Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Annotation to Be Added to the Minor Prophets
Certain novices and less learned theologians, not grasping the title of the Dedicatory Epistle which I prefixed to the Minor Prophets — "To the Most Holy Trinity, uncreated and created in Christ Jesus, the threefold jubilee and prayer of the Prophets" — but marveling at it (for ignorance causes wonder, as Aristotle says), demanded of me that I more fully explain and elucidate what was concisely obscure. I therefore now undertake to do this for their benefit, because, with Saint Paul, I am a debtor both to the unwise and to the wise.
It is clear from the very terms and words that this book is dedicated not to one, but to a twofold Trinity: the first uncreated, the second created. For one and the same Trinity cannot be both uncreated and created at the same time, just as the same being cannot be both Creator and creature — for this involves a contradiction.
The uncreated Trinity, then, is God, one in essence but three in persons, namely God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are three real divine Persons, really distinct from one another, who possess the same numerical essence and divinity, and therefore are in all things omnipotent, immense, and equal, and are to be adored with the same worship of latria. Wherefore the Seraphim, both angelic and human — that is, all the Prophets — with thrice-repeated fourfold voices continually sing to Them the Trisagion: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts," as I immediately add in the Dedicatory Epistle. This most august and ineffable mystery of the Trinity, expressly stated in Sacred Scripture, the Church has constantly taught and defended against Sabellius, Arius, and Macedonius in every age. The same has been defined many times in Ecumenical Councils, with anathema threatened against Arians and Sabellians who deny it. The same was handed down by the Apostles in the Creed, and by the Fathers — Syrian, Greek, and Latin — in every age: Saints Justin, Ephrem, Epiphanius, Athanasius, Damascene, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory, and all the other orthodox without exception, as I have demonstrated in many places, but especially in the Dedicatory Epistle to the Major Prophets, where I gave great and wonderful — though far less than He deserves — praises to the Holy Trinity; and on Isaiah 6:3, at the words "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts"; and on Romans 11:33, at the words "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! etc. For from Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things; to Him be glory forever, Amen"; and on Hebrews 13: "Who (the Son), being the brightness of His glory and the figure of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power"; and frequently elsewhere — for everywhere I pursue the Arians and Ebionites as sworn heretics against the Holy Trinity and enemies of Christ and Paul, and as blasphemers and atheists.
The created Trinity in Christ is Christ's most holy soul, flesh, and blood — for these three things were created and bestowed by God the Creator upon Christ's humanity as substantial parts in the Incarnation, when "the Word was made flesh." For I allude to that passage in 1 John 5: "For there are three who give testimony (that 'Jesus is the Son of God,' as I said in verse 5) 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." For the spirit is Christ's most holy soul; the water is that which Christ, dying, poured forth from the flesh of His side together with blood. There Saint John assigns the uncreated Trinity — the Father, the Word or Son, and the Holy Spirit — and the created one: the spirit, the water, and the blood, both of which testify that Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the world, as I expounded at length in that place. In like manner, all the Prophets prophesy and teach both Trinities — namely the mystery of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation of the Word — so that they seem to have dedicated their prophecies to both, and therefore I too have dedicated them to both. This is represented by the image of the Holy Trinity holding the crucified Christ in Its bosom, to whom the individual Prophets round about present their oracles — the image I prefixed to the Dedicatory Epistle. For the Dedicatory Epistle refers to the image and explains it.
Furthermore, although the name "Trinity," when used absolutely, belongs by the custom of the faithful to the uncreated alone, nevertheless if the word "created" is added, it can apply only to something created in time, such as Christ's humanity. And in this way the Fathers use the name "Trinity" when they say that in the human soul there is an image of the Holy Trinity — indeed a participated trinity — because in the soul there are three powers: memory, intellect, and will (indeed these three are really the same as the soul, if we believe certain philosophers), just as in the divine essence there are three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. "For by this very fact," says Saint Augustine (De Trinitate, Book XIV, ch. 8), "the mind is the image of God, in that it is capable of Him and can be a partaker of Him. Let us therefore seek in it the Trinity who is God. For behold, the mind remembers itself, understands itself, loves itself: if we perceive this, we perceive a trinity — not yet God, but an image of God. For a certain trinity appears here: of memory, understanding, and love." And Saint Isidore (Etymologies, Book VII, ch. 4): "It is called Trinity," he says, "because one whole is made from certain three, as it were a tri-unity — as memory, understanding, and will, in which the mind has in itself a certain image of the divine Trinity; for although they are three, they are one." And Saint Bonaventure (In 1 Sent., dist. 24): "Trinity is so called," he says, "as if thrice-unity, or the unity of three." Hence also Saint Bernard (Sermon 11 on the Song of Songs), treating of the same subject: "O blessed and beatifying Trinity," he says, "to You my wretched trinity wretchedly sighs, because it unhappily lives in exile from You. Departing from You, in how many errors, sorrows, and fears has it entangled itself! Alas, what a trinity we have exchanged for You! My heart is troubled — and thence comes sorrow; my strength has forsaken me — and thence comes dread; and the light of my eyes is not with me — and thence comes error. And what a dissimilar trinity, O exiled trinity of my soul, you have displayed!" In a similar phrase, Pliny (Natural History, Book II, ch. 31) says that in a parhelion three suns and three moons have often been seen. For what is a threefold sun and a threefold moon, if not a trinity of sun and moon? If it is good Latin to say that the powers of the soul are three, and that the parts of the incarnate Christ are three, why should it not equally be permissible to say that the soul has a trinity of three powers, and Christ a trinity of three parts?
Finally, if anyone should so take and twist the words "and created in Christ Jesus" as to claim that there is nothing in Christ Jesus except what is created, such a person is a heretic, an Arian and Ebionite — that is, a Jew or Judaizer. For the Christian faith teaches that in Christ there is one divine Person but two natures: namely the divine, which Christ received from the Father from eternity, according to which He is true God, coequal and consubstantial with the Father, and therefore second and middle in the uncreated Trinity; and the human, which was created in time when He, as man, was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. The first to deny this was the impious Ebion, the first heresiarch after Simon Magus, in the year of Christ 74. For this sacrilegious Judaizer, together with Cerinthus, denied that Christ was God and asserted that He was a mere man, because he preferred Moses to Christ and the Law to the Gospel; and therefore he called Saint Paul, the herald of the Gospel, an apostate from the Law. Whence Saint Ignatius, his contemporary, in his Epistle to the Philadelphians, says: "If anyone says that there is one God and confesses Christ Jesus, but thinks Him to be a mere man and not the only-begotten God, the Wisdom and Word of God, and considers Him to consist only of soul and body — such a person is a serpent preaching fraud and error for the destruction of men; and such a one, devoid of sense, is by surname Ebion." And Saint Epiphanius (Heresy 30, which treats of Ebion): "Just as if someone," he says, "had joined together for himself an ornament from various precious stones and a many-colored garment and had splendidly adorned himself — so this man (Ebion), conversely, took whatever is horrible, pernicious, abominable, formless, incredible, and full of hatred from individual sects, and fashioned himself into them all: for he has the abomination of the Samaritans, the name of the Jews, the opinion of the Essenes and Nazarenes, the form of the Cerinthians, the wickedness of the Carpocratians, and he wishes to have the appellation of Christians." And Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, Book III, ch. 27): "But the same demon," he says, "also deceived others by another craft — that is, the Ebionites, who are interpreted as 'the poor' (for Ebion in Hebrew means 'poor': and Ebion was indeed poor and destitute in mind, not so much in money and property — though he boasted of this — as in faith and sense). For they are truly poor and needy in the knowledge of the glory of Christ, since they consider Him to be merely a man, begotten by the ordinary generation of a man and a woman." Wherefore, as heresiarch and atheist, he is fiercely attacked by Saints Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret, Philastrius, Cardinal Bellarmine, Hosius, Gregory of Valencia, Stapleton,
Alphonsus a Castro, and all the other orthodox doctors, both ancient and modern, who have written against heresies — so that it is astonishing that in this age, in certain places, the infamous and criminal Ebion, so many times condemned, has been called back again from the underworld, and his monstrous heresy, long since buried, has come to light again through the work of Jews and Judaizers, with great disgrace to the Christian name and immense harm to the faithful. This, then, is the work, this the cunning of Satan, who transforms himself into an angel of light, so that through the Jews he may undermine Christ and Christians, and deceive and catch men like fish, and drag them with him to the eternal fires of Gehenna. Wherefore Saint John the Apostle so detested the blasphemous Ebion that, when he had by chance gone to a bathhouse and learned that Ebion was bathing in it, he immediately fled with his companions, saying: "Hurry, brothers, let us leave this place, lest the bathhouse collapse and we perish with Ebion, who is inside in the bath, on account of his impiety" — as Saint Epiphanius relates (Heresy 30).
Prooemium on the Twelve Minor Prophets
I here premise fewer introductory remarks: for those which I prefixed to the Major Prophets serve equally for the Minor. I therefore proceed to the matter at hand, for I strive for brevity, so as to encompass all of Sacred Scripture in eight or nine volumes, which learned men request. St. Augustine, Book XVIII of The City of God, chapter 19, and Rufinus, in his Preface to Hosea, note that the twelve prophets are called "minor" in comparison to the four major ones, namely Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, not because they are inferior in the gravity of their thoughts or the majesty of their subject matter and words, but because of the brevity of their discourse and books. They too could have written volumes equal to the major prophets, if they had wished: for they served in the office of preaching and prophesying for many years, as Hosea vigorously performed this office up to the ninetieth year of his age. From this it is clear that they said many things in prophesying and preaching that they did not commit to writing; and this out of a desire for modesty and humility, so that they might be and be considered lesser, and not be equated with the greater prophets. Moved by this same desire, the humble St. Francis wished that he and his brothers be called and known as Minors. Hence when Cardinal Hostiensis, who was later made Pope and called Gregory IX, asked him whether it would please him for his brothers to be promoted to ecclesiastical dignities, he replied: 'Lord, my brothers are called Minors for this reason, that they should not presume to become greater. If you wish them to bear fruit in the Church of God, keep them and preserve them in the state of their vocation, and by no means permit them to ascend to ecclesiastical prelacies.' So St. Bonaventure reports in his Life of St. Francis, chapter 6. Moved by the same desire and spirit, St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, a man noble by birth, genius, virtue, wisdom, and eloquence, whom St. Jerome and Augustine wonderfully extol, when asked to write on Sacred Scripture, replied that he was too little skilled, and unworthy to interpret such sublime and divine books. Therefore he never wished to set pen to this work, but devoted himself to other less sublime writings, letters and poems, which still survive, and testify to the man's learning, modesty, piety, and contempt of the world. So his Life records.
St. Chrysostom adds, in Homily 9 on Matthew: 'Many prophetic records, he says, have perished; for since the Jews were lazy — and not merely lazy, but also impious — some things they lost through negligence, others they both burned and cut to pieces. Of such profanation Jeremiah reports in chapter 36, verse 32. And of their negligence we read in 2 Kings 22, that after a long time the scroll of Deuteronomy was barely found, having been buried in a certain place, and nearly destroyed.'
And so these Prophets of ours preferred, passing over many things, to write down only a few, namely the principal points of their oracles and sermons, which would continually refresh the memory of the Jews concerning what they had said and what the Jews had heard from them, and which they themselves, as well as posterity, especially Christians, would not find tedious on account of prolixity, but would read eagerly on account of brevity. For with a few spoken words the present is served, but with writing all posterity is served: 'Zechariah (and every teacher),' says Tertullian, in his book On Idolatry, chapter 23, 'speaks with the stylus, is heard in the wax: the hand is clearer than every sound, the letter more vocal than every mouth.' In this brevity of the Prophets, therefore, there is a great and pregnant abundance of matter, a great sinew of speech, great pathos, a dense and manifold meaning. Hear St. Jerome in his Preface to the Epistle to Philemon: 'But, he says, it seems to me that those who accuse the Epistle of simplicity betray their own ignorance, not understanding what virtue and wisdom lies hidden in each sentence. But if brevity is held in contempt, let Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and the other twelve Prophets be despised, in whom the things reported are so wonderful and so grand that you would not know whether you should marvel more at the brevity of their words or at the magnitude of their meanings.' Therefore the same Jerome, here in his Preface, calls Hosea 'writing in short clauses, and as it were speaking in sentences:' for in brief sentences, as if broken up into short clauses, he eloquently and passionately expresses many great things; for just as the wise man discerns the truth in a single flash of the mind, so he also enunciates it,
and says and dictates in a single stroke of tooth and word. But hear St. Jerome himself: 'Hosea writes in short clauses, and as it were speaks in sentences. Joel is clear in his beginnings, more obscure at the end. And up to Malachi each has his own characteristics.' And in the Helmeted Prologue: 'The twelve Prophets, he says, compressed into the narrow confines of a single volume, prefigure something much different from what they sound in the letter.' Here then is true that verse which Virgil sang of bees in the Georgics:
'The labor is in small things, but the glory is not small.'
For, as Ecclesiasticus 11:3 says: 'Small' — in Greek μικρά, that is, little — 'among flying things is the bee, and the beginning of sweetness is her fruit;' hence that boast of the bees:
'For great is our virtue in our small body.'
Men small of stature are commonly great of soul. The heart is the smallest of the members, yet it is the hearth and citadel of the body, and a kind of second creature, the first to live and the last to die, the source and origin of life, sense, and motion. Indeed, noble animals, like the lion, have a small heart; whereas those that have a large one, like the hyena, hare, deer, donkey, panther, and weasel, are timid and fearful, as Pliny says from Aristotle, Book XI, chapter 37. So much does God and nature love small things, and in small vessels store their treasures: 'For no one has a small fortune who has a great soul,' says St. Leo, Sermon 1 On Lent. Therefore a Philosopher, asked what was at once the smallest and the greatest thing: when one had said it was the eye, because it is the smallest of the members, and yet comprehends by sight the whole world, which is the greatest thing; he replied that it was not the eye, but the heart, both for the reason already given, and because the heart embraces not only the world, but also those things that are above the world, and thus infinite things, by mind, love, and affection, nor can it be filled and satisfied by anything except God, who is immense. Finally, the heart is smallest in humility, but greatest in virtue and glory, as Christ teaches, Matthew 18:4, and chapter 19:26.
The Wise Man says beautifully, Proverbs 30:24: 'Four, he says, are the smallest things on earth, and they are wiser than the wisest. The ants are a feeble people, who prepare their food in the harvest. The rabbit is a weak folk, who makes its bed in the rock. The locust has no king, yet goes forth altogether in ranks. The lizard grasps with its hands, and dwells in the palaces of kings.' Manilius also says wisely, Book IV of the Astronomica:
'Do not despise your powers, as if in a small body.
What flies is immense. So the weight of a little gold
Surpasses in value great heaps of bronze.
So the diamond, a mere point of stone, is more precious than gold.
So the tiny pupil surveys the whole sky;
And whatever the eyes see is small, though they perceive the greatest things:
So the seat of the soul, placed beneath a slender heart,
Rules the whole body from its narrow domain.'
Paul was like that Tydeus, small in bodily stature but gigantic in mind, who was a Tydeus in height but a Hercules in spirit, a Ulysses in cunning. For virtue compressed becomes stronger, and inflicts greater attacks and blows upon adversaries. The Apostle was, as in name, so also in body, Paul — that is, 'little'; but in wisdom and spirit he was lofty, indeed taller: 'He is three cubits tall,' says St. Chrysostom, 'and he transcends the heavens and stars.' So the Minor Prophets are three cubits tall, if you look at their words and sentences; but in wisdom and meaning they transcend the heavens. St. Paulinus says excellently, in Epistle 1, among the six he wrote to Amandus: 'Just as a drop of honey tastes the same as the whole honeycomb, so also in even one word the dripping of your tongue conveys the whole flavor of your holy soul. Nor is a pearl cheap because it is small, but rather more precious, because in a small size it holds great value. And the grain of mustard, which seems the smallest of seeds, yet turns out to be the greatest among herbs: so also your brief discourse holds the sweetness and vigor of the heavenly word.' So Alanus in the Anticlaudianus praises Symmachus, prefect of the city under Emperor Theodosius, for the sinewy brevity of his style, saying:
'Symmachus, sparing in words, but profound in mind:
Lavish in meaning, narrow in words: abundant
In thought, but lesser in speech: blessed in fruit, not foliage,
He compresses the riches of sense into brevity of word.'
The Poet does not hesitate to compare the tiny fly with a king:
'Who would refuse to compare a fly with a prince?
God Himself, the greatest, shines in the smallest things.'
Three things small, but effective:
'The viper, if I remember, is first; the ant second;
Third is the bee, who shines with her own nectar.
Not you, little gnat, nor ant, nor viper — not you
Would a bee of the Bilbilian poet outshine.'
Furthermore Virgil, in Book IV of the Georgics, asserts that the bee possesses or has something of the divine:
'They said that bees have a share of the divine mind, and draughts
Of heavenly air: for God, they said, goes through all
Lands and stretches of sea, etc.'
Nature therefore delights, and so does God who is the author and active principle of nature, in diminishing, contracting, and compressing great things — indeed His own greatness — into small ones, so that there, united, it may be condensed, and shine all the more brightly the more it chooses to be small in what is small. What is greater than the microcosm and the universe? Yet God gathered all of this into man, when He made him a microcosm. What is more sublime than the Eternal Word, the Son of God? Yet He wished to dwell whole in an infant's body, and made Himself equal to it. This is the Abbreviated Word, the wonder of the ages, of whom the Apostle says, Romans 9:28: 'The Lord will make a shortened word upon the earth.' For, as Isaiah prophesied of the same, chapter 10:12: 'The shortened consummation will overflow with justice.' What is more magnificent than Christ, true God and man, and
yet He places His whole self in the tiny Eucharistic host, indeed in every point of it. Do you wish to be great, then? Imitate God: learn from Him the way and manner of becoming great: humble yourself, abbreviate yourself, compress yourself, and you will become great, and like God. So an angel contracts itself into a point of space: so also the whole soul is in every particle of the body. So an Orator called the convolvulus flower the first lesson of nature, learning to make a lily: in like manner humility is the convolvulus, the first lesson of the soul, by which it learns to climb to the summit of virtues. Finally, golden is this saying of the Poet:
'Whatever you teach, be brief, so that quick minds
May swiftly grasp what is said, and faithful ones retain it.'
And Cicero, in Book I of On the Orator, gives the orator this precept of speaking: 'It is better to say less than too much. For the image of any thing, when contracted into one, more easily clings to the eyes and minds than when dispersed over time,' says Velleius Paterculus, Book I. For this reason these Prophets preferred to be brief and concise, rather than expansive and prolix.
The subject matter of the Minor Prophets is the same as that of the Major, namely they condemn idolatry and the other sins of the Hebrews, which Jeroboam had introduced by erecting golden calves as gods in Dan and Bethel, for this purpose: that through a schism of religion, he might also create a schism of the kingdom of the ten tribes from the kingdom of the two, namely Judah and Benjamin, so that the ten tribes would not return, on the occasion of the sacred rites and divine worship that were to be celebrated by law in Jerusalem, from him and his kingdom to the two tribes and to King Rehoboam, as is clear from 3 Kings 12:26. God therefore, like a loving father, sent Prophets to call them back, who would reprove both the ten tribes and the remaining two — also infected by this contagion of idolatry on account of the proximity and kinship of the ten tribes — for these crimes, threatening them with Assyrian and Babylonian captivity; and thus call them back to the ancestral faith and piety of the fathers, and kindle them to the worship and love of God: for this reason they add prophecies and joyful promises concerning Christ, and concerning the Church, the Sacraments, grace, and all the blessings He would bring in the New Testament. Therefore these Prophets are frequently cited by Christ, Paul, and the Apostles. For, as St. Augustine wisely says in his Sententiae, number 214: 'He is foolish who does not believe the pronouncements of the Prophets in the few things that remain, when he sees so many things fulfilled that did not yet exist when they were predicted to be fulfilled.'
Furthermore, it is very easy, by merely changing the name, to apply tropologically to Christians and to any soul what the Prophets here literally threaten against the Jews for idolatry and other crimes — to any soul that departs from God through sin to its own lusts, and especially to heresy, to which St. Jerome everywhere adapts these passages tropologically: for, as he himself says on Hosea chapter 14, the glutton's god and idol is his belly, the miser's is money, the heretic's is his heresy, his own invention and doctrine, and so on for the rest. Therefore the Prophets dictated and recorded their oracles equally for Christians and for Jews.
Mystically, St. Bernard, in Sermon 2 to the Brothers, on that text: 'This is the generation of those who seek the Lord, who seek the face of the God of Jacob,' teaches that all truly Religious persons are mystically prophets, because with the keen eye of the mind they perceive from afar things heavenly, absent, and future; because their mind, thought, and conversation is in heaven, and from there, from the highest peak of the heavens, like eagles, they look down upon and despise this tiny speck of earth; because they dwell on the high mountains of eternity, and from there see beneath them and laugh at the empty pomp of honors and wealth, regarding kings and princes as ants, contemplating the rise and fall of kingdoms, the vicissitudes of all things, the revolutions and cycles of times, and all the storms, twists and turns of the world, like bubbles forming and soon dissolving. These truly are the real seers, the real prophets, the real initiates: the rest are half-blind, seeing only the small things of the present, not foreseeing even the greatest things of the future — 'lynxes in earthly things, moles in heavenly ones.' 'Great indeed,' says Bernard, 'is the kind of prophesying to which I see you (he addresses his Brothers) devoted; great is the pursuit of prophecy to which I see you given over. What is it? Surely, according to the Apostle, not to consider the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen, is without doubt to prophesy. To walk in the spirit, to live by faith, to seek the things that are above, not the things upon the earth, to forget what is behind and stretch forward to what is ahead, is in great part to prophesy. Otherwise how, except by the spirit of prophecy, is our conversation in heaven? So indeed the Prophets of old were as if not among the men of their own time, but by a certain virtue and impulse of the spirit, leaping over those days, they rejoiced to see the day of the Lord; and they saw it and were glad.'
Such a Prophet, such a seer was the royal Psalmist, singing to himself: 'I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord, in the land of the living.' Such was St. Hilarion, as St. Jerome attests, 'who admonished all that the figure of this world passes away, and that true life is purchased at the cost of the present life's discomfort.' Such was Paul, who, caught up to the third heaven, exclaimed: 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that shall be revealed in us. For our light and momentary tribulation works in us beyond measure an eternal weight of glory on high.' And: 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for' — therefore of future things — 'the evidence of things not seen,' therefore of things obscure and prophetic. Faith is to perceive with the mind the heavenly goods that you do not see with your eyes. Such a seer and father of seers was Abraham, who 'by faith dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise. For he looked for a city having foundations, whose builder and maker is God.' According to faith and prophecy died Abel, Enoch, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, 'not having received the promises, but beholding them from afar and saluting them, and confessing that they were pilgrims and strangers upon the earth. For those who say such things declare that they seek a homeland —'
— Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He has prepared for them a city. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season: for he looked to the reward. By faith he left Egypt.' Why? 'For he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.' Other heroes of faith and prophecy, contemplating the things to be hoped for and the prizes of future glory, for these 'were racked, stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was not worthy, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection.' Mystical Prophets therefore are those who, by life more than by voice, cry out to all: 'Bodies below, hearts above: despise earthly things, look up to heavenly ones.'
QUESTION ONE: To which nations were these Prophets properly sent; to which peoples did they prophesy?
I respond: Some of the Prophets prophesied to only two tribes, namely Judah and Benjamin; others to the remaining ten; others to both: and they indicate this by the names of the kings under whom they write that they prophesied; or by the name of the people Judah, or Israel, or by other means and circumstances, and indeed they often express this clearly. Here St. Jerome rightly notes in his Preface: Whenever, he says, the prophecy is directed at the ten tribes, they are usually designated by these names, namely Ephraim, Samaria, Israel, Joseph, Jezreel, Bethel, Beth-aven, and sometimes Jacob; but when it is directed at only two, then they are marked by the name Judah, Jerusalem, Benjamin, House of David, and sometimes Jacob. Now the ten tribes are called Ephraim and Joseph: because their first king Jeroboam, and many afterwards, came from the tribe of Ephraim, who was the son of the Patriarch Joseph. They are also called Samaria and Jezreel: because these two were the capital cities of their kingdom. They are called Israel and Jacob: because they were the greater part of his posterity; hence, as the majority, they appropriated to themselves the name of the ancestor. For Jacob was called by another name, Israel, Genesis 32:28. They are called Bethel: because in Bethel the golden calves were set up by Jeroboam, that is, the idols which they worshipped. Hence Bethel was also called by antiphrasis Beth-aven, that is, 'house of iniquity': for what in the time of Jacob was called and was Bethel, that is 'house of God,' Genesis 28:19, was made by Jeroboam into Beth-aven, that is, 'house of the idol and of sin.' Furthermore, the Prophets threaten the Israelites, on account of their idols and other sins, with destruction and the Assyrian captivity, which Shalmaneser inflicted on them in the sixth year of Hezekiah king of Judah; and they threaten the Jews with destruction and the Babylonian captivity, which Nebuchadnezzar inflicted on them in the eleventh and last year of Zedekiah; and under both they represent the final captivity and slaughter which Titus and the Romans inflicted on them, on account of their having killed Christ. It is therefore easy to adapt these things, merely changing the name of Shalmaneser
and Nebuchadnezzar to the name of Titus, and of the Chaldeans to the Romans.
Note that at the beginning of these Prophets, the names of fathers and grandfathers are added for some Prophets, but not for others. Some assign this reason for the distinction, others another: that from a tradition of the Hebrews (which St. Jerome reports at the beginning of his commentary on Zephaniah, and St. Basil on Isaiah chapter 1) the fathers and grandfathers of the Prophets who are named in their titles were also prophets; the rest are left unnamed because they were not prophets. But this tradition is uncertain and doubtful, even to St. Jerome himself; indeed Paul of Burgos, the most learned of the Hebrews, rejects and refutes it in his commentary on Hosea chapter 1. An easier and more consonant with Scripture explanation is that the names of fathers are added for those for whom it was necessary to add them for distinction and identification. For there were at that time in the same places many illustrious and wise men who were called Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Zephaniah, Zechariah: hence, so that the Prophets having the same names might be distinguished from those others, they added the name of the father, saying: Hosea son of Beeri, Joel son of Pethuel, Jonah son of Amittai, Zephaniah son of Cushi, Zechariah son of Berechiah. This reason is given by St. Chrysostom at the beginning of his Commentary on Isaiah, by Theodoret at the beginning of his Commentary on Joel, and by St. Gregory, Homily 2 on Ezekiel. A second reason is: the fathers of some are named because they were noble, or illustrious in virtue, wisdom, office, and authority; for naming them conferred a certain dignity and credibility upon the Prophets among the people. So St. Basil and St. Jerome on Isaiah 1. For this reason, for those born of kings and royal lineage, such as Isaiah and Daniel, the names of fathers (or at least the royal lineage) are added. Furthermore, the names of fathers sometimes help for understanding the Prophet, and for signifying certain mysteries, which St. Jerome elegantly explains at the beginning of each Prophet, and which I shall cite below from the same source.
The same reasons explain why the homeland is recorded for some, namely for three: Amos, who was from Tekoa; Micah, who was from Moresheth; and Nahum, who was the Elkoshite. For by one's homeland a person is easily identified and distinguished from others. Therefore the claim of some Rabbis, such as R. David, that those for whom no homeland is added were from Jerusalem, is an invention, and is clearly false in the case of Jonah, for whom no homeland is added, yet who was from Gath, not from Jerusalem, as is clear from 4 Kings 14:25.
QUESTION TWO: Concerning the time and order of the twelve Prophets — when, namely, and in what order did they prophesy?
I say first: Some Prophets do not note the time at which they prophesied, because their prophecies are general and pertain to all times. Such are Obadiah, Joel, Nahum, Malachi, and Jonah. Others express the time of prophecy, because they fit it to a certain period, or so that from the added time the subject matter and sequence of the prophecy may be more easily and better understood. So St. Basil on Isaiah 1, and Rufinus at the beginning of his Commentary on Hosea. Secondly, some omit the time because they aim at brevity and at obscurity, so that they may appear to be prophets, not historians, and may exercise and sharpen the reader's study. So Christopher de Castro, Book VI On the Prophets, chapter 6. Thirdly, there is a continuous tradition, says St. Jerome at the beginning of his commentary on Hosea, and Rufinus in chapter 1 of Joel, that the intermediate Prophets who do not indicate the time in their title prophesied under those kings (at least under the last of them) under whom the preceding Prophet who bears the temporal title prophesied, except perhaps Joel, who is said by the Hebrews to have prophesied not under Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, as Hosea who precedes Joel, but under Manasseh; and Habakkuk, who likewise prophesied under Manasseh, not under Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, as did Micah and Nahum, who immediately precede Habakkuk. This will be clear from the chronological table which I shall shortly append.
I say secondly: It is probable that nearly all these Prophets are placed in the Bible in the chronological order in which they prophesied. For this order was given to them both by the Synagogue in the Hebrew Bibles and by the Church in the Latin Bibles. St. Jerome denies this here in his Prologue; but that his passage is corrupt is clear from his own Preface to Joel: therefore for 'among the Hebrews,' one should read 'among the Greeks.' For the Greeks disagree with the Latins in the order of the Prophets, but the Hebrews agree. Therefore the last were Zechariah and Malachi: for that these were the last is clear from 1 Ezra 5:1, and from their title, in which they state that they prophesied under Darius Hystaspis, who was the fourth king of the Persians after Cyrus. The first, therefore, who prophesied before all, even before Isaiah, was Hosea. For he himself begins thus: 'The beginning of the Lord's speaking through Hosea,' chapter 1, verse 2; so Eusebius in his Chronicle, St. Jerome, and others on Hosea 1:2. Some deny this, such as Christopher de Castro, and think the first was Obadiah; for they believe he prophesied in the time of Jehoshaphat and Ahab. For these overthrew the Edomites, as Obadiah predicts, as is clear from 4 Kings 3:4 and 1 Chronicles 20:1. They think the second was Jonah, who prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, which took place under Sardanapalus, in the eighth year of Azariah or Uzziah king of Judah. The third, they say, was Hosea. But I shall show that this order appears less true in the cases of Obadiah and Jonah. Certainly in all Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles Hosea is placed first, and is even placed before Isaiah by the Septuagint, who nevertheless invert the order in some other respects. For in the Septuagint Bibles the twelve Prophets are arranged in this order: first, Hosea; second, Amos; third, Micah; fourth, Joel; fifth, Obadiah; sixth, Jonah; seventh, Nahum; eighth, Habakkuk; ninth, Zephaniah; tenth, Haggai; eleventh, Zechariah; twelfth, Malachi. Then the Major Prophets are appended: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel; and this either because Hosea was first in time; and Hosea
in the same book the other minor prophets are joined; or because the minor prophets yield nothing to the major ones in the weight of their oracles and thoughts, and surpass them in number: for they are twelve, while the major are four. I said 'nearly all': because if you consider the beginning of each Prophet, namely the year in which each began to prophesy, Jonah and Nahum should be placed before some others, and Joel should be placed after. For they began to prophesy in this order: First of all was Hosea; second, Jonah; third, Amos; fourth, Obadiah; fifth, Micah; sixth, Nahum; seventh, Joel; eighth, Habakkuk; ninth, Zephaniah; tenth, Haggai; eleventh, Zechariah; twelfth, Malachi. That this is so will be clear from the harmony, or chronological table, which I shall shortly append. Hence St. Chrysostom, in his Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, proves that in the Epistles of St. Paul the chronological order of their writing is not observed: Because, he says, that order is not observed in the Prophets. Now God willed to prophesy through twelve Prophets, so that no one could doubt their truth, since one sees the oracle of one confirmed by the oracles of all the rest, and they have as many witnesses as there are Prophets. For blasphemous and utterly mendacious is the statement of Apelles recorded in Eusebius, Book V of the History, chapter 13: 'That the prophecies refute themselves; for they are discordant with one another, false, and self-contradictory'; and therefore issued from a contrary and self-conflicting spirit.
Furthermore, on the Minor Prophets the following have written: Saints Jerome, Cyril, Theodoret, Theophylact, and Rufinus — not the Rufinus of Aquileia who was St. Jerome's antagonist, for the style is different, and Gennadius, who carefully collected the works of Rufinus of Aquileia, makes no mention of this commentary; this Rufinus was therefore a different person from that one. Remigius of Auxerre also wrote on all of them, except Hosea alone, and he lived around the year of our Lord 880, under Emperor Charles the Bald. It is extant in the Library of the Holy Fathers. Likewise Rabanus, Rupert, Lyra, Hugo, Dionysius. And most recently and most thoroughly Christopher de Castro, Gaspar Sanchez, and Francisco Ribera, who everywhere, after the literal sense, meticulously pursues the moral sense of each detail. Most briefly wrote Emmanuel Sa and Juan de Mariana, who touch upon many points concisely. All these I read from beginning to end with great expenditure of labor and time, examined them, and reduced them to a compendium: and I had almost decided not to write after them, according to the saying: 'Do not carry wood to the forest; do not add stars to the sky, light to the sun, or nights to Athens; lest you appear as an eighth Sage, a third Cato, a fifth Evangelist.' But many other things impelled me to publish this work, namely, to weave a commentary of even tenor on all of Sacred Scripture; for each person has his own method of speaking and writing, different and distinct from all others; furthermore, to add many things of my own: for Sacred Scripture is an abyss that cannot be exhausted, or even plumbed, by any writings or commentaries. Moreover, because many
time teaches, and the age and the times bring new things: for the Church grows in wisdom, and like the dawn gradually increases to clear midday. Otherwise I think and say of myself what St. Bernard said of himself, in Epistle 87, to Oger who was requesting from him instruction on right living: 'So the sheep seeks wool from the goat, the mill seeks water from the oven, the wise man seeks a word from the fool?' There exist here in Rome in the Vatican and Medici Libraries two ancient versions of the Bible, the Syriac and the Arabic, the latter being twofold — Antiochene and Alexandrian — which, as I have occasionally cited in the Major Prophets, I shall also cite here. Both were translated into Latin by the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord Sergius Risius, a Maronite, Archbishop of Damascus, for whom Arabic is his mother tongue and Syriac familiar: for the Damascenes and Maronites use it in their sacred liturgy. I shall cite both in the more difficult and important passages, for illuminating or enriching these Prophets. For this variety of ancient versions serves both the clarity and the abundance of Sacred Scripture, which preachers seek, and at their request and for the public good (to which we all strive to contribute for the glory of God) the Most Illustrious Lord Risius communicated these to me for publication, to whom therefore the reader should attribute them gratefully. Well known is the version of Pagninus, likewise the Zurich version, which Leo the Hebrew, Theodorus Bibliander, and their other colleagues, followers of Zwingli at Zurich in Switzerland, compiled, and which Francis Vatablus, royal professor of Hebrew in Paris, illustrated with brief commentaries; which, because it was published by heretics, and introduces many novelties, and deliberately disagrees with the Vulgate so as to covertly undermine it, therefore often requires correction and censure.
Finally, there exists the Targum, that is, the Chaldaic paraphrase on the Prophets (as well as on the other books of the Old Testament), whose author is R. Jonathan son of Uzziel; just as the Targum of the Pentateuch is attributed to R. Aquila, who in Chaldaic is called Onkelos; and the rest to R. Joseph the Blind. But this paraphrase in the other books besides the Pentateuch (where it nevertheless also has some blemishes, as Bellarmine rightly shows, Book II On the Word of God, chapter 3) is corrupted in some places, and sprinkled with the mere fables and trifles of the Talmudists about two Messiahs, about the third temple to be built by the Jews, about liberation from the captivity of Titus and Vespasian, about the lamentation of God, about the ascension of Moses into heaven, about tablets cut from the sapphire of the divine throne, etc. Therefore Cardinal Francisco Ximenez, Archbishop of Toledo, in his edition of the Complutensian Bible, states in the Preface that he publishes the Targum only for the Pentateuch.
because in the other books it has some things that greatly favor the Christian religion, for this reason the same was also published by Arias Montanus in the Royal Bible edition, where Francis Lucas also wrote an Apology for it. I shall cite it frequently for the purpose of either illustrating or enriching the translation, having dismissed the Jewish fables.
QUESTION THREE: Concerning the style and subject matter of the Prophets — namely, what style they use, and what object they treat, and what they signify literally?
I say, first, that all the Prophets indeed, but especially these twelve Minor Prophets, abound in parables, symbols, and enigmas; and this for several reasons: because they are Prophets, and therefore speak prophetically, that is, obscurely and enigmatically; because they are brief and concise; because the majesty of the Holy Spirit demands this, lest His oracles, being open and plain to all, become cheap, but rather, being full of hidden wisdom, they may excite in all reverence as well as diligent study. For this reason Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Pherecydes, Plato, and the Egyptians handed down their teachings through symbols and enigmas. Therefore Origen, in Homily 7 on Exodus, compares the heavenly eloquence with manna, which, although small and round, was nonetheless full of inner sweetness and admirable vigor; and R. Moses, as cited by Galatinus, Book V, chapter 6: 'Know,' he says, 'that the key to understanding all that the Prophets have said is to understand their parabolic and metaphorical comparisons, and their enigmas. For you know that in Hosea, chapter 12, it is said: By the hand of the prophets I will use similitudes; and in Ezekiel chapter 17: Son of man, propose a riddle, and speak a parable to the house of Israel. You know also what the Wise Man says, Proverbs 25: Golden apples in lattices
of silver, a word spoken according to both its aspects. Silver lattices are silver nets, in which the openings are very small, yet penetrable by sight. The meaning therefore is that a word spoken according to both its aspects — that is, according to the interior and exterior senses (namely the mystical and literal meanings) — is like a golden apple in a silver net: as if to say that it is necessary for the exterior sense to be precious and good like silver, and the interior even much better like gold; and it is also necessary that there be something in the exterior sense that leads consideration to the interior; just as a golden apple clothed in a silver net, when seen from afar, or without much scrutiny, appears entirely silver; but when someone with sharp sight approaches, drawn by the beauty of the silver, he will surely see the golden apple hidden within. Such are the words of the Prophets.'
Thus far R. Moses. There exists here in Rome, in the most elegant paintings of the Vatican Library, a hieroglyphic of prophecy. It is depicted as a matron with veiled eyes; in her right hand she holds an unsheathed sword and a trumpet; in her left a chain, which descends from a sun above, and a dove hovers over her head. The veiled eyes signify the obscurity of prophecy, the trumpet the blast of preaching, the sword the threats of death, the chain the series of providence connecting all things and events aptly with one another, which derives from the sun, that is, from God; the dove is the sign of the Holy Spirit who spoke through the Prophets. Truly therefore St. Chrysostom said, in Homily 23 on Acts: 'Sacred Scripture is an abyss of questions.' St. Augustine, Sermon 11, On the Words of the Lord according to Matthew: 'Where Scripture is open, it feeds hunger; where obscure, it lifts tedium.' Again: 'Where Scripture grows clear, there it grows sweet.' See Clement of Alexandria, Book V of the Stromata, where among other things he teaches that not only Greeks and Egyptians, but also barbarians, used these symbols: 'They say,' he writes, 'that Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians (as Pherecydes of Syros reports), sent to Darius, who had crossed the Ister and was threatening war, a symbol instead of a letter: a mouse, a frog,
a bird, a javelin, and a plow. When a dispute arose about their meaning, Orontopagas, the tribune of soldiers, said they would surrender their empire, conjecturing from the mouse houses, from the frog waters, from the bird the air, from the javelin arms, and from the plow the land. But Xiphodres interpreted it differently: for he said: Unless we fly away like birds, or burrow into the earth like mice, or plunge into the water like frogs, we shall not escape their weapons: for we are not masters of the land.'
From this it is clear how profound, weighty, and carefully wrought this small work of the Prophets is, since in composing and crafting it through symbols, the twelve Prophets labored for such a long time: for throughout their entire lives they wrote nothing else. It is said that Virgil scarcely composed fifteen verses per day, so that he might spend the whole day licking, re-licking, filing, and polishing them, and therefore
every word of his is full of elegance and learning. Therefore with this small poem of his he won first place among the poets, and is rightly regarded as the prince of poets. True is that saying of Apuleius in the Florida: 'No work can be at the same time hasty and carefully examined; nor is there anything at all that has both the praise of diligence and the charm of speed.' I pursue the same approach in these commentaries of mine, with my customary brevity, writing little, but what is substantial, and weighed, discussed, and considered at length and repeatedly over twenty-five years, during which I three times treated these Prophets in the schools.
I say secondly that the Prophets sometimes speak literally of Cyrus, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel, etc., who brought the Jews back from the Babylonian captivity to their homeland; or of David, Solomon, Hezekiah, who raised the kingdom of Israel in wealth and glory as well as in piety and worship of God, but allegorically of Christ; sometimes, however, they speak literally of Christ, even if with some allusion to Hezekiah, David, Zerubbabel, etc. Theodore of Mopsuestia denied this, Judaizing and Ebionizing (for he maintained that Christ was not God, but a mere man), who held that all the august oracles about Christ were to be referred literally to Aaron, Zerubbabel, David, and the Jews; and that by the Apostles and Evangelists they were applied to Christ only in an allegorical or accommodated sense. His doctrine is generally reviewed and condemned in the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which was the Second of Constantinople, Act 5, and in particular in the Roman Council under Pope Vigilius, which is preserved in the Vatican Library, from which Antonio Augustin transcribed it, and our Prado in his Preface to Ezekiel, section III, and Turrianus, as he himself reports in his commentary on Book II of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 5.
Furthermore, the Roman Council brings forward these examples. The first is Joel 2:28: 'I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh;' Mopsuestia interpreted this as the favor with which the Lord aided the army of Zerubbabel fighting against the Scythians. The second is Micah 5:2: 'And you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are little among the thousands of Judah: from you shall come forth for Me He who is to be ruler in Israel;' Mopsuestia took this ruler to be Zerubbabel. The third is Malachi 3:1: 'Behold, I send My angel; and the ruler shall come suddenly to His temple;' Mopsuestia took the ruler to be Ezra, or someone similar, who once restored the worship of God in the Jewish temple. The fourth is Amos 9:11: 'On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that has fallen, and I will rebuild the breaches of its walls,' etc. Mopsuestia says: 'In this passage Amos predicts the return from Babylon, when they had Zerubbabel from the line of David as king; but James, in Acts 15:16, transferred this passage to Christ, in whom the matter was brought to its true fulfillment.' The fifth is Zechariah 9:9: 'Behold, your king will come to you;' Mopsuestia said this king was Zerubbabel returning with his people from Babylon. So also some others,
whose reasoning was: Because, they said, it is more glorious for Christ and the Church to be prefigured by persons and events than by words. The sixth is Psalm 15:10: 'You will not abandon My soul in hell;' Mopsuestia held that this was literally predicted not of Christ, but of the people of Israel delivered from dangers. Again, Psalm 21:18: 'They pierced My hands and My feet. They gave Me gall for My food. They divided My garments among themselves;' Mopsuestia said these things were literally predicted not of Christ, but of David, because of the tyranny of Absalom, who had seized the royal city and substance, and had taken inventory of all his father's possessions in the land; but that the Evangelist applied these things to the person of Christ based on the outcome. After reciting all these, Pope Vigilius adds: 'Whoever thus holds, teaches, believes, or preaches these things, let him be anathema.' It is therefore a matter of faith that these passages are to be understood literally not of David, or of any Jew, but of Christ.
Similarly in the Fifth General Synod, Act 5, where Mopsuestia is condemned, it is said of him and his errors from the Ecclesiastical History of Hesychius: 'Beginning the first elements of his teaching from Jewish vain talk, he composed a treatise on the prophecy of the Psalms, denying all predictions about the Lord (Christ).' Therefore St. Thomas rightly says, in his Preface to the Psalms, that Theodore of Mopsuestia was condemned in the Fifth Synod, because he taught that in the Old Scripture and Prophets nothing was expressly contained about Christ, but only through a kind of accommodation.
Furthermore, certain modern writers must be guarded against here, especially Preachers, who, degenerating from the Prophets and Fathers, have invented a new manner of preaching, a new way of explaining and treating the Prophets. For in order to win applause among the people, they violently bend and drag the words of Sacred Scripture to fit their own wonderful concepts, which seem to them ingenious and elegant. Therefore they propose to the people — indeed they substitute — neither the literal sense of Sacred Scripture and the Prophets, nor the mystical sense (which ought to rest upon the literal as upon a base and foundation, and appropriately correspond to it on equal terms), but the speculative by-products of their own ingenuity in place of the word of God. For these men peddle to the people not God's meanings but their own as if they were divine, and repeatedly twist Sacred Scripture into alien interpretations, indeed into ones contrary to it, and thus violate it and lay violent hands upon it — which is truly a bold and serious irreverence and injury to God and His sacred Letters, a grave disgrace, and nearly a sacrilege: for it is an enormous abuse and profanation of the sacred Letters.
Do you want examples? Here they are. There exists a book of sermons which asserts that David, afflicted by marital difficulty — as the most troublesome thing in this life — prayed daily about it and for his wife. It proves this from the words of Psalm 37 [69]: 'O God, attend to my help' — that is, he says, O God, attend to my wife, make her easy and obedient: for a wife is called 'the helpmate of a man,' as is clear from Genesis
chapter 2:18: 'Let Us make for him (Adam) a helpmate (namely Eve) like himself.' You who are admitted to the spectacle, could you keep from laughing, friends? I heard another who taught that Sacred Scripture asserts that Moses died in a kiss of the Lord; because, he said, in Deuteronomy 34:5, in the Hebrew it says: Moses died upon the mouth of the Lord; therefore, he says, in a kiss of the Lord. But who does not know that 'the mouth of the Lord' in Scripture means the word, the command, the precept of the Lord? Therefore our Vulgate, the Chaldee, the Septuagint, and others everywhere translate it 'at the command of the Lord.' A third, from Lamentations 1:15: 'The Lord has trodden the winepress for the virgin daughter of Judah: therefore I am weeping,' proved that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without original sin. For he gave this meaning to the passage: Christ underwent the winepress of His Passion principally for the Blessed Virgin, and singularly applied its merits to her, ensuring that she was preserved from original sin; therefore I, Jeremiah, weep because I was conceived in original sin, although I was purified from it in the womb; for even though in this respect I am superior to other men, who are born in this sin, I am nonetheless inferior to the Blessed Virgin, who was neither born nor conceived in it. This was his demonstration — as if the passage were really about the Blessed Virgin, and not rather about impious Jerusalem, which was not purified from its sins, but was oppressed and destroyed because of them. For this winepress was of the destruction of Jerusalem, not of the Passion of Christ. But, you will say, these witty conceits please the people, and seem apt and elegant. Let the Satirist not hear these pleasantries, lest he sneer and exclaim: 'O how witty — but a hare-brained
wit, which, to soothe the ears of the crude and unlearned populace, turns both himself and Sacred Scripture into a fable —'
'He joins a horse's neck to a human head.'
And another:
'He believed his only task was this:
To make fables that would please the people.'
These witticisms are witless, their elegance is inelegant, their cleverness is clumsy, their wit is witless, their stories unspeakable — indeed, abominable. What philosopher would tolerate Aristotle being twisted by subtle explanations and commentaries into meanings alien to his mind? What orator would tolerate Cicero? What theologian would tolerate St. Thomas? Whoever dared this would be called a forger by everyone. Who then would tolerate Sacred Scripture — which is God's own letter to mankind, as St. Gregory says from St. Augustine, Book IV, Epistle 84, to Theodore — being seized and twisted into one's own conceits, which are alien to the mind of God? What king would endure a herald interpreting his letters and edicts with an explanation foreign to his intention? Surely he would punish him as guilty of lese-majesty. And will God endure the heralds of His word perverting and adulterating it with an alien, indeed hostile, interpretation?
The Church condemned Origen because he made the mysteries of Sacred Letters into figments of his own brain, when he spiritually interpreted the formation of Eve from Adam's rib, the trees of paradise as angelic fortitude, the garments of skin as human bodies; and he interpreted many similar things mystically, and fleeing the truth of the letter, took refuge in mystical senses — always a symbolic interpreter, says St. Jerome. And this was the one occasion of his fall. Cassiodorus says excellently, in his book On the Instruction of Divine Reading: 'Origen, where he is good, no one is better; where bad, no one is worse.' Therefore he should be read as Virgil used to read Ennius: when someone asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I am looking for gold in dung.'
The same reasoning condemns heretics, who attach a wax nose to Sacred Scripture, and try to bend and drag it, willing or unwilling, to fit their own views. Who would not equally condemn Orthodox men who weave into the same Scripture a meaning it does not have — indeed, does not tolerate? It is heresy to assert something contrary to Sacred Scripture; therefore it is heresy to attribute to Sacred Scripture meanings alien to its mind, and contrary to it. For this is in fact to say explicitly the contrary of what Sacred Scripture says and intends to signify. For Sacred Scripture consists not in syllables and words, but in sense and meaning. For what the sword is to its scabbard, the grain to the husk, the soul to the body — such is the genuine meaning to the words of Sacred Scripture. If you take away this meaning and substitute an alien one, you drain the life from Scripture itself; indeed, in place of its own soul that you tear away, you substitute a spurious one. For this reason, lest this should happen, the holy Council of Trent forbade it with a grave sanction, whose words I shall shortly recite, as did all the Fathers. Let one stand for all: St. Jerome, writing on Isaiah chapter 13, where the literal subject is the destruction of Babylon, censures those who, setting aside the literal sense, flee to allegorical and mystical ones that do not cohere with the literal, nor are built upon it: 'We have heard of the Medes, we have heard of Babylon and the famous city amid the pride of the Chaldeans. We wish to understand what really was, and we seek to hear what was not. And we say this not because we condemn the tropological understanding, but because the spiritual interpretation ought to follow the order of history — which most people, not knowing this, wander through Scripture in a delirious error.' Let
these architects of airy conceits hear this: let them know that they seek a knot in a bulrush, that they conceive in their minds what does not exist in the nature of things, that they fabricate a chimera: for they seek a meaning in Scripture that it does not possess, and therefore they wander through it in a delirious error. Therefore their conceit is not truth, but the error of fanatics, and therefore madness, if we believe St. Jerome. St. Paul admonishes Timothy, Epistle II, chapter 4:2: 'Preach the word, argue, entreat, rebuke. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap up teachers for themselves, having itching ears.' Similarly these men do not endure sound doctrine — that is, the genuine meaning — but
scorn it as commonplace, and to accommodate themselves to their listeners, who have itching ears, they itch equally in mind and tongue. This itching indicates a judgment that is not solid, a mind that is light, childish, and curious, which feeds on such inventions and fictions; when it has solid nourishment in the genuine sense of Sacred Scripture, it rejects it with nausea — just as unhealthy stomachs, swollen with gas and ill-humored, disdain solid and useful food and crave light, spongy, bad, and noxious foods. Cicero rightly said of Chrysippus, the craftsman of cleverness: 'Chrysippus's sharpness breaks itself and vanishes.' So these sharp conceits tickle the itching ears of the people, but if they are examined, they will be found less true, less genuine, and will vanish into thin air like wisps of smoke. For it is true everywhere: Things that are too clever and sharp are less solid, and not rarely foolish.
Sacred Scripture possesses the most beautiful, and equally the sharpest, most difficult, and most obscure thoughts and meanings about every virtue and vice; and its meanings are the very concepts of the Holy Spirit Himself. Why then do we pursue the thin imaginings of little men, often trivial and trifling? God through Jeremiah, chapter 23, sharply rebukes the false prophets who covered their dreams with the pretense of divine visions and words: 'I have heard,' He says, 'what the Prophets have said who prophesy lies in My name, saying: I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall this be in the heart of the Prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceptions of their own heart? Let the prophet who has a dream tell a dream, and let him who has My word speak My word truly. What is chaff to the wheat? says the Lord. Are not My words like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that shatters rocks?' God rebukes the Prophets who, while peddling the inventions of their own brains to the people, said: 'Thus says the Lord,' and He commands that, setting this aside as false, they say: 'This I have invented, this I have dreamed, these are my chaff; but the word of God is fire, and a hammer that shatters rocks.' Let these men say the same: This is my conceit, this my invention, not God's, not Sacred Scripture's. The Apostle commands Timothy the pastor and preacher, Epistle II, 2:15: 'Be diligent,' he says, 'to present yourself approved to God, a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth;' rightly, he says, not perversely, not in a twisted manner, not fictitiously; namely, first deliver the genuine literal sense of Sacred Scripture, then build upon it and, as it were, construct upon it the mystical and moral sense that appropriately adheres to it. Let each one, says the same Paul, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, take heed how he builds upon the foundation; for some build gold, silver, precious stones; others wood, hay, straw. But the fire of the Lord's day will burn these: yet the builder himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Therefore St. Jerome, on Isaiah chapter 6: 'With the same letters,' he says, 'both history and tropology proceed; but the former is humbler,
the latter more sublime.' The same author, or whoever wrote the commentary on chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians: 'That,' he says, 'is the true spiritual understanding which does not paint a beautiful lie with plausible colors, but by the power of the realities expresses the very thing of truth.' And St. Gregory, Homily 4 on the Gospels: 'The fruit of allegory is sweetly plucked only when it is first grounded after the history in the root of truth.' Finally, there exists on this matter the grave and just decree of the most holy Ecumenical Council of Trent, Session IV, which reads thus: 'Furthermore, to restrain reckless minds, it decrees that no one, relying on his own prudence, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the building up of Christian doctrine, shall dare to twist Sacred Scripture to his own meanings, contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church has held and holds — whose right it is to judge concerning the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures — or even contrary to the unanimous consensus of the Fathers, to interpret Sacred Scripture, even if such interpretations are never to be published. Those who violate this shall be declared by the Ordinaries, and punished with the penalties established by law.' And below, dealing with those who twist the statements of Sacred Scripture to fables, vanities, flattery, etc., it orders 'that all such persons, violators and profaners of the word of God, be restrained by penalties of law and judgment through the Bishops.' Let Bishops therefore be vigilant, and their vicars, and carry this out vigorously, and restrain this unbridled license of inventing new meanings of Sacred Scripture and indeed of preaching them in churches; and therefore let them drive these theatrical mimes, comedians, and fabulists from the sacred pulpits, or correct them, so as to be guardians and defenders of the authority of Sacred Scripture, which is the book of God Himself, and so as to exterminate from the Church this scandal and monster so foul and infamous; let them remember that they will render an account of this matter to God, which account the Judge Himself, as the Author and Dictator of Sacred Scripture, will demand of them strictly at the hour of death.
QUESTION FOUR: What was the disposition, what was the internal condition of the Prophets?
I respond: The first disposition of the soul was rest, tranquility, and serenity; for through this the soul is freed from all disturbance and tumult of passions and distracting thoughts, and is gathered into itself, so that it may fully and completely attend to the divine revelation, which is the cause of prophecy. So St. Basil, in his Preface to Isaiah: 'They prophesied,' he says, 'as pure and pellucid souls, made like mirrors of the divine operation, which represented the image whole and unconfused, and in no part disturbed by fleshly affections. For the Holy Spirit is indeed present to all, but in those who are pure in their affections, He shows a special power.' Therefore St. Jerome on Matthew chapter 28: 'In the Old and New Testaments,' he says, 'this must always be observed: that when some more august vision appeared, first fear is driven away, so that with the mind at peace
they can hear what is being said.' So Christ, revealing Himself to the women after His resurrection, prepares the way saying: 'Do not be afraid,' Matthew 28; and Gabriel, about to deliver the oracle to Zechariah concerning John the Baptist who was to be born, Luke 1:13, prepares his spirit by dispelling fear, saying: 'Do not be afraid, Zechariah.' Where Theophylact gives a golden rule, and as it were an indicator of good or evil spirit: 'If the mind,' he says, 'is first disturbed, and immediately the fear dissolves and it again becomes calm, it is truly a divine vision; but if the fear and disturbance grows more and more, it is a demonic vision.' Hence Cassian and other masters of spiritual matters teach that by this sign angelic consolation can be distinguished and discerned from diabolical illusion: that angels at first sight terrify, but soon, having dispelled the terror, they calm and console the soul; conversely, the devil first soothes the soul with false consolation, then soon entangles it in many terrors and anxieties.
The second disposition was the abstraction of the soul from the senses and sensible things, through frequent and constant prayer and meditation. For these things detach the soul from earthly matters and elevate it to God, so that it may be wholly free and attentive to receiving His inspiration. The reason is given by St. Augustine, Book X On the Trinity, chapter 4, namely that the soul, being of limited power, cannot attend simultaneously to sensible things and to divine things, especially since these are very different from those, and as it were contrary to them; therefore when it attends to sensible things, little strength and little attention remain for it to devote to divine things; the less therefore it attends to earthly and bodily things, the more it can attend to spiritual and heavenly ones. Therefore the Patriarchs prophesied most when they were near death, being as it were already separated from the cares, thoughts, and affections of this life; as Jacob prophesied when about to die, Genesis 49, and Moses, Deuteronomy 33. See on this matter St. Gregory, Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 26. Psalmody also helps for this purpose; for it excites and elevates the mind to sublime things. Hence Elisha, in 4 Kings 3:15, about to ask for God's oracle, called for a harpist: 'And when the harpist played, the hand of the Lord came upon him; and he said: Thus says the Lord,' etc. Flight from the pleasures of the flesh and the senses also serves this end; for these greatly depress, thicken, and defile the mind, so that it cannot perceive, receive, absorb, or taste heavenly illuminations and influences. Therefore Moses purified his body and mind by a fast of forty days, in order to receive God's oracles and precepts on Sinai, Exodus 34:28. Solitude also contributes to this. Therefore Orpheus and Zoroaster lived many years in solitude, so that they might attend to heavenly things. To such persons applies what Homer sings of Tiresias, and Plato after him in the Meno:
'He alone has wisdom, but the rest flit about like shadows.'
Third, holiness of life: for although God sometimes gives the gift of prophecy even to the wicked, as it were in passing and through a window — for on the day of judgment, as Christ teaches, Matthew 7:22, certain wicked people will say: 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name?' and such was Caiaphas, John 11:51, and Balaam, Numbers 22:32, and Saul, 1 Samuel 19:24, who, though they were impious, nevertheless prophesied — yet the continuous and quasi-habitual gift of prophecy He is accustomed to give only to the Saints, as can be seen in these twelve, who are all inscribed in the catalogue of Saints in the Martyrology. The reason is: first, that it is fitting that so great a gift (for the Prophets are, as it were, the mouth of God) be given only to the Saints, since the wicked are not only unworthy of it, but also unsuited for it; second, because holiness elevates the mind and disposes it to receive God's illuminations; third, because the Prophets are sent by God to be preachers who, like hammers, might break the stony hearts of men. For this, however, not ordinary but extraordinary holiness is required, namely an immense zeal both for the divine glory and for the promotion of the salvation of souls. For by what means shall a sinner convert a sinner to a pure and holy life? How shall one who is cold set fire to one who is cold? Heat and love are needed, and that in great measure, if one is to inflame another with the love of God; it is not water but a greater fire that kindles a lesser one. St. Chrysostom says excellently, in his Homily on the title of Psalm 50: 'The Prophets,' he says, 'are like certain painters of virtue;' but virtue is better painted by life than by voice. For the image of conduct is more vivid than that of words. Therefore Philo, in the book Who Is the Heir of Divine Things: 'It is not lawful,' he says, 'for an evil man to be an interpreter of the divinity, but this belongs to the wise man alone; because he alone is the instrument of God, resounding from His touch and striking, invisibly.' And Origen, Book III of On First Principles, chapter 3: 'Sound and undefiled souls,' he says, 'if they have dedicated themselves to God with all affection and all purity, and kept themselves free from all contagion of demons, and purified themselves through much abstinence, and been imbued with the holy disciplines of sacred religion, through this they assume a share in the divinity, and merit the grace of prophecy and of other divine gifts.' More excellently still St. Basil, in his Preface to Isaiah: 'When the soul,' he says, 'devoted to every pursuit of virtue, preserves through its vehement love of God the perpetual memory of God impressed upon it, and by this first prepares itself to have God dwelling within it as it were, being inspired by the divine power through its most vehement intention toward God and a secret love, it is rendered worthy of the gift of prophecy, as God imparts His divine power and opens the eyes of the soul to understand whatever speculations He wills.' St. Maximus, Century I On Charity, chapter 95: 'Just as,' he says, 'the sun rising and illuminating the world reveals both itself and the things it illuminates, so also the Sun of Justice, rising upon a purified soul, both presents Himself to be seen, and reveals the reasons for the things that have been made by Him, and that will hereafter be made.'
Therefore St. Bernard, in his book On the Interior House, chapter 29, at the end: 'Let this be a sure sign for you,
they wage a great contest and struggle of virtues; for each one strives to be found more merciful than another, more kind, more humble, and more patient; and if anyone should be wiser than the rest, he shows himself so common and moderate toward all, that according to the Lord's commandment, he appears to be the least of all and the servant of all." Behold by what reason, by what virtues those Saints merited and obtained the gift of prophecy and of miracles; indeed even today they merit and obtain them.
Finally, there are four marks by which a true Prophet and prophecy is distinguished and recognized from a false prophet and false oracles: the first is holiness; for the Prophets were holy men, while false prophets were idolaters, heretics, impious, proud, vain, lustful, etc., as they still are today; the second is that true prophecy conforms to the word of God, to the faith and doctrine of the Church, and submits itself to her as to a judge: but false prophecy is contrary to both; therefore it admits no judgment or censure; the third is the outcome of events; for true prophecies actually come to pass, false ones never do. This is the sign God gives, Deut. XVIII, 22. The fourth, true prophecy is useful for the edification of the Church, and it benefits piety and morals; false prophecy is useless, vain, curious, futile, indeed harmful and pestilent. So says St. Chrysostom, hom. 19 on Matthew, and St. Peter in St. Clement, lib. III Recognit. Miracles are also not infrequently added, which true Prophets work genuinely and solidly, while false prophets work only feigned and simulated ones.
FIFTH QUESTION: What was the outward appearance of the Prophets?
I answer first: Some think that the Prophets were also anointed with the same sacred anointing oil from the same horn with which, by the prescription of the law, priests and kings were anointed. But we read this only of Eliseus alone, namely that he was anointed by Elias at the command of God, and thus authorized and, as it were, consecrated as a Prophet. For thus God commanded Elias, III Kings XIX, 16: of the others we do not read this; indeed Isaiah, ch. VI, 7, says he was constituted a Prophet by the touch of a Seraph touching and purifying his lips with a burning coal; Jeremiah, however, by the divine voice, ch. I, 4. The rest of the Prophets were likewise constituted and authorized. Moreover, some prophesied far from Jerusalem and the Temple, indeed in Samaria and Bethel among idolaters, where there was no sacred oil with which they could be anointed, nor would the idolaters have permitted this anointing. Therefore it is not probable that all the Prophets were anointed and consecrated with sacred oil. So says a Castro, lib. IV Proleg. ch. V; indeed also St. Chrysostom, hom. 1 on the Epistle to the Romans at the beginning, on those words: "Servant of Jesus Christ," and St. Augustine, lib. I Retract. ch. XXVI.
Second, the garment of the Prophets was a sack, that is, haircloth woven from the hair of goats, or camels, or horses, etc. This is clear from Isaiah XX, 2: "Loose, He says, the sackcloth from your loins, and take your sandals from your feet." And Elias was "a hairy man, and girded with a leather belt," IV Kings
ch. XVIII. And Zechariah, XIII, 4, speaking of false Prophets who assumed the garb of the true ones: "Nor shall they be covered, he says, with a sackcloth cloak;" the Septuagint has, with a garment of haircloth. Here St. Jerome asserts that the Prophets, when they prophesied, wore haircloth to incite the people to penance. Clement of Alexandria teaches the same, lib. III Strom. Thus St. John the Baptist, the herald of penance, was clothed in haircloth of camel's hair, with a leather belt, Matt. III, 4. Moreover, over this sackcloth or sackcloth tunic or haircloth garment they threw a cloak, as is clear from Elias, who by throwing his cloak over Eliseus, called him to follow him and to prophesy, indeed compelled him by divine force, III Kings XIX, 17. Origen hands down the same, homil. 13 on Numbers. The Prophets therefore went about in such or similar garb as the Capuchin Fathers do now, as despisers of the world and preachers of the heavenly kingdom and life. So those who formerly converted from paganism to Christianity, casting off the toga, put on the pallium, as professors of modesty and despisers of the world, as Tertullian narrates and boasts that he himself did in his book De Pallio.
From time to time, at God's command, they also assumed and wore other things conformable to their oracles, as Jeremiah, ch. XXVII, 2, at God's command put on chains and bonds, to represent the imminent captivity in which the Jews and other nations were to be bound by the Chaldeans. For the same reason, Ezekiel was commanded, ch. XII, 3, to assume the garb of one migrating, and to go about with shaved head, ch. V, 1.
Third, the food of the Prophets was sober, and indeed cheap and rough; their voice was grave, their eyes looking up toward heaven, indeed fixed upon it, their life austere and unusual, their every gait and movement composed to modesty and piety, and designed to move and compel the hardened souls of the Jews; so that they seemed to be new men from another age, and as it were angels coming from heaven, and envoys sent by God to convert mankind. This is what Isaiah says, ch. VIII, 18: "Behold, I and my children, whom the Lord has given me as a sign and as a portent in Israel." Thus the food of Amos was sycamore figs, that is, tasteless and insipid figs, as is clear from ch. VII, 14; Ezekiel's, ch. IV, 12, was barley bread baked under ashes and water; Daniel's was vegetables: for he himself, refusing the royal foods, requested these, and therefore merited the gift of prophecy, as is clear from Daniel I, 17; John the Baptist's food was locusts and wild honey, Matt. III, 4. Likewise the sons of the Prophets lived on herbs, as is clear from IV Kings IV, 39. The food and life of Christ and the Apostles was similar, according to that saying of the Apostle: "I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, having preached to others, I myself should become a castaway," I Cor. ch. IX, 27. And: "It is good not to eat flesh and not to drink wine," Rom. XIV, 21. For the Apostle was a master of perfection, and taught more by deed than by word, not only the precepts but also the counsels of the Gospel, such as not drinking wine nor eating flesh. Hence he says again: "Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst," I Cor. IV, 11.
On this account Baronius, at the year of Christ 36, judges that Daniel was abstemious and never drank wine.
Moreover St. Jerome, Against Jovinian, ch. X, having said that men at the beginning of the world, during the entire time that preceded the flood, abstained from meats as well as wine (for these were first granted to Noah after the flood, Gen. IX, 3, who also first planted a vine and drew wine from it), adds: "After Christ came at the end of times, and drew the end back to the beginning, neither is it permitted to give us a bill of divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat meats, since the Apostle says: It is good not to drink wine and not to eat flesh. For wine together with meats was dedicated after the flood." Thus Hegesippus, and from him St. Jerome, in his book De Viris Illustribus, writes of James the brother of the Lord: "He was holy from his mother's womb, he drank neither wine nor strong drink, he never ate flesh."
St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his oration On the Love of the Poor, relates that St. Peter lived on lupins, herbs, and vegetables. Likewise, Eusebius, Josephus, and Philo, in the book De Essaeis, report that St. Mark in Alexandria with his Essenes fasted daily, so that they ate only in the evening, with bread and salt, or herbs, and drank water. Again St. Jerome, in his epistle to Lucinus of Baetica: "Would that, he says, we could fast at all times, which in the Acts of the Apostles, on the days of Pentecost and on the Lord's Day, we read that the apostle Paul and the believers with him did."
From these passages Vincentius Consention, Doctor and Provincial of the Order of Minims, in a treatise published on this subject, endeavors to prove that Christ and the Apostles never ate flesh, and to the objection that can be raised from Luke XVIII, 8: "Eat what is set before you," he responds by qualifying: "what is set before you," namely cheap and modest foods, among which meats cannot be counted. This must be taken with a grain of salt, namely in this sense: that the Apostles, zealous for abstinence and edification, as masters of perfection, avoided as much as they honestly could delicacies, meats and wines; yet not with that religious obligation and vow by which the Minims do so. For if necessity compelled, or if piety and usefulness counseled otherwise, e.g. if when invited they could not conveniently have other food, they freely ate meats. For this was required by their Apostolic life, so that they could travel throughout the whole world, and deal and live with all people, in order to become all things to all. Hence this was permitted to them, indeed commanded, by the words already cited from Luke X.
Finally, the morals, gestures, and all the actions of the Prophets were such that they seemed to be heavenly men and earthly angels. For to this end God sent them into the world, that they might call men away from earthly desires and impress upon them the desire for heavenly things. For the same reason St. Dominic was sent into the world, who, as a Paul of his own age,
as one fallen from heaven, by both word and life incited all, even Prelates and Cardinals, to contempt of the world and love of God. Wherefore, among other things, every night he severely scourged himself to the point of blood, to atone for the sins of others in his own body; he endured many persecutions from the Albigensians, and by his patience converted them from heresy to the faith; he burned with zeal for martyrdom, for the salvation of souls, and for the glory of God. He prayed so fervently that, his spirit being elevated to God, his body too was raised and hung suspended in the air. Hence nobles and commoners alike heard him as a divine man and followed him as an angel of God, and they counted themselves blessed if they could even touch him; very many, committing themselves to his discipline and reproducing his ways, became a wonder and a salvation to the world. For a Religious formed to his standard (as Tertullian said of the Philosopher in his book De Pallio), when he is seen, is heard; for he speaks and preaches more by example than by word. Given to him as a companion by God was St. Francis, who accordingly, with his mind and eyes fixed on heaven, preached nothing else by his life and voice, by his habit and countenance, than: "To heaven, to heaven." Hear St. Bonaventure, in his Life, ch. IV: "The evangelical herald, he says, went about cities and towns, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but in the power of the Spirit, announcing the kingdom of God. To those who beheld him he seemed a man from another age; for with mind and face always intent on heaven, he strove to draw all men upward."
Whence he adds the great fruit: "For very many, set on fire by the fervor of his preaching, bound themselves to new laws of penance according to the pattern received from the man of God, for whom the same servant of Christ resolved to name the Order of the brothers of penance. Virgins too were converted to perpetual celibacy; among whom the virgin most dear to God, Clare, the first little plant of them all, gave forth fragrance like a blossoming and pure flower, and shone like a most radiant star. Many also, not only moved by devotion, but inflamed with the desire for Christ's perfection, despising all worldly vanity, followed in the footsteps of Francis: and growing with daily progress, they swiftly reached the ends of the earth;" and ch. XII: "For his word was like a burning fire, penetrating the inmost depths of the heart, and it filled the minds of all with wonder; since it did not display the ornament of human invention, but breathed the inspiration of divine revelation;" and then: "So suddenly did he begin to overflow with such effective words, and with such mighty power did he bend the minds of exalted men (namely the Pope and Cardinals) to compunction, that it clearly appeared that it was not he but the Spirit of the Lord who spoke. He did not know how to stroke the faults of some, but to pierce them; nor to foster the life of sinners, but to strike with harsh rebuke. With the same constancy of mind he spoke to the great and to the small, and with the same fruitfulness of spirit he spoke to the few and to the many; every age and every sex hastened to see and hear the new man given to the world from heaven.
His followers were St. Anthony of Padua, of whom the author of his Life writes thus: "He seemed to have come forth as another Elias, burning with zeal for God, and inflamed with the fire of the Holy Spirit, he kindled and burned with fiery sermons the lukewarm, sluggish, cold, and darkened hearts of his hearers." Likewise Blessed Peter Martyr, whose constant sermon theme, taken from our Jonah, was: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed." And St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, St. Bernardine, St. Vincent Ferrer, and other similar heavenly orators. Let our own prophets, that is, our preachers and teachers, who strive to reform, sanctify, and lead the clergy and the people to heaven, set these men before themselves as models to imitate.
Of the same name and comparable to St. Francis of Assisi was, in our own century, our St. Francis Xavier, enrolled among the saints in this year of the Lord 1622, who with his mind and eyes fixed on heaven, thought of nothing but heaven, looked upon nothing but heaven, preached nothing but heaven, and as if a man fallen from heaven strove to bring all men to heaven. For he seemed to have been sent by God into the world for this one purpose alone. For he continually not only contemplated heavenly things, but truly tasted and savored them, so that he seemed to anticipate and have a foretaste of those ineffable delights of the blessed. Hence those exclamations of his: "Enough, Lord, enough, God of my heart, and my portion is God forever." Hence his burning countenance, breathing love like a Seraph, indeed flashing with divine ardor. Hence that elevation of his body from the earth in prayer, so that suspended between heaven and earth, his spirit carrying upward with it the weight of his body, he ascended on high, so that he seemed, as St. Gregory says, homil. 37: "To be present in the choirs of Angels, to stand with the most blessed spirits before the glory of the Creator, to behold the face of God present, to see the uncircumscribed Light, to rejoice in the gift of perpetual incorruption." Wherefore, an exile from his homeland, bereft of parents and friends, as a stranger on earth and a citizen of heaven, he sought to live and die among foreigners and the remotest peoples of India, knowing that he was the closer to God the farther he was removed from acquaintances and friends. Relying therefore on God alone, driven by love of Him alone, he traveled through the whole East with the utmost speed, evangelizing;
For Xavier (as Chrysostom says of St. Paul, the patriarch of Prophets and Apostles, hom. 2 On his praises) "walking on earth conducted himself in all things as though he enjoyed the company of angels. For though bound to a body subject to suffering, he rejoiced in their perfection, and though subject to so many frailties, he strove to appear in no way inferior to the heavenly powers. For as if winged he flew through the whole world teaching, and as if bodiless he despised all labors and dangers; and as if already possessing heaven, as though he already dwelt with those incorporeal beings, so with unceasing intentness of mind he kept watch. To Angels
indeed the care of various nations has been committed, but none of them governed the people entrusted to him as Paul governed the world," and Francis "illuminated" the whole East. "How wonderful this is, when speech leaping forth from an earthly tongue, like an oracle, put death to flight, dissolved sins, scattered the darkness of unbelief, and by a wondrous transformation converted earth into heaven! For this reason he hastened more toward the shame and insults which he sustained on account of his zeal for preaching, than toward the pleasures of good things, desiring death rather than life, poverty rather than wealth, and labor far more than others desire rest after labor; praying more earnestly for his enemies than others pray against their enemies. For he was converting the world which we are perverting. In his zeal for this, he counted as sand not only cities, nations, armies, provinces, money, and powers as vices; but for the sweetness of Christ he did not even admire the dignity of Angels or Archangels, nor desire anything like it. For to enjoy Christ -- this was life to him, this was the world, this was angels, this was the present, this was the future, this was a kingdom, this was a promise, these seemed innumerable goods. And beyond these he reckoned nothing among sorrows. For of the things we have here he counted nothing harsh, nothing even pleasant. So he despised all that we see, as rotting grass is wont to be despised. Tyrants themselves and peoples breathing fury he regarded as mere gnats. Death and tortures and a thousand punishments he considered child's play, provided he suffered something for Christ. For Him he embraced willingly, and he was adorned more by being bound with a chain than by being crowned with a diadem. For though confined in a prison he dwelt in heaven, and he received blows and wounds more gladly than others snatch prizes; he loved pains no less than rewards, since he reckoned those very pains in place of rewards; for this reason he called them grace. Finally, for him to live was Christ, and to die was gain." So far Chrysostom on Paul; we apply this to Xavier. These are the marks of the apostolate of Paul and Xavier, these the glories of prophecy, these the heroic deeds of virtue, by which he everywhere conquered the monsters of unbelief and the prodigies of vice, indeed transformed them into the splendor of evangelical truth and virtue, and in the space of a few years filled and adorned himself with merits, Europe and India with benefits, the Society of Jesus with examples, the world with fame, the Church with glory, and heaven with citizens and saints whom he sent there. Behold for you the model of the true Prophet, the true Apostle.
Fourth, concerning the community of the Prophets we read in I Kings X, 5, what Samuel said to Saul: "When you have entered, he says, the city, you will meet a group of Prophets coming down from the high place, and before them a psaltery, and a drum, and a flute, and a harp, and they themselves prophesying. And the spirit of the Lord shall come upon you, and you shall prophesy with them, and you shall be changed into another man." These Prophets were religious men, withdrawn from the world, devoted to the praises of God and to psalmody, and therefore with psaltery, drum, flute, and harp, they both praised God and mutually encouraged one another to sing the praises of God. Among them, however, there were some Prophets in the proper sense, such as Elias, Eliseus, etc., IV Kings VI, 1. Hence St. Jerome, epistle 4 to Rusticus, calls Religious and monks the sons of the Prophets. For they are imitators and followers of these in their pious life and morals, as well as of the Essenes and Therapeutae, both those who lived among the Jews before Christ, and those who became Christians, whose founder and leader was St. Mark, about whom Eusebius, Josephus, and Philo write in the book De Essaeis.
Moreover the Prophets withdrew from the people, both for the sake of prayer and holiness, and for the sake of authority. For, as Tacitus says: "Greater is the honor of things from afar," and as Blessed Peter Damian says in his epistles, just as a painting, if it stands at a distance, is gazed upon eagerly and with desire; but if it is nearby, it is judged contemptible: so from seclusion arises reverence for the learned and holy among all people; conversely, "presence diminishes fame."
Moreover, whether any of these twelve Prophets belonged to this community of Prophets is uncertain: it is certain that not all of them did. For Amos, ch. I, 1, was taken from the herds to prophesy. Again, that they did not have fixed residences and houses is clear from the fact that they prophesied in various places, cities, and provinces. For some prophesied in Judea, others in Samaria, others in Bethel, etc. Of the prophetess Hulda we read, IV Kings XXII, 14, that she dwelt in Jerusalem "in the second quarter," that is, in the middle part of the city; for Jerusalem was divided into three parts, as it were districts and quarters: namely the first, the second or middle, and the third, as is clear from its topography. The Hebrews report that in the second quarter, as the quieter and more secure part of the city, there were schools, and that learned and studious men dwelt there. Wherefore it is probable that some Prophets likewise dwelt there.
Finally St. Jerome briefly summarizes the etymologies and meanings of the Prophets' names, in his Preface to Joel: "Hosea, he says, is interpreted 'saving,' whom we may call Savior; Joel 'beginning,' that is, one who begins; Amos 'bearing,' who in Latin is called 'carrying'; Obadiah 'servant of the Lord,' that is, slave of the Lord; Jonah 'dove,' that is, a dove; Micah 'who is an image,' which in our language sounds like, 'who is like?' or 'who is as if?'; Nahum 'comforter,' that is, consolation; Habakkuk 'embracing,' that is, one who embraces, or a wrestler; Zephaniah 'hidden of the Lord,' that is, the secret of the Lord; Haggai 'festive,' whom we may call festive or solemn; Zechariah 'memory of the Lord,' that is, remembrance of the Lord; Malachi 'my angel,' that is, my messenger. In what sense all these are to be understood will be discussed in their respective books." He then adds the etymologies of the four major
Prophets: "Isaiah, he says, is called 'salvation of the Lord,' that is, the salvation of the Lord; Ezekiel 'strength of the Lord,' that is, the might of the Lord; Jeremiah 'exalted of the Lord,' that is, the lofty one of the Lord; Daniel 'judgment of the Lord,' that is, the Lord has judged him."
Finally, the character, life, and death of each of the Prophets were written by St. Epiphanius, Isidore, and Dorotheus, whom many think was the Bishop of Tyre and a martyr under Julian the Apostate. But Baronius denies both, and rightly shows that this Dorotheus was different from the Dorotheus who was a presbyter (not a Bishop) of Tyre, and was made a martyr by Julian at the age of 107, about whom the Martyrology speaks on the 5th of June. Bellarmine agrees in De Script. Eccles., and asserts that this Synopsis of Dorotheus on the life of the Prophets is full of fables. For he places Prisca the wife of Aquila among the 72 disciples of Christ, and makes her Bishop of Colophon. Indeed, everyone whom St. Paul names or greets in his Epistles, he makes into disciples of Christ. See Bellarmine in the cited book, Laronius, and Possevinus in the Bibliotheca, on the Synopsis of Epiphanius and Isidore.
SIXTH QUESTION: What is the aim, what is the use, what is the fruit of the Prophets?
I answer: The end is to set forth for us the very thoughts and secrets of the divine mind: the fruit is to teach us divine wisdom, as well as the heavenly life; to teach us to think according to God, to think divine things, to live for God, from God, with God. St. Charles Borromeo, the splendor and lightning bolt of Italy and of our age, used to assert that this is the foundation of a wise and holy life, namely always and everywhere to tend toward God, so that all our actions and sufferings may begin, be directed, and end in God: If you wish, he said, to advance in the Christian life, to be perfected in the doctrine, virtue, and spirit of Christ, observe these three things: First, consider that you are beginning and starting anew every day, so that you may serve God each day with that same fervor as if on that day you were for the first time beginning to serve Him; second, always keep God in your mind, and continually reflect that you are in His presence: for we have been made a spectacle to the world and to angels and to men; third, make all your works tend toward God. So says the author of the Life of St. Borromeo, lib. VIII, ch. XVIII.
"I will show you, O man, says Micah, ch. VI, 8, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: namely to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk carefully with your God," so that, as it were higher than earth, greater than man, a citizen of heaven, equal to angels, you may walk with God, continually dwell and act with God, draw, measure, and direct all your thoughts, words, and actions from God. This care of walking with God embraces many and great things, and is the parent of great and heroic works, as I shall show in Micah. The Prophets, therefore, are "the mouth and oracle of God," through whom God revealed to the world His secrets, His thoughts and His designs, especially what we should believe, hope, love, and do, in order to attain the blessed life. "In many ways, says Paul, Heb. I, 1, and in many manners God spoke of old to the fathers through the Prophets, and in these last days He has spoken to us through His Son." And Zechariah, Luke I, 70: "As He spoke through the mouth of His holy Prophets who have been from of old."
The Prophets, therefore, spoke not from themselves but from God, and they were His mouth and tongue. Wherefore they teach us the wisdom of God, "the knowledge of the saints," and the prudence of the just, so that we may teach the same to others, and with John the Baptist prepare for the Lord a perfect people. St. Thomas, I part. Quest. I, art. 1, asks whether, besides the natural sciences, another revealed and supernatural science is necessary; and he answers that it is absolutely necessary, which he then establishes as the foundation of all Sacred Scripture and of Theology, and of the entire Christian doctrine and life. He assigns the a priori reason, that our end and beatitude is supernatural, which the natural light, reason, and natural science do not know and cannot reach; and therefore, to demonstrate it and the way to it, a revealed and supernatural light is necessary: for to a supernatural end supernatural means must be given and adapted.
The philosophers of the pagans discoursed subtly about nature, about the elements, about animals, about man, about domestic and political life, but all these things remain within the bounds of nature and do not exceed the limits of the earth: therefore other teachers are needed who may show us the way to heaven, the road to God: "The wicked, says the Psalmist, Psalm CXVIII, have told me fables: but not as your law." What Plato, what Pythagoras, what Socrates, what all the philosophers have written about the world, about morals, about happiness, are fables if compared with your law, O Lord, if compared with your oracles, with your Prophets. "Vain, says" the Wise Man, ch. XIII, 1, "are all men in whom there is not the knowledge of God:" but this knowledge of God the Prophets proclaim. For God Himself through Hosea, ch. XII, 10, declares: "In the hand (in the oracle) of the Prophets I have been likened." And expressly Baruch, investigating true wisdom, ch. III, 14: "Hear, he says, O Israel, learn where prudence is, where strength is, where understanding is, that you may know at the same time where length of life and sustenance is, where the light of the eyes and peace is. Where are the princes of the nations, etc., who sport among the birds of heaven, who treasure up silver and gold: they have been cut off and have gone down to the netherworld; but the way of discipline they have not known. It has not been heard in the land of Canaan, nor has it been seen in Teman. The children of Hagar too, who seek the prudence that is of the earth, the merchants of Merrha and Teman, and the storytellers, and the seekers of prudence and understanding: but the way of wisdom they have not known. There is none who can know his ways: but He who knows all things knows it, and has found it by His prudence. This is our God: He has found every way of discipline, and has delivered it (through the Prophets) to Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved.
After these things," that He might teach this wisdom to men by word of mouth, "He was seen on earth, and He conversed with men," when, that is, "the Word was made flesh."
This, then, was the error, this was the darkness of human life, that mortals, like moles, savored only the earth and earthly things, but were ignorant of divine things and the way to divine beatitude. Indeed this error still holds many Christians, who arrange their lives according to political and human prudence, according to natural and temporal considerations, so as to live honestly, respectably, honorably, wisely among men, to pass their time comfortably, and when it is over, to say with Augustus Caesar on his deathbed: We have played our part well enough, well enough and with decorum: farewell and applaud. Meanwhile they do not consider, do not provide for, do not take counsel for their soul, their salvation, their eternity. Against this rock the greater part of mankind crashes, breaks, and perishes. God, therefore, wishing to remedy this evil and dispel this error, sent the Prophets, who as seers of things that are remote, heavenly, future, and eternal, gazing from the lofty watchtower of prophecy as if from heaven, might show us the way to salvation, teach us to think and live according to principles not natural, earthly, and temporal, but supernatural, heavenly, and eternal, which are written and live in the mind of God, and which alone satisfy and bless the mind. For that saying of Augustine is most true, epist. 39: "The bonds of this world have real harshness, false pleasantness: certain pain, uncertain pleasure: hard labor, fearful rest: a thing full of misery, an empty hope of happiness."
This is what Zechariah sings of his son St. John the Baptist, who was the last of the Prophets and the end of the law and prophecy, and the morning star of the Gospel and of Christ: "You, child, shall be called the Prophet of the Most High: for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways. To give knowledge of salvation to His people, for the remission of their sins: through the tender mercy of our God, in which the Dayspring from on high shall visit us. To enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace." Wherefore the Prophets were as it were stars illuminating the night of the world, indeed as suns of the world. For, as Origen says, Sacred Scripture and the word of God, which the Prophets bore, is a sun not corporeal and material, but spiritual and intelligible, illuminating the entire universe. As much, therefore, as heaven surpasses the earth, as much as the sun by its light and brilliance surpasses a candle and a lamp, so much do the oracles of Sacred Scripture and the Prophets surpass the wisdom and doctrines of all the philosophers.
St. Peter had seen in the transfiguration of Christ, close up with his bodily eyes, the glory of Christ, and had heard with his own ears the voice: "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: hear Him," and yet when recounting this very vision, in his second epistle, ch. I, 17, he places it after prophecy: for the eye can be dazzled, the ear deceived; but prophecy can be neither dazzled nor deceived: "This voice, he says, we heard brought from heaven, when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And we have the more firm prophetic word: to which you do well to attend, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." The morning star is that clearer doctrine of Christ, namely the splendor of the Gospel, succeeding the night of the darkness of paganism and Judaism, and leading to the bright midday of blessed eternity and the vision of God. "Understanding this first, that no prophecy is made by private interpretation. For prophecy was never brought by human will, but holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit."
Wherefore here heavenly light is needed, that we may grasp and understand these heavenly voices of God, these heavenly teachers. Therefore, with St. Thomas, meditation and prayer must be relied upon and employed here more than study. Hence this was the axiom of St. Bernard: "The mind of a wise man who loves God is not on earth, but in heaven:" because he always considers and desires heavenly things. And St. Augustine on Psalm LXIV: "From heaven, he says, our Father has sent us letters, God has furnished us with Scriptures, by which letters the desire to return might be produced in us; because, loving our exile, we had set our faces toward the enemy and our backs toward our homeland." And St. Gregory, lib. IV, epist. 84 to Theodorus the physician: "The Emperor, he says, the Lord of heaven, of men and of angels, has sent you His letters for your life; and yet, glorious son, you neglect to read these same letters ardently. Study, therefore, I beg, and meditate daily on the words of your Creator. Learn the heart of God in the words of God, that you may sigh more ardently for eternal things, that your mind may be kindled with greater desires for the heavenly kingdom. For the greater will be his rest then, the less rest he has now from the love of his Creator."
Thus St. Bernard, wholly given to meditation, "once confessed that while meditating or praying, all of Sacred Scripture had appeared to him as if laid open and set before him," says the author of his Life, lib. III. Of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure writes in his Life, ch. XI: "Unwearied zeal in prayer, he says, together with the continual exercise of virtues, had led the man of God to such serenity of mind, that although he had not acquired knowledge of Sacred Letters through formal learning, yet illumined by the splendors of the eternal light, he searched the depths of the Scriptures with a wondrous keenness of understanding. For his mind, pure from every stain, penetrated the hidden things of mysteries, and where the knowledge of masters stands outside, the love of a lover entered within." Hence also a certain Doctor of theology, marveling at his answers, said: "Truly the theology of this holy Father, borne aloft as on wings by purity and contemplation, is like a soaring eagle: but our learning crawls on the ground upon its belly."
On this subject St. Chrysostom, homil. on the title of Psalm L: "The Prophets, he says, are as it were painters of virtue and of the warfare which we wage against sins and the devil." The same, homil. 1 on ch. I of Isaiah, at the beginning, teaches that the prophecies are divine oracles and letters sent down from heaven. Hence, homil. 4 on ch. VI of Isaiah, he asserts that "the silence of the Prophets is a sign of divine wrath." The same, on ch. VIII of Isaiah: "God, he says, prepared the remedy of prophecy, instructing sinners with foreknowledge of punishments, but not with the teaching experience of them; so that if they should come to their senses upon hearing the threats, they might avoid the experience of the intended punishment."
Moreover, in the Prophets one should not seek eloquence, but wisdom. Hear the memorable story which St. Jerome, writing to Eustochium On the Keeping of Virginity, narrates as having happened to him in his youth: "After frequent vigils of the night, he says, after the tears which the remembrance of past sins drew from the depths of my heart, Plautus was taken in hand. If at any time, coming to my senses, I began to read the Prophets, the uncultivated style repelled me: and because I did not see the light with my blind eyes, I thought the fault lay not with the eyes, but with the sun. While the ancient serpent thus mocked me, etc., I was seized in spirit and dragged before the tribunal of the Judge, etc. Asked about my condition, I answered that I was a Christian. And He who presided said: You lie; you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian. For where your treasure is, there is your heart also." He then adds that he was severely scourged until he promised and swore: "Lord, if ever I possess secular books, if I read them, I have denied You." For this reason the same St. Jerome in his prooemium to book III of his Commentary on Amos says: "In the explanation of Sacred Scripture, he says, not polished words adorned with rhetorical flowers, but learning and simplicity of truth are sought;" for to these sublime mysteries of the Prophets that saying of Manilius is fitting: "The subject itself forbids adornment, content to be taught." And that of Fabius: "If a philosopher brings eloquence, I do not reject it; if he does not bring it, I do not greatly demand it. Great subjects are adorned by themselves, and do not need cosmetics to be loved." And St. Basil, the most eloquent of the Greeks, to Diodorus: "The unaffected and unpolished simplicity of reading, he says, seemed fitting to me, and suitable to the profession of a Christian, whose business is to write not for ostentation but for public usefulness." Again St. Jerome to Damasus, as if to say: "I know, he says, that these things are wearisome to the reader, but it does not befit one who discusses Hebrew letters to seek out the arguments of Aristotle, nor should a rivulet be drawn from the river of Tullian eloquence, nor should the ears be charmed with the flowers of Quintilian and the declamation of the schools: a plain and everyday style is needed, smelling of no midnight oil, one that explains the subject, sets forth the meaning, makes clear what is obscure, not one that luxuriates in the arrangement of words."
Nor was it unfitting, if a holy man had received from God the understanding of the Scriptures, since through the perfect imitation of Christ he bore the truth of them inscribed in his works; and through the full anointing of the Holy Spirit he had their teacher within his own heart."
Meditation, therefore, prayer, and a holy life are the keys to Sacred Scripture and the Prophets: and these in turn are the keys to heaven. For "the reading of the Prophets and the Scriptures is the opening of heaven," says St. Chrysostom, homil. 2 on the words of Isaiah: "I saw the Lord," etc. The same, sermon 3 On Lazarus: "It cannot be, he says, that anyone should attain salvation unless he continually engages in spiritual reading." From which he infers that not only monks, but also married laypeople ought to devote themselves to the reading of Sacred Scripture, and all the more so as they are entangled in greater distractions, temptations, and dangers than monks. Hence it is necessary, he says, to draw armor unceasingly from the Scriptures." And he adds: "Wherever spiritual books are found, from there every power of the devil is expelled, and much consolation comes to the inhabitants: because even the very sight of sacred books makes us more reluctant to sin. Again, whether we have persevered in holiness, we are rendered more secure and stronger by books. And if sacred reading is added, the soul engaged in divine things, as in a sacred sanctuary, is thus purified and made better, God conversing with it through those Scriptures." And further on: "Remember the eunuch of the Queen of Ethiopia (Acts VIII) who, though he was a barbarian man occupied with innumerable cares, and did not understand what he was reading, yet read the prophet Isaiah while sitting in his chariot: and if on the road he showed such diligence, consider what he was like at home. A great defense against sin is the reading of the Scriptures; a great precipice, a deep abyss is ignorance of the Scriptures, a great loss of salvation, etc. Just as they bite the conscience, so they bring no small benefit to the souls of those who are bitten."
The author of the Opus Imperfectum on St. Matthew, homil. 27, calls the Prophets angels and groomsmen of Christ. "Behold, he says, all the Prophets were sent before the face of Christ, and they are called angels; as it is written (Acts VII): You who received the law by the disposition of angels, and did not keep it." And above: "It belongs to a Prophet to preach about Christ. It belongs to a Prophet to receive prophecy according to the merit of his way of life and faith. It belongs to a Prophet to receive a benefit from God. It belongs to a Prophet to signify the word about Christ before the time. It belongs to a Prophet that he himself prophesy from God." And homil. 41: "Christ is the Way that leads to life. And all the Prophets and all the Apostles are called ways: for all these ways lead to Christ: and Christ leads to the Father; so the devil is the general and public way that leads to death: and ways are all the professions of this world, for instance the profession of philosophy (vain, pagan, and erroneous) is one way: the profession of military service is another way, worldly dignity, another."
Moreover, so great is the obscurity and depth of the Prophets that almost every single sentence of theirs seems to be a riddle: for prophecy includes obscurity in its very nature and essence: the Prophets therefore cultivate it. "Wondrous," says St. Augustine, lib. XII Confessions XIV, "is the depth of Your words, whose surface, behold, lies before us, charming to little ones, but wondrous is the depth, my God, wondrous the depth. It is fearful to gaze into it, a fear of reverence and a trembling of love." In these things, therefore, that saying of the author of the Opus Imperfectum, in St. Chrysostom, homil. 4, is true: "As God is hidden in heaven, so He is hidden in Scripture." And just as all men see this heaven, but cannot discern God dwelling within it; so also nearly all read the Sacred Letters, yet not all understand God the truth hidden in their secret meanings, unless illuminated by the light of wisdom.
Wherefore Origen constantly pored over, meditated upon, and searched the Sacred Scriptures, and from these he became a teacher of the world and almost an oracle, who indeed would have been greater if, receiving the applause of the world with less eagerness, he had wished to be lesser. Hear St. Jerome about him, to Marcella, epistle 10: "Ambrose, who furnished the paper, the expenses, and the scribes, our truly Adamantine and Brazen-bowelled one produced so innumerable books, in a certain letter which he had written to the same from Athens, reports that he never took a meal without reading in Origen's presence: that he never went to sleep unless one of the brethren was reciting the Sacred Letters: that he did this day and night, so that reading followed prayer and prayer followed reading. What have we, belly-animals, ever done like this, who if reading catches us even at the second hour, we yawn, rubbing our face with our hand we suppress our appetite; and as if after much labor, we busy ourselves again with worldly affairs." Origen spent his days and nights in the Sacred Letters; but relying too much on his own talent and study, he fell by the just judgment of God, who casts down and levels the lofty, into errors, and by his own misfortune taught us not to be high-minded, but to approach God and God's books with fear and reverence, to trust Him, to distrust ourselves: to beg Him constantly with humble prayer, that He may deign to introduce us into His sacred sanctuaries and the thoughts of His mind.
For nearly forty years now I have been engaged in this sacred study, for thirty years I have done nothing else, indeed I have continually taught the Sacred Letters: and yet I feel how little I have advanced in them, that I am far more ignorant than learned; indeed the deeper I search them, the greater abyss of wisdom I behold. So that I clearly see that the old saying of the Wise Man is true here: "When a man has finished, then he shall begin." O eternal truth, and true charity, and dear brightness, my God and my all, for whom I sigh day and night, illuminate my darkness (which I daily discover to be greater in me) with the splendor of Your light, shine upon my mind in the brightness of the Saints, that in Your light I may see light; so that I may equally
enlighten others and inflame them with love of You. Open my eyes, and I shall consider the wonders of Your law, You who make eloquent the minds and tongues of infants. "For every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration." I profess openly and say with St. Augustine, lib. I Confessions ch. XVI: "Behold, You, Lord, my King and my God: let whatever useful thing I learned as a boy serve You; and let what I speak, what I write, and read, and count serve You. For I labor, write, and live for You and Your glory, and the needs of Your Church, not for myself nor for my own. Be favorable, therefore, and graciously breathe upon my beginnings with the rays of Your favor. I do not care for the judgments or applause of men: for I desire to please You alone, but I fear to displease You, and I say with the Apostle: "It is a very small thing to me to be judged by you or by man's day. But neither do I judge myself: but He who judges me is the Lord." And with St. Jerome, Preface to book II of the Commentary on Hosea: "I would wish that what Titus Livius writes of Cato might happen to me, whose glory no one benefited by praising, nor did anyone harm by blaming; since men of the highest genius did both. He refers to Marcus Cicero and Gaius Caesar, one of whom wrote the praises, the other the criticisms of the aforesaid man. For while we live and are contained in a fragile vessel, the efforts of friends seem to help, and the reproaches of rivals seem to harm. But after the earth has returned to its earth, and pale death has carried off both us who write and those who judge us, and another generation has come, and a green forest has grown up over the first fallen leaves, then without regard to the distinction of names, talents alone are judged, not by the diversity of honors but by the merit of works."
If there is anything of truth, of virtue, of beauty in me and in my words and writings, it is entirely, wholly and completely Yours, O Most Holy Trinity, who are the first, uncreated, and fontal truth, virtue, and beauty. Therefore not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Your name give the glory. For all our good things are Your gifts. But if there is in me and in my things any error, vice, or deformity, as there is very much, it is entirely from me, I impute it entirely to myself, I accept it upon myself, and I humbly beg pardon. To You, therefore, be praise, to You the honor of every good; to me the disgrace of every evil, and the confusion of my face: to You be blessing, and brightness, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honor, and power to our God forever and ever. Amen.
You said, O Lord, to Your Apostles and Prophets, and to their followers and interpreters: "You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world," Matt. ch. V, 13. You said it, and by saying it You decreed and accomplished it. For, as St. Hilary says in the same place: "The Apostles are the heralds of heavenly things, and as it were the sowers of eternity, conferring immortality upon all bodies to which their word has been applied." Grant, O Lord, that after their pattern we too may be heralds of heaven and sowers of eternity, that like salt
we may season the earthly and tasteless minds of men and impart incorruption to them; that whoever reads these things, from the knowledge of Your holy oracles, from the weight and gravity of Your promises and threats, may despise the alluring delicacies of earth, and be kindled with love of heavenly goods, and with the desire and effective pursuit of blessed eternity. This one thing I aim at, this one thing I ask, to this all my reading and writing, to this all my labor sweats, that Your holy name may be sanctified, and Your holy will may be done on earth as it is in heaven; and that Your holy kingdom of grace, of glory, and of everlasting happiness, where You will be all in all, may come to us. Amen.