it to a martyr, and Cantacuzenus to Christ killed by the Jews: because although the young Christ was slain, His life-giving death, he says, will rescue from destruction those who believe in Him, and will bestow upon them immortality; but those who did not believe, and especially those who dared to rage against Him, it will openly rebuke and condemn; the mystery of redemption also, which He accomplished in the flower of His age, will take away from our midst the law of sin, which had grown old. This he says truly, but narrowly: for the Wise Man speaks
of any just person, but especially of Christ, who is the prince of the just and the Holy One of holy ones. Hence Barlaam, at seventy years old, when asked by Josaphat how old he was, replied: Forty-five: "Because only that many years, he said, have I served God; the rest, in which I served the world, I count not as years of life, but of death," according to the saying: "He lived, while he lived well:" so says Damascenus in his Life. Again, "condemns" means: on the day of judgment the dead just man will condemn the wicked old men who have lived long, when he approves the sentence of Christ judging them worthy of Gehenna for the vices in which they have grown old.
17. FOR THEY SHALL SEE THE END OF THE WISE MAN, AND SHALL NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT GOD HAS PLANNED CONCERNING HIM, AND WHY THE LORD HAS FORTIFIED HIM. — T
his maxim pertains not to what immediately preceded — "but the dead just man condemns the living wicked" — but in the Hebrew manner, somewhat more remotely, to the words of verse 14, "but the peoples seeing and not understanding": for these words correspond equally to those, and explain what they shall see and not understand, namely that the peoples shall see the end, that is, the departure and premature death of the wise man, that is, the just man, and shall not understand its cause, namely why God snatched him so quickly from the midst of the course and flower of life, and what He planned to do concerning him — because, intoxicated with love of the present life, they do not grasp the glory of the future life; whence they reckon a swift death to be the greatest misfortune.
AND WHY THE LORD HAS FORTIFIED HIM. — T
here are three readings here. The first, the Complutensian and the Royal, reads: why the Lord has diminished him (that is, the years and days of his life, says Rabanus, and from him Holcot): but the Greek and the other Latin texts consistently read "fortified," not "diminished." The second is that of the current Greek manuscripts: and why the Lord has fortified heauto, that is, Himself, as if to say: Why the Lord has made firm and secure His own decree concerning the snatching away of the just man by a swift death. The third and genuine reading is that of the Vulgate and others, who reading auton for heauto, translate: and why the Lord has fortified him, that is, why God, quickly snatching the just man, preserved him safe and upright from sin, fall, and damnation; why He guarded his salvation and repelled every danger from it: for this is what the Greek esphalísato signifies, that is, He endowed with security, guarded, protected; hence Vatablus translates: and to what end the Lord kept him safe; Clement of Alexandria, Book VI of the Stromata: They shall see, he says, the death of the wise man, and shall not understand what He decreed concerning him, and to what end the Lord established him: for the just man, with God's help, fights against all who resist like a palm tree, and the more it is struck, the higher it raises itself and the more it blossoms, according to that saying, Psalm CXXXI, verse 18: "His enemies I will clothe with confusion; but upon him shall my sanctification flourish;" where Arnobius says: "Christ, he says, is compared to the ever-blooming palm tree, who, sitting at the right hand of God, extends His branches to the victorious, bestowing from His flowers a crown,
and from His fruits bestowing the fattening of perpetual refreshment."
18. THEY SHALL SEE (I
say, the end, that is, the swift death of the just man), AND SHALL DESPISE (Greek exouthenesousin, that is, they shall count for nothing) HIM: BUT THE LORD SHALL LAUGH THEM TO SCORN. — For whoever despises the just man, tacitly despises God, just as whoever despises a servant or an ambassador, despises his master or lord; but God, just as He honors those who honor Him and His own, so in turn He scorns those who scorn Him, according to that saying to Eli, 1 Kings II, 30: "Whoever glorifies Me, I will glorify him: but those who despise Me shall be ignoble;" and that verse, Isaiah XXXIII, 1: "Woe to you who plunder, shall you not yourself be plundered? And you who despise, shall you not yourself be despised?" He alludes to that verse of David, Psalm II, 4: "He who dwells in the heavens shall laugh them to scorn, and the Lord shall mock them," and Psalm XXXVI, 13: "But the Lord shall laugh at him, because He foresees that his day will come."
19. AND AFTER THIS THEY SHALL BE CAST DOWN WITHOUT HONOR. — F
irst, Vatablus: they shall fall shamefully; Greek, esontai eis ptoma; which first, with our translator, you may render: they shall be in ruin or a fall, or a collapse without honor, that is, devoid of honor and ignominious, as if to say: The wicked, granted that for a time here they are exalted with riches and honors, yet at last from this pinnacle of worldly happiness and glory they shall fall, and shall rush into want, misery, wretchedness, and infamy, as into an abyss — especially in death, and after death in Gehenna. Second, you may translate: they shall be a vile corpse: for death from the living, fine, and splendid shall make ugly and foul corpses; for the more delicately bodies are nourished in life, the more they rot and stink after death: for the Greek ptoma is derived from pipto, just as cadaver from cado ("I fall"): so Jansenius. Third, you may translate: they shall be like fallen olives, or like fruits shaken from a tree and falling to the ground, or like a tree with its roots torn out, cast upon the ground, rejected and inglorious. So above in verses 3 and 4, he compared the wicked to trees agitated and uprooted by the wind: for the Greek ptoma signifies all these things: so Petrus Nannius here.
Some take all these things, as I said above, of tyrants who kill martyrs; Cantacuzenus however takes them of the Jews who crucified Christ: for on account of this infamous christicide they were cut down by Titus, sold, condemned to the beasts, made exiles and wanderers, a laughingstock to the whole world; but fully and adequately you should take these words of the wicked who persecute any just person.
AND IN DISGRACE AMONG THE DEAD FOREVER. — L
ucifer of Cagliari, Apology for St. Athanasius, reads: they shall be in the disgrace of death forever; Vatablus: and they shall suffer perpetual ignominy among the dead, both among men, and among those above, and among those below: for they shall go into Gehenna, where they shall be the mockery of demons, according to that verse, Daniel XII, 3: "Some shall awake to eternal life, others to reproach, that they may see always;" and Isaiah LXVI, 24: "Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be a spectacle even to the satiety of sight for all flesh." The phrase "among the dead" means the same as "among the damned": for the corpses of the wicked shall rot in the tomb, while their souls shall be tormented perpetually in Gehenna with the damned, according to that verse, Psalm XXVIII, 13: "Like sheep they are placed in hell (Theodoret: they have established themselves, whence they cannot extricate themselves), death shall feed upon them;" St. Jerome: death shall be their shepherd, and he adds: "Rightly are they fed upon by death, who did not wish to have Christ as their good shepherd," John XI, 14; and that saying of St. Gregory, Book XV of the Morals, chapter XII, where he expounds Job XX, 18: 'He shall pay for all that he has done, yet shall not be consumed': "He is not consumed by death, he says, because if the life of the dying person were consumed, the punishment also would end; but so that he may be tortured without end, he is compelled to live in punishment, so that the death of one whose life here was dead in guilt may there live on in punishment."
BECAUSE HE SHALL BREAK THEM ASUNDER, PUFFED UP, WITHOUT A VOICE
as if to say: Just as an inflated wineskin, swollen with wind, is broken and burst with a great crash: so God shall break asunder the wicked, swollen with pride, in death with great crashing and pain, and shall make them aphonous, that is, voiceless (some read aphronas, or rather aphronas, that is, senseless, so that they seem to lack mind, that is, counsel and judgment, and to be destitute of all reason). Moreover "without a voice" means tongueless and mute, like fish, so that they cannot speak, nor if they could, would they dare to mutter or open their mouths, from confusion and consciousness of their crimes; hence that man who did not have a wedding garment at the heavenly nuptials of the Lamb fell silent; wherefore, bound hand and foot, he was cast into outer darkness, Matthew XXII, 12. Moreover the Greek transposes the words, for it reads: because He shall break them, voiceless, puffed up — or, as some read, inflamed; whence Cervantes refers "without a voice" to "inflamed," and explains it thus: without a voice, that is, like a flame, consuming and swallowing the wicked with a gentle yet fierce silence, sent from heaven, and without any resistance, without the crash of this or that branch breaking and, as it were, complaining — He shall utterly destroy, rout, and remove them whole, and shall so devour them with the fire of divine wrath that
He shall also transfer them from their place into hell.
Our translator instead of preneis seems to have read prestheis, from pretho, that is, I puff up, or I set on fire; whence he translates "puffed up," and this aptly coheres with the verb "shall break asunder"; others translate "inflamed," and indeed some think that instead of "puffed up" one should read "inflamed"; whence prester is a fiery whirlwind; but Vatablus and others, reading preneis from prenizo, that is, I cast headlong, or I lean forward, translate "prostrate, cast down, or headlong"; whence Vatablus translates: because He shall dash them, with voice shut in, headlong: for He shall cast them headlong into the underworld. Moreover God shall break the wicked asunder, first, in death, when He shall tear and rip the soul from the body; which tearing, on account of the supreme union of soul with body, is most bitter. Second, at the judgment He shall rip, that is, separate them from the society of angels and
of the blessed. Third, in Gehenna He shall break them asunder with torments, scourges, blows, and the most bitter pains, so that they seem to be torn limb from limb and broken apart. He alludes to the torment of wheels, on which robbers' arms and limbs are broken; and to wheels on which martyrs were spun around, and through blades and swords placed beneath were torn and shattered: for saints who were in spirit caught up there by God saw similar wheels, but far more atrocious, in Gehenna, by which the bodies of the damned were twisted and torn to pieces — but in such a way that, always coming back to life, they persisted for new torments. See the authors who have written about the torments of hell, and especially Denis the Carthusian, On the Punishments of Hell, article 47 and following, and On the Judgment of the Soul, chapter XXI and following. Fourth and genuinely, the Greek rhegma signifies to strike with violence and crashing, and to fall from above, as a stormy rain and hail are wont to do; likewise to be torn away and carried off, as trees, houses, and great masses are swallowed up by an opening of the earth: for in a similar way the bodies of the damned, swollen, heavy, and weighty like lead, shall from the Valley of Josaphat, where they will be judged and condemned by Christ, — the earth gaping open — be dashed, torn away, snatched up, and shall crash down into the lowest depths of the underworld with great force and crashing, all of which our translator indicates by the word "disrumpet," that is, "He shall break asunder."
AND HE SHALL MOVE THEM FROM THEIR FOUNDATIONS, AND THEY SHALL BE DESOLATED TO THE UTTERMOST: AND THEY SHALL BE GROANING, AND THEIR MEMORY SHALL PERISH. — A
nd He shall move them from their foundations, that is, as Vatablus says, He shall move them utterly, just as trees, houses, or doors are moved and shattered when they are torn from their foundations and hinges: He alludes to Job XXII, 16: "A river overturned the foundation of those who said to God: Depart from us; in Hebrew it is: a river poured out (the Septuagint: flowing) their foundation: He alludes to the waters of the flood. This river signifies the onslaught of God's wrath against the wicked, and their swift destruction, and the immense force and mass of calamities flooding upon them. And they shall be desolated to the uttermost, that is, they shall be utterly desolated, says Vatablus, so that nothing of theirs remains safe: for it is fitting that the wicked, who in this life had the greatest pleasures, consolations, and joys, should likewise in the next have the greatest sorrows, desolations, and torments. And they shall be groaning, Greek: and they shall be in manifold and most intense pain, such as that of women in labor; for this is what odin signifies: for they shall be tortured by the fire and torments of Gehenna. And their memory shall perish, in the sense which I gave above—
20. THEY SHALL COME IN FEAR AT THE THOUGHT OF THEIR SINS — G
reek: they shall come to syllogismo, that is, in a syllogism, namely in reckoning, calculation, collection, as if to say: The wicked in their mind and memory, with conscience dictating, shall gather together as into one heap all their crimes of their past life, with the result that they shall be struck with the greatest fear and utterly confounded with extreme shame; hence Vatablus translates: they shall come forth fearful at the reckoning of their sins, come—
come forth, that is, in order to render an exact account of each of their deeds, words, and thoughts to Christ the Judge; whence in fear they shall reckon with themselves what they are to answer Christ, and shall find nothing fitting.
AND THEIR INIQUITIES SHALL CONVICT THEM TO THEIR FACE (G
reek elenxei, that is, they shall openly refute and convict, and expose them to the gaze of all as convicted criminals), — so that they cannot deny, cloak, or excuse them: the conscience, which is a thousand witnesses, shall on the day of judgment reveal not only to the wicked themselves, but to all men and angels, all their crimes, according to the verse:
"And all the secrets of all shall be open to all."
Hence Vatablus translates: and they shall be convicted before all by their own crimes: so chapter II, verse 14: "He has become for us, he says, a public reproach," that is, a public rebuke.
Less correctly Cantacuzenus: "They shall lead away," he says, that is, they shall lead apart and lead the wicked away from the society of the saints; for the Greek elenxo is the same as what Jeremiah reproaches to the wicked, chapter II, verse 19: "Your malice shall convict you, and your turning away shall rebuke you," as if to say: There will be no need of an accuser or
witness, because your own conscience shall lay bare your crimes to the whole world, shall accuse and bear witness; and Job, chapter XV, verse 24: "Tribulation shall terrify him, and distress shall surround him, like a king who is prepared for battle."
Weigh each word of the Wise Man from verse 18 up to this point, and you will find just as many punishments of the wicked and the damned in Gehenna: for each word threatens a new torment. Moreover Holcot so aptly matches and proportions each punishment to its corresponding guilt. The downfall of the falling wicked, especially of tyrants, he says, shall exact punishment for their ambitious pride; disgrace shall answer the disgrace with which they afflicted the saints; mockery shall answer mockery; perpetuity shall be applied to the obstinacy by which they perpetuated their life in sins until death; they shall be broken asunder, just as they broke the pious asunder: they shall be voiceless and mute, because they condemned the saints unheard, and gave them neither space to defend themselves nor the ability to speak; they shall be moved from their foundations, who attempted to utterly uproot the pious; desolation shall succeed carnal consolation, groaning shall succeed laughter, pleasures, and delights; their memory shall perish, because they themselves forgot God, His law, virtue, and their own salvation.