Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Chapter I: On the Excellence and Majesty of the Gospels Above All Other Books of Sacred Scripture, from Parallels of the Law and the Gospel
I return from the Old Testament to the New: from Solomon, I say, to Christ, as from a rivulet to a fountain; from Proverbs to the Gospels, as from a river to the ocean of wisdom; and through them I set the crown upon the Sacred Scripture of the New Testament. So great is the dignity, usefulness, and majesty of Sacred Scripture that it surpasses all books of philosophers and theologians, whether Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, by as much as divine wisdom transcends all human wisdom. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God, the very speech and voice of God, by which God declares His wisdom to us and shows the way to virtue, salvation, and eternal happiness. Wherefore St. Augustine, in Epistle 3 to Volusianus, says: «What mind, eager for eternity yet moved by the fickleness of the present life, would contend against the summit and light of this divine authority? What disputations, what writings of any philosophers, what laws of any states, are in any way to be compared with the two commandments on which Christ says the whole law and the prophets depend: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and your neighbor as yourself?» He then asserts that Sacred Scripture is the encyclopedia of all the sciences, saying: «Here is physics, because all the causes of all natures are in God the Creator. Here is ethics, because a good and upright life is formed from no other source than when the things that ought to be loved are loved as they ought to be loved, that is, God and neighbor. Here is logic, because the truth and light of the rational soul is none other than God. Here also is the praiseworthy welfare of the commonwealth; for a state is not best founded and preserved except on the foundation and bond of faith and firm concord, when the common good is loved, which in its highest and truest form is God, and when in Him people love one another most sincerely, since they love one another for His sake, from Whom they cannot hide the disposition with which they love.» And after a few interjections, he concludes thus: «By these things, corrupt natures are corrected, small ones are nourished, and great minds are delighted. That mind is an enemy to this teaching which either, through error, does not know it to be most wholesome, or, through sickness, hates the medicine.»
Sacred Scripture, therefore, is the art of arts, the science of sciences; it is the Pandora and encyclopedia of wisdom. In our own times, St. Teresa, a virgin famous in Spain for the spirit of prophecy no less than for holiness and miracles, learned from God that every harm to the Church and all the losses of the world flow from this source: that mortals do not penetrate the truths of Sacred Scripture with clear and solid knowledge and serious consideration. The authority for this is Father Francisco Ribera, the distinguished interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in her biography. «For, as St. Basil says in his homily on Psalm 1, Sacred Scripture is the common workshop for healing souls, from which each person can select a remedy salutary and suited to his own disease;» it is therefore a storehouse most fully furnished with everything, which for every time, person, difficulty, and danger, supplies medicines, arms, and instruments for driving away evils, summoning goods, destroying errors, establishing orthodox doctrines, implanting virtues, and repelling vices. Thus indeed the Church drew from Sacred Scripture constancy and fortitude during the struggles of the martyrs; during the ages of the doctors and the opportunity for teaching and learning, the lights of wisdom and the rivers of eloquence; during the times of the heretics, the bulwarks of faith with which to uproot errors; in prosperity she learned from it humility and modesty, in adversity magnanimity, in lukewarmness diligence and fervor. Finally, whenever through the passing of so many years she is disfigured by the old age, stains, and blemishes of corrupt morals, from it she claims for herself the restoration of what was lost and the return to her former dignity and state of virtue.
Furthermore, «among all the divine authorities contained in the sacred writings,» says St. Augustine, Book I of On the Harmony of the Evangelists, chapter 1, «the Gospel deservedly excels. For what the Law and the Prophets foretold as future is shown in the Gospel to have been fulfilled and completed.» Prophecy, therefore, is the Gospel veiled, and the Gospel is prophecy revealed. Hear St. Ambrose, Book V of the Hexaemeron, chapter 7: «The Gospel is that from which the martyr ascends. The Gospel is the sea in which the Apostles fish, into which the net is cast, to which the kingdom of heaven is compared. The Gospel is the sea in which the mysteries of Christ are figured. The Gospel is the sea in which the Hebrew escaped and the Egyptian was destroyed. The Gospel is the sea in which there is the fullness of divine grace, and the Bride of Christ, the Church, which is founded upon the seas, as the Prophet said: He Himself founded it upon the seas. Leap upon the waves, O man, for you are a fish; let not the waves of this world overwhelm you. If there is a storm, seek the deep; if fair weather, play in the waves; if a tempest, beware of the rocky shore, lest the raging tide dash you upon the rock.» Wherefore St. Basil, Homily 16, says: «Every word of the Gospels is recognized as surpassing all other precepts of the Holy Spirit.» And Origen, in his preface to John: «The first-fruits of all Scripture,» he says, «is the Gospel.»
Christ cries out: I am the light of the world, that is, through the Gospel, which He diffuses as a light, so that through it He may illuminate the whole world. The Gospel, therefore, is the light of the world and the sun of the earth; for this reason, when it is read, candles are lit. This was an ancient custom before the time of St. Jerome; for he himself writes against Vigilantius, who was blind and sleeping even amid the lights of the Gospel: «Throughout all the Churches of the East, when the Gospel is to be read, lights are kindled even while the sun is shining brightly — not indeed to dispel darkness, but as a sign of joy; whence also those evangelical virgins always have their lamps burning, etc., so that under the figure of bodily light, that light may be shown of which we read in the Psalter: Your word is a lamp to my feet, O Lord, and a light to my paths.» Psalm 118.
Wherefore there has always been a wondrous reverence of all people — not only of the saints, but of Christians in general — toward the Gospel, a wondrous love, a wondrous veneration. Constantine the Great sent to St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, a codex of the Gospels adorned with gold and gems, as his biography attests. The Emperor Theodosius read daily a Gospel copied out in his own hand during a good part of the night. The witness is Nicephorus, Book XIV, chapter 3. The ecumenical synods — both of Nicaea, of Chalcedon, and of Ephesus — placed the codex of the Gospels in the midst of the council, so that they might turn to it as to the person of Christ; as if Christ Himself were saying to them: Judge with just judgment, says St. Cyril in his Apology. It has been established by canon law that in solemn oaths one swears by the most sacred Gospels, touching them with the hand; whence even now, when confirming something by oath, we say: «So help me God and these holy Gospels of God.» Just as we swear by God, so also we swear by the Gospels, as by the most sacred word of God. And not only the orthodox, but also most heretics do the same, who, although they have struck other books of Sacred Scripture from the sacred canon, mutilated some, and corrupted others, yet have not dared to touch or profane the Gospels. I say further: even the pagans held the Gospels in awe. St. Augustine relates how highly the Platonists esteemed them, in Book X of The City of God, chapter 29, and in Book VII of the Confessions, chapter 9, he reports that he found in the books of the Platonists the beginning of the Gospel of St. John: In the beginning was the Word, but not the verse: And the Word was made flesh. Finally, the demons themselves are struck with terror at the codices of the Gospels and shaken by a certain sacred horror: St. Chrysostom writes, in Homily 51 on John, that demons dare not enter a place where any codex of the Gospels is kept.
Finally, through the Gospels Christ has wrought very many miracles. Receive a few from among many. Gregory of Tours, in On the Lives of the Fathers, chapter 6, narrates that when the city of Clermont was ablaze with fire, St. Gallus entered the church, prayed before the holy altar for a very long time, and then rising, took up the codex of the Gospels, opened it, and presented himself before the fire, and immediately the conflagration was extinguished so that not even embers remained. St. Martianus, when the creeping flame was already approaching the church of St. Anastasia, took the sacred Gospel into his hands, climbed up through the roof tiles onto the roof, and by his prayers and tears preserved it unharmed from the fire. So relates Nicephorus, Book V, chapter 22. Zonaras likewise recorded that in the account of Basil the Macedonian, the people of Rhosus, when a book of the Gospels was snatched from the fire unharmed, embraced the faith of Christ. And so the Gospels are the most divine, most sublime, most fruitful, and most profound part and portion of all Sacred Scripture, and therefore are ever present in the chairs of teaching, in the pulpits, in controversies, in the divine office, and in every discourse both public and private. What therefore theologians both ancient and modern unanimously attribute to all of Sacred Scripture — namely, that it is of all books, disciplines, and sciences the most certain, the most august, the most efficacious, the most wise, the most useful, the most lofty, and the most necessary — this the Gospels claim properly and primarily for themselves, whether you consider the subject matter, or the author, or the manner and method of speaking.
The Subject Matter of the Gospels
For the subject matter is God Himself, both as God and as man: that is, the Gospels describe the words and deeds of Christ the Lord, by which He both redeemed us and taught us what is to be believed, what is to be done, and by what paths we ought to strive toward the blessed life. And so here it treats of the divine precepts, of the counsels, of the perfection of the Christian life, of the virtues, of the vices, of the sacraments, of faith, hope, and charity, of the Trinity, and therefore of every theological subject, so that you may rightly define the Gospels, with St. Jerome, as the compendium or summary of all theology and of Christian doctrine and life.
The Author
The Author Himself, and as it were the director of this evangelical drama, who almost alone here either acts or speaks, is Christ the Lord, the eternal Wisdom: «In many ways and in many modes, says the Apostle, Hebrews 1, God spoke of old to the fathers through the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us in His Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Whom He also made the ages.» Therefore not Moses, not the prophets, not the kings, but the Only-Begotten, Who drew from the mind of the Father the secrets of divine wisdom and uncreated wisdom itself in its entirety, together with the divinity — He communicates that same wisdom to us here in the Gospels; the Word Himself, I say, the all-knowing Word of the divine intellect, here sounds forth with His own mouth, here speaks, here pours out the mysteries that were silent through the eternal ages and foreshadowed by so many figures of the Law and the Prophets.
The Method
But how admirable is the manner and method of speaking and discoursing in the Gospels! St. Dionysius the Areopagite, most learned in Platonic and Peripatetic philosophy, a disciple of St. Paul and easily the foremost among Christian theologians, published among other most learned books three principal ones. The first he entitled On the Divine Names, in which he demonstrates that only those names that contain some perfection and excellence properly apply to God, such as being, goodness, beauty, and perfection. The second he wrote On Mystical Theology, in which he shows that no name can properly apply to God, and that God is known more perfectly through negative than through affirmative theology. The third he published On Symbolic Theology, in which he demonstrates from the Sacred Scriptures that all names whatsoever can be attributed to God. The Gospels follow this threefold theology, but especially the last, the symbolic, to which pertain so many metaphors, so many similes, so many parables, in which God assumes many forms of things and images of men, like a kind of Proteus, a heavenly one, He puts on for our sake. For now He is compared to a king who made a wedding feast for his son, or to a master settling accounts with his servants, or to a commander going to war with ten thousand; now to a householder, now to a farmer, now to a shepherd, now to a fisherman, now to a merchant, now to a money-lender, and to very many others to whom Christ wished to liken Himself, so that He might represent Himself to our minds and eyes for our instruction, not so much by words as by the things themselves. Whence you may note here that in the Gospels we are taught both by the words and by the deeds of Christ: «For every action of Christ,» says St. Gregory, «is our instruction; and it is proper to God not only to set forth divine and evangelical realities for the mind's contemplation through words, but also through the things themselves and His deeds, as by a kind of alphabet.»
This method of evangelical wisdom claims for itself yet another dignity. For it has been so composed by the Holy Spirit that both the uneducated and the simple are not deprived of the fruit of reading it, and great and lofty minds find many difficult and obscure things in which they can exercise themselves and labor; for it is neither always plain nor always obscure: «For the divine word,» says St. Gregory, in the Preface to Job, chapter 4, «just as it exercises the wise with its mysteries, so it generally refreshes the simple with its surface meaning. It has in the open that with which to nourish little ones; it preserves in secret that which may hold the minds of the exalted in wonder. It is, as it were, a kind of river, if I may say so, both shallow and deep, in which both a lamb may walk and an elephant may swim.» Indeed, Christ's teaching is easy and accessible to the little ones and the studious, but difficult and impenetrable to proud, idle, and self-confident minds. «I confess to You, Father,» says Christ Himself, «Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and have revealed them to the little ones; yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before You.» Matthew 11.
These things and more you will perceive at a glance if you set the Law alongside the Gospel by way of parallels and antitheses, comparing and contrasting them. Under the Law I include the Prophets and the other books of the Old Testament; under the Gospel, the other books of the New Testament; for the Gospel is as it were their foundation and center. For just as the sun shines brightly in the midst of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter, and these planets borrow their light from the sun, and wandering around it form as it were a chorus and, so to speak, a dance; so the Gospel, like a sun, gleams among the writings of the Apostles and imparts to them its light and splendor. For what are Peter, Paul, James, John, and Jude, but heralds and interpreters of the Gospel? «Paul,» says St. Jerome, Epistle 64 to Pammachius, «is the trumpet of the Gospel, the roar of our lion, the river of Christian eloquence.» Wherefore the Acts of the Apostles transmit the practice of the Gospel, the Epistles of St. Paul and the other Apostles its doctrine, the Apocalypse its prophecy; for what Christ foretold concerning Elijah, the Antichrist, the judgment, the consummation of the world, and the signs that will precede it — all these St. John narrates and explains more fully in the Apocalypse. For Christ in the Gospel, just as He is the supreme legislator, apostle, evangelist, and teacher, so also He is a divine seer and prophet.
Antitheses of the Law and the Gospel
First
The first antithesis, therefore, between the Law and the Gospel is in the author: that the author of the Law is Moses, a mere man, but the author of the Gospel is Christ, true God and man. So the Council of Trent, Session 4: «The Gospel,» it says, «our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth.» «The Law,» says the Apostle, Galatians 3:19, «was ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator,» namely Moses, who was the intermediary and mediator between God and the people. Therefore, by as much as Christ surpasses Moses and the angels, by as much as the Creator surpasses creatures, by so much does the Gospel surpass the Law. For Christ, as the Apostle says, Hebrews 1:2, «being the brightness of His glory and the figure of His substance (that is, of God the Father), etc., sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having been made so much superior to the angels as He has inherited a more excellent name than they. For to which of the angels did He ever say: You are My Son, today I have begotten You?» And chapter 3:3: «For this One (Christ) has been counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who built the house has greater honor than the house.» And ibid., verse 5: «And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things that were to be spoken; but Christ as a Son over His own house.» All the angels served Christ in the Gospel, as His ministering spirits.
Whence St. Cyprian (or whoever is the author of the tract On the Nativity of Christ) says: «From heavenly embassies (of the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin and to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist) the Gospel begins, whose first dictators were the angels.» But Christ Himself is in His own person the founder of the Gospel. For He clothed His divinity in our flesh so that through it He might dictate the Gospel with His own mouth: «For, as St. John says, chapter 1, verse 17, the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.» What, then, is the Gospel? It is the book of Christ, the philosophy of Christ, the theology of Christ; it is the most joyful message of Christ concerning the redemption, grace, and eternal salvation of the human race, brought from heaven by Him and conferred upon those who believe in Him. For Christ spoke with His own mouth things far more sublime and divine than He had spoken through Moses and the prophets.
Therefore, to read or hear the Gospel is to read or hear the very voice of the Son of God. The Gospel must therefore be heard with as much reverence as Christ Himself, as we read that St. Anthony, St. Basil, St. Francis, and similar saints were accustomed to do. «Let us therefore hear the Gospel,» says St. Augustine, Tract 30 on John, «as though the Lord were present; the Lord is on high, but the truth of the Lord is also here.» Wherefore, when the Gospel is read in the church, all should rise as though venerating Christ in it and at the same time yearning for the heaven that He promises in it; and this by the ordinance of the Apostles. Hear St. Clement, Book II of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 61: «When the Gospel is read, let all the priests, deacons, and laity rise with great silence.» There also exists a decree of Pope Anastasius to the same effect, addressed to all the bishops of Germany and Burgundy, in these words: «You have reported that some in the church sit when the Gospels are read;» and shortly after: «We command by apostolic authority that this by no means be done henceforth; but while the holy Gospels are recited in the church, let the priests and all others present, not sitting but reverently bowed, standing in the presence of the holy Gospel, attentively hear and faithfully adore the words of the Lord.» Apostolic Canon, On Consecration, distinction 1.
Isidore of Pelusium, Book I, Epistle 436, also approves this custom of standing even among bishops, with these words: «For when the true Shepherd Himself approaches through the opening of the adorable Gospels, then at last the bishop rises and sets aside the manner of one who merely imitates, thereby signifying that the Lord Himself, the master of the pastoral art, God and Master, is present.» Sozomen, Book IX of the Tripartite History, chapter 39, condemns the practice of the Alexandrians, among whom, contrary to the common custom, the bishop does not rise when the Gospels are read. Furthermore, the Eighth Ecumenical Synod, Session 10, Canon 3, decrees that equal honor is to be given to the Gospels as is given to the cross of Christ: «We decree,» it says, «that the sacred image of our Lord Jesus Christ and Savior of all be adored with equal honor as the book of the holy Gospels. For just as through the words in syllables contained in the book all attain salvation, so through the pictorial operation of colors both the wise and all the unlearned enjoy the benefit of what is readily available. For what speech conveys in syllables, this painting also proclaims and commends in colors.»
Second
The second antithesis, following from the first, is drawn from the preeminence of doctrine. For the doctrine of the Gospel far surpasses that which is found in Moses and the Law. The Law proposes one God to be believed in and worshipped; the Gospel proclaims one God in essence but three in Persons, to be loved and adored: «Go,» says Christ, «teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.» Matthew 28. I grant that in the Law and the Prophets there exists a shadow of the mystery of the Holy Trinity; whence Trismegistus drew from them his famous oracle: «The Monad begot the Monad, and reflected its ardor upon itself;» but he did not understand, did not penetrate the truth of the mystery. The Platonists likewise pursued the same truth but did not attain it, and contaminated it with an error similar to Arianism, when they posited one supreme God but other lesser and inferior gods. The birth, life, passion, cross, ascension of Christ, the mission of the Holy Spirit, the calling and conversion of all nations — the prophets foretell these things faintly and obscurely; but the Gospel announces these very things solidly and clearly. God's foreknowledge, providence, predestination, omnipotence, immense charity, and all His other attributes are laid open distinctly and openly not by the Law, but by the Gospel: «No one,» says St. John, chapter 1, verse 18, «has ever seen God; the Only-Begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known.» For Christ descended from the bosom of the Father into the bosom of His mother, becoming man, so that He might declare to us the secrets of the Father known to Him alone: indeed this is «the great mystery of godliness, which, as the Apostle says, was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, was preached to the nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory» — not in the Law, assuredly, but in the Gospel. 1 Timothy 3:16.
Third
Third. The Law is as it were a shadow, but the Gospel is the very truth foreshadowed by the type of the Law; therefore, by as much as truth and the real body surpass a shadow, by so much does the Gospel surpass the Law. «For the Law, having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things,» etc., says the Apostle, Hebrews 10:1; and 1 Corinthians 10:1: «Our fathers,» he says, «were all under the cloud, and all were baptized in Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ, etc. Now all these things happened to them in figure.» Indeed, so many deeds of the patriarchs, so many oracles of the prophets, so many symbols of visions, so many sacrifices of victims, so many sacraments of baptisms and ceremonies, so many decrees of laws ratified by the blood of animals — all were shadows, figures, and types that prefigured Christ and represented Him, as it were in an enigma and under a veil, to the rude people; but the Gospel manifestly presents to us Christ and His mysteries and sacraments. Whence the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 3:18, says: «But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are being transformed into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord.» For this reason the Apostle begins his Epistle to the Romans thus: «Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, which He had promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning His Son, etc.»
Fourth
Fourth. The Law was a messenger of fear, but the Gospel of love. For the Law threatened death to transgressors, while the Gospel chiefly holds out a reward to believers. Therefore the Law belonged to servants; the Gospel belongs to the free and to children. «God,» says Paul, «has made us competent ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Now if the ministry of death (that is, the Law threatening death), engraved in letters on stones, was in glory, etc., how much more shall the ministry of the spirit (the Gospel, which ministers the spirit) be in glory?» 2 Corinthians 3:6. What then is the Gospel? It is the law of liberty, the law of the spirit, the law of beneficence and charity. For Christ «went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him.» Acts 10:38. Wherefore St. John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria, as Leontius testifies in his biography, chapter 22, was inspired to his most generous almsgiving by the Gospel, and by the example of that evangelical man Serapion of Sidon: when he read in his acts that Serapion had given his cloak to a poor man, and then going on a little further had met another suffering from cold and had given him his tunic; and that because he was sitting naked, holding the holy Gospel, and when someone asked: «Who stripped you, Abba?» he pointed to the holy Gospel and said: «This did.» At another time he had sold this same Gospel and given the money as alms; and when his disciple said: «Abba, where is the Gospel?» he replied: «Believe me, son, He Who said to me, Sell what you have and give to the poor — I sold Him and gave to them, so that on the day of judgment we may have more abundant confidence before God.» And because on yet another occasion a widow had asked the same holy Serapion for alms, since her sons were starving, and he had absolutely nothing, he handed himself over to her to sell him to Greek actors, whom he also converted to Christianity in a few days. So too St. Paulinus gave himself into slavery to the Vandals in place of a widow's son, to imitate Christ, Who, though He was the Lord of glory, is recorded in the Gospel to have made Himself poor and a servant for our sake, so that by His poverty and servitude He might enrich us and make us free. Palladius, in the Lausiac History, chapter 116, narrates that Abbot Bisarion always carried the Gospel under his arms, so that from it he might learn what was to be done and how to live according to the Gospel. Therefore, when he came upon a naked man, he stripped himself of his own clothes to clothe the naked man. And when he was asked: «Who stripped you?» he held out the Gospel: «This,» he said, «stripped me.» Again, when he encountered another destitute man and had nothing else to give, he sold the very codex of the Gospel and gave the money to the poor man; and when Dulas, his disciple, asked: «Abba, where is your Gospel?» he replied: «Do not be saddened; for that we may have confidence there (in heaven), I sold the very word that always said to me: Sell what you have and give to the poor.»
Fifth
Fifth. The Law promised earthly and perishable goods; but the Gospel promises heavenly and eternal ones. In the Law you hear nothing but the promise of an abundance of oil, wine, honey, cattle, etc.; but in the Gospel, the promise of the vision and possession of God, of joys and everlasting goods. Joshua led the Hebrews into a land flowing with milk and honey, but a land of the dying; Jesus, however, leads Christians into the land of the living, shining with all grace and glory, as the Apostle teaches (Hebrews 4:8); whence in Romans 1 he boldly says: «For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek» — that is, then to the Gentile. «For the justice of God is revealed in it from faith to faith, as it is written: The just man lives by faith.» Therefore the power of the Gospel teaches and persuades faith, faith justifies, justice saves and blesses.
Sixth
Sixth. The Law was a heavy burden; the Gospel, however, is a light yoke. Hear Christ in Matthew 11: «Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart.» For the Law enacted very many laws, and these of three kinds: moral, ceremonial, and judicial, most of which decree death for transgressors; but the Gospel added few precepts to the Decalogue, as well as sacraments; moreover it attached to them an abundance of the grace of the Spirit and of heavenly consolations. Whence Isaiah, chapter 61, introduces Christ speaking thus: «The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me. He has sent Me to bring good tidings to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, to proclaim liberty to captives and release to the imprisoned.»
Seventh
Seventh. The Law was a road to Christ and the Gospel; but the Gospel is the goal and terminus of the Law, namely «the end of the Law is Christ, for salvation to everyone who believes» (Romans 10:4). Wherefore St. Bernard, in homily 1 on the Missus est, teaches that Christ was the fruit of the Law's promise, as it were of the seed and flowers. For the fruit is the end toward which seeds tend and in which they terminate. Therefore Moses and the Prophets aim at Christ as their target; wherefore the Gospels are likewise the end and goal of those same prophets, and all of them lead by the hand to the Gospels, and are contained and explained in the Gospels.
Eighth
Eighth. The Law was given only to the Jews; the Gospel to all nations. Hence Isaiah, chapter 49, prophesying of Christ: «It is too small a thing,» he says, «that you should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the remnants of Israel. Behold, I have given you as a light to the nations, that you may be My salvation to the end of the earth.»
Again, the Law was temporary, for it lasted only until the Gospel; but the Gospel will endure forever and be eternal. Hear the Apostle, Hebrews 7:18: «For there is indeed a setting aside of the former commandment, because of its weakness and uselessness — for the Law brought nothing to perfection — but there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God, etc., through Him who said: The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest forever» (Psalm 110).
Moreover, the Gospel was composed by Christ in such a wondrous manner that it suits every age, sex, and rank of human beings, so that it is a universal book, and like a kind of Pandora is a treasury of all wisdom. For the Gospel provides the rule of a just and holy, indeed perfect life, prescribing it to men, women, children, married couples, widows, virgins, monks, pastors, teachers, and bishops. Let the following serve as an example, which St. Augustine says in his book On True Religion, chapter 16: «The entire life of Christ on earth, through the humanity which He deigned to assume, was a school of morals.» For all the goods of the world, since He despised them, He taught should be despised; all the evils of the world, since He endured them, He showed should be endured and overcome. For Christ taught nothing by word that He did not demonstrate by example. «The followers of pleasure perniciously craved riches: He chose to be poor. They yearned for honors and power: He refused to be made king. They considered their carnal children a great good: He scorned such marriage and offspring. They most proudly shrank from insults: He endured every kind of insult. They considered injuries intolerable: what greater injury than for a just and innocent man to be condemned? They loathed bodily pains: He was scourged and tortured. They feared death: He was punished with death. They considered the cross the most ignominious form of death: He was crucified. All the things we were not living rightly because we desired to have them, He made worthless by going without them; all the things we were straying from the pursuit of truth because we desired to avoid them, He cast down by enduring them.» Thus far St. Augustine.
Ninth
Ninth. The Law was imperfect; but the Gospel, in whichever direction you look, whether you consider faith or morals, is complete and perfect. The Jews therefore under the Law were like students of the alphabet; but Christians under the Gospel become accomplished theologians. Hear the Apostle, Galatians 4:3: «When we were children, we were in servitude under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.» Wherefore St. Cyril, book 9 on John: «It was fitting,» he says, «that Israel should be taught through Moses as a child, since it was still of a childish and rather unrefined mind; but through Christ, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, the true and most consummate knowledge was to be brought to us.» Indeed, Christ in Matthew 5 reformed many decrees of the Law, and recalled them to a better form and standard of virtue and piety. «You have heard,» He says, «that it was said to the ancients: You shall not swear falsely, but shall fulfill your oaths to the Lord. But I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is His footstool, etc. But let your speech be: yes, yes; no, no; for whatever is more than these comes from evil. You have heard that it was said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if someone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also, etc. You have heard that it was said: You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and slander you, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes His sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.»
For this reason St. Jerome (or rather St. Paulinus, as the style indicates) writing to Celantia, a most noble matron bound by marriage yet seeking a rule of pious life, in Epistle 14, responding to her, assigns the path of the Gospel for her to read, and of Him Who says: «I am the truth and the way.» «As a kind of brief reminder,» he says, «you must choose that sentence of the Gospel and inscribe it upon your heart, which is uttered from the Lord's own mouth as a summary of all justice: Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do also to them. And expressing the force of this precept, He adds and says: For this is the Law and the Prophets.» And after some further words: «Therefore at every action, at every word, at every thought even, let this maxim be reconsidered; which, like a mirror always prepared and placed at hand, may show you the quality of your will, and may either reprove you for an unjust deed or gladden you for a just one: for whenever you have toward another the same disposition that you wish another to maintain toward you, you are keeping the path of equity; but whenever you are toward another such as you wish no one to be toward you, you have abandoned the road of justice.»
The same St. Jerome, in his epistle to Gaudentius, instructing him on how to educate his little daughter Pacatula: «When the little maiden,» he says, «has reached her seventh year, let her learn the Psalter by heart and make the Gospels the treasure of her heart.»
Tenth
Tenth. The Law hands down precepts only, and those conformable to nature; but the Gospel contains both precepts, and counsels, and mixtures of precepts and counsels — and these transcend nature, are paradoxical, supernatural, and divine. Among the precepts, that of the new charity holds the first place: «A new commandment,» He says, «I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, so also love one another» (John 13:34).
The counsels are: «If someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the other also.» And: «And whoever wishes to go to law with you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.» And: «Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two» (Matthew 5:39, 40, 41). The mixed — that is, partly precepts, partly counsels — are: «Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,» and the remaining eight Beatitudes which St. Matthew recounts in chapter 5:3 and following.
Wherefore St. Augustine, in Sermon 112 On Time, teaches that the blessedness of this life consists in sacred letters and the Gospel, and demonstrates it by this argument: «Blessedness,» he says, «consists in the knowledge and contemplation of God; we draw our knowledge of God from sacred letters and the Gospel; therefore blessedness resides in them and in the study and meditation of them.» Moreover, Christ said to the Jews: «Search the Scriptures,» He says, «for you think that in them you have eternal life» (John 5:39). And in chapter 17, turning to the Father: «This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent, etc. For I am the way, the truth, and the life.» «I am the way for beginners, the truth for those advancing, the life for the perfect; I am the way of holy conduct, the truth of divine teaching, the life of everlasting blessedness,» says St. Leo. «Let us follow therefore,» says St. Bernard, Sermon 2 On the Ascension, «let us follow You, O Lord, through You, to You, because You are the way, the truth, and the life: the way in example, the truth in promise, the life in reward.» St. Augustine gives the reason, Sermon 112 On Time: «Because,» he says, «the reading of Sacred Scripture is no small foretaste of divine blessedness. For in these writings, as in a kind of mirror, a person can examine himself — what he is, or where he is heading. Constant reading purifies all things, strikes the fear of hell, and stirs the reader's heart toward heavenly joys. Whoever wishes always to be with God must pray and read frequently; for when we pray, we ourselves speak with God; but when we read, God speaks with us.»
The whole wisdom, virtue, perfection, and happiness of a Christian consists in this: that he drink in, meditate upon, and express in his conduct the teaching and life of Christ described in the Gospel. Christ teaches that true justice and holiness consist in the interior purity and integrity of the mind, not in the outward appearance of works; in a modest and holy conscience before God, not in the pomp and applause of men; in humility, not in ostentation; not in the pursuit of honors, but in their avoidance and contempt. He teaches not to resist evil, but to love enemies equally with friends. What Socrates, what Aristotle, what Plato understood these things? He teaches to despise earthly things as worthless and fleeting, to aspire to heavenly things, so that we who have begun to be greater than the world and the age may, above all the surging waves and tempests of the struggling world, direct our minds and lives in heaven, live for God, labor for eternity, and therefore in the contest of justice, with God and Christ watching, eagerly run toward the proposed palm of glory, and for it willingly and generously pour out our life and blood, if need be. What philosopher knew these things? The worldly have followed, and still follow, the vapors of fame and glory; they pursue the summits of honors, they gape after wealth and pleasures; the disciple of Christ holds this as fixed: «For me, to cling to God is good; for me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.»
Christ teaches that He was sent by the Father into the world for a threefold reason: namely, that He might be for mankind a Redeemer, a Teacher, and an Exemplar of life. To the Redeemer we owe love, to the Teacher obedience, and to the Exemplar imitation and following. This is the sum of the Gospel. «The Gospels,» says St. Basil, in his preface to St. John, «present Christ Himself to us as though breathing, teaching, working wonders, and suffering terrible things.» St. Anthony, as attested by St. Anastasius in his life, said: «The Gospel is a kind of letter sent from God out of heaven,» teaching us by what way we should tend toward heaven, how we should please God, and by what means we should live well and perfectly.
Clearly and brilliantly St. Bernard says, in Sermon 1 On the Seven Loaves: «The Gospel,» he says, «is the mirror of truth; it flatters no one, it deceives no one; in it each person will find himself such as he is, so that he may not tremble with fear where there is no fear, nor rejoice when he has done evil.» St. Gregory uses the same metaphor, in book 2 of the Moralia, chapter 1: «Sacred Scripture,» he says, «is set before the eyes of the mind like a kind of mirror, so that our interior face may be seen in it. For there we recognize our ugliness, there our beauty; there we perceive how much we are progressing; there how far we are from progress.» St. Ambrose agrees, in Sermon 20 on Psalm 118, around the middle: «The Gospel,» he says, «is not only a teaching of faith, but also a school of morals and a mirror of conduct.»
Eleventh
Eleventh. The Law presents a bare precept to the intellect; the Gospel at the same time with the precept breathes grace into the will for fulfilling it, according to that saying of St. Leo: «He justly presses with a precept who first provides assistance.» For Christ, Who speaks in the Gospel, does not merely sound outwardly in the ears, but also inwardly enters the mind and instills in it the meaning and relish of the outward sound, so that what the voice urges, the spirit persuades: «My words are spirit and life,» He Himself says (John 6); and Jeremiah, chapter 31, whom Paul cites in Hebrews 10: «This,» he says, «is the covenant that I will make with them, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their hearts, and on their minds I will write them.» When therefore we read the Gospel, Christ speaks to us; when we pray, we ourselves speak to Christ. One single voice of the Gospel — «If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor» — was able to inflame that great Anthony, then still a young man renowned for his nobility and wealth, with such love of angelic poverty that he immediately stripped himself of all goods, for which blind mortals so eagerly gape, and embraced a heavenly life on earth through monastic profession. Christ sounds forth: «Everyone who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or wife, or children, or fields for My name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will possess eternal life» (Matthew 19:29). «These are the words,» says St. Bernard in his sermon Behold, we have left all things, «which have persuaded contempt of the world throughout the whole world and voluntary poverty; these are what fill cloisters with monks and deserts with anchorites.» This trumpet-call at Bethlehem and the sheepfolds summoned to the standards of the Cross Jeromes, Anthonies, Francises; the tenderest and most noble princesses, Paulas, Melanias, Pelagias, and a thousand hosts of angels in the flesh — this does not surprise me. But one may well marvel at the opinion of St. Bernard, who in Sermon 1 on Septuagesima does not hesitate to assert that whoever hears, reads, and meditates on the word of God with fruit possesses a sign and token of his predestination; and lest you be surprised, he gives the reason: «He who is of God,» says the Truth, «hears the words of God; therefore you hear, because you are of God.» Wherefore St. Cecilia, the glory of Rome, leader of virgins, standard-bearer of martyrs, always carried the Gospel of Christ in her breast, which neither fires, nor swords, nor goads could wrest from her — rather, through it she not only attained the crown of virginity and martyrdom herself, but also instructed and formed her spouse Valerian, his brother Tiburtius, and many others for the same crown, so that the Church rightly sings of her: «Your handmaid Cecilia, O Lord, served You like a busy bee.»
St. Hilarion's inheritance was the Gospel written in his own hand, which therefore on his deathbed he bequeathed to his disciple Hesychius. «In the eightieth year of his age,» says St. Jerome, «when Hesychius was absent, he wrote a brief letter in his own hand, as a kind of testament, leaving him all his riches — namely, the Gospel, and a tunic, a sackcloth, a cowl, and a small cloak.»
Thus cenobites, anchorites, and all the saints drew their rule of life likewise from the Gospel; for many there was no other book. St. John Calybites had one book of the Gospel as his entire possession, and no other guide for life, no other teacher of that sublime philosophy by which he so conquered the affections of fatherland and parents that he seemed a citizen of the world, without father and without mother. St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Augustine, and St. Basil borrowed their rules and monastic constitutions from the Gospel. Hence also St. Bernard, in Sermon 43 on the Song of Songs, attributes to the Gospel all his progress since his conversion. For this reason St. Jerome commands St. Eustochium, a religious virgin, to engage in this reading day and night, «so that sleep may creep upon her while holding the book, and the holy page may catch her falling face.» And of St. Paula, what a marvelous knowledge of Sacred Scripture he records — not only knowledge, but also experience and practice! You would call her a woman who was an ark of the covenant and an armory of the Gospel. In dangers, says St. Jerome, she would say: «If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.» When the ruin of her entire patrimony was reported, she would say: «What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his soul?» And: «Naked I came from my mother's womb.» In frequent illness: «When I am weak, then I am strong.» And: «We have this treasure in earthen vessels, until this mortal puts on immortality.» In sorrow she would sing: «Why are you sad, O my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God.» Assailed by envy and reproaches: «Why should I not,» she said, «overcome malice with patience? Why should I not break pride with humility, and offer the other cheek to the one who strikes me?» When, because of her excessive fervor for virtue, she seemed mad to some: «We have become,» she said, «a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.» And: «We are fools for Christ; but the foolishness of God is wiser than men.» When she poured out alms and stripped herself bare: «Blessed,» she said, «are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.» And: «Make for yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity.» In self-contempt: «The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do to me.» «The humble can be pressed down, but cannot be crushed; she is a palm tree — the more you press it down, the higher it raises its triumphant crown. Humility alone exalts.» Against flatterers: «If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ;» «I cannot flatter, I detest sycophants; Christian liberty, sincerity, and truth with St. John the Baptist are dearer to me than life. And why should I fear a man who tomorrow will be dust and worms?» And many more such sayings — fortifying her breast with this armor of God against each and every temptation, virtue, or vice — she was the first in Bethlehem to train the angelic choirs of virgins: a woman leading so great an enterprise, she taught men to laugh at, despise, and trample underfoot wealth, glory, kingdoms, applause, and all the mockeries of fortune and the world. These things and more St. Jerome records in various places, and in nearly the same words in the Epitaph of St. Paula.
Twelfth
Twelfth. The Law created no apostles; the Gospel created very many. The reason is what I just assigned: «For the word of God is living and effective, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and penetrating even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.» For the Gospel has this power: that whoever believes is immediately made zealous to propagate it, and thereby becomes its herald and preacher.
St. Chrysanthus, who purpled Rome with the blood of himself and his companions, was converted from paganism to Christ by the constant reading of the Gospel, and in turn converted his wife Daria, and the two of them drew countless persons — he men, she women — to the faith and to chastity. Wherefore by the Emperor Numerian, after various tortures, and after the brothel in which a lion sent by God defended Daria from violation, they were buried alive in the ground and crushed with stones, undergoing a glorious martyrdom in the year of our Lord 284, on October 25, on which day the Church, especially the Roman Church, recalls and celebrates their annual memorial and triumph — the same Church which displays the tomb and trophy of their combat.
The apostle of the Germans, St. Boniface, in the year 750 from the Virgin's birth, while propagating the law of Christ with his companions in Germany, always carried the sacred book of the Gospel with him, to such a degree that he did not relinquish it even in martyrdom: indeed, when the Frisians brandished their sword at his head, he held out this book as a spiritual shield, and by a remarkable miracle, although the book was cut through the middle by the sharp sword, not a single letter was destroyed by that cut. St. Dominic, that torch of the Church and father of the Preachers, had the Gospel of St. Matthew as his perpetual companion, and wore it out so much that he knew nearly all of it by heart; his axiom was: «Without Sacred Scripture, one cannot be a preacher.» Rightly does St. Gregory say on that passage of Job, Silver has the beginnings of its veins: «Silver,» he says, «is the splendor of eloquence or wisdom; the veins are the Sacred Scriptures; as if he plainly said: Whoever prepares himself for the words of true preaching must necessarily draw their origins from the sacred pages, so that he may recall everything he says to the foundation of divine authority, and upon it establish the building of his speech.» For this reason, the Venerable Bede died over the Gospel of St. John, and nearly breathing his last, in order to finish this commentary, summoned a scribe: «Take up,» he said, «the pen, and write quickly.» And at last: «It is finished» — and singing his swan song, «Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,» he most peacefully breathed forth his spirit, to be blessed with the vision of God in reward for his faith and labor, in the year of our Lord 731. Moreover, the Emperor Charlemagne, as great in the glory of sacred letters and historical deeds as in body, near his death, having crowned his son Louis at Aachen, gave himself entirely to prayers, almsgiving, and studies: he himself admirably corrected the four Gospels from Greek and Syriac exemplars, and devoted himself to them until his very last breath. His manuscript is religiously preserved at Aachen, as I myself have seen.
Heretics imitate the same practice, like apes of the Catholics. About Philip Melanchthon alone, it is well known that he never set out anywhere, never sat down anywhere, never dined, never lunched, unless a copy of the Gospel was at his side; thus this profane and dark son of the earth deceived many with this mask of wisdom and holiness. But leaving the sectarians aside, let us return to the orthodox apostles. St. Barnabas, the first apostle to the Gentiles together with St. Paul, when about to go to them, carried everywhere a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew written in his own hand, and at last, dying as a martyr for it in Cyprus, wished to be buried with it, as with a pledge of the heavenly resurrection promised to him; whence this Gospel was found on his breast under the Emperor Zeno, as his Life records. St. Bartholomew, according to Eusebius (History, book 5, chapter 10, section 5), brought with him to the Indians the Gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew, and left it there, and after more than a hundred years Pantaenus found it in the same place and brought it to Alexandria. Who made Saul into Paul? Certainly the Gospel. «These are the men,» says St. Leo in Sermon 1 on Sts. Peter and Paul, «through whom the Gospel of Christ shone forth for you, O Rome; they delivered to you the Gospel entrusted to them by Christ as a deposit, and sealed it with their blood, so that you might preserve it pure and unadulterated, and hand it on and explain it to the other Churches as a teacher of truth. This is what Paul proclaims to you, in Romans 15:16: That I should be the minister of Christ among the Gentiles, sanctifying (in Greek, ἱερουργῶν, that is, consecrating, offering sacrifice) the Gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.» Therefore the Gospel and the preaching and interpretation of the Gospel is a sacrifice; the victims are the Romans and the Gentiles who believe the Gospel — for by evangelizing, Paul offered them to God as a most pleasing victim; the libation is the blood of Paul, by which this sacrifice was watered and ratified. The same Apostle, in Ephesians 3:8: «To me,» he says, «the least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all as to what is the dispensation of the mystery hidden from ages in God, Who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places through the Church.» Paul therefore was a teacher of angels — he taught the principalities and powers the Gospel of Christ, says St. Chrysostom on the same passage. Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 9: «Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel. What then is my reward, what my glory? That in preaching the Gospel I may offer the Gospel without charge, so that I may not abuse my authority in the Gospel.»
Therefore the imitators, followers, and co-workers of Paul are those who handle, explain, and preach the Gospel both to natives and foreigners, both to the faithful and the unfaithful; to whom Isaiah rightly offers congratulations, chapter 52:7, and Paul in Romans 10:15: «How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, of those who bring glad tidings of good things!»
It remains for us to apply these teachings of the Gospel to our own conduct and that of others; for the Gospel is a mirror in which each person may look upon his own face, as well as another's, and wipe it clean, polish it, and adorn it. «Let there be no delay,» says St. Augustine in Sermon 112 On Time, «in doing what you understand inwardly by wisdom. And most blessed is he who turns the divine Scriptures into deeds» — so that by imitation he may translate the divine words of Christ into divine actions. Hear St. Bernard, in his work To the Knights of the Temple, chapter 11: «The life of Christ has been the rule of living for me.» And St. Gregory, book 30 of the Moralia, chapter 30: «God,» he says, «was made man among us, not only to redeem us by shedding His blood, but also to transform us by His example shown to us.» Still more clearly and fully St. Basil in his Monastic Constitutions, chapter 2: «Every action,» he says, «and likewise every word of our Savior Jesus Christ is a rule for cultivating piety and practicing virtue. For He assumed human nature for this reason: that in Himself, as on a kind of canvas, He might paint for us true piety and virtue, and place it before the eyes of all of us, proposing it as an archetype to be imitated by each according to his abilities.» For Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last (Apocalypse 1:4). «First in eternity,» says St. Ambrose, «last in humility.» Whence by Isaiah, chapter 53:3, He is called the most despised of men — in Hebrew: the cessation or ending of men. «O most lowly,» exclaims St. Bernard, «and most high! O humble and sublime! O reproach of men and glory of angels!» Let us learn therefore from the Gospel to live evangelically, that is, angelically. For Christ descended from heaven like an angel to teach men an angelic doctrine and life alike — indeed, to make men into angels, and into a kind of gods. «Behold, I send My angel,» He Himself says through Malachi, chapter 3, «and he shall prepare the way before My face, and immediately the Ruler Whom you seek shall come to His temple, and the Angel of the covenant Whom you desire.» Therefore from Him, Who is the eternal Wisdom of the Father, we must constantly seek light, spirit, and grace, so that He Who once sat in the midst of the teachers of Sacred Scripture — about to begin the Gospel — may even now open the same to both teachers and learners alike, that we may understand it, and complete our understanding with Christian actions. For this is His delight. «Did you not know,» He says, «that I must be about My Father's business?» — namely, in the ancient Scriptures, which were a prelude to Me and the Gospel, about which I listen to and question the scribes and doctors of the Law, so that from them they may recognize Me as the Christ and Messiah sent by the Father. Let us therefore say, and say again and again, if not with equal, at least with similar devotion, with St. Augustine, book 4 On the Trinity, chapter 1: «Among this kind of men (who bear the sorrow of their pilgrimage from their longing for their homeland and for its Creator, the blessed God), in the household of Your Christ, O Lord my God, among Your poor I groan: give me of Your bread to answer those who do not hunger and thirst for justice, but are satisfied and abound. But what satisfies them is their own fantasy, not Your truth, which they recoil from by repelling it and fall into their own vanity. I certainly know how many fabrications the human heart produces. And what is my heart but a human heart? But I pray to the God of my heart that I may pour forth into these writings nothing from those fabrications in place of solid truth, but that there may come into them whatever can come through me from that source whence, though cast out from the sight of His eyes and trying to return from afar by the way which the divinity of His Only-Begotten has paved for humanity, the dawn of His truth is sprinkled upon me.» And after a few words: «For indeed the essence of God, which is, has nothing changeable — neither in eternity, nor in truth, nor in will — because there the truth is eternal and the charity is eternal; and there the charity is true and the eternity is true; and there the eternity is dear and the truth is dear.»
Open to us, O Lord Jesus, the secrets of Your truth and true charity — You Who have the key of David, Who open and no one shuts, Who shut and no one opens — that we may clearly know it, and knowing it may cherish and love it, and practice what we love by our deeds — because You are our love, our desire, our life and blessedness. Amen.
Chapter II: On the Number, Order, Dissonance, and Consonance of the Gospels
Very many in ancient times wrote Gospels, especially heretics, who attributed them to apostles and inscribed them with their names, so that they might thereby gain authority for their heresy: «Whence,» says St. Jerome in his preface to St. Matthew, «composed by diverse authors, they became the origins of diverse heresies — such as the gospel according to the Egyptians, and Thomas, and Matthias, and Bartholomew, and the Twelve Apostles, and of Basilides and Apelles, and the rest whom it would take far too long to enumerate. It is only necessary for now to say that there were certain persons who, without the spirit and grace of God, attempted to compose a narrative rather than to weave together the truth of history. To whom that prophetic word may rightly be applied: Woe to those who prophesy from their own heart, who follow their own spirit; who say: The Lord says — and the Lord did not send them; about whom the Savior also speaks in the Gospel of John: All who came before Me were thieves and robbers.» And further on: «From all these things it is clearly shown that only four Gospels ought to be accepted, and that all the trifles of the apocrypha are to be shunned by the dead heretics rather than by churchmen.» Therefore these four alone are canonical Gospels; for the Church approved them as such from the teaching and tradition of the Apostles. For St. Peter approved the Gospel of St. Mark; Paul that of St. Luke; the company of apostles that of St. Matthew, which they took with them as they departed for their provinces; and all the bishops of Asia and the other faithful approved that of St. John.
Origen and St. Jerome occasionally cite the Gospel according to the Hebrews as if it were St. Matthew's: therefore it seems to have been the same as the Gospel of St. Matthew, but corrupted here and there with various and foolish additions; hence its authority is doubtful and uncertain. Nevertheless, St. Jerome translated it from Hebrew into Latin. Hear him speak of it in the Catalogue of Illustrious Men, under James, the brother of the Lord: «The Gospel which is called According to the Hebrews, recently translated by me into Greek and Latin — which Origen frequently uses — relates the following about James after the resurrection of the Savior: Now when the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, He went to James and appeared to him; for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from the hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he should see Him rising from the dead. And again shortly after: Bring, said the Lord, a table and bread; and immediately it is added: He took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to James the Just, and said to him: Brother, my brother, eat your bread, for the Son of Man has risen from among those who sleep.» Thus Jerome, who in the same book, speaking of Ignatius, says: «Ignatius wrote one letter to the Smyrnaeans, in which concerning the Gospel recently translated by me, he puts forth testimony about the person of Christ, saying: And I, even after the resurrection, saw Him in the flesh, and I believe that He exists. And when He came to Peter and to those who were with Peter, He said to them: Behold, touch Me, for I am not a bodiless demon; and immediately they touched Him and believed in Him.» Furthermore, Origen, in volume 2 on John, cites from this Gospel the following: «Christ said: Just now My mother, the Holy Spirit, took Me by one of My hairs and carried Me to the great mountain Tabor.» This statement indeed, unless considered charitably, seems to contain the heresy of the Gnostic Valentinians, who asserted that the Holy Spirit was the mother of Christ.
Origen, however, excuses this by saying that the Holy Spirit is called «mother» not by generation, but by imitation, because He imitates the Father and conforms to His will — an excuse that seems rather weak.
Bede also praises this Gospel and asserts that it was approved by the ancients. Be that as it may, it is certain that it is not canonical, nor does it have the authority of Sacred Scripture. Moreover, this Gospel according to the Hebrews is also called the Gospel of the Nazarenes, because the Nazarenes used it. Hear St. Jerome on Matthew 12:13, where the healing of the withered hand by Christ is discussed: «In the Gospel,» he says, «which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use (which we recently translated into Greek from the Hebrew language, and which is called by most people the authentic Matthew), this man who has the withered hand is described as a mason, pleading for help in these words: I was a mason, earning my living with my hands; I beg You, Jesus, to restore my health to me, lest I shamefully beg for food.»
Moreover, the Nazarenes were Jews converted to Christ who, while observing the Law of Moses along with the Gospel, were expelled from the Church, and they seem to have corrupted the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew — which at first they preserved pure and intact — with certain additions, just as the Ebionites and Carpocratians did.
You may ask why there are precisely four Gospels and four Evangelists — no more, no fewer. Various authors give various reasons.
First, St. Augustine, in book 1 On the Harmony of the Evangelists, chapter 2, responds that this was done because of the four regions of the world, to which the Gospel was to be preached: «Since,» he says, «there are four parts of the globe, throughout the entirety of which the Church of Christ was to be spread, they in a certain way declared this by the very beginning of their number.»
Second: these four are like «four pillars of the Church, upon which, as upon a squared stone, the structure of holy faith rises,» says St. Gregory, book 1, epistle 24. For buildings are made in a square form so that they may be firm. Whence also the heavenly Jerusalem is said to be set in a square (Apocalypse 21:16), and through the four cherubim, which Ezekiel saw (chapter 1) and St. John (Apocalypse chapter 4), the four Evangelists are signified, as St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus, St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, Bede, and the rest of the Fathers and interpreters teach by unanimous agreement.
Hear St. Jerome, Epistle 103 to Paulinus: «Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four-horse chariot of the Lord, and the true cherubim, which is interpreted 'multitude of knowledge': throughout the whole body they are full of eyes, sparks flash forth, lightnings dart about, they have straight feet reaching upward, their backs are winged and everywhere in flight. They hold one another, they are interlocked with each other, and like a wheel within a wheel they revolve and go wherever the breath of the Holy Spirit has led them.»
Now indeed the cherubim of Ezekiel had four faces and forms, namely of a lion, a calf, a man, and an eagle. Whence St. John (Apocalypse 4) calls them four living creatures: «The first living creature,» he says, «was like a lion, and the second like a calf, and the third like a man, and the fourth like a flying eagle.» And a little afterward: «They were full of eyes,» he says, «and they had no rest, day and night saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was, and Who is, and Who is to come.»
The lion denotes St. Mark, whose face — that is, the beginning of whose Gospel — is the cry and roar of St. John the Baptist in the desert: «Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.» The calf denotes St. Luke, who begins his Gospel from the old priesthood (whose victim was a calf) of Zechariah, who was the father of the Baptist. The man denotes St. Matthew, who begins from the human genealogy of Christ. The eagle denotes St. John, who, soaring most high from earth to heaven like an eagle, thunders forth that opening of divinity: «In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,» so that rightly St. Dionysius the Areopagite, in his epistle to the same St. John, calls him the sun of the Gospel, and names his Gospel the memorial and renewal of that theology which he himself, reclining on the breast of Christ, drew from Him, and left for posterity to behold in his Gospel, as if by a ray of the sun.
Hear St. Jerome, in his preface to St. Matthew: «These four Gospels, then, long foretold, the book of Ezekiel also confirms, in which the first vision is thus woven: 'and in the midst the likeness of four living creatures; and their countenance was the face of a man, and the face of a lion, and the face of a calf, and the face of an eagle.' The first face, of a man, signifies Matthew, who began to write as if about a man: 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.' The second, Mark, in which the voice of a lion roaring in the wilderness is heard: 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.' The third, a calf, which foreshadows that the Evangelist Luke took his beginning from Zechariah the priest. The fourth, John the Evangelist, who, taking up the wings of an eagle and hastening to the higher things of Christ, discourses on the Word of God.»
Third, because the number four is a solid and square number; it therefore signifies the solidity and perfection of the Gospels. Whence Philo, in his book On the Creation of the World, says that «the number four is the first to display the nature of a solid; for in unity a point is reckoned, in the binary a line; when width is added, a surface is produced pertaining to the ternary; this falls short of being a solid body in nature by lacking height alone, which being joined to the ternary produces the quaternary.» Likewise St. Augustine, in his Eighty-Three Questions, question 57: «Progression,» he says, «from a point to length, from length to width, from width to height, produces the solidity of a body, which in turn is contained in the number four.» «Furthermore, it should not be overlooked,» says Philo, «that the first of the numbers, four, is a perfect square, equally even, the measure of equity and justice, and thence of all virtue.» Wherefore Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book I, chapter 12, compares a perfect man to a square. For this number is the first equally even, as the measure of the just and equitable. It also contains the threefold dimension of a solid body together with the point. Finally, four is the cause, basis, and source of ten, which is the most perfect of all numbers. For all numbers from one to four, if added together, make ten: namely, add 1, 2, 3, 4, and you will produce ten.
Fourth, others assign the reason that there are just as many, namely four letters in the tetragrammaton name of God (יהוה), representing the four primary attributes of God which are explained in the Gospels. Others, because there are four rivers of paradise. So St. Augustine, On the City of God, Book 13, chapter 21, and St. Jerome, in the prologue to St. Matthew. But all these are mystical and symbolic; whence our Joannes de la Haye catalogs similar reasons, or rather symbolic analogies, numbering up to twenty, in his Apparatus Evangelicus, chapter 29.
Fifth, then, the literal, proper, and genuine reason is that, just as in the heavenly court there are four cherubim, as it were princes and wise ones of God, so in the earthly Church it was fitting that there be four Evangelists, as it were princes and cherubim of Christ. That this is so is clear from Ezekiel 1, where he depicts these four cherubim with four emblems representing four attributes of God. Add that two Evangelists at the beginning of their Gospels describe the two natures of Christ, namely Matthew the human, John the divine; while the other two describe Christ's twofold dignity, namely Mark the royal, Luke the priestly: so Rupert, on Ezekiel chapter 1, chapter 7. «For Christ is a man by being born, a calf by dying, a lion by rising, an eagle by ascending,» says St. Jerome in the preface to Mark, or whoever the author is; for the style indicates that it is not St. Jerome's. This therefore is the cherubic chariot, the four-horse chariot of the Gospel, driven by four horses — that is, by the Evangelists — and carried around the whole world.
Moreover, these four living creatures signify the four primary attributes, and as it were the emblems, of Christ: namely the lion signifies royal fortitude, which He displayed most especially in the resurrection from death and the tomb; for just as the lion is king of animals, so Christ is King of the faithful, indeed of all men and angels. The calf denotes His priesthood, which He accomplished and consummated by offering Himself on the cross as a holocaust and victim for sin to God the Father; the man denotes His humanity assumed from the Virgin, and His words and deeds; the eagle, His divinity and ascension into heaven. Each of these living creatures had four faces, because each fourth Evangelist embraces the beginnings of the other three Evangelists, and therefore the entire sequence of the Gospel narrative, as Primasius rightly observed. See the commentary on Ezekiel 1:28 and Apocalypse 4.
Somewhat differently, St. Augustine assigned these four in his On the Harmony of the Evangelists, Book 1, chapter 3, and Book 4, chapter 19; and St. Jerome, Against Jovinian, Book 1, and Rupert: «Matthew,» they say, «especially commends the royal dignity in Christ's humanity, Mark the prophetic, Luke the priestly, John the divine; for Christ was king, prophet, priest, and God.»
Now as regards the order of time, St. Matthew first wrote the Gospel, St. Mark second, St. Luke third, St. John fourth. Hear St. Jerome, in the preface to St. Matthew: «First of all is Matthew the publican, surnamed Levi, who published his Gospel in Judaea in the Hebrew language, especially for the sake of those who had believed in Jesus from among the Jews, and who by no means kept the shadow of the Law after the truth of the Gospel had succeeded it. Second is Mark, the interpreter of the apostle Peter, and the first bishop of the Church of Alexandria, who did not himself see the Lord and Savior, but narrated the things which he had heard his master preaching according to the fidelity of the deeds rather than their order. Third is Luke the physician, a Syrian by nation, of Antioch, whose praise is in the Gospel, who was himself also a disciple of the apostle Paul, and composed his volume in the regions of Achaia and Boeotia, reaching back to more remote matters, and, as he himself confesses in his preface, describing things heard rather than seen. Last is John the apostle and evangelist, whom Jesus loved most, who, reclining upon the breast of the Lord, drank the purest streams of doctrine, and who alone from the cross merited to hear: 'Behold your mother.'»
Hear St. Augustine, On the Harmony of the Evangelists, Book 1, chapter 2: «First,» he says, «Matthew, then Mark, third Luke, last John. Whence they had one order in knowing and preaching, but another in writing. For in knowing and preaching, those who followed the Lord present in the flesh were certainly first, who heard Him speaking and saw Him acting, and were sent from His mouth to evangelize; but in writing the Gospel, which must be believed to have been divinely ordained, of the number of those whom He chose before the Lord's Passion, two held the first and last place. Matthew the first, John the last, so that the other two, who were not of that number but yet had followed Christ speaking in them, might be embraced as sons and, being placed in the middle, might be protected on either side by them. Of these four, Matthew alone is reported to have written in Hebrew speech, the rest in Greek.»
Moreover, these four wrote the words and deeds of Christ so fittingly that they seem to produce a musical diatessaron harmony; for each one writes in such a way that he differs from the others in style, but agrees in sense and in reality. For what one passes over in silence, another supplies; what this one touches upon concisely, another expounds in detail; what that one indicates obscurely, this one declares clearly. Hear St. Augustine in the passage already cited: «And although each one seems to have maintained a certain order of narrating, yet none of them is found to have wished to write as if ignorant of the preceding writer, or to have passed over in ignorance what another is found to have written, but as each was inspired, he added also the not superfluous cooperation of his own labor.»
I shall say more on this matter in the canons which I shall presently append, where I shall show how dissimilar their likeness is, their concordant discordance, and at the same time I shall demonstrate how sweet a melody and harmony of the history this discordant concordance of theirs produces.
Finally, this discordance of the Evangelists «is the greatest testimony of truth,» says St. Chrysostom in the preface to St. Matthew: «For if they agreed completely and in all things, and with excessive diligence and care matched exactly in all times and places, down to each individual word, no enemy would ever have believed that they had not gathered together by common counsel to deceive, and composed the Gospel from a kind of human arrangement; for such solicitous consonance would not indicate simplicity.» And after some further remarks: «For if any one of them had said everything, the number of the rest would already have been superfluous; if they had all written things entirely different from one another, and all new, no proof of agreement could have appeared: therefore they both said many things in common, and nonetheless each recorded something of his own and special; and lest something seem added superfluously and importunely if nothing new were added, nor the entire trustworthiness of events be called into doubt if they had all said different things.»
Chapter III: On the Interpreters of the Gospels
The Syriac translation of the Gospels from the Greek, as it seems, exists in the Royal Bible. The Arabic with a Latin rendering was printed at Rome, in the typography of the Medici, in the year of the Lord 1591. I shall frequently cite both.
Likewise at Rome, in the Vatican library and in our library of the Roman College, I found the Gospels written in Coptic or Egyptian, Ethiopic, and Persian, and these are ancient; for soon after the times of Christ the Gospel was brought into Egypt by St. Mark, into Ethiopia by St. Matthew, into Persia by Simon and Jude. Whence in these regions there flourished the evangelical faith, life, and perfection. For this reason there existed in those same places so many swarms of holy monks, as well as the bravest martyrs.
The Persian Gospel was transmitted to the Roman College by the Rev. Father Hieronymus Xaverius, of the Society of Jesus, a relative of St. Father Francis Xavier, from the city of Agra, which is the royal seat of the King of the Moguls, as a precious gift and a notable monument of antiquity, where I made use of it. This codex was transcribed from the original in the year 790 of the Moors, which the Moors reckon from the birth of their sect of Mohammed, which began in the year of Christ 591. Therefore the year 790 of the Moors is the year 1381 from the birth of Christ, in which this codex was transcribed. But the original itself is far more ancient: whence it also has very many Persian words very dissimilar to those which the Persians now use. I shall make use of all these from time to time, but sparingly and with a grain of salt; for they do not have the authority and trustworthiness which the Greek and Latin Gospels possess; they do, however, confirm and from time to time illuminate them.
Moreover, there are Ethiopians or Abyssinians at Rome, and so the younger priests among them frequent the Roman College; there are also those skilled in other languages: for in the City is the whole world. These men interpreted for me the Gospels of their nation and language, and especially the Rev. Father Athanasius Kircher, of our Society, skilled in oriental languages, as is clear from his Lexicon of them, which he recently published.
Moreover, even though St. Matthew preached in nearer Ethiopia, which is closer to Egypt, and is called Sonnar today, where the Ethiopians are darker, and he is said to have died in the city of Luah, where even now temples exist in honor of St. Matthew; yet the rest of Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, ascribes the Gospels and the other Sacred Scriptures, as well as the faith of Christ, to a certain Ethiopian monk whose name was Aba Salama, that is, «Father of Peace,» because he brought them true peace and salvation. He was educated among the eastern Arabs, and from them he absorbed the Christian faith and Sacred Scripture, and then communicated them to all Ethiopia; whence he is regarded as its apostle. Therefore the Ethiopic version of Sacred Scripture agrees with the Greek, as with its mother.
Very many in ancient times, as well as in later and modern times, wrote commentaries on the Gospels (some on all, most on one particular Gospel), and illuminated them with their commentaries: namely Origen, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory, Bede, Theophylactus, Euthymius.
Hear St. Jerome, in the preface to Matthew: «I confess that I read many years ago Origen's twenty-five volumes on Matthew, and as many of his homilies, and the clause-by-clause type of interpretation; and the commentaries of Theophilus, bishop of the city of Antioch, and also of Hippolytus the martyr, and Theodore of Heraclea, and Apollinaris of Laodicea, and Didymus of Alexandria; and the minor works of the Latins Hilary, Victorinus, and Fortunatianus, from which, even if I were to gather only small things, something worthy of remembrance could be written.»
The number of more recent writers is almost infinite. Here therefore the abundance of interpreters produces a poverty of choice, so that the reader may say with the ancient Niobe: «Abundance has made me poor» (Ovid).
For among so many who vary in meaning, you do not know whom to prefer and follow. Many also are so prolix that not only students, but even doctors who devote themselves entirely to Sacred Scripture, need time and leisure, as well as strength and vigor of mind, to work through them. The following stand out: Alphonsus Tostatus, Bishop of Avila, who labored over four enormous volumes on St. Matthew alone; Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ghent; Franciscus Lucas, Dean of Saint-Omer; and from our Society, Alphonsus Salmeron, Joannes Maldonatus, Franciscus Toletus, Sebastianus Barradius. Jansenius excels in solidity of interpretation; Lucas in the Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syriac languages; Salmeron in applying the parables; Toletus in maturity of judgment; Barradius in moral applications, which serve both meditation and preaching.
Innovators and sectarians too, very many of them, have written commentaries on the Gospels. For so great was the veneration of the Gospels always among all, that in our age the followers of Luther wished to be called «evangelical,» when in reality they were «cac-evangelical,» and no one has dared to call the divine authority of the Gospels into doubt except madmen, Manichaeans, Ebion, Cerinthus, Carpocrates, Marcion, and our own enthusiasts, anabaptists, and Servetians; heretics, I say, without number have adorned the Gospels with their commentaries, or rather violated and corrupted them, as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Beza, Pellicanus, to the point that Augustin Marlorat, their fellow minister, wove a catena from easily twenty of the more celebrated among them.
I have therefore worked through all these, partly when at Leuven in the year of the Lord 1600, partly when at Rome I publicly treated, taught, and dictated the Gospels in the schools; and now I am working through those who have written on them more recently. For now, as an old man, I have spent nearly my entire life wearing myself out in this arena of learning Sacred Scripture, and for nearly forty years I have been striving to teach it both by lecturing and by writing. For no one can be a master and doctor in an art so vast, so sublime, and so difficult, unless he has first by studying been long a disciple of the learned; as it says: «Divination is in the mouth of the teacher; in doctrine his mouth shall not err.»
Finally, there was a twofold manner and method of explaining the Gospels. The former method, of many in ancient times and still now, was to skillfully weave the four Holy Gospels together into one monotessaron with a beautiful harmony. The first to do this was Theophilus, seventh from St. Peter, Bishop of Antioch, says St. Jerome to Algasia; then Tatian, the father of the Encratites; third, Ammonius, whom, as St. Jerome says, Eusebius of Caesarea followed: many more recent writers have imitated this, but with great praise above the rest, Cornelius Jansenius.
The latter method is of those who have pursued the Gospels individually in order, and still continue to do so. I shall follow these latter: both because this method is more straightforward, accessible, and orderly — for it is easy to find a passage you are looking for in any one Gospel separately, but difficult in a monotessaron, that is, in a harmony conflated from four into one, and therefore confused — and because it is my duty to explain Sacred Scripture as it stands, not to forge a new Gospel or a new harmony of the Gospel. Yet I shall carry this out in such a way that I shall insert into one Evangelist those things which others report, and refer the reader to him in the others, lest it be necessary to repeat the same thing twice, three times, and four times.
The chronological arrangement, however, and the order and sequence of all four, as well as of each individual one, I now briefly append, prefixing a synopsis as a kind of cover to the commentary.