Cornelius a Lapide
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Commentaries on Sacred Scripture by the Reverend Father Cornelius a Lapide, of the Society of Jesus, formerly Professor of Sacred Scripture at Louvain, afterwards at Rome. Carefully revised and illustrated with notes by Jos. Max. Peronne, Canon Director of Soissons, formerly Professor of Sacred Scriptures. New edition, carefully purged of the errors that had crept into the earlier one. Volume Eleven: On Isaiah the Prophet. Paris. Published by Ludovicus Vives, Bookseller and Editor, 13 Rue Delambre, 13. 1891.
Dedication to the Most Holy Trinity, God One and Three
To You, O most sacred Trinity and threefold Unity, I offer what is mine — or rather, I return and render back to You what is entirely Yours: this third and threefold work on the Prophets. From You it began; in You it shall end. I have been Yours from the womb, where You formed me in Your image and likeness. Yours from birth, where I was baptized and reborn in Your name. Yours from the first use of reason, where I began to worship You with faith, hope, and charity, which You had instilled in me at baptism. Yours from adolescence, where by Your prompting I willingly and gladly bound myself to You by the three vows of Religion. Yours from my youth, where, consecrated a priest by Your gift, I immolated the one and threefold victim of Christ to You daily up to this very day as a perpetual sacrifice. Yours from manhood, where I dedicated to You these labors of mine and the fruits You had given me; I consecrated all my studies, all my learning, all my commentary to Your glory, and desired that my every action, every suffering, and my whole life should be nothing other than a continual praise of You.
"For a hymn is fitting to You in Sion, and to You shall my vow be rendered in Jerusalem" (Psalm 64); indeed, a hymn falls silent before You in Sion, as the Psalmist says: because all our praise, compared to You and Your majesty, is mere and mute silence. Receive the threefold image of Yourself in these Commentaries of mine, impressed by You upon my mind and hand. I have published the Pentateuch, Paul, the Prophets — that is, the Law, the Gospel (for Paul is its herald), and Prophecy. The Law represents You as Father and Lawgiver; the Gospel represents You as the incarnate Son; Prophecy represents You as the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the Prophets. The work is likewise threefold in structure: Isaiah portrays You, O eternal Father, whom he saw seated on the lofty and august throne of divinity! Jeremiah, most afflicted of all, as Isidore of Pelusium says, foreshadows You, O Christ, in Your suffering! Ezekiel prophesies You, O gracious Spirit, to be poured out upon the Apostles and the faithful!
They are Yours, they are Yours, O most holy Trinity, who are the Father of lights, the fountain of every triad, the origin and cause of all things that have been, are, shall be, and can be! You revealed Yourself to my mind long ago, that I might esteem and seek You alone, and count all other things as trifling, empty, and fleeting, and despise them. For the king, the wisest of mortals in God's judgment, found them to be just as he declared, saying: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1). The Teacher of the Nations taught me to count all things as dung, that I might gain Christ. Isaiah thunders in my ears: "All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field.
The grass has withered, and the flower has fallen, etc.: but the word of our Lord endures forever" (Isaiah 40:6). The saying of the royal Psalmist resounds in me frequently: "Be still, and see that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth" (Psalm 45:11). Therefore I flee courts and breezes of the world, and follow a silence and seclusion that is pleasant to me and not useless to others, together with St. Basil, Gregory, and Jerome, whose holy Bethlehem — which he so earnestly sought out in Palestine — I have found in Rome.
Once, when younger, I played the part of Martha; now in the declining years of age I play and love more the part of Magdalene, mindful of life's brevity, mindful of God, mindful of approaching eternity. I am the inhabitant of a silent and solitary cell (which, as my faithful friend, is dearer to me than the whole earth, and which therefore seems an earthly heaven, as it appeared to St. Bernard): a dweller of the cell and follower of the sacred study, I strive to be a dweller of heaven. I pursue the leisure — or rather the business — of holy contemplation, reading, and writing. I devote myself to God, one and three, and to receiving, meditating upon, and celebrating His oracles and inspirations. I sit at the feet of Christ, that hanging upon His lips I may drink in the words of life, which I may then pour out upon others.
For what is more worthy, what more salutary, what wiser, what more divine, than to attend to Him alone, from whom all things come, so that you may say and know with the Psalmist: "But for me, to cling to God is good" (Psalm 72:28) — to be wholly free for Him, to please Him, to think of Him, to imitate Him, to follow Him; to love Him, to sound His praises in custom, in speech, and in love; to praise Him alone with one's life, tongue, and heart; to celebrate Him with hand, pen, and mind? This is the continual work of Angels, this is a foretaste of the heavenly life, this is the beginning of eternal beatitude: namely, to persist in contemplating and enjoying God, one and three, and together with the Seraphim — who veil their eyes and feet in awe and veneration — to sing perpetually: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory"; and with the Apostle to cry out: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"
O sacred Trinity, and threefold and one Godhead, how incomprehensible, how unsearchable You are! — so that in the confession of the true and everlasting Godhead, there may be adored distinctiveness in the Persons, unity in the essence, and equality in the majesty. From You, through You, in You are all things. "The whole Father," says St. Augustine, "is in the Son and the Holy Spirit; the whole Son is in the Father and the Holy Spirit; the whole Holy Spirit likewise is in the Father and the Son. None of Them is outside any of the others, because no one of Them precedes another in eternity, or exceeds another in greatness, or surpasses another in power. But of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit there is one divinity, equal glory, coeternal majesty" (St. Augustine, De Fide ad Petrum, Book I, ch. 1; St. Athanasius in the Creed).
For it is of as great worth for the Son to be begotten as it is for the Father to beget; it is as august for the Holy Spirit to be spirated as it is for the Father and the Son to spirate: for by being spirated He receives the same identical essence and majesty that the Father and the Son possess. "You, therefore, one in substance, a Trinity in Persons, we confess." We invoke You, we praise You, we adore You, our hope, our salvation, our honor, O blessed Trinity. To You be praise, to You be glory, to You be thanksgiving, unto everlasting ages. You, God the Father unbegotten; You,
the only-begotten Son; You, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete — the holy and undivided Trinity — with all our heart and voice we confess and bless. But with what praises shall I celebrate You, with what names shall I address You? You infinitely transcend the concepts and words of men and Angels, and You dwell in inaccessible darkness; and therefore, as St. Dionysius says, You are to be venerated more with chaste silence than celebrated with the meager eloquence of a lowly mind.
You are the three-faced Godhead, the Triform Relation, the Triangle of Divinity, the Trigeminal Nature, the Thrice-Holy Majesty, the all-harmonious Triad, the Tripartite Hypostasis, the Ternion of Persons, the Triumvirate (so to speak) of the God-Man. With what ideas, parables, and similitudes shall I represent You? Every likeness of ours is very unlike You. Every trace of You on earth is as far distant from You as the creature from the Creator, the shadow from the body, nothingness from being, the finite from the infinite.
If infants may be allowed to babble — and indeed it is fitting — if the lowest may be compared with the highest, the human with the divine; if we may fashion You in some measure for our minds through our own concepts, likenesses, and forms, however greatly deformed: You are the self-moving Triple Finger, the Thrice-Great God, the Three-Faced Mirror, the Triple-Powered Mind, the Three-Lustrous Parhelion, the Three-Brilliant Sun, the Three-Bodied Soul, the Three-Forked Lightning, the Three-Headed Sword, the Three-Cleft Tree, the Three-Leaf of Paradise, the Three-Flamed Fire, the Three-Shining Lamp, the Triangular Diopter, the Three-Voiced Harmony, the Triglyph of Elegance, the Three-Membered Beauty, the Triangle Alpha, the Three-Tongued Eloquence, the Three-Armed Power, the Three-Way Wisdom, the Three-Eyed Providence, the Three-Gated Citadel, the Three-Couched Banquet of Ambrosia, the Three-Oared Vessel of the Abyss, the Three-Footed Dance of Eternity, the Three-Peaked Summit, the Three-Crowned Glory, the Trident of Creation, the Three-Footed Substance, the Three-Storied Heavens, the Three-Rayed Light, the Three-Colored Rainbow, the Three-Fingered Hand, the Three-Mouthed Fountain, the Three-Horned Brow, the Three-Pointed Spear, the Three-Gemmed Adamant, the Three-Knotted Cord, the Three-Threaded Weave, the Three-Measured Being, the Three-Turned Essence, the Threefold Measure of Worship, the Three-Crowned Empire, the Three-Citied Universe, the Three-Worlded Magnificence, the Threefold Jehovah, the Threefold Alpha and Omega.
You are of all things both the beginning and the end, the same;
The Son, offspring coeval with the eternal Parent;
The common love of Both, the golden flame of heaven,
The fire-mighty Spirit, filling the world with ardors.
One divinity, the same for Three, and for Three one will,
One majesty, the same nature, for Three one power.
For the Father is one Person, the Son is another, the Holy Spirit is another; yet They are not another thing. And conversely, these Three are one; yet not one Person. For each Person is in Himself one, and therefore one Person: but oneness, or the unity of essence, exists in three Persons, and in each one, whole and entire. The error of Abelard — who posited degrees among the Persons in the Most Holy Trinity — was exploded long ago and, mocked by itself, fell apart of its own accord. Against him St. Bernard sublimely declared: "He worthily esteems the divine magnificence, to the extent of his ability, who thinks nothing in it unequal, where all is supreme; nothing distant, where all is one; nothing gaping, where all is whole;
nothing, finally, imperfect or lacking, where all is the whole. For the whole is the Father, which is the Son and the Holy Spirit. The whole is the Son, which is both Himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit. The whole is the Holy Spirit, which is both Himself and the Father and the Son. And the whole is one whole, neither overflowing in Three, nor diminished in each: for they do not divide among themselves in parts the true and supreme good that they are, since they do not possess it by participation, but they essentially are this very thing" (Epistle 190, to Pope Innocent).
Admiring and deeply venerating this, St. Augustine says: "To Yourself alone, O Trinity, are You fully known. O holy Trinity, O Trinity supremely wondrous and supremely beyond telling, supremely beyond access, supremely beyond comprehension, supremely beyond understanding, supremely beyond essence — surpassing super-essentially every sense, every reason, every intellect, every essence of the super-celestial spirits: whom it is not possible to speak, to think, to understand, or to know, even for the eyes of Angels" (Soliloquies, ch. 31).
Moreover, although the works of the Most Holy Triad, like its nature, power, mind, and will, are undivided, nevertheless, because of the affinity congruent with the proper characteristic of each Person, rightly to the Father, says St. Thomas (I, q. 45, art. 6), is attributed omnipotence; to the Son, omniscience, because He is the Word and the Idea of the Father; to the Holy Spirit, supreme and immense goodness, because He is the notional love of the Father and the Son.
Again: "In the Father," says St. Augustine, "is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the concord of unity and equality. And all these three are one by reason of the Father, all equal by reason of the Son, all connected by reason of the Holy Spirit" (De Doctrina Christiana, Book I, ch. 5). Furthermore, to the Father is ascribed eternity, to the Son truth, to the Holy Spirit charity; to the Father providence, to the Son wisdom, to the Holy Spirit order and union; to the Father creation, to the Son governance, to the Holy Spirit conservation; to the Father predestination, to the Son redemption, to the Holy Spirit sanctification; to the Father vocation, to the Son justification, to the Holy Spirit glorification; to the Father purgation, to the Son illumination, to the Holy Spirit perfection; to the Father the past, to the Son the present, to the Holy Spirit the future; to the Father the beginning, to the Son the middle, to the Holy Spirit the end and terminus.
For, as St. Bernard says (Sermon 80 on the Song of Songs): "The Most Holy Trinity contains all places, and arranges each thing in its proper place, while never being contained by any place; times pass beneath It, not for It: It does not await the future, does not recall the past, does not experience the present." For the Most Holy Trinity is immensity, for which every place — highest, middle, lowest — exists; and eternity, for which all time is present and coexists, and consequently the past is not past for It, but present; the future is not future for It, but present. Therefore perfect knowledge of the Trinity is full wisdom and eternal life: for which, accordingly, St. Gregory Nazianzen, sighing in his hymn to God, thus sings:
O living Trinity! I shall sing of You as the one Monarch,
Who has no origin and no change.
The same author, in Oration 40, calls the Most Holy Trinity "the infinite conjunction of three infinites. Scarcely have I conceived one in my mind," he says, "when I am illumined by three. Scarcely do I begin to distinguish three, when I am immediately carried aloft to one, etc. I perceive one splendor, since I am unable to distinguish or measure a united light." For, as the same author says in his poem on the Holy Spirit, in the Most Holy Triad there is a monad, and therefore a monarchy, which begets concord — not a polyarchy, which begets discord, strife, and wars. Therefore with all our heart and voice let us celebrate the Triad, let us adore the Monad, let us bless the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let us praise and super-exalt Him unto the ages.
Now indeed the Most Holy Trinity communicated Itself to Christ and to us in manifold ways, and wrought a certain trinity, and daily works and communicates it. "There are three," says St. John, "who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these Three are one. And there are three who give testimony on earth: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three are one" (1 John 5:7).
And St. Bernard says: "Just as in that singular divinity there is a trinity in the Persons and unity in the substance, so in this special admixture (in Christ) there is a trinity in the substances and unity in the Person. And just as there the Persons do not split the unity, and the unity does not diminish the trinity, so also here the Person does not confuse the substances, nor do the substances themselves scatter the unity of the Person. That supreme Trinity bestowed upon us this trinity — a work, a wondrous work, a singular work among all and above all His works. For the Word, and the soul, and the flesh came together into one Person; these three are one, and this one is three, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person" (Sermon 3 on the Vigil of the Nativity).
Blessed, therefore, be the holy Trinity and the undivided Unity; we shall give thanks to It, because in Christ It has shown us Its great mercy.
Creatures, however, depend upon the Most Holy Trinity as a ray depends upon the sun. For the Father is He from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named; the Son, from whom all sonship, offspring, and propagation; the Holy Spirit, from whom all love, all grace, all generosity, all gifts.
In man, moreover, says St. Bernard, "there is the creating Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, from which there fell a created trinity: memory, reason, and will. And there is a trinity into which it fell: powerlessness, blindness, and uncleanness. There is a trinity through which it rises again: faith, hope, and charity. And these have threefold subdivisions. For there is faith of precepts, of signs, and of promises; and there is hope of pardon, of grace, and of glory; and there is charity from a pure heart, a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith" (Sermon 1 among the minor sermons).
In like manner, St. Augustine, in Book XI of De Trinitate, near the end, teaches that the Most Holy Trinity expressed Its image in the soul and in its three faculties: "These three," he says, "memory, understanding, and will — since they are not three lives but one life, nor three minds but one mind — are consequently not three substances but one substance. Therefore these three are one insofar as they are one life, one mind, one essence: and just as in God the three
Persons are one life, one mind, one divine essence." The same author, at the beginning of Book XII, shows that a vestige of the Most Holy Trinity exists in the body and in each sense. In sight, for example, he says, there are three things: the thing seen, the vision itself, and the attention of the mind. And in chapters 5 and 20, he teaches that a perfect image of God exists only in the just. "For they alone," he says, "live according to the trinity of the inner man," which consists in faith, hope, and charity. Now just as memory gives birth to understanding, and understanding to love; and just as faith gives birth to hope, and hope to charity: so the Father generates the Son, and the Son with the Father spirates the Holy Spirit.
Again, an image or vestige of the Most Holy Trinity was impressed by It upon the sun: for just as the sun sends forth rays, and the rays send forth heat, so the Father sends forth the Son from Himself, and the Son with the Father sends forth the Holy Spirit. Likewise upon the tree: for just as a tree from its root puts forth a branch, and the branch together with the root puts forth fruit, so the Father puts forth the Son, and through the Son and with the Son, the Holy Spirit. The image is in Adam, as Nazianzen suggests (Oration 39). For Adam was unbegotten, because he was formed by God alone, who soon from Adam fashioned Eve; and then Adam from Eve begot Seth: so the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten from Him, through whom and with whom He produces the Holy Spirit.
The image is in the soul, which is the same in the head, neck, and chest, and flows from the head through the neck, and transmits the animal spirits into the chest: for similarly the same divinity is in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which flows from the Father through the Son, and communicates Itself to the Holy Spirit. The image is in the eye and in the mirror. For just as the same object — for example, one and the same individual man — through its likeness exists and appears as though threefold in three mirrors and in three eyes, so the same Godhead exists and appears as threefold in the three Persons.
An image — and indeed a most clear and illustrious one — exists in the venerable Eucharist. For just as one and the same Christ exists in three consecrated hosts, and the hosts are really distinguished from one another, while yet having entirely the same essence, namely the same Body of Christ: so the same divine essence exists in the three Persons, who really differ in respect of personhood, while having the same and undivided essence.
The image is in a chain, says St. Basil (Epistle 43 to Gregory of Nyssa). "For just as one who grasps the top of one ring thereby simultaneously draws along another that is linked to it, so also here one who draws the Spirit — as the Prophet says — has thereby simultaneously drawn along the Son and the Father as well. For here there is a discretion joined in a new and unwonted manner" — that is, of notions and personal properties — "and a discrete conjunction" of Persons in the same identical essence.
The image, says the same author in the same place, is in the rainbow: just as three colors form a rainbow in the celestial arc, so three Persons in the Godhead form the Triad — that is, the one and three God. Finally, an image of the Most Holy Trinity is every spirit and every body: for in a spirit there is a trinity of nature, power, and operation; in a body, a trinity of matter, form, and property.
Do you want more? God created and ordered all things in a trinity — namely, in number, weight, and measure. For this reason Plato in the Timaeus held that the world was made through the cube of the number three, that is, through twenty-seven (the cube of numbers is formed when a number is first multiplied by itself, then multiplied into the product; and
three times three is nine, three times nine is twenty-seven), in which all harmony and consonance consists. Hence also He originally created the Angels, distinguished in three orders in three likewise equal hierarchies, so that He might express in them the first image of Himself — that is, of the Most Holy Triad. For three times three is nine, three times nine is twenty-seven, which is the cube of the number three.
Grant, O Lord, that in these vestiges of Yourself, and especially in that image of Yourself which You have impressed upon our souls, we may perpetually behold You. Grant that in our memory we may always have present our prototype, the eternal Father, so that everywhere we may remember and be mindful of Him. Grant that in our understanding, in the word of our mind, we may think upon and savour the primeval Word, from whom comes every word of ours. Grant that in our will and in our love, we may love everlastingly the Holy Spirit, who is the fountainhead of our love, so that He may deign to dwell in our soul as in His holy temple, and to move and impel it toward every good.
These ineffable mysteries of Yours, O Most Holy Trinity, the Prophets were the first to learn from You who revealed them, the first to proclaim them, the first to hand them down in writing to posterity. Isaiah saw God, not only as one, but also as three, in that wondrous and inexplicable vision, seated on an august throne, and therefore he likewise heard the Seraphim greeting and adoring Him with the thrice-holy hymn. The same prophet frequently learns and teaches that the Father communicated the Holy Spirit to the incarnate Son: "Behold," he says, "My servant, I will uphold Him; My chosen one, in whom My soul is well pleased: I have placed My Spirit upon Him" (ch. 42, v. 1). "And now the Lord God has sent Me, and His Spirit" (ch. 48, v. 16). And: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me; He has sent Me to announce to the meek" (ch. 61, v. 1).
Jeremiah, receiving from the same source the oracles he was to proclaim, and astonished at his own inadequacy, confesses his childishness to the Most Holy Trinity with a triple sigh and lament: "Ah, ah, ah, Lord God: behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am a child" (ch. 1:6). The same prophet, with a triple rebuke of the earth, admonishes it to hear the voice of its triune God: "Earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord" (ch. 22:29). Again: "The Lord has created a new thing upon the earth: a woman shall encompass a man" (ch. 31:22). And immediately afterward, concerning the Holy Spirit: "I will place My law in their innermost parts, and upon their hearts I will write it (which is the work of the Holy Spirit): and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (v. 33).
Ezekiel saw the Most Holy Trinity in the chariot of glory, attended by four Cherubim, seated upon a sapphire throne, in the triple appearance of a man, of amber, and of fire. "The wheels also had size and height and a terrible appearance, and the whole body was full of eyes, etc. For the spirit of life was in the wheels" (ch. 1:18). The same prophet constantly hears from God: "Son of man, you shall speak these things" — you shall prophesy them — so as to represent the Son of God as an envoy sent by the Father to men. Of the Holy Spirit he makes mention when he says: "And the spirit lifted me up and brought me into Chaldea" (ch. 11:24). And: "I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them" (v. 19). And: "I will give you a new heart
and I will place a new spirit in your midst" (ch. 36:26). Daniel, by the three young men in the Babylonian furnace, represents the Most Holy Triad, by whose aid they remained unharmed in the fire (ch. 3); for this reason they sang to It a famous hymn (ch. 3). The same prophet says: "I watched until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat. His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head was like clean wool. His throne was flames of fire; its wheels were burning fire. A fiery and rushing river issued from before Him. Thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him, etc. And behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man, and He reached even to the Ancient of Days. And there was given to Him power, and honor, and a kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him. His power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away; and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. My spirit trembled" (vv. 9-15).
And again: "Seventy weeks are shortened upon your people and upon your holy city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be blotted out, and everlasting justice may be brought in, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the Holy of Holies may be anointed" (ch. 9:24). For the one anointing is the Father; the anointed one — that is, Christ — is the Son; and the anointing oil is the Holy Spirit.
These oracles are Yours, then — or rather, they are about You, O Most Holy Trinity — by which You revealed Yourself to the Prophets, and through them depicted Yourself for us. Grant that we may know You, revere You, love You, and worship You through them. Grant that all who shall read these commentaries upon them may be set ablaze with love and veneration for You.
You are denied and torn apart by the Saracens and Turks in Asia, by schismatics in Africa, by heretics in Europe, by pagans in India. Come, O Lord! By Your power and grace let heresy, schism, Mohammedanism, and paganism come to an end. May Your kingdom come; may Your holy name be sanctified throughout all Asia, Africa, Europe, and India, so that the whole world may confess You, praise You, and celebrate You; so that all of us together, with one voice and in equal harmony, may perpetually sing to You: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."
Glory to the Father, who created us; glory to the Son, who redeemed us with His Blood; glory to the Holy Spirit, who sanctified us with His grace. Glory to the Father, who predestined us; glory to the Son, who justified us; glory to the Holy Spirit, who will beatify and glorify us. And by this faith and praise, may we merit to enjoy You in heaven, and to possess in You life, a kingdom, and eternal glory (which assuredly You are), and together with the hierarchies of heavenly spirits — with myriads, I say, of Angels — may we jubilantly sing to You through all eternities: Blessing, and brightness, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honor, and power, and might to our God, one and three, unto the ages of ages.
O sacred Trinity, O threefold Unity, O one Immensity, immense Charity, dear Truth, true Sweetness, sweet Felicity, happy Eternity — our God, our Love and our Honor, our Jubilation, and our All. Amen.