Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
In the preceding chapter St. Peter exhorted the faithful to hold steadfastly to and to increase the faith of Christ by good works and by the reading of the Prophets; now in this chapter he warns the same to beware of false prophets contrary to the Prophets, namely heretics, of whom he first describes the malignity, and then the punishment; namely that they are to be punished after the manner of Lucifer and of the demons, and after the manner of the worldly, who were submerged by the flood, and of Sodom and Gomorrha, which were burnt up by heavenly fire. Then, in verse 10, he describes their depraved morals, especially lust, pride, rebellion, audacity, self-love, blasphemy, flattery, and avarice. Thirdly, in verse 16, he compares them with Balaam, whose malice was rebuked by an ass, because, like him, they entice men into errors by teaching lust and the liberty of the flesh; which is mere and foul slavery. Wherefore, he says, their latter end is become worse than the beginning, according to the proverb: "The dog is returned to his vomit," and, "The sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire."
Vulgate Text: 2 Peter 2:1-22
1. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them: bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2. And many shall follow their riotousness, through whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. 3. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you. Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their perdition slumbereth not. 4. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but delivered them, drawn down by infernal ropes to the lower hell, unto torments, to be reserved unto judgment. 5. And spared not the original world, but preserved Noah, the eighth person, the preacher of justice, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. 6. And reducing the cities of the Sodomites and of the Gomorrhites into ashes, condemned them to be overthrown, making them an example to those that should after act wickedly; 7. and delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation of the wicked: 8. for in sight and hearing he was just, dwelling among them, who from day to day vexed the just soul with unjust works. 9. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly from temptation, but to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented; 10. and especially them who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government, audacious, self-willed, they fear not to bring in sects, blaspheming: 11. whereas angels who are greater in strength and power, bring not against themselves a railing judgment. 12. But these men, as irrational beasts, naturally tending to the snare and to destruction, blaspheming whatever they know not, shall perish in their corruption, 13. receiving the reward of their injustice, counting for a pleasure the delights of a day: stains and spots, sporting themselves to excess, rioting in their feasts with you; 14. having eyes full of adultery and of sin that ceaseth not: alluring unstable souls, having their heart exercised with covetousness, children of malediction: 15. leaving the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity. 16. But had a check of his madness: the dumb beast, used to the yoke, which speaking with man's voice, forbade the folly of the prophet. 17. These are fountains without water, and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved. 18. For, speaking proud words of vanity, they allure by the desires of fleshly riotousness, those who for a little while escape, such as converse in error: 19. promising them liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption. For by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave. 20. For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former. 21. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them. 22. For that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit; and, the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.
Verse 1: There Were Also False Prophets Among the People, Even as There Shall Be Among You Lying Teachers, Who Shall Bring in Sects of Perdition
1. But there were also false prophets — namely false seers and teachers, who called the people away from God to idols and vices, promising them peace and an abundance of temporal goods, and mocking the oracles and threats of the true Prophets. For the demon, who is the ape of God, has stirred up such men in every age, so that just as God had His Prophets, he too might have his own, but false ones — who would attack God and the true Prophets by corrupting the true faith and religion with false opinions and superstitions, as Tertullian noted in the book On the Prescription against Heretics; Justin Against Trypho; St. Irenaeus, Cyprian, Augustine, and others. Such were the Prophets of Baal who set themselves against Elias, that they might substitute Baal for God, 3 Kings 18:19; Sedecias, Ananias, and others, whom Jeremiah strikes at in chapter 28; Isaias, chapter 9, verse 15; Moses, Deuteronomy 13:1, and others.
Among the people — of the Hebrews, who were the people and Church of the true God.
As there shall be also among you. — This is an anastrophe (inversion of order): for these words are to be placed thus, As there were of old false prophets among the Jews, so also among you, O Christians, there shall be lying teachers. For henceforth he treats of the Christians and their false prophets; but he recalls the ancients, both that Christians may not consider this novel and unprecedented, and that he may represent the morals of the new from the morals of the old. Such, in the time of St. Peter, were Simon Magus, the first heresiarch, whom his disciple Menander succeeded, and then Saturninus, Basilides, Ebion, Cerinthus, the Nicolaitans; and soon to come were the Gnostics, Valentinians, Montanists, Marcionites, etc., whom Tertullian, in the book On Prescription, chapter 4, calls pseudo-prophets, that is, false preachers; and pseudo-apostles, that is, adulterous evangelizers, as he himself interprets.
St. Paul foretold that the same would soon arise in the Church, Acts 20:30, and St. John, 1 Epistle, chapter 2, verse 2. Thus St. Augustine portrays the Manichaeans of his own age, in book 3 of the Confessions, chapter 6, and recalls that he was ensnared by them: "I fell," he says, "into men proudly raving, far too carnal and verbose, in whose mouths were the snares of the devil and a birdlime concocted by the mingling of the syllables of Thy name, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Paraclete our Comforter, the Holy Spirit. For all these did not depart from their lips, but only as far as the sound and the rattle of the tongue went; the heart, for the rest, was empty of the truth. And they kept saying: 'truth and truth,' and many spoke it to me, and nowhere was it in them, but they spoke false things, not only concerning Thee, who art truly the Truth, but even concerning these elements of this world, Thy creatures — concerning which I ought to have passed by even those philosophers speaking truly, out of love for Thee, my Father, supremely good, beauty of all things beautiful."
Who shall bring in — παρεισάξωσιν, that is, will introduce stealthily, secretly and deceitfully, holding out a face and a mask of piety and reformation as a screen for their heresy. As do our Calvinists, who call themselves the Reformed Church, while it is plainly deformed and disfigured, indeed disfiguring everything sacred and holy. Surely these are the rapacious wolves, who hide and disguise themselves in sheep's clothing, as Christ says, Matthew 7:15. These same are the foxes that demolish the Lord's vineyard, Canticles 2:15, whom St. Cyprian, in epistle 73, rightly calls apes imitating men; St. Ignatius, in the epistle to the Trallians, calls them men tempering hemlock with mead, tavern-keepers mixing poison with wine.
Hence St. Cyprian, epistle 52; St. Augustine, epistle 165; Irenaeus, book 3, chapter 2, and others slay heresy and heretics by convicting them of injustice and rapine — namely, that they invade the boundaries of Sacred Scripture and the Church, and occupy them as it were unjust possessors, with the legitimate Bishops and teachers driven out.
Excellently does Tertullian, On Prescription, chapter 21, lay down this rule of faith: "That is to be held," he says, "which the Church received from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, Christ from God: but he teaches that every other doctrine, which savours against the truth of the Churches and of the Apostles, and of Christ, and of God, is to be condemned beforehand as falsehood;" and in chapter 31 he shows the same from the parable of the seed and the tares, Matthew 13: "which establishes," he says, "that the good seed of wheat was sown first by the Lord, and that the adulteration of barren wild-oat fodder was afterwards superinduced by the enemy, the devil. Thus from the very order it is made manifest that what was handed down first is the Lord's and true; but what was sent in afterward is foreign and false." And in chapter 35, that our orthodox faith is the prior one, he says: "This will be the testimony of truth, wherever it occupies the chief place. What is not condemned by the Apostles, but defended, this will be the indication of ownership;" and in chapter 37, urging the prescription: "To the heretics, it must be said: Who are you? when and whence did you come? What do you, who are not Mine, do in My field? By what right, Marcion, do you cut down My forest? By what license, Valentinus, do you turn aside My fountains? By what power, Apelles, do you move My boundaries? Mine is the possession: why do you others sow and pasture here according to your own will? Mine is the possession: of old I possess, before you I possess, I have firm origins from the very authors whose property it was. I am the heir of the Apostles. As they provided in their testament, as they entrusted in faith, as they bound by oath, so I hold: you indeed they ever disinherited, and disowned as strangers, as enemies." See Vincent of Lerins in his golden little book against the profane novelties of the heresies.
Sects of perdition. — In Greek αἱρέσεις ἀπωλείας, that is, heresies of perdition, that is, lost and pernicious ones, which lead to ruin both present and eternal. For heresy does not only ruin souls in hell, but often also bodies, wealth, and empires in the present life — as in this and the preceding century we have seen Hungary and other provinces, by heresy and heretics, occupied by the Turks; great battles and slaughters committed by the Huguenots in France, by the Puritans in England and Scotland, by the Lutherans in Germany. Hence their leader, choirmaster, and instigator is the angel of the abyss, namely the devil, "whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, in Greek Apollyon, in Latin Exterminating One," Apocalypse 9:11. Further, Tertullian, On Prescription, chapter 6: "Heresy," he says, "called by a Greek word from the interpretation of choice, by which one uses it either to set up or to take up such opinions. Therefore he also called the heretic self-condemned, because in that for which he is condemned, he chose for himself; but for us it is not lawful to introduce anything of our own judgment, nor even to choose what someone else has introduced from his own judgment. We have the Apostles of the Lord as our authors, who themselves did not choose anything to introduce from their own judgment, but the discipline received from Christ they faithfully delivered to the nations. So even if an angel from heaven were to evangelize otherwise, anathema would be said by us." The heretic, therefore, is one who chooses what he will believe, and accordingly does not believe what the Doctors and the Church teach is to be believed. For heresy in Greek is the same as choice; sect (secta) is named from cutting (secando), in that it is a faction cut and separated off from others — according to that of Jude, verse 19: "These are they who separate themselves."
And denying Him who bought them. — In Greek ἀρνούμενοι, that is, denying — both in the present and in the future, that is, they deny and will deny, because this is their genius and spirit, namely to deny Christ. As if to say: Heretics deny Christ who redeemed them with His own blood, which is of the highest ingratitude and equally of madness; for they deny their own Saviour and salvation. Now they do this, both because most heresies have denied either Christ's divinity, or humanity, or soul, or will, or redemption, or grace; or ascribe to Christ things unworthy and blasphemous — such as ignorance, blasphemy, despair, damnation — as Calvin does: for whoever asserts these things denies Christ to be redeemer, not in word but in fact; and because they attack Christ's Sacraments, faith, doctrine, and Church. This is what St. Peter's follower, St. Jude, says in verse 4: "Denying the only Sovereign and our Lord Jesus Christ;" and because Simon Magus denied Christ, and used to say that he himself was the power of God and Christ; as in this century David Georgius (Joris), John of Leyden, and similar fanatics did. Finally, every heresy at last ends in atheism, and first denies Christ, then divinity and providence, finally God Himself; as we already see heretics teaching that anyone, even a Turk or a Pagan, can be saved in his own faith, and consequently that Christ and Christianity are not necessary — a sect which is now greatly growing in strength, which Prelates and Princes must resist with all their might.
Bringing upon themselves swift destruction, — because after death — which in this life, so brief for them, hastens and presses upon them — they bring upon themselves eternal fire. Most heresiarchs also have been carried off by an unhappy, swift, and infamous death. Simon Magus, flying by the magic art, was thrown down from the Capitol by the prayers of St. Peter, fell headlong, broke his legs, and shortly after expired from pain, as Arnobius testifies, book 2 Against the Gentiles; St. Maximus, homily 5 On the Nativity of Saints Peter and Paul; and Hegesippus, book 3 On the Destruction of Jerusalem, chapter 2. Manes, who called himself Manichaeus as it were the pourer-out of manna, was flayed by the king of the Persians, because he had killed the king's son, whom he had promised to cure, as Epiphanius testifies, heresy 66. Montanus together with his Prophetesses choked himself with a noose, says Eusebius, book 5, chapter 16. The Donatists, casting the Eucharist to the dogs, were torn to pieces by them, says Optatus, book 2 Against Parmenian. Arius, going to the church to take it over, was seized with pain in the bowels, and in the latrines poured out his entrails together with his soul, as Rufinus testifies, History, book 10, chapter 13. Julian the Apostate, fighting against the Persians, perished struck by a heavenly weapon, says St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 1 against Julian. Priscillian was beheaded by the tyrant Maximus. Leo the Armenian, the iconoclast, was slain in church itself. The Emperor Heraclius, having become a Monothelite, met a sudden and foul death, since he could only urinate into his own face, says Zonaras in the Annals. Of Theodoric, the Arian king of the Goths, St. Gregory in the Dialogues, book 4, chapter 30, narrates the horrible death and damnation. Valens the Arian, conquered by the Goths and fleeing into a hut, was burnt up in it by them, says St. Jerome in the Chronicle. Worms ate out the blasphemous tongue of Nestorius, says Evagrius, book 1 of the History, chapter 7. Hunneric the Arian, persecutor of the faithful, was consumed by worms, says Victor, book 3 of the Vandal History. The Emperor Anastasius the Eutychian fell struck by a thunderbolt, says Zonaras, and Paul the Deacon in his Life. Luther died strangled by night after a sumptuous supper, as Cochlaeus testifies in the Life of Luther. Zwingli, in the Helvetic war, promising that he would intercept all the weapons of the Catholics, was slain by those same. Andreas Carolstadius, snatched away by a demon, did not appear again. Calvin, like Herod consumed by worms, blaspheming and cursing, breathed out his unhappy soul, as Bolsec testifies in his Life.
Verse 2: And Many Shall Follow Their Riotousness, Through Whom the Way of Truth Shall Be Evil Spoken Of
2. And many shall follow their luxuries. — In Greek ἀπωλείαις, that is, perditions and ruins. But the Royal Polyglot, the Complutensian, and others read ἀσελγείαις, that is, wantonnesses, luxuries, intemperances.
This is what Jude says in verse 4, that the heretics have changed the grace of our God into luxury. And Paul calls them lovers of pleasures more than of God, 2 Timothy 3:4. St. Jerome on Jeremiah chapter 3 expressly says, "that no heresy is constructed except for the sake of the gullet and the belly, that it may seduce silly women laden with sins;" and on Hosea chapter 9: "It is difficult," he says, "to find a heretic who loves chastity." The monstrous sacrileges and lusts of Calvin, Luther, Beza, and the rest are well known. Whence Thomas More wittily, to one who objected that very many were going over to Luther's sect, and that therefore it seemed to be true, replied: "It is no more of a miracle that men run to Luther, than that stones rush down from a height." For most run and rush to gluttony, lust, and the liberty of the flesh, like swine to the wallowing-place — which Luther permits, indeed teaches.
Through whom the way of God shall be blasphemed. — Hebrew דרך derech, that is way, means a course of life, a rule and manner of living. The "way" therefore "of God" is the true religion and Christianity ordained by God. This is blasphemed by the heretics, both by deed and life — since they pollute it with impure morals, and expose it to the Turks and Pagans to be mocked and blasphemed; and by tongue and pen — since they teach many blasphemous errors, and hurl many revilings and blasphemies against Christ, the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, Religious, Monks, vows, fasts, celibacy, the Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist.
Verse 3: And Through Covetousness Shall They With Feigned Words Make Merchandise of You
3. And through covetousness, with feigned words. — He alludes to merchants who, with feigned and artfully composed words, praise and extol their wares above the truth, that they may more easily push them off and sell them at a higher price. For so the heretics, in order to sell off and disseminate their heresy, decorate it with bland and elegant words, and, as it were, paint it like a harlot with the cosmetics of speech, that it may appear beautiful and elegant like Helen. Hence for "feigned" the Greek is πλαστοῖς, that is, as Pagninus and the Tigurine, manufactured, or rather, fashioned — because in the manner of moulders and the potter they fabricate many things, in order to veil, clothe, and adorn the idol of their heresy. This is what Paul says, Romans 16:18: "By sweet speeches and blessings they seduce the hearts of the innocent;" and St. Gregory, Morals 5, chapter 11, alias 12: "Quite always," he says, "what they propose are bland things, but what they bring in by following them up are harsh;" and St. Jerome, in the epistle to Oceanus and Pammachius: "Thus," he says, "do they temper their words, thus do they invert the order, and arrange ambiguities, so as to retain both our confession and that of our adversaries, lest the heretic hear one thing, the Catholic another." As the Arians, in order to do away with homoousion, that is consubstantial, said that Christ was homoiousion, that is similar in substance to the Father, that they might appear to say the same as the orthodox; but by adding a single iota of homoiousion they overturned homoousion, as St. Cyril testifies, Dialogue on the Trinity, book 1.
Excellently does St. Augustine say, in the book On the Agreement of the Decalogue with the Ten Plagues of Egypt: "Those who contradict the Christian truth, and, deceived in their own vanity, deceive others, are frogs, bringing indeed weariness to the ears, but offering no food to the minds." But these frogs fall silent at the light of the Church and of truth, according to that of the Poet:
Struck by the light, the frogs cease to revile,
And the sophist, conquered by the light of truth, is silent.
The same, in sermon 87 On the Times, compares them to the cynips, or gnats, which you do not see flying but feel stinging. For the heretic "pierces souls with the minute and subtle stings of his words, and surrounds them with such cunning that whoever is deceived neither sees nor understands whence he is deceived." The same, in book 5 of the Confessions, chapter 3, On Faustus the Manichaean: "Faustus," he says, "was a great snare of the devil, and many were entangled in it by the allurement of his sweet speech;" and chapter 6: "I found him a man pleasant and agreeable in words, and chattering those very things which they (the Manichaeans) are wont to say, far more sweetly;" but he adds that his thirst for true wisdom could not be filled by him, especially when "he appeared," he says, "unskilled in those very arts in which I had thought him to excel," etc. For their books are full of very long fables about heaven, and the stars, and the sun, and the moon. Whence St. Augustine confesses that, having left him, he turned elsewhere to track down wisdom.
Of you they will make merchandise, — ἐμπορεύσονται, that is, they will trade; Vatablus, they will keep tavern of you, they will misuse you for gain; both because they will wipe clean your purses, and because they will sell you to the devil. The proper vice, then, of heretics is covetousness, but that of the Apostles and orthodox Doctors is contempt of riches. Whence Paul preached the gospel without charge, 1 Corinthians 9:13, and 1 Thessalonians 2:5. This is what Paul says to Titus 1:10: "Who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake;" and Jude, verse 16: "Admiring persons for gain's sake." Whence St. Ignatius, graphically depicting them, epistle 3: "Whose God," he says, "is the belly, who savor earthly things, lovers of pleasures and not of God; bearing indeed the appearance of piety, but denying its power; χριστέμποροι, that is, Christ-traffickers, preaching the word of God in taverns, and selling our Lord Jesus Christ — corrupters of women, coveting what belongs to others, and lovers of money."
Whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, — as if to say: "Judgment," that is, the punishment and damnation decreed against them by the just judgment of God of old — namely from eternity — does not delay, but presses on and impends, although they themselves here triumph as if safe, blessed, and happy. In Greek οὐκ ἀργεῖ, that is, it is not idle — that is, as Oecumenius says, it will not be idle or fruitless, it does not sit still, it does not grow torpid, but vigorously goes forward and hastens on. Whence, explaining, he adds: "And their perdition slumbereth not." This is what Isaiah 30:33 thunders at sinners: "Tophet has been prepared since yesterday, prepared by the King, deep and broad. Its nourishment is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord like a torrent of sulphur kindling it:" see what is said there.
Verse 4: For if God Spared Not the Angels That Sinned, but Delivered Them, Drawn Down by Infernal Ropes to the Lower Hell, Unto Torments, to Be Reserved Unto Judgment
4. For if God spared not the angels that sinned. — Understand: much more will He not spare base men, namely heretics, as Peter explains in verses 9 and 11. So Cassian, Institutes 12, chapter 4, and Damascene, 1 Paralipomenon 6. Sinning, understand also persisting in their sin even to the end: "For what death is in man, this in the angels is a fall or lapse," namely the end of the way, of penance, and of merit, says Nyssen, or rather Nemesius, On Man, book 1, chapter 3, and from him Damascene, book 2, chapter 4. Just as, then, man is a wayfarer up to death, and is able to repent and be saved, so also the angels had some space, brief though it was, during which they were wayfarers right up to their fall from heaven, in which they could have repented, says Nyssen, if they had willed; but they would not, and therefore all fell and were damned, as the Fathers and Doctors universally teach. And St. Thomas does not seem to have meant otherwise, in Part 1, Questions 63 and 64, when he says that the nature of an angel as regards the will is inflexible, so that it constantly persists in what it once deliberately chose — as in fact all, both good and evil, persisted in their choice. He understood "inflexible" because the angelic will is bent only with difficulty, in that it first considers and sees all things exactly before choosing, which man often does not do, and so is more easily bent and changes his purpose. Otherwise, since the angel is most free, he is absolutely flexible, and can change his choice, as Scotus shows, in II, distinction 6, Question 2, and Gabriel Biel in the same place, Question 1, article 2. It is credible, however, that God did not give them the actual grace necessary to repent, since they sinned most freely, and hardened themselves in their sin — as St. Gregory teaches, Morals 2, chapter 3 or 4; Cassian, Conferences 4, chapters 13 and 14; Prosper, On the Contemplative Life, book 1, chapter 3; Fulgentius, On Faith, chapter 3; Isidore, On the Highest Good, book 1, chapter 12, sentence 2; St. Anselm, Why God Became Man, book 1, chapter 16.
And for this reason some Doctors hold that the demons, as soon as they fell into sin, were at the term of their way, and accordingly could not rise again through penance and be saved. Yet the sentence of damnation against them all was not pronounced by God except after their perseverance and obstinacy in sin had been completed: which sentence, once pronounced, immediately cast them down from heaven into hell. See Gabriel Vasquez, Part 1, Question 64, article 2, disputation 239, chapter 7, where also he reckons up from the Fathers five causes why God spared sinning man, but not the angel. The first is, that man being frail sinned through the weakness of the flesh, and therefore obtained mercy: but the angel is a pure and vigorous spirit, says St. Gregory, Morals 4, chapter 9 (alias 10), and Damascene, On Faith, book 2, chapter 3. The second, that the angel sinned with no one persuading him, but man sinned with the devil persuading: thus St. Gregory in the cited place. The third, that in the angels not the whole nature fell, but a part of it; but in man the whole nature fell: therefore Adam's posterity, when he sinned, were worthy of pardon, because they were not conscious of his sin: thus St. Augustine, Enchiridion, chapter 29. The fourth, that the angel, on account of the supreme perspicacity of his mind, sinned with full will: thus Cassian, Conferences 4, chapter 3. The fifth, that the angel was created in the highest order of honor that he could have on the way, and was to be confirmed solely through contemplation of his Creator; therefore once fallen from there, he was not called back through penance: but man, placed on the earth, destined for generation, that thence he might pass over to a better life without death, was set in a state more remote from beatitude; and therefore a greater span has been allotted to man than to the angel, and penance has been granted to man, not to the angel: thus the Author of On the Marvels of Sacred Scripture, in the works of St. Augustine, book 1, chapter 2.
Furthermore, the sin of Lucifer and of the angels was pride, because at Lucifer's instigation they rebelled against God; but as to where it was located, the Doctors disagree. First, Gabriel Biel and Scotus in II, distinction 5, hold that it was located in this, that they took too much complacency in their own beauty and excellence. Secondly, others place it in this, that they did not wish to depend on God, but to live and suffice for themselves. Thirdly, others, in this, that they wished to claim beatitude for themselves and to attain it by their own powers, not God's: thus Alexander, Albert, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure in II, distinctions 5 and 6. Fourthly, others, in this, that they wished to be preferred above the rest and to be subject to no one: thus St. Augustine, City of God 14, chapter 11, and St. Gregory, Morals 34, chapter 17 (alias 14): "He coveted," he says, "the right of liberty, that he might be set over the rest, and be subject to none." Fifth, with probability, Francisco Suarez, On the Angels, book 7, chapter 18, number 13, holds that they aspired after the hypostatic union of the Word, namely that it should be conferred on one out of the order of angels — namely on Lucifer their prince — not on any man, that is, Christ. For this union Lucifer seems to have desired, and to have envied it to Christ, and therefore to have solicited others to consent with him. The Apostle himself hints at this, Hebrews chapter 1, verse 6, saying: "And again, when He bringeth in the First-begotten into the world, He saith: And let all the angels of God adore Him." The same opinion Catharinus holds here, and it is hinted at by Tertullian, On Patience; St. Basil, homily On Envy; St. Cyprian, treatise On Jealousy and Envy; St. Bernard, sermon 1 On Advent; Rupert on chapter 8, verse 5 of John, and others.
But with ropes (some, in the text of Bede, wrongly read "rugicatibus") of hell drawn down He delivered them into hell to be tormented. — With ropes, that is by infernal chains, namely by binding them with fire and hell, so that they have no power or strength to shake them off or free themselves from them. In Greek it is σειραῖς ζόφου, that is, with chains of darkness, or of night. By "cords of hell" St. Peter signifies the power, right, and might which hell had and exercised, as a minister and lictor of God, upon the angels in heaven as soon as they sinned and were condemned by God; namely, while Michael with his fellow good angels was casting them out, hell drew them to itself by its quasi-supernatural force, insofar as it was the instrument of divine vengeance, from the heavens, and bound them inseparably and unbreakably to itself as torturer and torment. Just as that same fire of hell holds the demons wandering anywhere on earth so fast that they can in no way escape its activity. As therefore a vehement fire seeks its fuel, so that if it merely smells straw or stubble at a distance, it immediately attacks them, seizes them, and burns them: so also the fire of hell, having scented its fuel in heaven, namely the demons, at once snatched them, dragged them down, and set them aflame, making them bellows and tinder of Gehenna. Note here a paradox: for then hell had jurisdiction over heaven, that is, over the angels in heaven, and so heaven was as it were a hell, indeed subject to hell. Nor is this strange: for it is more wonderful that the angels' sin should have occurred in heaven than its punishment. Hence behold and gather from this punishment how great is the gravity of sin and pride, which transformed heaven as it were into hell, and angels into demons.
However, in the Greek the "cords of hell" can more easily be referred not to the word "cast down" but to the word "delivered," as if to say: God delivered the sinning angels and consigned them to the prison and infernal fire, and bound them up forever in them, and as if with certain cords — or, as the Greek has it, with chains of darkness — He tied them and most firmly fastened them, so that they can never shake them off or escape. These chains, then, and cords are nothing other than the bars of hell. Hence St. Augustine, book 11 De Civitate, chapter 33, and St. Gregory, book 8 Morals, chapter 11, read thus: "But thrusting them back into the prisons of the darkness of hell, He delivered them to be reserved for punishment, or to be tormented in the judgment."
These cords St. Cyprian graphically depicts in De Laudibus martyrii: "That savage place," he says, "whose name is Gehenna, with a great murmur and groan of those wailing, and with tormenting flames through the horrible night of dense darkness, ever breathes forth the cruel fires of a smoking furnace; a ball of fires is held back compressed, and is then released in various outlets of punishment. Then it rolls upon itself many kinds of cruelty, whatever the devouring flame of the emitted fire has tortured. Those by whom the voice of the Lord has been refused and His commands have been despised, it constrains with unequal destructions, and exactly proportions its forces to the merit of salvation refused, while one part imposes the doom of crime." And these things indeed are wholly and universally true. Then, distinguishing the individual kinds of punishment, he says:
"And some indeed," he says, "an unbearable mass bends down; others a savage force hurls headlong over the brink of a steep ridge, and the heavy weight of grating chains drags down. There are also those whom a wheel turning swiftly and an unwearied whirling drives, and those whom — bound together with stubborn density and clinging body to body — one body encloses; so that fire consumes them, iron weighs them down, and the throng of multitudes torments them." These things truly, unless you take them metaphorically and improperly, seem fabulous and like the inventions of poets: for although it is certain that the damned in hell are tortured by various penalties and modes, yet in demons, who have no body, these things cannot apply — unless one says that the demons in hell assume horrible bodies in order both to torment the damned the more, and to be themselves the more tormented; which Isaiah 34:14 hints at, as I said there.
Furthermore, from what the Greek has, "chains of darkness," many take "darkness" to mean not hell but this thick air; and accordingly they teach that this air is full of demons: for part of the demons were thrust into hell, while another part wanders here to tempt all, which on the day of judgment will be banished into Tartarus: so St. Jerome, on Ephesians 6, verse 12; St. Chrysostom, homily 11 on the First Epistle to the Thessalonians; Tertullian, Apology chapter 22; Theodoret, book 4 De Graecor. Affect.; St. Antony as cited by St. Athanasius; St. Augustine, De Natura boni, chapter 33, and 8 De Civitate 22, and tractate 95 on John, and elsewhere; he also adds that this lowest air can be called hell. This opinion is true, but it does not fit our version, which has "cords of hell:" for these are not in the air; nor does it fit the Greek ταρταρώσας, that is, casting down into Tartarus. Therefore this "darkness" must be understood as in hell, as Jude verse 6 explains, saying: "He hath reserved them under darkness in everlasting chains;" for in hell are the eternal chains of demons, not in the air.
Note: the phrase "did not spare" contains a meiosis: for it says little but signifies far more, as if to say: "He did not spare," but pronounced upon them an irrevocable sentence of damnation, according to that of 1 Kings (Samuel) chapter 15, verse 29: "The Triumpher in Israel will not spare and will not be moved by repentance; for He is not a man that He should repent." For this reason the error of Origen was long ago condemned — that the demons would at some point be recalled by God and saved. To this is added Ambrosiaster on Ephesians chapter 3, asserting that some of the demons were freed by Paul from error, sin, and the tyranny of Lucifer. Hither some refer that saying of Sulpicius Severus, which he ascribes to St. Martin in his Life, chapter 24, where he relates that St. Martin said to the devil possessing a man: "If thou wilt repent and be converted, God will have mercy on thee." But if St. Martin said this, he did not say it absolutely — that God would have mercy on the devil — but conditionally, namely if he were willing to repent; yet this condition is impossible: for the demon is obstinate in evil and being utterly impenitent, neither will nor can repent: therefore likewise it is impossible according to the ordinary law that God should have mercy on him. Hence most truly St. Augustine, book 21 De Civitate 23: "Let it be held," he says, "as fixed and immovable, that the devil and his angels will have no return to justice and the life of the saints; for Scripture, which deceives no one, says of them that God did not spare them, and that they have been so foredoomed by Him among the impious, that, thrust into the prisons of the darkness of hell, they should be handed over to be kept and to be punished at the last judgment, when eternal fire shall receive them, where they shall be tortured for ages of ages."
Cast down into Tartarus. — In the Greek it is more emphatically ταρταρώσας, as if to say: tartarizing, blasting, smiting with thunderbolts, and driving down into Tartarus. Now "tartarus" — and in the plural "tartara" — is so called ἀπὸ τοῦ ταράσσειν, that is, to disturb; or rather ἀπὸ τοῦ ταρταρίζειν, that is, from the tartar-like trembling of cold; therefore Tartarus signifies the place of greatest cold: so Plutarch from Hesiod, in the little work De primo Frigido. As, then, hell is called Gehenna from fire and burning, so likewise it is called Tartarus from cold and frost, according to that of Job chapter 24, verse 19: "Let him pass from the waters of snow to excessive heat," which Philip the Presbyter, Bede, Lyranus, St. Thomas, the Studite, and others explain of hell. The same is signified by "gnashing of teeth," of which Christ speaks in Matthew 25:30 and 41. For this gnashing arises from cold. Hence Bede, book 5 Histor. Angl., recounts that St. Drithelm saw souls in Purgatory leap from fires to snows. Tartarus therefore is the deep and lowest place of the underworld, says Servius and Suidas. Hence Virgil, 6 Aeneid:
Then Tartarus itself
opens twice as far down into the abyss, and stretches beneath the shades,
as is the gaze upward to the ethereal Olympus of heaven.
The same author in the same place:
Hence the way that leads to the waves of Tartarean Acheron;
here the turbid pool seethes with mire and with a vast whirlpool,
and belches forth all its sand into Cocytus.
Around these the Tartarean Phlegethon, a swift river, encircles with torrents of flame,
and rolls along its sounding rocks.
Lucretius, book 3:
Tartarus belching forth horrific blasts of heat from its jaws.
You will ask: from what place were the demons cast down, and consequently where were they created? Reply, first: St. Augustine, book 3 De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 10, and Rupert in Genesis book 1, chapter 11, hold that they were created in the upper air, which is near to heaven, and from there cast down. Eugubinus held the same opinion, book 7 Peren. Phil., chapter 38, but on a false foundation, namely that the angels are corporeal and as to body created from air. Secondly, St. Jerome (whom our Lorinus and Ascanius Martinengus on Genesis chapter 1, and Francisco Suarez, tractate De Angelis book 1, chapter 4, follow), book 6 on Isaiah chapter 14, verse 13, explaining that saying of Lucifer: "I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of heaven I will exalt my throne," judges that Lucifer and the demons were created in the firmament, or eighth sphere, in which are the stars and constellations, and from there wished to ascend into the empyrean heaven.
Thirdly, St. Augustine, 11 De Genesi ad litteram, chapters 17 and 19, holds that the demons were created in this lower world, but the good angels in heaven. Fourthly, St. Thomas, Part 1, Question 61, article 4, ad 2, suggests that the lower angels, who preside over creatures such as the heavens and the elements, were created in those very things, but the rest in the empyrean heaven.
Fifthly, others commonly hold that all the angels, both good and bad, were created in the empyrean heaven, and that from there the evil ones were cast down by Michael and his companions into Tartarus: so the Gloss; Bede, homily 2 on the Hexaemeron (which work others ascribe to Junilius); the Master of the Sentences, book 2, distinction 2; St. Thomas and the Scholastics, Part 1, Question 61, article 4. The reasoning is, first, that the angels are the noblest of creatures and purest spirits: therefore the noblest and purest place was due to them; and such is the empyrean heaven. Secondly, because the angels were created on the first day of the world, namely together with the world itself. But on the first day there were created only the empyrean heaven, the earth, and the abyss of waters: for the other heavens were created on the fourth day of the world, as I have shown on Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 ff. Therefore it was necessary that all the angels be created in no other heaven than the empyrean. Thirdly, the empyrean heaven is immobile; for the other heavens are moved and carried along by the motion of the prime mover, but the angels are at rest and stable; nor is it fitting that they be carried about like the heavens, or that their place and home be swept along while they themselves are immobile, so that their seat and place be snatched from them: therefore they were created in an immobile heaven, namely the empyrean. Fourthly, because in the empyrean is the seat and throne of the glory of God; and those who attend Him are the angels: therefore, etc.
Furthermore, the passage of Isaiah does not prove that Lucifer was created in the firmament; for the sense of Isaiah is different, as I said in the same place: otherwise from the same passage it would have to be concluded that Lucifer was created in the lowest region of the air; for he says: "I will ascend above the height of the clouds; nay, I will sit on the mount of the covenant, on the sides of the North," that is, on the mount and temple of Sion. Therefore Isaiah is speaking of an earthly man, namely of the king of Babylon (as he himself says in verse 4), not of the devil.
You will say: Adam was created outside Paradise, and was translated by God into Paradise: therefore likewise it was fitting that the angels not be created in the place of glory, which is the empyrean heaven, but be transferred to it through merits. I answer: I deny the consequence; and to the antecedent I say that Adam was created outside Paradise because he was earthly and lord of all the earth, and his descendants were to be scattered throughout all the regions of the earth. Add that it is almost the same thing to be created in Paradise and to be placed in Paradise gratuitously immediately after creation, as happened to Adam; whence Eve too was created in Paradise: but for the angels, on account of the excellence of their nature, no other place was fitting than the empyrean heaven. Furthermore, if Adam contaminated Paradise by sinning, what wonder if Lucifer also contaminated the empyrean heaven by sinning? For it is not the place but the person sinning that is properly contaminated by sin.
Note: St. Peter here compares and likens the heresiarchs to Lucifer, heretics to demons, their heresy to his sin — both in fault and in punishment. First, because Lucifer sinned by intolerable pride, and so also does the heresiarch. Secondly, because Lucifer and the demons rebelled against God and the heavenly Church: so also the heretics rebel against God and the earthly Church. Thirdly, Lucifer with the demons committed the crime of high treason against the divine majesty; for he wished to invade His throne when he said: "I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of God I will exalt my throne, I will be like the Most High," Isaiah 14:13. So also the heretics commit the crime of high treason against the divine majesty, because they assail His truth, faith, religion, worship, Church, and Sacraments; and accordingly they strive to introduce as it were a new God, a new faith, religion, and Church, in which the heresiarch presides like an earthly Lucifer, with the heretics attending him as his angels and demons who believe in him. Fourthly, Lucifer strives to drag all, both angels and men, with him into ruin: so the heresiarch seduces many and drags them with him into perdition and Gehenna. Fifthly, because Lucifer is the author of every heresy, and accordingly many heresiarchs have had demons as their attendants and familiars, as I have shown on 1 Timothy 4:1. Hence Cassian, Collat. 7, chapter 32, affirms that he heard a demon confessing that through Arius and Eunomius he had brought forth the impiety of sacrilegious dogma.
Indeed Luther, in his book De Missa angulari and in his letter to the Elector of Saxony, confesses that he ate more than a peck of salt with the devil and received from him the arguments by which he attacked the Mass. Calvin, when Bucer reproached him with his zeal for reviling and cursing, replied in a letter to him that "this is a disease not so much of his genius (talent) as of his genius (familiar spirit)," namely an evil one; for he was driven by a certain genius, so that whether he wrote or preached, he constantly cursed and reviled. Zwingli, in his book De Supplem. Eucharist., professes that he was taught at night the way to twist the words of consecration: "This is My body," namely by explaining "body" by "figure of the body"; and adds that he does not know whether this genius was white or black. That Karlstadt was carried off by a demon is a matter of common report. Hosius, book De Haeresibus, writes that some adored the devil ten times a day, and were therefore called Daemoniacs. To this also pertains what Tertullian, book De Praescript., chapters 43 and following, writes — that the heretics had dealings with the Magi; indeed that the first heresiarch Simon and his disciple Menander were magicians. In this age there is a sect of Devil-worshippers, who boast that they are sorcerers, marked with the character of the devil, which when they have grown warm with wine they do not fear to show on bared flesh. It has been heard from their own confession that the number of them has grown up to sixty thousand in Gaul. They say they believe something where it is expedient, and on the other hand believe nothing where that is expedient: so Rescius, in his Centuria sectarum, from a book in Paris.
Let everyone beware of them as of the devil, especially princes; for they strive to insinuate themselves into princes' courts and minds, that they may be their counsellors, by the pretence of wisdom. See our Delrio's preface to his Disquisitiones magicae, where he lists five reasons why heresy is accompanied by magic: whence in Apocalypse chapter 9, verse 3, the locusts representing heretics come forth from the pit of the abyss. Hence also Antichrist, who will be the head and prince of heretics, will be so possessed by the devil that he will appear to be an incarnate demon. Whence the Apostle says of him in 2 Thessalonians 2:9: "Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity."
Sixthly, as Lucifer is the lowest in hell, so also the heresiarchs are the deepest in hell, like assessors of Lucifer. Wherefore St. Chrysostom, Contra Arianos, thus concludes: "He is an Arian, therefore he is a devil." And St. Athanasius, in sermon 2 Contra Arianos, calls Arius an atheist. St. Augustine, 21 De Civitate 25, teaches that a heretic is worse than a pagan. He gives the reason: "For surely a deserter of the faith, and one who from a deserter has become its assailant, is worse than one who has not deserted what he never held." And Tertullian, book De Patientia: "The pagans," he says, "by not believing, believe" many things known about God by natural light; "but the heretics, by believing, do not believe," because they say they believe the word of God, when in truth they do not believe.
Delivered them to be tortured, to be reserved unto judgment. — St. Peter speaks of the demons as of defendants already condemned to the ultimate punishment: for these, after the sentence of damnation, are handed over to the warden, that he may keep them in prison and bind them, until they are led out to punishment. For in a similar way God consigned the demons to hell until the day of judgment and punishment. For although "cruciandos" (to be tortured) is not in the Greek, it is understood. Gagneius suspects that our interpreter, instead of τηρουμένους (those who are kept) or τετηρημένους (kept, i.e. to be kept), read ταριχομένους — that is, afflicted, vexed — and for this rendered "cruciandos" (to be tortured): indeed some manuscripts have κολαζομένους, that is, those who are being punished and tortured.
Some, from this passage and similar ones — such as Matthew chapter 8, verse 29, where the demons ask Christ not to send them into the abyss — have thought that the demons are not yet tormented by the fire of Gehenna, but are to be tormented by it after the day of judgment: so St. Justin seems to speak, Contra Tryphonem; Irenaeus, book 5, chapter 33; St. Hilary, can. 8 on Matthew; Eusebius, 4 Histor., 17 or 18; Lactantius, book 7, chapter 26. But it is certain that all the demons, even those that wander in this air, are tormented by the fire of Gehenna, whether because that fire acts at a distance, or because they invisibly carry that fire with them, and are bound to it: for therefore God dragged them down into Tartarus, that they might be perpetually tormented and burn there. Wherefore the Fathers just cited must be explained as referring to accidental punishment: for this will accrue to the demons on the day of judgment. First, because in the universal judgment, before all the angels and men, they will publicly receive the sentence of damnation from Christ the Judge, whose face and wrath will be so horrible that the demons and the damned would prefer to remain in hell and be tormented there, than to go forth from there into the valley of Jehoshaphat for judgment, according to that of Apocalypse 6:16: "They say to the mountains and rocks: Fall upon us and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"
Secondly, because in the judgment all liberty will be taken from them of wandering over the earth and of tempting and destroying men, and they will be shut up in hell as in a perpetual prison from which they will never come out; which will torment them greatly: hence the demons asked Christ that He would not send them into the abyss, Matthew chapter 8.
Thirdly, because in the judgment all the Angels and Blessed with Christ will condemn and rebuke them, 1 Corinthians 6:3; Wisdom 5:1. Again, the demons in the judgment will see the glory of the Angels and Saints, and will see them succeed to and be raised up to thrones and seats once destined for themselves, but themselves cast down into Gehenna — which will torment them greatly.
Fourthly, because then all the damned and demons will be thrust together into Gehenna, where each, seeing the torments of all the rest, will be tortured by them; especially because one curses the other there, and execrates, afflicts, and torments him — especially those who tempted him to sin, and were therefore the cause of his damnation, as the demons were. This is what St. John says, Apocalypse 20:9: "The devil who seduced them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ages of ages." In hell therefore all torment each other, snarl and tear at each other like rabid dogs. This is what St. Clement, 7 Const. 33, says: that Christ will come to judge the devil who deceives the world. And Lactantius, book 7, 26: "On the day of judgment, the lord of those impious ones (namely Satan) with his ministers will be seized and condemned to punishment; with whom likewise the whole crowd of the impious for their crimes in the sight of angels and the just shall be burned in perpetual fire for eternity." Finally St. Bonaventure, on book 4, distinction 27, article 1, Question 4, suggests that part even of the essential punishment of the demons is deferred to the day of judgment; but this is not generally accepted by others.
Verse 5: And Spared Not the Original World, but Preserved Noah, the Eighth Person, the Preacher of Justice, Bringing in the Flood Upon the World of the Ungodly
5. And spared not the original world. — In Greek ἀρχαίου κόσμου, which Pagninus and Vatablus translate "to the ancient world"; Clarius, "the old"; Gagneius, "the rude and unlearned," namely in the knowledge of God and the things of salvation. He therefore calls "original" the ancient and primeval world, which was before the flood: for then was the origin of the world and of men in Adam, from whom Noah was the tenth; under whom God punished this whole world by the flood, because, ungrateful and unmindful of his recent origin and creation and of his Creator, it had turned aside to the flesh and to crimes; especially when the descendants of Seth joined in marriage with the descendants of Cain, as is narrated in Genesis 6.
After the example of the punishment of the demons, St. Peter sets forth the example of the flood, by which God drowned all sinners and destroyed the whole world; that every impious man, especially every heretic, may think within himself: If God did not spare the whole world, then neither will He spare me, who am but one and alone.
Note: just as a little before St. Peter compared the heretics and heresiarchs to Lucifer and the devils, so here he compares the same to the giants; for these were the cause of the flood. First, then, as the giants were born of the lust of the sons of God, namely the descendants of Seth, with the daughters of men, namely those of Cain, Genesis 6:4: so lust drives many monks and apostates to heresy, that they may become ministers of heretics.
Secondly, because the giants were proud and atheists (ἄθεοι): so also the heretics are most haughty Titans, who fight against Christ and God, and finally become atheists and introduce atheism.
Thirdly, as the giants were tyrants and oppressors of men, so also are the heretics.
Fourthly, as Nimrod and the giants built the tower of Babel as if to fight against heaven and God: so also the heretics build a Church of schism and confusion (which is what Babel signifies), that they may assail the Church both heavenly and earthly.
Fifthly, as God drowned the giants in the flood and cast them headlong into Tartarus, so also He casts down the heretics: see what was said of the giants on Genesis 6.
But preserved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of justice. — Titelmann holds that Noah was the eighth from Adam; but he is mistaken: for he was the tenth from him. He is therefore called the eighth, namely of those who were saved by the ark: for St. Peter alludes to what he said in 1 Epistle 3:20: "Eight souls," that is, persons, "were saved by water;" of these, then, Noah was the eighth. Others, following Josephus, book 1 Antiq., chapters 4 and 5, hold that Noah was the eighth preacher of justice, because he followed seven generations in which the descendants of Seth cultivated justice and sanctity. Others think he is called "the eighth" because he was born in the eight-hundredth year — not from the creation of the world (for from that he was born in the year 1050) — but from the beginning of the impiety and corruption of the world, which had lasted before Noah for seven hundred years. Others invent seven other preachers of justice in that age, whom Scripture does not name, of whom Noah was the eighth. But the first sense is the genuine one.
Furthermore Philo, in his book De Congressu quaerendae eruditionis gratia, notes that Noah — who is the first in Scripture to be called "just" — was the tenth from Adam: "That," he says, "he may openly teach, that just as the number ten, which follows after the unit in due order, is most perfect: so justice in the soul is truly the end of the actions of life."
Note: Noah is called "a preacher of justice." First, because he foretold the just vengeance for crimes hanging over the world through the imminent flood. Secondly, because he himself was a cultivator of justice and sanctity, and proclaimed it both by word and by example. Thirdly, because he was a Prophet and foretold the coming of the Just One, namely Christ — that He would Himself assume flesh; and accordingly that it was unworthy to defile by gluttony and lust the flesh which the Son of God was to raise up to the Divinity.
Hence Josephus, book 1 Antiq., chapter 4: "Noah," he says, "bearing their deeds (those of the men of his age) with grief and indignation, urged them to change their mind and works for the better. But when he saw that they would not obey him and were utterly succumbing to the sweetness of vices, fearing that they might destroy both himself and his family, he withdrew with his own and migrated into another region. And God, delighted by the justice of the man, not only condemned the malice of the others, but, having resolved to extinguish the whole human race and to set up a new race pure from vices, first restricted their life within a shorter span, and, abrogating their longevity, restrained it within one hundred and twenty years; then He transformed the dry land into the face of the sea, and thus utterly abolished that race."
Wherefore St. Paul thus celebrates Noah and his faith and justice, in chapter 11 to the Hebrews, verse 7: "By faith Noah, having received an answer concerning those things which were not yet seen, fearing, framed an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world, and was instituted heir of the justice which is by faith."
And St. Ambrose, book 1 De Noe, chapter 1: "Noah," he says, "the Lord God reserved for renewing the seed of men, that he might be a seedplot of justice, etc., so that when we consider the holy Noah with greater earnestness, we ourselves may be refreshed, just as the whole race rested in him from its works and from sorrow. Hence in Latin Noah is called 'just' or 'rest.'" And presently he adds: "Justice alone is that which is born for others rather than for itself, and seeks not what is useful to itself, but what is good for all. This makes us rest from the works of iniquity, and recalls us by its light from sorrow; because while we do those things which are just, we fear nothing, by the security of a pure conscience."
And in chapter 20 he teaches that on account of Noah's justice the restoration of the human race was made, lest the whole body of the human race should either appear abolished on earth, or be left cut off from the grace of God, etc. "And therefore the just man, not seeing the Lord, sought Him, free from corruption, desirous of eternity."
The same St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, octave 7, asserts "that Enoch, on account of his devotion, was rapt to heaven and escaped the poison of earthly malice; that Noah, on account of his justice, became victor of the flood and survivor of the human race; that Abraham, on account of his faith, spread the seedplot of his posterity throughout the whole world; that Israel, on account of his endurance of toils, consecrated the people of believers with the seal of his own name; that David, on account of his meekness, endowed with royal honor, was preferred above his elder brothers; that Elias, on account of his zeal for God, taken up by the chariot into the air, by a new kind of dwelling acquired the lodging of a heavenly seat;" see St. Augustine, sermon 46 De Tempore, where he displays and celebrates the charity and sanctity of Noah.
Preserved — both in justice and in life, that he might not perish in the flood, but be the conserver and restorer of the human race, and father and patriarch of a new age after the flood.
Bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. — He calls "the world of the ungodly" not only the ungodly themselves, but the whole world full of the ungodly: for the whole world, on account of the ungodly, was drowned together with them in the flood. Concerning Noah and the flood, see what was said on Genesis 6.
Verse 6: And Reducing the Cities of the Sodomites and of the Gomorrhites Into Ashes, Condemned Them to Be Overthrown, Making Them an Example to Those That Should After Act Wickedly
6. And reducing the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes. — To the ungodly, namely the heretics, St. Peter set forth, first, the punishment of the demons; secondly, the vengeance of the flood. Here, thirdly, he sets forth the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah for their unspeakable crimes and unnatural lusts. Wherefore the Emperor Justinian, in his Novel Constitution 77, deservedly forbidding such things, calls them illicit, impious, and diabolical lusts, on account of which God sends grievous calamities upon the world. And the Emperors Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius decreed that they should be punished by flames, and that pederasts should be burnt — just as God burned the Sodomites; indeed He reduced the whole Pentapolis, though most pleasant and fertile, into ashes, lest even the relics of so great, so monstrous, and so infamous a crime should remain on the earth. So also the heresiarchs are handed over to the fires as expiations and purifications of the earth, lest they pollute it but rather purify it; for they are not seldom corporeally, but always mystically, Sodomites, because they adulterate the faith and bring in what is unnatural: on which account St. Peter here compares them to the Sodomites.
Making them an example to those that should after act impiously, — namely showing by this example that all the ungodly are to be punished in like manner as the Sodomites, and to burn perennially in Gehenna: of which thing the ὑπόδειγμα, that is, the example, image, specimen, paradigm, exemplar, likeness, and type — was the burning of Sodom: which was so great that even now that whole land is gloomy and smoking, full of bitumen, nourishing nothing alive; nay, even leaves, flowers, and fruits, as soon as they are plucked, turn into ashes and cinders — as if the original fire were still lurking there and persisting, and thus representing the perennial fire of hell.
Hence Josephus, book 5 Belli, chapter 5: "Adjoining to this Arabia," he says, "is the Sodomite land, once indeed prosperous both in fruits and in the riches of its cities, but now wholly burnt up — since it is recorded to have been consumed by thunderbolts on account of its inhabitants' impiety; finally, even now in it one may see the relics of divine fire, and the images of the five cities, and ashes reborn in fruits: which in color indeed resemble edibles, but at the touch of those plucking them dissolve into smoke and ash." And Philo, book De Abraham: "The lightning-fire of Sodom," he says, "is never extinguished; it either creeps or evaporates, which is discernible to the eyes themselves; there remain also, as evidence of the ancient disaster, smoke continually exhaling, and sulphur which is dug there." Add that all the Sodomites and inhabitants of the Pentapolis appear plainly, after the conflagration, to have been condemned to infernal fire, as St. Cyprian teaches, sermon De Passione. This is what St. Jude, agreeing with St. Peter, clearly asserts, verse 7: "As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighboring cities, in like manner having given themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire."
Verse 7: And Delivered Just Lot, Oppressed by the Injustice and Lewd Conversation of the Wicked
7. And delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injury and lewd conversation of the wicked (Sodomites), — through the angels, just as He delivered Noah from the ungodly and from the flood: see the history of Lot in Genesis 19.
Verse 8: For in Sight and Hearing He Was Just, Dwelling Among Them Who From Day to Day Vexed the Just Soul With Unjust Works
8. For he was just in sight and hearing, — as if to say: Lot was rescued from the burning of Sodom because his eyes and ears were holy and chaste, while the Sodomites in both were incestuous and obscene: hence he was tormented by such obscenities of theirs, which he most unwillingly and most painfully saw and heard.
They vexed his soul. — Our Interpreter read ἐβασάνιζον, that is, "they tortured," in the plural: now they read in the singular ἐβασάνιζεν, that is, "it tortured" — namely Lot tortured himself and his own soul; but the sense returns to the same: for the Sodomites by their unspeakable crimes tortured Lot, just as Lot by the same things tortured and was tortured in himself, saying that of St. Polycarp, De Haereticis: "Good God, into what times hast Thou reserved me, that I should hear these things?" as Eusebius witnesses, book 5 Histor. chapter 20. For, as St. Gregory says, 1 Moral. 7: "The life of the wicked touched the ears and eyes of the just, not by delighting them, but by striking them;" for he detested and execrated it. Note here: it belongs to the saints to be tormented by the crimes and offenses against God and neighbor committed in their congregation, city, province, and kingdom; so David, Psalm 118:139: "My zeal hath made me to pine away," he says, "because my enemies have forgotten Thy words." And verse 158: "I beheld the transgressors, and I pined away." For because they supremely love God, and are zealous for His honor as also for the salvation of their neighbors, hence they supremely grieve and are tormented by the contempt of God and the perdition of neighbors.
Verse 9: The Lord Knoweth How to Deliver the Godly From Temptation, but to Reserve the Unjust Unto the Day of Judgment to Be Tormented
9. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly (Noah, Lot, and their followers) from temptation. — He knoweth not only speculatively but also practically; therefore "He knoweth" means He knows, can, wills, and is wont (it is a metalepsis) to deliver the godly, according to that which He promised through Isaiah chapter 43, verse 2: "When thou shalt pass through the waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers shall not cover thee; and when thou shalt walk in the fire, thou shalt not be burnt, and the flame shall not kindle upon thee." For Noah was delivered from the waters, and Lot from the fire. Thus God delivered Abraham from Ur, that is the fire of the Chaldeans, Genesis 11:31; Jacob from the hand of Esau; Joseph from the hand of his brothers and from prison; Moses and the Hebrews from the hand of Pharaoh; David from the hand of Saul; Susanna from the hand of the elders; Daniel from the lions' den; the three children from the furnace; Mordecai from the hand of Haman; Judith from the hand of Holofernes; Tobias from the hand of Asmodeus; the Maccabees from the hand of Antiochus; Elijah from the hand of Jezebel.
Truly the Psalmist says: "Many are the tribulations of the just," he says, "and out of all these the Lord will deliver them," Psalm 33:20. And Psalm 49:15: "Call upon Me in the day of tribulation: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." And Psalm 90:15: "I am with him in tribulation, I will deliver him and glorify him."
Let the Saints therefore say in tribulation with Paul: "In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are humbled, but are not confounded; we are cast down, but we perish not," 2 Corinthians 4:8. And: "For Thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter; but in all these things we overcome, because of Him that loved us," Romans 8:37.
The greater therefore the tribulation and distress, the more we must hope, and the more strongly and securely must hope be fixed in God; because to those more afflicted God is the more near. Pliny acutely says, book 8, chapter 16: "Then," he says, "is the chief place for prayer, when there is no place for hope." This is what Nahum — that is, "Consoler" — says in chapter 1, verse 7: "The Lord is good, and strengtheneth in the day of tribulation." For then the wondrous goodness of God shines forth, when He sees the just so oppressed that humanly they cannot be rescued from dangers and saved.
Hence the Tigurine version translates: "A defense in most difficult times;" others, "strength in the day of distress," Hebrew מָעוֹז maoz, for which the Septuagint is wont to render ὑπερασπιστής (defender); the Vulgate, "protector," according to that of Wisdom 5:17: "With His right hand He shall cover them, and with His holy arm He shall defend them;" in Greek ὑπερασπιεῖ, that is, as a body-guard with his close-pressed shield will protect them. So God said to Abraham, Genesis 15:1: "Fear not, Abraham, I am thy protector;" Hebrew "I am a shield to thee"; Septuagint, ἐγὼ ὑπερασπίζω, that is, "I protect thee," with a most strong shield set against and opposed to the enemies. Hence by David in Psalm 59:9, God is called "the strength of my head," Hebrew maoz; Septuagint, κραταίωμα, that is firmness, security, fortification. And Psalm 9:10: "A helper in due time, in tribulation." Proverbs 10:29: "The strength of the simple is the way of the Lord;" Hebrew maoz; Septuagint, ὀχύρωμα, that is, fortification, citadel, bulwark.
Canticles 1:8: "To My company of horsemen in Pharaoh's chariots have I likened thee," that is, as to My people — when in front the Red Sea blocking the way held back their flight, and behind the raging Pharaoh with most powerful forces was pursuing, and on the sides the cliffs denied any crossing, reduced to such straits and destitute of every human help — I came opportunely to their aid; so also I will succor thee, O My spouse, in any distress whatever.
But to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented. — There is here an antapodoton, that is, a return and completion of the comparison begun in verse 4. For that sentence: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned," hangs unresolved, and keeps the reader in suspense up to this point: for here it is completed. Indeed Pope Hyginus, epistle 2, having cited the preceding words of St. Peter concerning the angels, Noah, and Sodom, immediately adds: "What think you shall be the end of the wicked and impious who persevere in iniquity?" — whether he himself read this once in the epistles of St. Peter, or whether, not having read it but having grasped its sense, he supplied it. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: "If God spared not the angels, but cast them down with the cords of hell into Tartarus to be tormented, reserved unto judgment," etc.; therefore the same God knows, that is, He knows, He can, and He wills to reserve wicked men, like the Sodomites and those drowned in the Flood, and the rest, "unto the day of judgment to be tormented." Hence some have thought that the damned are not tormented by the fire of Gehenna before the day of judgment. Guido the Carmelite attributes this opinion to the Greeks; but this is an error condemned in the Council of Florence, and indeed by Christ in Luke 16:19, where He relates that the soul of the rich Glutton is tormented by the fire of Gehenna. As, therefore, the souls of the saints after Christ's death, if they are fully purified, fly straightway to heaven, and there are made blessed by the vision of God: so the souls of the reprobate are immediately snatched into Tartarus, that they may be burned with fire, says St. Gregory, 4 Dialog., 20. Therefore that which is here said, that they are reserved unto the day of judgment to be tormented, understand thus: because then they will be tormented not only in soul as now, but also in the body in which they shall rise; and they shall undergo other accidental punishments, just as the demons do, as I said on verse 4.
Verse 10: And Especially Them Who Walk After the Flesh in the Lust of Uncleanness, and Despise Government, Audacious, Self-Willed, They Fear Not to Bring in Sects, Blaspheming
10. But chiefly (Greek μάλιστα, that is, especially: St. Jerome, book 1 Contra Jovinianum, principally) them (supply and repeat what preceded, namely: "The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented;" for to this aptly coheres "but chiefly them") who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness. — As if to say: God in the day of judgment will punish all the impious, but most of all the lustful heretics, who despise dominion, etc.; for as their crime is greater, so likewise will the judgment and punishment be greater. Lyra, from "chiefly" — or, as the Greek has it, "especially" — gathers that the sin of heresy, especially in a heresiarch, is more grievous than the sin of the Sodomites and of those who were drowned in the flood, indeed than that of the demons, and is therefore to be more grievously punished in Gehenna. Understand this not of all, but of many: for the sin of Lucifer in stirring up others to rebellion against God was more grievous. Add that heresy induces all the other sins; and especially lust, even the perverse kind: as that Calvin and Beza were pederasts is taught by their lives and verses. This is what Jude says, verse 7, that they like Sodom went away after strange flesh.
Who walk after the flesh (that is, following the flesh and its carnal appetites) in the lust of uncleanness (Greek μιασμοῦ, that is, of contamination and pollution). — Hence St. Jerome, book 1 Contra Jovinianum, reads thus: Who walk after the flesh in the lusts of pollution, that is, of corruptions, by which they contaminate and pollute the body as well as the soul. St. Peter is censuring the heretics of his own age, namely the Simonians, Nicolaitans, Gnostics, for their lusts and filthinesses, says Oecumenius. The same was the disposition of other heretics, especially of this present age, as prudent and experienced men know. Hence Paul speaks of the same, Ephesians 5:12: "For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of."
And despise dominion. — First, as if to say: They despise magistrates, bishops, prelates, both secular and ecclesiastical, who hold dominion in Church or State. Thus Vatablus; whence St. Jerome, book 1 Contra Jovinianum, reads in the plural, "and they despise dominions." The Royal and Complutensian Bibles read in the same way. How true this is, all histories proclaim; indeed we have seen it with our own eyes in the wars which the rebellious heretics stirred up in France, Germany, England, Belgium. Indeed Luther, book De Potestate saeculari: "You ought to know," he says, "that from the beginning of the world a prudent prince is a very rare bird, and a virtuous prince is much rarer still: most often the greatest fools and most wicked rascals are upon the earth, and they themselves are God's lictors and executioners." And in the Preface against the two edicts of Caesar: "The Turk," he says, "is ten times more prudent and virtuous than our princes." And in his little book against the Peasants, he calls them tyrants and persecutors of the Gospel. "The Scripture," he says, "calls them beasts, that is, wild animals, like wolves, boars, bears, lions. I therefore will not make men of them; yet they must be tolerated, if God wills to afflict us with plagues through them. Truly I feared both: if the peasants prevailed, the devil would be Abbot; if such tyrants prevailed, his mother would be Abbess." The same in his Bull against the Ecclesiastical Order calls bishops masks of the devil, and adds: "Whoever lend their aid, body, goods, and reputation to lay waste bishoprics and to extinguish the rule of bishops, these are the beloved sons of God and true Christians, observing God's commandments and resisting the ordinances of the devil: or if they cannot do this, let them at least despise it. On the contrary, those who uphold the rule of bishops and obey them, these are ministers of the devil." And again: "Wherever the Gospel comes, there must be tumult; if not, it is not true."
In the year 1560 a council was held at Geneva concerning the King of the French, the queen his wife, the queen mother, his children, the nobles, and the Catholic magistrates, to be slain on a certain day, with Beza as the leader, Calvin as the author, Ottoman as the under-signer, Spifamius as the persuader, and all the brigands and gladiators of Gaul as accomplices. Of this counsel and conspiracy, a letter of Calvin to Viret of Lausanne was found and printed, as Bolsec relates in his Life of Calvin, chapter 21. Calvin, on Daniel 4: "Today," he says, "as kings are nearly all foolish and brutish, so likewise they are like horses and asses among brute animals." Zwingli, priest of Mars and Bellona, book 4 Epistolarum, folio 186: "The Roman empire," he says, "indeed any empire whatsoever, where it has begun to oppress the true religion, if we tolerate this negligently, we shall be no less guilty of contempt of religion than the oppressors themselves." Ederus, in part 2 of the Inquisitio Evangelica, lists these among the dogmas and axioms of the Flacians: "The Pope is the true Antichrist, the venomous dragon, administrator of the devil, man of sin, son of perdition. Caesar and kings, when they are consecrated by the Pope or his bishops, then receive the mark of Antichrist: all in the Papacy are properly the kingdom of the devil, the people of the demon, of the dreadful and savage beast and arch-rascals." See more in Stanislaus Rescius, book 1 De Atheismis Evangelicorum, chapter 7. And further, Aurifaber, the disciple of Luther, in his Symposiaca, on the Sectarians: "It is certain," he says, "that every heretic or sectary is seditious: for after he has taught and spread lies, he afterwards seals them with murders." And again, folio 367: "Seditions and homicides are as it were a certain seal of the heretics, indeed of the devil." Hence so many crimes of Luther's followers, so many that Luther himself, astonished at so many and so great things, said that men were worse in Lutheranism than in the Papacy. For Aurifaber, in the Convivial Sermons of Luther, writes that Luther often said with sighs: "Since the revelation of the Gospel (through Luther), virtue has been killed, justice oppressed, temperance bound, truth torn by dogs, faith made lame, daily wickedness, devotion driven out, heresy abandoned." Famous is that line about Tilemann Heshusius, the Lutheran ejected from Heidelberg and five other cities:
It is asked, why was Heshusius driven from his sixth city?
The cause is at hand: he was seditious.
Secondly, more pointedly, as if to say: They despise the Lordship of God, they deny that God is the governor and Lord of His own affairs and of human affairs, they deny the providence of God. Thus St. Jude explains, verse 4, saying: "Denying the only Sovereign and our Lord Jesus Christ." For the Nicolaitans and Gnostics, says Irenaeus, book 1, chapter 1: "call Him Saviour: for they are unwilling to call Him Lord;" according to what Peter said, verse 1: "and denying the Lord that bought them," as if to say: They despoil Christ their Redeemer of His supreme dominion, that is, of His divinity, as the Arians did afterwards: for the proper name of God is Lord, on account of His full dominion over all things. Whence St. Thomas, professing the divinity of Christ: "My Lord," he says, "and my God," John 20:28. Oecumenius gives the cause: "Then," he says, "the dominions having been driven away by these from the workmanship and providence of the world, they were poured out into all carnal uncleanness." For thus heretics and atheists deny the Godhead and providence of God, that without remorse from the judging and avenging Lord they may give the rein to their lusts and indulge in them wholly, like horses and swine. By κυριότητα therefore St. Peter signifies the divinity, that is, His supreme empire, indeed His every empire, dominion, right, power, will, authority, governance, and providence over all things — which Simon Magus with his followers withdrew from Christ and arrogated to himself. "Dominion" therefore, that is, the Lord, as St. Jude explains, with His dominion and providence — for which a little later Valentinus substituted the names and portents of his thirty Aeons, as it were divinities, as is plain from Tertullian, Irenaeus, St. Augustine, Epiphanius in his heresy. Whence against them this dominion of Christ is asserted by St. John, Apocalypse 19: "He hath," he says, "on His vesture and on His thigh written: King of kings and Lord of lords." And Paul, Ephesians 1:21: "setting," he says, "Christ at His right hand in the heavenly places, above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come."
Truly Tertullian, book De Praescript., chapter 43: "From the kind of conversation," he says, "the quality of faith can be estimated; discipline is the index of doctrine. They deny that God is to be feared. Therefore all things are free and unrestrained for them: where indeed is God not feared, except where He is not? where God is not, neither is there any truth; where there is no truth, deservedly there is also such discipline. But where God is, there is fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. Where there is fear of God, there is honest gravity, and attentive diligence, and solicitous care, and well-considered choice, and well-deliberated communication, and well-earned promotion, and religious subjection, and devout appearance, and modest procession, and a united Church, and all things of God." Thus Luther, book Contra coelestes Prophetas, writes of Andrew Karlstadt, his disciple, that he was so impious that he did not believe that any God existed either on earth or in heaven. Calvin, book 2 Inst., writes that Servetus, who called himself the supreme prophet of the world, impiously blasphemed that God who is called Jehovah, saying that He is wood in wood, stone in stone, tree in tree; because He truly has the form and substance of wood, stone, and tree. Heshusius, book Contra Illyricum, writes that from the doctrine of Illyricus it is gathered that the soul of man was created not by God but by the devil. Bernardine Ochinus, in his next-to-last Dialogue, having professed himself devoid of religion, teaches that God is the prime mover, but that He is not to be adored; nor is anything to be expected from Him by way of help. Beza denies that God is omnipotent. Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin make Him the author of evil works as well as good ones, namely of sins. Rightly, therefore, Cardinal Hosius calls atheism the perfection of the Lutheran and Zwinglian perfidy, elsewhere its center, elsewhere the summit of the ladder. The schoolmasters of these — "swine of Epicurus' herd" (among whom John Vetus names Beza) — used, as Viret testifies, to chant in their own ears, that he is blessed who, as the Poet says:
Has trampled all fears and inexorable fate beneath his feet,
together with the roar of greedy Acheron.
Finally Molinaeus, in Genebrard's Chronology, makes Calvin the prince of the Atheists.
Audacious. — For what would they not dare who despise the dominion of God and men? Thus Oecumenius. Luther sent this New Year's gift to the Apostolic See: "Martin Luther sends to the Holy Roman See his greeting and salvation. Most holy See, burst." The same, book Contra Regem Angliae: "Who is this Henry? a new Thomist, the disciple only of so cowardly a monster;" and soon after: "Here I stand, here I remain, here I glory, here I insult the Papists, the Henricians, the Sophists, all the gates of hell: the divine Majesty causes me not to care if a thousand Augustines, a thousand Cyprians, a thousand Henrician Churches stand against me; my dogmas shall stand, and the Pope with the Henricians shall fall, against all the powers of hell, and the powers of the air, the earth, and the sea." You have heard Thraso, you have heard Lucifer.
Self-pleasing — αὐθάδεις, that is, insolent. Thus St. Jerome, book 1 Contra Jovinianum; Catharinus, impudent; Gagneius, obstinate; Clarius, shameless; Tigurine, headstrong; Vatablus, of their own sense and head; Pagninus, contumacious. Likewise Oecumenius: "Contumacious," he says, "that is, those who wish wholly to follow and uphold what pleases themselves;" others, intractable, insolent, arrogant, despisers of others: for heresy consists in the obstinacy of one's own opinion and error. For αὐθάδεια is the same as moroseness, self-love, contumacy, rashness, hardness, obstinacy, insolence, pride, disdain, arrogance. Our Vulgate translates word-for-word, "self-pleasing," because ἅδω is "I please," so that αὐθάδης is as it were ἅδων ἑαυτῷ, that is, pleasing to himself; or, as Hesychius, as it were αὐτὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ, that is, the same in himself; or, as others, as it were αὐτὸς ἀφ' ἑαυτοῦ, that is, the same from himself. Thus Erasmus, called by Luther an incarnate devil, in his Apology against him, calls Luther crazier than Orestes, distraught with hatred, drunk with self-love, and therefore in need of being given hellebore beforehand to drink, that he may write more soberly. Indeed even the Wittenbergers called Luther, although their teacher, philautus, philonicus, and eristicus, that is, quarrelsome, hyperbolical, who makes a camel out of a gnat, polypragmonic, who insolently and pertly thrusts himself into all affairs, an ostentatious fellow, stoic, harsh, headstrong, a dreamer — because he peddled the nocturnal visions born in his drunken head as the pure word of God, as John Spangenberg reports in the book entitled: A True Narration of the Benefits through D. Martin Luther, etc.
They fear not to introduce sects. — The verb "to introduce" is not in the Greek, for it has thus: δόξας οὐ τρέμουσι βλασφημοῦντες, which can first be rendered, "they fear not to blaspheme and revile glories," so that by δόξας are understood those famed in glory and endowed with majesty. Thus Gagneius, Pagninus, Tigurine, Catharinus, Clarius, Salmeron and others. Wherefore St. Jude, verse 8, alluding to this passage, says: "and they despise dominion, and they blaspheme majesty" (Greek δόξας). Whence here too the Gothic Bibles read, "They do not fear majesty," or "majesties." Wherefore by δόξας some understand the angels, ministers of God, presidents and governors of the Church and of the world. Thus Turrianus, book 2 De Hierarchia Ord., chapter 9, who renders δόξας as glories or splendors. Others understand magistrates, kings, princes, bishops. Thus Oecumenius: "For those," he says, "who out of contempt fear no dominion, what wonder if they also despise every glory and excellence?" For δόξα among the Greeks is the same as majesty, splendor, glory, dignity, esteem; likewise opinion, view.
But our Vulgate, better supplying ἐπάγειν, translates: "they fear not to introduce sects," for this is proper to heretics; and the Greek δόξα signifies opinions and sects; so that here St. Peter is saying the same thing he said in verse 1: "who shall bring in sects of perdition." Furthermore, it is no wonder that the Interpreter here renders δόξας as sects, but in the epistle of St. Jude renders it as majesty, because the meaning of St. Jude is one thing, and that of St. Peter another; for St. Jude says: "they despise dominion, and they blaspheme majesty" (δόξας); where δόξας cannot be rendered as sects: for the heretics do not blaspheme sects, but court them. But St. Peter inserts other words, and says: "and they despise dominion, audacious, self-pleasing, they fear not to introduce sects" (δόξας) "blaspheming." Where the word "sects" explains the words "audacious, self-pleasing," as if to say: How audacious and self-pleasing they are is plain from this, that against the common doctrine and consensus of the Church and of the Fathers, they dare to introduce new opinions invented from their own brain, and so to make sects. Add that our Interpreter, like the Syrian, in St. Jude read δόξαν in the singular, which signifies majesty, not sects; but in St. Peter read δόξας in the plural, which signifies sects, not majesty.
Note: The word "sects" signifies, first, errors and heresies; secondly, schisms and divisions by which they break the unity of the Church, and cut themselves off from her, that they may constitute their own Church and school, of which they themselves are held to be the authors, and from whom the followers are named; just as from Simon are named the Simonians, from Arius the Arians, from Nestorius the Nestorians, etc. Thirdly, the word "sects" signifies not only that the heretics are divided among themselves, but that one and the same heresy is straightway divided into various sects and schisms: for heretics, since they are driven by pride and arrogance, and trust neither God nor man but their own brain, are unwilling to be the disciples of others, but the leaders. Whence very many devise new opinions and errors, that they may be held as their authors, and may draw disciples after them, and impose their own name upon them. St. Augustine, book De Haeres., enumerates ninety heresies from Christ down to his own times; from St. Augustine to Luther, the same number is reckoned: so that in 1500 years Sanderus collected no more than 180 heresies. But indeed from Luther, that is, from the year of Christ 1517 to the year of Christ 1595, Staphylus, Hosius, Lindanus, Prateolus, Ederus enumerate two hundred and seventy heresies, and from these Stanislaus Rescius, book 1 De Atheismis, chapter 9. "So fertile is error," he says, "erring, neither knowing what it wishes, nor knowing what it does not wish." Nor is it any wonder that Luther's disciples have departed from Luther their master, and have introduced so many sects: for Luther himself departed from himself, and often changed his dogmas and heresies, as Cochlaeus shows in his book entitled: Luther the Seven-Headed. For truth is constant and ever the same; but falsehood is inconstant and always varying.
Wisely Trismegistus, in the tract De Veritate, teaches that falsehood is known by mutation, truth by immutability. "For nothing," he says, "that does not remain in itself is true: for everything that is altered is falsehood, not remaining in that which it is." The same, in the tract De Pietate et Phil.: "What is always becoming," he says, "is always also being corrupted: what was once made is never corrupted;" this then is the source, origin, and mother of heresy, namely pride and ambition. Hence the experience of all ages has taught that nearly all heresiarchs departed from the Church, and devised their own heresies, because aspiring within the Church to the chief Sees, Bishoprics, and Doctorates, and being repulsed from these, they set them up outside the Church, that there they might obtain the chief place which they could not obtain within the Church. Truly St. Augustine, book De Pastoribus, chapter 8: "In different places," he says, "are different heresies, but one mother, pride, has begotten them all, just as one mother of ours, the Catholic Church, has begotten all the faithful Christians scattered throughout the whole world." Thus Eusebius, book 4 Histor., chapter 22: "Theobutes," he says, "because he was refused a bishopric, began at first to disturb everything and to corrupt it." And Tertullian, in the book Contra Valentinianos, after the beginning: "Valentinus had hoped," he says, "for a bishopric, because he had power both in talent and in eloquence; but resentful that another, by the prerogative of martyrdom, obtained the place, he broke off from the authentic Church, as those souls accustomed to be incited by the presumption of vengeance for the priority." Of Marcion, Epiphanius testifies the same, heresy 42, near the beginning: "Marcion, lifted up by emulation," he says, "when he did not receive presidency, devises a council for himself;" and below: "Therefore, moved by emulation, and lifted up to great indignation and pride, he made a fissure, raising up a heresy for himself, saying: I shall split your Church, and shall send a fissure into it forever. And indeed he sent in no small fissure, yet did not split the Church, but himself and those who obey him." Of Montanus, Theodoret testifies, book 3 Haeret. Fab.: "He also, by ambition," he says, "and the desire of obtaining the first place, called himself the Paraclete." Novatian, because in the pontificate St. Cornelius was preferred to him, made a schism and induced a heresy, indeed set himself up as Pope, that is Antipope, as Eusebius testifies, book 2 Histor., 33, and St. Cyprian, epistles 49, 52, 64, 68. Arius, aspiring to the bishopric of Alexandria, when he saw himself excluded by Alexander being preferred to him, armed his tongue against him and the Church, and introduced Arianism, as Theodoret testifies, book 4 Haeret. Fab. The same of Aetius, when in the bishopric Eustathius was preferred to him, Epiphanius writes, heresy 75. That John Wyclif, because he was excluded from a bishopric, was made a heresiarch, Thomas Walden affirms, book 2 Doctrinae fidei, chapter 60.
Luther, the choragus and standard-bearer of all the heresies of this age, began his heresy by preaching against Indulgences, because the promulgation of them had been transferred from him and his Augustinian Order to the Friars Preacher, as Cochlaeus narrates in the Acts of Luther, year 1517. Moreover, so great was Luther's pride, that in his book Against the King of England he asserts that Kings, Princes, Pontiffs are not worthy to loose the strap of his sandals, and that he wished to be regarded as a saint against the will of all, and that he made small account of a thousand Cyprians and a thousand Augustines; for his maxim was:
So I will, so I command, let my will stand for reason.
And:
Living I was thy plague; dying, I shall be thy death, O Pope.
But the false prophet has lied and deceived: for Luther is dead, but the Pope and the Papacy live and flourish. The same calls kings the lice of his head, the University of Paris Sodom, that of Louvain Gomorrah, the bishops and priests "shaved and oiled heads," St. Thomas one of the seven vials of the wrath of God.
Blaspheming, — because they hurl insults not only against God, sacred things and the Saints, but also against one another, and most atrocious ones, but often true. Thus in this age Bucer against Calvin called him an idol, impiously audacious, rapacious, fratricide. Calvin called Valentinus Gentilis a Tritheist, a heretic, a dog, a traitor, a madman, a Satan surpassing in impudence, a Lucifer vomiting forth insults, etc. In turn Gentilis calls Calvin a Quadritheist, hostile to truth, cruel, biting, bewitched by execrable error, as Aretius reports, book De Supplicio Gentilis. Smidelinus admits that he was called by the Saxons a chameleon, a polyp, a liar, a forger, a juggler, a fellow of thieves, a sophist, a hypocrite, shameless, devoid of conscience, neither having eyes nor heart, deprived of mind. There appeared an anonymous booklet by a certain Lutheran in the year of the Lord 1586, printed at Jena, of which this is the title: That the Calvinists are not Christians, but only baptized Jews and Mohammedans. Theomorus the Calvinist in his book lists nine most foul stains branded on Calvin by the men of his own sect: first, that he was a heretic worse than any heretic; second, that he was ambitious and most desirous of tyranny; third, that he was a notorious usurer; fourth, that he was a notorious money-changer or banker; fifth, that he was most avaricious; sixth, that he was a gamester; seventh, that he was a most lustful fornicator, and that openly; eighth, that he was immoderately bilious and prone to anger; ninth, that he was most desirous of vengeance, savage and bloodthirsty. Sturmius in his Palinode, addressed to Lucas Osiander, calls him a Caligula, the grandson of Ulysses, a courtier of every hour. Postellus writes that the Calvinists have nothing of the human except the form of a human, that they have sent back the messenger of the Catholic faith, that they live in the manner of beasts. The Zwinglians published a writing in the year of the Lord 1527, in which they call Luther a Beer-seller, a Pope, the nephew of Antichrist, a lunatic, a sophist, gross, a rustic, a seducer, a pseudoprophet, a near kinsman of Antichrist, an executioner of Christ, a violator of the sacred Letters. Zwingli himself in his Reply to Luther's book De Sacramento calls Luther a pseudoprophet, who imprudently asserts whatever comes into his mouth, a sodomite, a buffoon, incorrigible, a heretic, an impostor, a denier of Christ, an oppressor of truth, an Antichrist. See more in Stanislaus Rescius in the Ministromachia, where he cites the Lutherans, who call the Calvinists blasphemers, capital enemies of the Son of God, ignorant, insane Doctors sent by Satan, Schwenckfelders, Molossian dogs, swine, masks of the devil, seducers, buffoons, offspring of vipers, worse than Turks, robbers of body and soul, fanatics, fools, blockheads, heads of devils, soul-killers, slanderers, infernal wolves, the stench of Satan, and that their doctrine has come forth from the most secret abyss of the infernal hall, etc.
Truly Plato, book De Amicitia: "The good man alone," he says, "is friend only to the good man; but the evil man is never truly friend either to the good or to the evil." More truly St. Augustine, book Contra Litteras Petiliani: "Dissension and division make heretics; but peace and unity make Catholics;" and Tertullian, book Contra Hermogenem, chapter 1: "Such men, the heretics," he says, "reckon loquacity to be eloquence, count impudence as constancy, and judge that to slander each individual is the duty of conscience."
Furthermore, blasphemies properly so called against God and the Saints are very many among the heretics. Luther Contra Jac. Latomum dared to write: "My soul hates the word ὁμοούσιος (homoousios)." The same removed from the Litanies that form of prayer which the Church has always used: "Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us." The same prayer Calvin called barbarism, as the Genevan Ministers testify in their epistle De Blasphemia Valentini Gentilis. For thus says Calvin in his epistle to the nobles of Poland, folio 63: "The prayer commonly current, 'Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us,' does not please me, and I altogether call it barbarism." The same compared God the Father to Grammar, the Son to Dialectic, the Holy Spirit to Rhetoric. Thus reports Manlius in his Loci Communes, tit. de Deo. Valentinus Gentilis, as he wished there to be three persons, so also wished there to be three natures in the deity, namely three gods.
The new Arians deny that the Son is God, and they call the Symbol of Athanasius the Symbol of Satanasius. Lindanus in the Christomachia testifies that the Calvinists in many places of Gaul have expunged from their hymns that little verse: "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit."
Beza, book Contra Brentium, teaches that there are two hypostatic unions in Christ, one of the flesh with the soul, the other of God with the man.
The Transylvanian Ministers, like Georgius Blandrata, afterwards by the just judgment of God strangled by his own nephew, Paulus Alciatus, Laelius Zosimus, Franciscus David in Collat. Transylvan. (I shudder while I write), call the Holy Trinity a three-headed Cerberus, a three-bodied Geryon, a new idol, the tower of Babel, a fictitious and sophistical God, a Sabine idol. Therefore they laugh at these names in divine matters: Essence, Person, Relation, Property; nor do they acknowledge any distinction of persons in God, book 2 Disp. Albana, chapter 4. Others have taught that Christ was a mere man, the son of Joseph, who could not deliver Himself from sufferings, and therefore is not to be invoked, much less is He the Redeemer of the world, etc.
Staphylus narrates that there was in Moravia one Lucas Sterbergius, "who first of all in those parts taught that all those who confess and worship the name of the Holy Trinity falsely imagine three gods, since the Trinity is a superfluous and empty name, and there is none but one God in heaven; he therefore wished that, in place of that 'O venerable Trinity,' one should chant 'O venerable goodness of God.' That impious man also wished (the mind shrinks to write) that all the demons might carry off and bear away the Trinity: saying that he did not know whether it was female or male; but rather he was persuaded that that Trinity was a certain woman, who had had three husbands. He moreover taught that Christ was not true God, but only a man like other mortals, the son of Mary and Joseph the carpenter, who rose from the dead not by His own divine power, but by the power of the Almighty, and was then at last adopted into a son, when at John's baptizing, the voice was heard from heaven: This is My beloved Son. He laughs at the Holy Spirit, saying that He is nothing other than a dove. He denies that the Mother of God remained a perpetual virgin; he teaches that the Sabbath, not the Lord's Day, must be kept holy; he calls baptism an institution of Satan." On the blasphemies of Calvin see Feuardent in Theomachia Calvinistica, and William Reginald in Calvinoturcismus.
Conradus Vorstius the Calvinist, book De Deo et Attributis divinis, holds these atheisms: first, God is not infinite; secondly, God according to His substance is not everywhere present in this world, but only in heaven; thirdly, in God there are real accidents really distinct from the substance of God; fourthly, the decrees of God, such as the decree of predestination or of reprobation, are not from eternity; fifthly, the eternity of God is not indivisible, and all at once, but successive. See our Martin Becanus in his Tituli Calvinistici, tit. 4. Finally, on verse 18, I shall show that Calvin and his followers do not worship the true God, but the devil.
Verse 11: Whereas Angels Who Are Greater in Strength and Power, Bring Not Against Themselves a Railing Judgment
11. Whereas angels, who are greater in strength and power (Greek δυνάμει, that is, in might and force), do not bear against themselves an execrable judgment. — Many think that here the discourse is of evil angels, that is, of demons, as if he compared to them the heretics, who, as he just said, "despise dominion," and signifies that they are worse than demons, and therefore to be more grievously punished, as if to say: As the audacity and impudence of heretics is enormous, "who despise dominion, and fear not to introduce sects, blaspheming," so will their punishment be enormous. For if the evil angels, that is, the demons, who are greater in strength and power, do not bear against themselves "an execrable judgment," Greek a blasphemous judgment, that is, an execrable condemnation and eternal malediction, how shall these bear the same, when they are men, weak and feeble in body and soul? Indeed they themselves "shall not stand fast in the miseries" of Gehenna, Psalm 139, verses 11 and 12. Thus Genebrard, on this passage. Or more briefly and plainly, as if to say: How is it that audacious heretics fear not to introduce sects and to blaspheme, when they know that demons, who are far more powerful, have been so punished for schism and rebellion that they cannot bear the execrable judgment, that is, the dreadful condemnation pronounced by God against them, and the punishment of Gehenna?
This exposition agrees very well with the Latin version, and with the Greek μάλιστα, that is, "especially," verse 10, as if to say: God will most of all, namely with monstrous and intolerable torments, torture lustful and contumacious heretics, as is plain from the demons, who though equal to them in crime, but superior and stronger in nature, yet do not bear an execrable judgment, that is, a condemnation and the punishment of Gehenna. Thus the Gloss, Lyra, Thomas Anglicus, Hugo, Dionysius, Catharinus, Titelmannus and others.
Secondly, others say, as if to say: Demons do not dare to execrate and blaspheme the Prelates of the Church, although adverse to them, indeed in exorcisms they submit themselves to them, although by force: how then do heretics dare to blaspheme them and to assail them with revilings? Thus Gagneius.
Thirdly, Clarius, as if to say: Demons, although they are stronger to bear the pains of hell, yet do not dare to blaspheme God their Author, lest they be more grievously punished by Him: how then do heretics dare to blaspheme Him? Hither comes Arias, as if to say: Demons, though enemies of God, yet do not dare to deny the first practical truths of God, namely the first principles and precepts of virtue and piety, or to overturn them: how then do the heretics deny and overturn them?
Fourthly, others, as if to say: Demons do not curse one another, nor do they mutually blaspheme one another: how then do men, namely heretics, dare to curse and blaspheme one another?
But others everywhere take the angels here properly, and therefore as good ones. These therefore "do not bear against themselves an execrable judgment," Greek οὐ φέρουσι κατ' αὐτῶν παρὰ Κυρίῳ βλάσφημον κρίσιν, that is, "they do not bring nor pronounce against them from the Lord a blasphemous judgment," that is, they do not hurl an execrable sentence against their enemies, namely that they may imprecate evils on the devil from God, and the punishments which are horrible and execrable that they have deserved. For St. Peter seems to say the same here as that which St. Jude says, verse 9, namely that Michael, contending with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare "to bring a railing judgment," that is, to blaspheme, to curse and to revile the devil, and to inflict on him the just punishment of blasphemy, by saying: Be silent, accursed devil; go, blasphemer, into Gehenna: there shall God torment thee, as thou and thy blasphemy deservest; but to have said: "The Lord rebuke thee;" for the words of St. Jude that follow are nearly the same as those that follow in St. Peter, as is plain to anyone comparing on both sides the Greek text.
Again, the phrase κατ' αὐτῶν can be rendered, first, as "against them themselves," namely against the δόξαι (glories), that is, against the powerful, such as the demons; second, as "against themselves," as our translator renders it, as if to say: Angels, since they are most pure and most holy, do not dare even to name anything that in any way sounds like blasphemy, that is, evil-speaking, lest they seem even by a shadow to defile their angelic mouth, and because they especially execrate blasphemy and blasphemers.
Finally, the phrase "from the Lord," which is in the Greek, signifies that evils are wished upon them "from the Lord," who is the avenger of crimes. Thus Oecumenius: "St. Peter says," he writes, "that these wretched men, with no consideration, blaspheme the glories, although those who are greater than these wicked men in power and strength do not bring, that is, do not pronounce against these very glories any railing judgment before the Lord."
Then, citing the example of Michael, which St. Jude relates in verse 9, he subjoins: "And there is an argument from the greater in this manner: If the devil, who is more deserving to be cursed, yet because he is a partaker of a certain glory, did not have this done to him by Michael the Archangel before the Lord, surely those are unwise who so rashly pursue every glory with curses, although they have been constituted far below the dignity of the angels."
Adamus, Gagneius, Clarius, Salmeron, and others follow Oecumenius. To this Feuardentius adds, explaining thus, as if to say: How do the heretics dare to revile, curse, and resist dominions, that is, orthodox magistrates and princes, even though opposed to themselves, when the good angels do not execrate but honor and revere even pagan magistrates and princes, though hostile to the faith and the people of God? This is clear in the angels of the Persians and Greeks fighting on behalf of the Persians and Greeks against the angel of the Hebrews and the people of God, Daniel chapter 10, verses 5 and following.
Verse 12: But These Men, as Irrational Beasts, Naturally Tending to the Snare and to Destruction, Blaspheming Whatever They Know Not, Shall Perish in Their Corruption
12. But these (the lying teachers, namely the heresiarchs spoken of in verse 1) are like irrational beasts; Pagninus reads, "like brute animals naturally," that is, they tend and rush, "into the snare and into destruction;" in Greek φυσικὰ γεγεννημένα εἰς ἅλωσιν καὶ φθοράν, that is, "born by nature for capture and destruction," as Pagninus says. "It is natural," says Venerable Bede, "for irrational animals, by reason of fodder, often to fall ignorantly into capture and destruction;" so heretics, in order to satisfy their gluttony and unbridled appetites, fall into the snares of the devil and into eternal destruction.
On the contrary, Arias explains this actively, as if to say: Heretics are like wild beasts, namely bears, lions, and wolves, which are naturally borne to capture and destruction, that is, to the prey and slaughter of other animals. Both are true: for heretics both passively rush into ruin, and they actively drag others, ensnared in their nets, with them into the same. It is a hyperbole: for the nature of heretics is not depraved or born for capture and destruction; but the sense is, as if to say: Heretics are wholly depraved, wholly corrupt, so that they seem born and made for this evil, because they follow the corruption and concupiscence of their nature. Again, heresy so affects and infects their nature that it wholly devours it and drags it to evil. Thus we are said to be by nature children of wrath, Ephesians 2:3; the natural malice of the worst men is mentioned in Wisdom 12:10, because by a blind impulse of nature they are borne where the ardor of lust, or the desire for honors and wealth, or the fury of anger and ambition snatches them.
St. Peter compared the heresiarchs of his age, namely the Simonians and Gnostics, on account of their pride, avarice, and lust, first, to demons; second, to the impious men submerged in the flood and to the Sodomites; now, third, he compares them to wild beasts, which are driven not by reason but by the ardor or fury of their savage nature, and therefore fall, indeed rush, and drag others with them into the snares of hunters, so as to be captured and killed. St. Jude says the same in nearly the same words, verse 10: "But these blaspheme whatever they do not understand; and what they know naturally, as do dumb animals, in these things they are corrupted." And St. Ignatius, contemporary with both, in his Epistle to the Antiochians: "Behold," he says, "rabid dogs, and serpents creeping upon the breast, scaly dragons, and asps, basilisks, scorpions: these are jackals (a kind of wolf), foxes, and apes imitating men." For, as Clement of Alexandria says in Exhortation to the Heathen, "men are called serpents, who are deceivers; lions, who are spirited and stirred up to anger; swine, who are devoted to pleasure; wolves, who are rapacious."
Blaspheming in those things which they know not — that is, as St. Jude says: "Whatever they know not, they blaspheme;" the Tigurine version: "speaking evil of those things which they do not understand." It is a Hebraism: for the Hebrews construct verbs of contact, whether real, mental, or verbal (such as "to blaspheme"), with the ablative governed by the preposition "in," so that they say "to strike in the face" for "to strike the face," "I believe in God" for "I believe God." So here: "In those things which they know not," that is, "they blaspheme these things which they know not." He rebukes those who called themselves Gnostics, that is, knowers, when they were ignorant, and therefore proudly and impudently rejected and blasphemed the orthodox teachings which they did not know or were unwilling to know and believe; concerning such men St. Paul rightly says, Romans chapter 1, verse 22: "Saying themselves to be wise, they became fools." To this purpose pertains the "diabolical privilege" of the heretics (Manichees), as St. Augustine calls it, in book 22 Against Faustus, chapter 15, namely that "whatever is in the Gospel by which they think their heresy may be supported, they hold to have been said by Christ; but whatever from these same books speaks against them, they say was inserted by falsifiers with shameless and sacrilegious mouth they do not hesitate to say." The same author, in book 13, chapter 12, compares them to the partridge: "For the partridge," he says, "is known to be a most contentious animal, with what greed for the contest itself it runs into the snare."
They shall perish in their corruption. — In Greek there is an elegant paronomasia: Ἐν τῇ φθορᾷ αὐτῶν καταφθαρήσονται, that is, "they shall be corrupted by their own corruption"; for this is the end and reward of foul lust. For, as St. Paul says: "He who sows in his flesh, of the flesh shall also reap corruption," Galatians 6:8; and Philippians 3:19, marking these very heretics: "Whose God," he says, "is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."
Verse 13: Receiving the Reward of Their Injustice, Counting for a Pleasure the Delights of a Day: Stains and Spots, Sporting Themselves to Excess, Rioting in Their Feasts With You
13. Receiving the reward of injustice — not only in the future, but also in the present life, namely, in that they give themselves over to foul and perverse pleasures of Venus and the belly, by which they corrupt, defile, and destroy both body and soul; for this is the corruption mentioned a little before, which, as Oecumenius says, they have voluntarily procured for themselves. Hence St. Jerome, in book 1 Against Jovinian, reads: "And they shall receive luxury as the reward of iniquity;" just as the philosophers received it, who, when they had not worshipped the God they knew, were handed over to a reprobate mind and to sodomitical lusts, of which Paul speaks in Romans 1:24. Hence St. Peter, explaining this reward, adds:
Counting for a pleasure the delights of a day. — In Greek τὴν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τρυφήν. Tigurine: counting it for pleasure if they enjoy delights for a day, or, as Vatablus, daily delights; Pagninus: thinking pleasures to be those delights which are for a day. He therefore calls "delights of a day" the daily delights, which last for a day, that is, a brief time, while true delights are solid, constant, and eternal. So Arias, Titelmannus, Adamus, Gagneius, and Salmeron; or, as Oecumenius, "of a day," that is, throughout each day, daily: "Counting pleasure," says Oecumenius, "as daily luxury, that is, placing true and lovely joy and pleasure in the daily enjoyment of gluttony."
Excellently St. Jerome, in book 2 against Jovinian, near the end: "That many," he says, "acquiesce to your opinion (he is addressing Jovinian) is a sign of pleasure; and do you reckon it great wisdom if more swine run after you, whom you are fattening for the bacon-stores of hell?" And after a few things: "Basilides, master of lust and of the most foul embraces, after so many years has been transformed into Jovinian, as if into Euphorbus, so that the Latin language too might have his heresy." Again, after a few words: "The standard of the cross and the authority of preaching had destroyed the temples of idols; in the opposite region the lust of the belly and the throat strives to subvert the fortitude of the cross. Finally, false prophets always promise sweet things, and please for a little while: bitter is the truth, and those who preach it are filled with bitterness; for in the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity the Lord's Passover is celebrated, and is eaten with bitter herbs."
And St. Ambrose, in his epistle to the Church of Vercellae: "I hear," he says, "men who say that there is no merit in abstinences, and that those who chastise their flesh in order to subject it to the mind are raving: which Paul would never have written or done, if he had thought it madness. But he glories, saying: I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should be found a reprobate; therefore those who do not chastise their body, and yet wish to preach to others, are themselves held to be reprobates." Then, censuring those who imitated the Gnostics in this respect: "What new school," he says, "has produced these Epicureans, who preach pleasure and persuade to delights? The Lord Jesus, wishing to make us stronger against the devil's temptations, fasted as one about to engage in combat, that we might know that we cannot otherwise overcome the allurements of evil. For what reason should they assert that Christ fasted, except that His fasting might be an example to us?" And St. Basil in the longer Rules, Rule 17: "Just as," he says, "an excellent bodily habit and goodness of color distinguishes the boxer from others, so a leanness of body and a deflowering pallor distinguishes a Christian from others, which is, as it were, the constant companion of continence: for it is a sign that he is truly a champion of Christ's commandments, who, in the firmness of body, casts down his adversary in the wrestling-match; and how powerful he is in the contests of piety he declares fittingly in those words: When I am weak, then am I strong."
Indeed, his servant, afterwards converted to the orthodox faith, asserted that Luther, after he had supped lavishly in the evening, was driven by the despair and furies of the demon at night and brought death upon himself by a noose he had cast around his own neck, as Thomas Bozius reports in De Signis Ecclesiae, vol. 2, book 23, chapter 3. There he also adds that Carlstadt, Bucer, and Oecolampadius perished strangled by Satan; Bolsec, his disciple, in his Life of Calvin, testifies that Calvin, tortured for four years by lice-disease and nine other most terrible diseases, died most shamefully. Thus the tyrant Dionysius, professing his own unhappiness and that of tyrants, used to say: "We tyrants are surely like those animals which are fattened, to whom an abundance of food and drink is wont to be offered for no other purpose than for their own destruction," as Eusebius reports, book 8 of the Praeparatio, chapter 5.
Truly St. Chrysostom, homily 45 on Matthew, treating of heretics: "They creep upon the belly," he says, "because whatever they do, they do for the sake of the belly, and for the vain glory of their breast. They eat earth, because they gain none but those who are on the earth, that is, carnal men." And St. Leo, sermon 1 On the Ascension: "For what devil," he says, "do carnal pleasures fight, who delight to bind souls aspiring to heavenly things with the delectations of corruptible goods, and to lead them away from those seats from which he himself fell?" The same, sermon 5 On the Epiphany: "Let noxious pleasures be fled," he says, "hostile joys, and desires that are about to perish: what fruit is there, what use, in ceaselessly desiring those things which, even if they do not desert us, must be deserted?" And St. Basil, homily On Reading the Books of the Gentiles: "The body," he says, "must be chastised, and restrained as a wild beast, and the tumults arising from it against the soul must be repressed by reason as by a scourge; lest, by altogether loosening the rein to pleasure, the mind, like a charioteer, be carried away and snatched off by horses contumacious and least obedient." He cites Plato, who chose Academia at Athens in a pestilential location to cut down the luxuriance of the body; and Pythagoras, who said to one fattening himself: "Alas, wretch! You do not cease to prepare a harsher prison for yourself!" And St. Salvian, book 1 to the Catholic Church: "Tarrying in the abyss of lusts, they bury themselves in their own ruins."
Stains and spots. — Σπίλοι καὶ μῶμοι. Pagninus: filth and stains; Vatablus: defilements and spots. For σπίλοι, according to Gellius, are stains from wine or grease clinging to garments, which discolor them, so called from σπᾶν ὅλην, that is, from drawing in dirt. So he calls the heresiarchs, as if to say: They are most defiled and most spotted. By a similar trope we call a wicked man "a wickedness." Moreover, such they are, both because they are most corrupted by their own pleasures; and because they corrupt others by the same; and because they brand a foul stain upon the Church and the Christian name, so that the Gentiles are turned away from it and blaspheme it. "For, as Oecumenius explains, they have no purity in themselves, but, as filth clinging in a clean garment, that is, in a pure and sincere life, and staining everything, when they have turned some away from holiness, and have been able to render shameful those men or women whom they associate with, they reckon this to be their delights." Hence they are μῶμοι, that is, reproaches and disgraces, the vituperation, ignominy, and infamy of Christ and Christianity, and this by the trickery of Satan: for, as St. Epiphanius wisely observes in heresy 27: "They have been suborned and produced by Satan as a reproach and scandal to the Church of God. For they have given themselves the name of Christians for this purpose, that the Gentiles may be offended through them, and may turn away from the usefulness of the holy Church of God and from true preaching on account of their nefarious deeds and incomparable wickedness. And so that the Gentiles, considering their nefarious works, may suppose the holy Churches of God to be such, and turn away their ears from the doctrine of God and of the truth." Moreover, St. Jude says these stains were in their banquets, which were full of drunkenness, debauchery, vomiting, lasciviousness, and luxury: for he says in verse 12: "These are spots in their feasts, banqueting without fear." Of these too St. Peter is speaking; whence he adds:
Abounding in delights in their banquets. — Wisely Gorgias the Sophist, when he was in his hundred and eighth year, said that he had reached so long an age because he had never gone to other people's banquets, as Lucian relates in Macrobii. On the contrary, St. Jerome, in book 1 Against Jovinian, depicts the enemy of abstinence and continence thus: "When he boasts that he is a monk, and after a sordid tunic, and bare feet, and coarse bread, and a drink of water, betakes himself to a white garment and a shining skin, to honey-wine and elaborate meats, to baths and cook-shops, it is manifest that he prefers earth to heaven, vices to virtues, the belly to Christ, and reckons the purple of his complexion to be the kingdoms of the heavens. This is your handsome monk, stout, sleek, whitened, and walking about always like a bridegroom." St. Jerome seems to depict the present-day ministers of the heretics.
Note: For in their banquets, the Interpreter reads in the Greek ἐν ἀγάπαις: for of old the banquets, or common tables of Christians after the Holy Synaxis, were called Agapae, because they were a symbol of common love and fraternal charity of the faithful. Now they read ἐν ἀπάταις, that is, banqueting in their errors, or in their frauds and deceptions. So Oecumenius, Pagninus, Vatablus, and others, as if to say: The heresiarchs, from their error and heresy, seek nothing else than to feast and to take their delights. Hence St. Jerome, in book 1 Against Jovinian, reads: "Thinking of nothing else but pleasures."
Hear now the stains and obscenity of the banquets among the Gnostics, as Minucius Felix describes them in the Octavius: "On a solemn day they come together to a feast with all their children, sisters, mothers, persons of every sex and every age. After many feasts, when the banquet has grown warm, and the fervor of incestuous lust has been kindled, a dog which is tied to the lampstand, by the throwing of a morsel beyond the length of the line by which it is bound, is provoked to a leap and a rush. Thus, the conscious light being overthrown and extinguished, with shameless darkness they entangle themselves in the bonds of nefarious lust."
Clement of Alexandria writes the same about the Carpocratians, in book 3 of the Stromata, where he also adds that they sacrilegiously abused for this promiscuous and unspeakable lust that saying of Christ: "Give to every one that asketh thee," Luke 6:30. Philastrius and Theodoret in the book On Heresies, and Tertullian, Apology chapter 7, testify the same of the same. Similar to these today are some Anabaptists and Adamites, whose parent and chorus-leader was Luther, who spent whole days in banquets, drinking-parties, and beds, and there hammered out his heresies; and this for the purpose of burying in wine the remorse of his conscience that was barking at him and continually charging him with apostasy: which he also urged his followers to do. Therefore our Frusius rightly wrote this against him:
The Bibles which are yours, Luther, are Bacchic cups;
Your wine-cellar is your library.
Whoever wishes to know the delights, debaucheries, and venereal exploits of Calvin, let him read Bolsec in his Life. Heshusius, in his Antidote against Illyricus, a rigid Lutheran, writes that he drags with him the very Epicureanism itself, and overturns the whole of religion from its foundations. Smidelin complains thus about his own Lutherans, in sermon 4, on chapter 21 of St. Luke: "In order that the whole world may recognize that they are not Papists, and that they place no trust whatever in good works, of those works they perform absolutely none. In place of fasting, they devote themselves night and day to feasting and drinking-bouts; where they ought to deal kindly with the poor, they flay and skin them: they turn prayers into oaths, blasphemies, and execrations of the divine name, and this so perversely that even the Turks today do not blaspheme so greatly. Finally, in place of humility, pride, haughtiness, and arrogance reign everywhere; and this whole way of life is called by them the Evangelical institute." Erasmus, in his epistle to Vulturius, in the year of the Lord 1529: "Look around," he says, "at this Evangelical people, and observe whether luxury, lust, and money are indulged any less there than among those whom you detest. Show me anyone whom this Gospel of yours has rendered sober from a glutton, gentle from fierce, generous from rapacious, blessing from cursing, modest from shameless. I will show you many who have been made worse than themselves." Indeed, Luther himself (as Aurifaber, his disciple, reports in the Table-Talk of Luther, sermon, page 244) asserted that "the disciples of his school are for the most part Epicureans, who measure sermons by their own brain, and seek only this, that they may have good days: such monstrosities of scoundrels are not found in the papacy; they are called Reformed Evangelicals, when in fact they seem rather to be incarnate demons, so that if anyone wishes to view some assembly of scoundrels, dissolutes, rebels, and fraudulent men, he should enter some Evangelical city; scarcely among Pagans, Jews, or Turks are found such contumacious men, among whom all honesty and whatever is of virtue has utterly perished, and no account is taken of any sin." Who would not believe Luther here, as a master testifying about his own disciples?
Rioting with you. — In Greek συνευωχούμενοι ὑμῖν, that is, feasting together with you, as Oecumenius and St. Augustine read, in book On Faith and Works, chapter 25, and St. Jude, verse 12: "Banqueting without fear," in Greek συνευωχούμενοι ἀφόβως. So also Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 2, 1, says ἑστία, that is, a full, public, and perpetual banquet is held in the heavens; and so it is named from the good seating: but δεῖπνον, that is, lunch, on earth, because after this comes πονεῖν, that is, to give effort and labor. And in the same sense our "rioting" could be taken; for "luxuria" often signifies the luxury of foods and banquets, as in Ephesians 5:18: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxuria," in Greek ἀσωτία, that is, luxury, ferocity, drunkenness, debauchery.
But because the seething belly foams forth into lusts, as St. Jerome says, and because the Gnostics directed their meals and banquets to satisfy their lusts, our translator, wishing to embrace all these things, skillfully renders "rioting." For he saw that this pertains to what follows: "Having eyes full of adultery." Oecumenius explains it best: "Indeed," he says, "while they feast with you, they do not do this for charity's sake, but in order to find an occasion for deceiving women. For these, having eyes, look at nothing other than adulterous women, and sinning in this without any end, as children of execration they entice unstable souls." St. Peter therefore signifies that the Gnostics insinuated themselves into the agapae, that is, the banquets of the faithful after the Eucharist, and there with wanton looks and touches they enticed the faithful to their lusts. So St. Augustine, On Faith and Works, chapter 25: "For they are mixed with the good," he says, "in the meals of the Sacraments and in the meetings of the people."
Perhaps the Interpreter read, in place of συνευωχούμενοι, συνοχευόμενοι, that is, "rioting": for ὀχεύω signifies to be lustful, to copulate, to perform venereal acts. "Rioting therefore with you," that is, among you and concerning you, as if to say: They lay snares for your chastity, and with you they exercise their lusts in mind, eyes, and touch, in order to entice you to fulfill the same in deed. Beware of them therefore as of lions, indeed as plunderers of chastity. Wherefore it is strange that Erasmus, Vatablus, and Pagninus translate it "insulting." "In their errors," they say, "that is, through their deceptions, by which they have prepared riches for themselves, they insult you, and call down evils upon you;" for the Greek word signifies no such thing.
Verse 14: Having Eyes Full of Adultery and of Sin That Ceaseth Not: Alluring Unstable Souls, Having Their Heart Exercised With Covetousness, Children of Malediction
14. Having eyes full of adultery. — Μεστοὺς μοιχαλίδος, that is, full of an adulteress, this is full of "lustful and adulterous gazes upon adulteresses," as if to say: They constantly look at the women whom they court and busy themselves to make adulteresses; they bear them in their eyes, mind, and countenance; they look at and think of nothing but them, in order to entice them to adultery. So Oecumenius. Hence St. Cyprian, in book On the Single Life of the Clergy, reads "full of adulteries," to wit:
The eyes are guides in love,
as Propertius says in book two of the Elegies, 15; and another:
As I saw, so I perished, so the evil error carried me away.
Hence Jeremiah, Lamentations 3:51: "My eye has plundered my soul;" and, as St. Jerome says in the same place, "through the eye of the body he carried off the spoil of the heart." For, as Christ says: "Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart," Matthew 5:28. Wherefore the greatest custody must rightly be applied to the eyes, because "death enters through the windows," Jeremiah 9:21. So Job, chapter 31, verse 1: "I made," he says, "a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin." "Lest, as St. Jerome says in Lamentations 3:51, he should first incautiously look upon what he would afterward unwillingly love; for the form, once bound to the heart through the eyes, is scarcely loosed by the hand of great struggle: for in order that the mind may be kept pure in thought, the eyes must be repressed from the lasciviousness of their own pleasure, as certain ravishers leading to fault." And David, Psalm 118:37: "Turn away," he says, "my eyes lest they look upon vanity."
Thus those old men lying in wait for Susanna had eyes full of adultery, and therefore "they perverted their own mind, and turned away their eyes that they might not see heaven, nor remember just judgments," Daniel 13:9.
Rightly St. Ambrose, in book On Joseph, chapter 3: "First," he says, "are the weapons of the eyes of the adulteress, second those of words; but he who is not captured by the eyes can resist the words;" for the eyes are the windows of our minds, says Salvian in book 3 On Providence, who also adds that "all wicked desires enter into the heart through the eyes, as through natural mines." Wherefore Zeleucus, the legislator of the Locrians, justly enacted by law that the eyes of adulterers should be plucked out, as the first adulterers in a man, as Aelian relates in book 13 of Various Histories, chapter 24. See St. Gregory, Morals 21, chapter 2, and St. Basil, book On Virginity, and Augustine in the Rule of Monks, and epistle 109, where among other things he says: "Do not say that you have chaste minds if you have unchaste eyes; because an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart, and when, even with tongue silent, hearts mutually announce themselves unchaste by the sight of one another, and according to the concupiscence of the flesh delight in mutual ardor, even with bodies untouched by impure violation, chastity flies from morals."
And of unceasing sin, — that is, of perpetual fault, as if to say: The Gnostics perpetually with lustful eyes look impudently at women, in order to make them adulteresses; hence they perpetually sin and offend with them, so that they do not cease from sin even for a moment, because they continually turn them over in their mind and lust after them: they never cease from offense, because they never cease from foul gazing, thinking, and lusting after adultery. The Interpreter reads ἀκαταπαύστου, that is, "unceasing"; now they read ἀκαταπαύστους ἁμαρτίας, that is, "unceasing," namely the eyes, which never cease from offense. So Pagninus, Vatablus, and others. St. Jerome, in book 1 Against Jovinian, reads "with insatiable lust."
Hear St. Cyprian, On the Single Life of the Clergy, treating this passage excellently: "They go utterly mad," he says, "they burn with desire for women, and neighing with obscenities they prefer to die rather than to be content to be torn from the sides of women by any separation, so that to satisfy the gluttony of their greed they may not be without a woman's pleasure for a moment of time; and they have this fruit in women, that with intention always fixed on them, they may satisfy the desires of the eyes. Thus among them integrity dies away, where every remembrance, whether living together or remaining together, is polluted by corrupt affections. Whom the Apostle St. Peter designated, saying: Rioting in their banquets, having eyes full of adulteries and unceasing offences, capturing weak souls." Thus in this age Luther, although he was a priest and monk who had professed chastity by solemn vow, writes (vol. 5 of the Wittenberg sermons, fol. 419): "As it is not in my power to be a man, so it is not within my right to be without a woman; and to be joined to a woman is as necessary as to eat and drink." Zwingli, in his letters to all the cities of the Helvetic republic, speaking of himself, testifies that "he was so inflamed with the heat of lust and the desires of the flesh that he turned over in his mind the pursuits of lustful flesh, spent all his thoughts on these alone, meditated upon this, and was wholly in it, that he might satisfy the fury of the flesh." Wigand, On the Goods and Evils of Germany, cited in Surius's History, pages 664 and following, asserts that "fornications and drunkenness are growing far more than ever in Germany: because," he says, "they have a greater freedom for growing than ever before, and luxury has now broken through and exceeded all bounds of shame;" and, as Luther says in 1 Corinthians 15: "As they believe, so they live; they are and remain swine, they believe like swine, and like swine they die." That the modern ministers of the heretics, primped up like Penelope's suitors, even in the very pulpit of the Word of God turn around eyes full of adultery, is testified by Archibald Hamilton in his Demonstration of Calvinist Confusion, book 2, chapter 29; where he asserts that in Scotland "there is hardly any of the ministers who refrains from either the wives or the maidservants of others." The same is shown extensively about the ministers of other nations by Stanislaus Rescius in their Atheisms concerning the sacrament of Orders, where among other things he describes the cenotaph of Beza from Gabriel Fabricius in his response to Beza: "There stands," he says, "at Geneva in his mausoleum a statue of Beza supported by four columns. On the first, with skillfully concealed work, is sculpted a fair maiden with her quivered Cupid, by many incestuous loves not merely defiled but ravished. On the second a Harpy laden with many not robberies but sacrileges, as with the rich spoils of France. On the third Bellona girt with parricides and tinged with the blood of many citizens. On the fourth Chimaera painted with manifold imposture. And these are the four cardinal virtues of Beza: Venus, Harpy, Bellona, Chimaera."
Morally note here that the epithet of lust is "unceasing offense," because once venereal love has occupied the mind, it is so kindled by it as by fire, that one cannot extinguish it or cease from it; for lust never says: "It is enough," Proverbs 30:16. Thus Theotimus preferred to lose his eyes, as the physician had foretold him, rather than to abstain from his wife; whence he exclaimed: "Farewell, friendly light," as St. Ambrose relates, book 4 on Luke, chapter 4. The same may be seen in beasts, such as horses, bulls, and cows, which when driven by love seem to rage and cannot be restrained by anyone. A famous example was in Henry VIII, king of England, who in order to satisfy his insane lust with Anne Boleyn squandered wealth, faith, conscience, fame, and kingdom. Whence the poet at the funeral of the queen of Scotland, in Paris in the year 1587, sang of him thus:
Juno was the sister and wife of Jove, but Anne Boleyn
Was both the bastard daughter and wife of Henry.
Enticing unstable souls, — Δελεάζοντες ψυχὰς ἀστηρίκτους, that is, alluring weak souls not well established and grounded in faith and chastity. St. Cyprian, On the Singularity of Clerics: "capturing weak souls." St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian: "deceiving souls not yet strengthened by the love of Christ." Wherefore Ecclesiasticus wisely warns in chapter 5, verse 12: "Be steadfast in the way of the Lord, and in the truth of thy understanding." Just as fowlers, then, capture birds by setting bait before them, so heretics are fowlers of weak and inconstant souls, such as silly women: for they entice them by setting before them the bait of pleasure and lust, through wanton eyes and glances. Hence they deny God's judgment, vengeance, hell, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, etc. Indeed Calvin holds that hell is not fire, but the apprehension by which the damned torment themselves while they think that they have offended God and have Him angered and offended against them. Joannes Sturmius in his Antiprooemium writes that Pappus and Osiander have reached this final point, that they reckon all faith a mockery. For he says: "The heaven of heaven is to them a dream, hell a phantom; heaven is the dwelling-place of both God and the devil." Again the Calvinists teach that no one ought to resist his desire or lust, since, forsooth, it is from God, who is the author of all movements and actions, both evil and good, whom one must always and in everything obey, and that without shame or scruple, since no one ought to be ashamed of divine motions: concerning which see verse 18.
Having a heart exercised (some wrongly read, "blinded") in covetousness. — Pagninus and the Tigurine version: "Having a heart exercised in robberies." St. Paul agrees, 1 Timothy 6:10: "The root," he says, "of all evils is covetousness," in Greek φιλαργυρία, "which some coveting have erred from the faith." So in this age the Lutherans and Calvinists have plundered many churches and monasteries in Germany, France, and indeed concerning England alone the Poet truly sang in Sanders, On the Schism of England:
A single year has carried off ten thousand churches:
How I fear that one year will scarcely suffice for the punishments.
Again, heretics are usurers, and they teach that usury is lawful, as Molinaeus taught, in his treatise On Usury.
Excellently does St. Prosper say, book 2 On the Contemplative Life, chapter 13: "For those," he says, "who serve as soldiers of God, riches must be fled; which those who wish to have do not seek without toil, do not find without difficulty, do not keep without care, do not possess without anxious enjoyment, and do not lose without sorrow."
Sons of malediction. — Κατάρας τέκνα. Tigurine version: sons of execration, that is, firstly, execrable and to be execrated; secondly, worthy of execration and eternal malediction, namely so that they may hear from Christ on the day of judgment: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels," Matthew chapter 25, 41. For the noun "son" among the Hebrews, when joined to a genitive of penalty or reward, means the same as "worthy," as "son of death" and "of Gehenna," that is, guilty of death, worthy of Gehenna; "sons of the kingdom," that is, worthy of the kingdom of heaven. Thomas Anglicus understands by "malediction" the devil; for he was the first cursed by God, Genesis chapter 3, verse 1, as if to say: heretics are sons of the devil. "A heretic, if not the brother of the devil, is certainly his helper and son," says St. Augustine, book On the Pastors, chapter 12. But this is symbolic, not literal. Indeed William Rosse, in his book That Calvinism Is Far More Detestable Than Paganism and Turkism, by comparing the doctrines and mores of both, clearly proves this very thing from their books. Whence he also adds that the Calvinists in Poland fell little short of publicly rejecting Christ and professing the Koran of Mahomet; the cause being that the Calvinists are possessed by Satan, so that Satan speaks and acts through them as through pipes and channels, and vomits out his venom into the Church of Christ, and therefore they are driven by enthusiasm and as it were by frenzy: wherefore Vigilantius the heresiarch is as much inferior to Calvin, and his deliriums to the frenzies of the Calvinists, as a dwarf is less than Hercules, a wart than a mountain, a straw than a beam, and a gnat than an elephant.
Verse 15: Leaving the Right Way They Have Gone Astray, Having Followed the Way of Balaam of Bosor, Who Loved the Wages of Iniquity
15. Forsaking the right way (of truth, faith, and sanctity) they have gone astray, having followed the way (that is, the norm, institute, manners, actions) of Balaam of Bosor, — that is, being descended from Bosra, a city of Moab. So Bede, the Gloss, Dionysius, Thomas Anglicus. But Balaam was not descended from Moab, but from Mesopotamia, as is evident from Deuteronomy 23:4. In that region, then, was the city of Bosor, which the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Septuagint, which St. Peter usually follows, call Pethor, or Pethora, Numbers 22:5. Others, as if to say: Born of a father named Bosor, so that Bosor is the same as Beor: for he was the father of Balaam, Numbers 22:5. Whence St. Augustine, Quaestio 48 on Numbers, reads, "son of Beor." So Pagninus, the Tigurine version, Gagneius, Cajetan, Adam, Salmeron, and others, and the Greek τοῦ Βοσόρ suggests this: for the article τοῦ usually denotes a son, not a place.
Who loved the wages of iniquity, — namely the gifts of Balak, king of Moab, which Balaam, coveting them, wished to curse the Hebrews for, that is, the people of God, as I said on Numbers 22 and 23. St. Peter teaches that the heresiarchs are devoted to avarice, just as Balaam was devoted to it, and therefore feign errors agreeable to the people.
Again, just as Balaam gave counsel to King Balak that he should send beautiful maidens into the camp of the Hebrews, who would entice them to lust, and thence to idolatry and the worship of Beelphegor, Numbers 25:1: so the heretics preach the freedom of the flesh, that with this bait they may entice men into their heresy.
Verse 16: But Had a Check of His Madness: the Dumb Beast Used to the Yoke, Speaking With Man's Voice, Forbade the Folly of the Prophet
16. But he had a rebuke for his madness. — In Greek ἔλεγξιν δὲ ἔσχεν ἰδίας παρανομίας, that is, "he had a rebuke for his own iniquity," or "transgression." Our translator, instead of παρανομίας, seems to have read παραφρονίας, that is, "of madness, folly, dementia"; for St. Peter immediately adds this, saying: "He checked the prophet's foolishness." Now this rebuke was effected through the donkey, of whom he adds: A dumb beast of burden (namely, a donkey accustomed to bear the yoke and rider, mute and brute) speaking with the voice of man — through an angel, who formed articulate sounds in the donkey's mouth, saying: "What have I done to thee? Why dost thou strike me, behold now the third time? Am I not thy beast, on whom thou hast always been wont to ride? say when I have ever done such a thing to thee?" Numbers 22:28. Origen and the Gloss judge that this Angel was the one who presides over the species of donkeys and all donkeys: for they hold that every species of things has its own presiding angel. More truly, Theodoret, Procopius, and Abulensis judge it to have been St. Michael, formerly the protector of the Synagogue and of the Hebrews, now the protector of the Church and of Christians. Moreover, Balaam was insane and senseless, in that he contended with the donkey and wished to slay her, nor did he consider that an angel was speaking through her mouth, but doubtless anger and fury drove and blinded him: perhaps also he himself, as being a magician accustomed to converse with the demon, supposed that the demon was speaking through the donkey's mouth, and wished to impose upon him and hinder his journey, and intercept the gain he expected from Balak. Hence Dionysius the Carthusian, on Numbers 22, judges that he contended with the donkey for this end, that the demon speaking through her might understand his indignation against him, and so contend with him indirectly by raging against her, and to her shame beat the donkey, wishing to slay her. Wherefore the angel, showing himself to him with a flashing sword, and threatening death, took from him this error, stupor, and arrogance; yet Balaam, soon blinded by avarice, went on to Balak, and when he could not curse the Hebrews as he wished, he gave Balak the most wicked counsel concerning the maidens, which I have just recounted, and therefore he was slain by the Hebrews in the war against the Midianites, Numbers 31:7 and 8. That the flashing sword which the angel pointed at him was a presage of this matter, Anastasius of Nicaea teaches, Quaestio 32 on Scripture.
Mystically Bede: Just as, he says, the donkey reproved Balaam, so often the Pagans reprove and confute heretics, the laity reproves the Clergy, subjects their Prelates, the unlearned the learned, women men, plebeians the wise. Concerning Balaam and the donkey see what was said on Numbers 22 and 23, and Apocalypse 2:14.
Verse 17: These Are Fountains Without Water, and Clouds Tossed With Whirlwinds, to Whom the Mist of Darkness Is Reserved
17. These are wells without water, — because they are without vital water, that is, sound doctrine; as if to say, the Gnostics boast and promise great wisdom, but they do not in fact display it. So St. Jerome, book 2 Against Jovinian; and Oecumenius: "They have lost," he says, "the water of life, that is, the pure and sweet water of preaching;" whereas Christ on the contrary promises and provides His own: "He who believes in Me, as Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water," John 7:38. Heretics, therefore, are philologists, not philosophers; they give leaves, not fruit; words, not knowledge; sophisms, not solid arguments: they boast and rattle on about Holy Scripture, but they do not understand it, nay they pervert it.
Secondly, St. Augustine, in his book On Faith and Works, chapter 25: "Therefore, St. Peter," he says, "also calls them dry wells: wells, namely, because they have received the knowledge of the Lord Christ; but dry, because they do not live in accordance with it (for they are destitute of the water of grace and good works). What Peter calls dry wells, this Jude calls clouds without water; this James calls dead faith." Again the Gloss: "Where," it says, "there is a well without water, there is the mire of error and sin, and it does not wash but defiles."
St. Peter alludes to that text of Jeremiah 15:18: "Thy hand has become to me as the falsehood of unfaithful waters;" for unfaithful waters are wells which promise water but do not deliver it, but dry up in summer, when men most need it for drink, refreshment, and the watering of crops. So St. Jude, verse 12, compares the heretics to clouds without water, that is, sterile and barren, and therefore lying and deceptive: "These," he says, "are clouds without water, which are carried about by the winds."
And mists. — A "mist" is a sterile and barren cloud, namely the residue of cloud and vapor: hence the mist, like a cloud, seems to promise rain and moisture; but it either delivers none, or delivers what is harmful to the crops: so the doctrine of the heretics is painted, deceptive, sophistical, pestilent.
Driven about by whirlwinds. — He compares the heresiarchs to mists, which by whirlwinds — that is, winds rotating in a circle, or contrary winds clashing with each other — are agitated and snatched everywhere, and so are dispelled and vanish. For so the heretics are driven by the demon, the spirit of dizziness, and as it were by a whirlwind of errors, so that they teach contrary things among themselves and fight each other most fiercely, according to that of Isaiah chapter 19, verse 2: "I will make the Egyptians run together against the Egyptians;" nay, one and the same person frequently changes errors, and teaches now this, now that, and often contrary things, and so his doctrine displays its own falsity, perishes and vanishes. This temper of the heretics of their age was noted by St. Irenaeus, book 1, chapter 5; St. Justin, Quaestio 4 to the Orthodox; Tertullian, De Praescript., chapter 42, and Novatian, book 7 On the Trinity, where he says: "They affirm our faith while they oppose one another, and by that inconstancy they show that all things among themselves are uncertain and vain, and their war is the Church's peace."
St. Augustine gives the cause, book 18 On the City of God, chapter 51: "The devil desired," he says, "to bring about through the heretics that there should be free dissensions in the Church, as there were in the Academies of the Philosophers, so that, as those at last perish through many divisions, and consume each other, the same might happen in the Church." But he is mistaken and is deceived. For the Church, founded by Christ in faith as upon the firm rock of Peter, always stands consistent with itself, and so the sects which the devil introduces for her obscuration, instead show and illustrate her all the more. The same thing in the heretics St. Paul noted, Ephesians 4:14, saying: "That we may no longer be little ones tossed about, and carried about by every wind of doctrine in the wickedness of men, in cunning to the circumvention of error." See what was said there.
To whom the gloom of darkness is reserved. — The Greek adds εἰς αἰῶνα, that is, the gloom of darkness for eternity, that is, the densest darkness and the gloomy fires of hell. St. Jude, verse 13: "To whom the storm of darkness is reserved for eternity."
Symbolically Hugo, the Gloss, and Thomas the Englishman: The gloom is reserved for the heretics, because in it they daily grow, so that those who are blind become more blind and seduce more, according to that of Apocalypse 22:11: "He who hurts, let him hurt still, and he who is in filth, let him grow filthy still."
Verse 18: For, Speaking Proud Words of Vanity, They Allure by the Desires of Fleshly Riotousness Those Who for a Little While Escape, Such as Converse in Error
18. Speaking proud things of vanity. — He gives the reason why he called the heresiarchs "wells without water and mists driven about by whirlwinds," namely because they vainly exalt themselves and grow proud after the manner of wells and mists. "Proud things of vanity," that is, proud vanity, or empty pride, the swelling and arrogance with which they swell up; namely, they speak and belch forth pompous, vain and proud things; hence they call themselves Gnostics, that is, knowing ones, although they are ignorant of all things. Tertullian truly says, De Praescript., chapter 41: "All," he says, "are puffed up, all promise knowledge; they are perfect catechumens before they are taught. The very heretical women — how forward! who dare to teach, dispute, perform exorcisms, promise cures, perhaps even to baptize."
Note: For "superba" (some wrongly read "superbia") the Greek has ὑπέρογκα, that is, swollen out beforehand, lofty, huge, proud, turgid, excessive, immense, intolerable; the Tigurine version, vehemently pompous; concerning such things Horace says, De Arte Poetica:
He throws aside flasks and yard-and-a-half-long words.
St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian, renders it, "they speak swelling words." "The Apostolic discourse," he says, "described Jovinian speaking with puffed-up cheeks, and weighing inflated words." St. Jude, verse 16: "Their mouth speaks proud things." He alludes to the mists, to which he had just before compared the heresiarchs: for as mists, like clouds, thicken, swell and bulge, but within are vain, empty and void, lacking moisture, dew and rain: so also the heretics swell with arrogance, and boast their wisdom with their mouth, but in their heart they are empty and void of it; whence they are like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. And this is what τὸ φθεγγόμενοι signifies, which our translator rendered as "speaking"; for φθέγγομαι is the same as "resonate, shout, vociferate," as the heretics do, who, when they are conquered by reason, strive to conquer the orthodox by contention and shouting.
They entice. — Δελεάζουσι, that is, they bait, they capture by setting out food, as fowlers catch birds, fishermen fish.
In the lusts of the flesh of luxury. — Of the flesh of luxury, — that is, the luxurious things of the flesh, or of carnal luxury, the Interpreter reads ἀσελγείας, that is, "of luxury" in the singular genitive, as also St. Augustine reads, book On Faith and Works, chapter 24: "They allure," he says, "in the concupiscences of the flesh of unchastity," that is, unchaste, or to unchaste persons. Now they read ἀσελγείαις in the dative plural. Hence Vatablus translates, "they bait men by carnal lusts with pleasures." Furthermore ἀσέλγεια is general, and signifies luxury, wantonness, lust, licentiousness, such as is in unchaste touches and looks, concerning which see verse 14. This is what St. Jude says, verse 4: "Transferring the grace of our God into luxury."
Furthermore, the bait for luxury, and consequently for heresy, is given by the heretics in many ways. First, Luther gave this, that chastity is impossible; while luxury is as necessary to man as eating and drinking. The impostor spoke truly, but only of himself and his followers: for to them chastity is impossible, both because they persuade themselves of it: for it is impossible for him to remain chaste who thinks it impossible for him; for affection follows the light and judgment of reason; both because they reject the faith and grace of God, without which chastity is impossible, Wisdom 8:21; both because they deny free will, and judge that a man is necessarily driven and snatched by his appetite and fantasy, like a beast; both because, like swine, they have voluntarily devoted themselves wholly to the flesh, Venus, and the belly.
The second is common to the heretics, namely, that present certain goods are to be cared for, not future uncertain ones. Hence either openly or tacitly they deny the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, and Gehenna. Hear Brentius on St. Luke chapter 20, homily 35: "Although," he says, "there is among us no public profession that the soul perishes together with the body, and that there is no resurrection of the dead, nevertheless that most impure and profane life which the greatest part of men follow plainly indicates that they do not believe there is life after this one. Also from some such words slip out, both when drunk amid cups, and when sober in familiar conversation." This is what Luther said of his own: "They believe like swine, they live like swine, they die like swine."
The third is Calvin's, that God is the author of all motions and actions, both evil and good. For from this principle of his, his disciples, the Libertines, draw two rules, which Calvin himself recounts, Instruct. contra Libertin., 13. The first is: "Since all things are works of God, men are permitted to do whatever comes into their mind, with reins as it were slackened, not only because we are beyond danger of sinning, but also because to restrain any desire is to hinder God. Thus fornications and rapines will be approved by God, whose works they are: so there is no need to care that what is stolen be restored, because it is not fitting that God be corrected." The other: "Let no one be moved by conscience of any matter. Nor does this only follow from what was set down above, but they confess this very thing; and indeed they principally propose this to themselves, that they may lull consciences to sleep, so that, free from all anxiety, men may perpetrate whatever offers itself, whatever they have desired."
For with this principle laid down, that God is the author of all concupiscences, lusts, pleasures, rapines, slaughters, etc., anyone will say: I neither can nor ought to resist God; therefore I will obey Him, I will cooperate with Him; I will indulge in concupiscences, lust, pleasure without scruple — nay, with praise — because I follow God.
Hence Epicureanism has so prevailed, and grows stronger day by day, that Calvin himself wonders that in France alone there are so many swarms of Doctors who industriously give their labor to sowing it, and an infinite multitude of disciples.
Wherefore Sebastian Castalio, On the New God of Calvin, asserts that Calvin transforms God into a devil: for this one is the author of all evil; and consequently that Calvin and his followers worship and adore the devil in place of God. "There are," he says, "two gods, the one true, of Christians, the other false, of the Calvinists: the false God is slow to mercy, prone to wrath, because He created the greatest part of the world to perdition, and predestined them not only to damnation, but also to the cause of damnation. Thus He decreed from eternity, and wills and brings about that they sin necessarily, so that neither thefts, nor murders, nor adulteries are committed except by His will and impulse; for He suggests evil and dishonest affections to men, not only permissively but effectively, and so hardens them that, while they act impiously, they perform rather the work of God than their own. He therefore makes Satan a liar, so that not Satan now, but the God of Calvin is the father of lies; since He often bears one thing on the lip, another in the heart. But that God whom the sacred Scriptures teach is plainly contrary to this. He wills all to be saved, etc. And this God came that He might destroy the works of that Calvinian God." Furthermore, those two contrary gods imbue and inform their worshippers with contrary morals. For, as Castalio adds: "The true God came that He might destroy the works of that Calvinian God; and these two gods, as they are by nature contrary to each other, so also they beget sons contrary to each other: namely, the Calvinian God begets the merciless, the proud, the harsh, the envious, the bloody, the slanderers, the false (bearing one thing in the heart, another on the lip), the impatient, the malicious, the seditious, the contentious, the ambitious, the avaricious, lovers of pleasure more than of God, full of every depraved and dishonest affection, which their own father suggests to them. But the other God begets the merciful, the humble, the meek," etc.
And so that you may see that this is the view not of Castalio alone, but the common view of others, Smidelinus Against Grynaeus: "The Calvinist spirit," he says, "is a liar, a murderer, black, the worst, fugitive, slippery, diabolical, false, furious, wordy, gross, blind. Calvinism, Arianism, and Mahometanism are brothers and sisters: three boots of the same cloth. The Camarina, into which many heresies have flowed; the last wrath of Satan." Luther, cited by Gretser, book 1 Against Goldast, chapter 12: "The Calvinists," he says, "are fanatics, a viperous progeny, soul-murderers, impious, blasphemers, deceivers, bloody, infernal mastiffs, German Turks sent and possessed by Satan, baptized Mahometans, devil-ridden, devil-traversed, super-devilled." Godefroy de la Vallee, publicly burned at Paris in the year 1572, wrote a book On the Art of Believing Nothing, in which he teaches that "one must first become a Calvinist who wants to be an atheist." Guilielmus Reginaldus in Calvinoturcism shows that Calvinism differs little from Turkism or atheism, and that he who is truly a Calvinist is hardly removed from being a Turk or an atheist. Finally, the Most Serene King of England James in Basilicodorus asserts that his Puritans in England, that is, pure Calvinists, are "fanatical spirits, perjurers, perfidious, breathing nothing but sedition and slander, hurling curses without reason; that he has found more faith in wild robbers than in Puritans; that he has not only been continuously vexed from his birth by Puritans; but was also nearly extinguished by them in his mother's womb."
Them (refer to "entice": as if to say, the heretics by the bait of luxury entice into their heresies those) who have a little escaped, (those) who live in error. — Namely, those who have a little escaped Gentiles and Jews, who live in the error of gentilism and judaism; as if to say, the heretics entice to themselves novices, or those wavering and weak in the faith, that is, those recently or feebly converted from judaism or gentilism to Christ: for these, since they are tender, weak and unschooled in the faith, easily allow themselves to be seduced. For "paululum" the Interpreter reads ὀλίγῳ; others read οὕτως, that is, "thus," that is, in some manner a little; others ὄντως, that is, indeed. Again the Interpreter reads in the present ἀποφεύγοντας, that is, "who flee"; now in the aorist they read ἀποφυγόντας, that is, "who had fled." For this whole sentence is read in Greek: τοὺς ὀλίγως ἀποφυγόντας, τοὺς ἐν πλάνῃ ἀναστρεφομένους, which you may render plainly and clearly thus: they entice those who had a little escaped, those who live in error, namely Jews, Gentiles, or rather Gnostic heretics; as if to say, the Gnostics again entice to their heresy those who had recently been converted from their heresy to the orthodox faith, by rubbing and thrusting upon them the bait of those former pleasures and lusts in which they had indulged in heresy; therefore, from the memory, habit and accustomedness of these, they easily relapse into heresy, since they were recently converted from it, and so are tender and weak in the orthodox faith. To this sense the following words strongly favor, and St. Augustine, book On Faith and Works, chapter 24, when he reads thus: "They allure in the concupiscences of the flesh of unchastity those who had a little escaped from living in error;" and St. Jerome, book 2 Against Jovinian, when he renders it thus, "they entice in the desires of the flesh of luxury those who had a little escaped and have returned to error," — for the Greek ἀναστρέφειν means both "to return" and "to live or dwell."
In sum, St. Peter signifies that the heretics seduce, not those who are strong and seasoned in the faith, but those who are novices in it, weak, and therefore easily wavering and seduced by the bait of pleasure set before them, to which they had previously been accustomed and to which they had wholly devoted themselves. Hence St. Augustine, treatise On the Utility of Believing, vol. 9: "The wheat," he says, "either does not depart from the threshing-floor, or returns: the enemy carries off some of the chaff by the wind of temptation, by which he makes for us not a way of perdition, but a work of exercise." In the same place he teaches that the devil introduced heresies in place of idolatry. For as fish and birds slipped from the net, if they fly or swim near it, gaping at the bait of the net, easily fall back into it and are entangled: so also those who have been converted from error, if they hear its teachers and listen to their pleasures, easily relapse into the same; therefore, in order to be safe, they ought wholly with all their heart to renounce error, and to depart from it and its teachers as far as possible, and to close their ears completely, lest they hear anything about it even from afar.
Verse 19: Promising Them Liberty, Whereas They Themselves Are the Slaves of Corruption
19. Promising them liberty (both from sin, from the law, and from subjection to lords and princes, that they may freely do whatever pleases them; for they say that luxury is not sin, but the work of God and of nature), when they themselves are slaves of corruption, — namely of lust and pleasure, which corrupts soul and body. For just as chastity is the integrity of mind and body, so luxury is the corruption of both: therefore they make themselves slaves of it: "For everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin," John chapter 8, verse 34. Cicero wrote a Paradox: "That only the wise man is free;" and Philo: "That only the upright is free; for the wicked, though he deny it, is the slave of as many lords as he has vices." Diogenes used to say that between slaves and bad masters there is no difference except in name, save that slaves serve masters, and masters serve their lusts, and brutish and paltry ones at that. Seneca, book On the Happy Life, chapter 5: "Born in a kingdom," he says, "to obey God is liberty." Rightly does St. Ephrem wonder, Exhortation to piety, vol. 1, that even one can be found who would prefer to serve the creature rather than the Creator. For that mind is free, which, serving God alone, has dominion over vices and all creatures and the whole world, and is therefore happy and blessed. Hear St. Salvian, On Providence, book 1: "No one," he says, "is wretched in another's judgment, but in his own, and therefore those cannot be wretched by false judgment who are truly blessed in their own conscience, etc. None, as I think, are more blessed than those who act according to their own knowledge and choice. The Religious are humble, this they want; they are poor, they delight in poverty; they are without ambition, they reject ambition; they are unhonored, they refuse honor; they mourn, they desire to mourn; they are weak, they rejoice in weakness. When I am weak, says the Apostle, then am I powerful. Therefore whatever happens to those who are truly Religious, they must be called blessed, because amid however many harsh things, none are more cheerful than those who are what they wish to be." See what was said in Epistle 1, chapter 2, verse 16.
Furthermore in this age there flourishes the sect of the Libertines, so called from the Evangelical liberty which Luther first proclaimed. This sect Stanislaus Rescius describes thus in his Centuries of Sects: "A fanatical kind of men, in whom you may rightly believe that the Gnostics and Valentinians have come back to life, to whom nothing is so displeasing as the simple, proper and natural sense of Scripture. To them Christ is Satan, vice virtue, and virtue vice. For nothing in their judgment is sin, except in the opinion of those who think themselves to sin. The true fear of God, and a conscience imbued with it, is to them as hell: but for paradise they have a conscience contemptuous of divine judgment, secure, stupefied and put to sleep. They teach that all things are lawful to a man without any exception, and they approve every kind of living: they want the pimp to perform his function; they boldly bid thieves to steal; they want marriages to be dissolved when the wife has grown weary of her husband: hence they praise promiscuous unions, and call this spiritual marriage; the communion of the Saints they call the communion of temporal goods, and therefore they urge that each one, as much as he can, should plunder. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, nor is any other judgment to be expected. They affirm that all Christians have already risen, since they hold that the human soul has now become that immortal spirit of God, indeed has returned into the essence of God, whence, they say, it issued, and is so joined to it that one single spirit remains."
Finally, our heretics in France, Belgium, England, etc., at the beginning of the heresy took up arms against the orthodox princes, and put forward as the title of the war the liberty of conscience. But when they had got hold of the state, they overturned that very liberty for which they had fought so many years and shed so much blood, nay even deprived themselves of it. For they do not permit liberty of religion and faith, either to themselves or to others, but compel all to be Protestants or Calvinists, and persecute the orthodox even unto death, with unheard-of torments, more than the Turks and Saracens, indeed more than the Turks persecute the Christians. Is this the liberty sought and promised, indeed sworn to, by so many slaughters? Elegantly does our Perpinianus, an eyewitness, depict these plagues of the human race, furies of the Church, torches of kingdoms, or rather burning brands of hell, in oration 8.
For by whom a man is overcome, of him he is also a slave. — In Greek δεδούλωται, that is, "has been bound to servitude," or "assigned into slavery." Hence "mancipium" (slave) is so called, as one taken by hand in war, and "servus" as one preserved (servatus) from the enemy, says St. Augustine, book 19 On the City of God, 15. For by the law of nations slavery was introduced thus, when victors granted life to enemies captured in war whom they could have killed, and exchanged death for slavery, as Justinian teaches, in the Institutes on the law of persons, book 4, § 1. Hence the same Augustine reads this passage thus: "For by whom a man is conquered, to him also has he been assigned as a slave;" and St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian: "For each one is subject to that passion by which he is conquered."
"How great an iniquity it is," exclaims St. Augustine, book On the Honor of Women, chapter 30, "that the lustful man should sell and hand over to the devil, for the delight of one hour, the soul which Christ redeemed with His blood?" And the bond of this sale, fortified by his own signature, the sinner hands over to the devil. So Origen explains, homily 23 on Genesis, that text to Colossians chapter 2, verse 14, "Blotting out the bond which was against us:" "That bond," he says, "was the security of our sins: for each one of us in those things in which he transgresses becomes a debtor, and writes the letters of his sin." The Gentiles saw the same in their own way. "Diogenes called himself emperor, but Alexander the Great a slave of his slaves, because he served his own lusts, over which Diogenes himself was emperor." So Manutius in the Apophthegms of Diogenes, book 3, century 1, no. 47. To the same Alexander the Brahmins wrote, "There is no profit in becoming lord of the world, while serving the lowest and vilest thing: in overthrowing external enemies, so as to foster and sustain internal ones."
Verse 20: For if, Flying From the Pollutions of the World, Through the Knowledge of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, They Be Again Entangled in Them and Overcome: Their Latter State Is Become Unto Them Worse Than the Former
20. For if, fleeing the defilements of the world (that is, the errors and sins, namely the superstitions and idolatries of gentilism, and the consequent license of pleasures and lusts. The sense is, as if to say: To such, that is, those who, fleeing the defilements, pleasures and lusts of the world, have betaken themselves to knowledge, that is, to the faith and worship of Christ — if, apostatizing from Him to gentilism, or rather to the heresy of the Gnostics, they again, in those defilements,) entangled, are overcome (which had overcome them before, as St. Jerome reads, book 1 Against Jovinian), the last things are become unto them worse than the first, — both because the evil of relapse is graver; both because they immerse themselves more and more deeply in their former vices, and put on a stronger habit; both because, ungrateful to the grace of God, they are deserted by it. He alludes to, indeed cites, that saying of Christ: "The last things of that man become worse than the first," Matthew chapter 12, verse 45; and Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 36: "How greatly vile hast thou become, repeating thy ways!" St. Basil, Rule 289 from the shorter Rules, acutely notes that when someone relapses into sin, it is a sign that originally he had not fully departed from sin, nor extirpated its root, but the appetite and concupiscence of sin still secretly resided in his mind. Hence William of Paris infers, book On the Sacrament of Penance, chapter 5, that such a one had not had a strong and efficacious contrition. St. Peter compares the Gnostics with idolaters; so that those who from idolaters had become Christians, if from Christians they become Gnostics, may seem to relapse into idolatry, because the Gnostics in many things imitated the wicked worship of unbelievers, and because the impiety of both was equal, the same lust, the same parent. Hence Tertullian, book On Prescription, chapter 40, teaches that "heresies do not differ from idolatry, since they are of the same author and work as idolatry; for they fashion another God against the Creator; or if they confess one Creator, they discourse of Him otherwise than as He is in truth. Therefore every lie which they tell about God is in some way a kind of idolatry." For, as St. Augustine says, Quaestio 29 on Joshua: "Whoever thinks of such a God as God is not, undoubtedly bears another and false God in his thought."
Morally note here, that just as the relapse of a convalescent into illness is graver and more dangerous than the original illness, so also is the relapse of one who has been justified into sin. Hear St. Paul, Hebrews chapter 6, verse 4: "It is impossible," he says, "for those who have once been illuminated, have also tasted the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, have nevertheless tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, and have fallen away, to be renewed again unto penance." And elsewhere: "For if we sin willingly after having received the knowledge of the truth, there is no longer left a sacrifice for sins, but a certain dreadful expectation of judgment and the rage of fire which shall consume the adversaries." And St. Chrysostom, homily On the Fall of the first man: "Do not," he says, "sin after pardon; do not be wounded after cure; do not be defiled after grace: consider, O man, that guilt after pardon is graver, that a renewed wound hurts worse after a cure, that it is more grievous for a man to be defiled after grace. Therefore he is ungrateful for indulgence, who sins after pardon; he is unworthy of health, who wounds himself after he has been cured; nor does he deserve to be cleansed, who defiles himself after grace." And a few words later: "It is grave for an instructed man to transgress, graver for an absolved one to sin: he is worse than a slave who offends his patron after liberty has been given him: he is ungrateful for benefits, who despises the giver with the arrogance of swelling." See our John Busaeus in the Medicinal Ark, word Relapse, where he suggests five remedies against relapse into sin, and confirms them with the testimonies of Holy Scripture and the Fathers.
Verse 21: For It Had Been Better for Them Not to Have Known the Way of Justice, Than After They Have Known It, to Turn Back From That Holy Commandment Which Was Delivered to Them
21. Better, — not positively, as if it were a greater good, since it is not even a good; but negatively, because it is a lesser evil, that is, the guilt of the ignorant unbeliever is less than that of the knowing believer, and therefore the punishment also will be less. "For the former has not yet drawn near, but the latter has looked back," says St. Augustine on Psalm 83. The same St. Augustine, sermon 2 on Psalm 30: "When he says," he says, "'It would have been better for them not to know the way of justice,' did he not judge that enemies placed outside are better than those living wickedly within, by whom the Church is pressed and burdened?" And Salvian, book 4 On Providence: "Now," he says, "because thou hast known Christ, thou who hast been received as it were into the mouth of God through the recognition of faith, thou shalt be cast forth through tepidity; which also blessed Peter set forth, saying concerning the vicious and tepid: It would have been better for them," etc.
Not to know, — μὴ ἐπεγνωκέναι, that is, "not to have known."
The way of justice, — that is, the institution and religion is the way leading us to true virtue and righteousness before God, in which therefore no one is permitted to stand still, but each one ought always to advance and progress in it, until he arrives at the goal, namely the heavenly fatherland and glory. Some, instead of "justice," read ἀληθείας, that is, "of truth," that is, of true doctrine and faith, namely the Gospel.
To turn back from the holy commandment. — St. Augustine, On Faith and Works, chapter 24, reads, "to turn away from what was handed down;" St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian, "to turn backward, and to forsake the holy commandment which was delivered to them."
He calls the Evangelical law "the holy commandment." First, because its author is Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Second, because the Evangelical law teaches and commands every purity and sanctity, and forbids every defilement and impurity.
Third, because it sanctifies all those who obey it through the doctrine, grace, and sacraments which it supplies.
Fourth, because it ought to be observed with holiness: for its manner, equally with its end, is sanctity, according to that saying: "That being delivered without fear from the hand of our enemies, we may serve Him in holiness and righteousness before Him, all our days," Luke 1:78.
Fifth, because many things in it cannot be observed without sanctifying grace, among which the first is the law of charity, the reception of the Eucharist, the administration of the Holy Sacraments, etc.
Sixth, because it has for its object God, who is sanctity itself: for it worships Him by faith, hope, charity, religion, and the other Christian virtues.
Seventh, the commandment of the Gospel is holy, because it was sanctioned and confirmed by God, that it might endure through all ages, and through all eternity, and that it might be fully and perfectly fulfilled by the Saints in heaven.
Excellently does Salvian say, book 4 to the Catholic Church, at the end: "All," he says, "who hate the sacred commandment, have the cause of hatred in themselves. All loathing is not in the precepts of the law, but in their own morals. The law indeed is good, but their morals are evil, and on this account let men change their purpose and disposition. For if they have made their morals praiseworthy, nothing of what the good law commands will displease them: for when anyone has begun to be good, he cannot but love the law of God, because the holy law of God has within itself this same thing which holy men have in their morals." St. Peter speaks of apostasy and of those apostatizing from the holy faith and law of Christ to the impure sect of the Gnostics. Nevertheless you may rightly apply his sentence to Priests and Religious who apostatize from their priesthood and religion, and return to the world, or take wives, or rather concubines: as to how great a wickedness this is, see in St. Basil, Greater Rules, Rule 14; Caesarius, homily 3 to the Monks; the Author of the sermon to the Brothers in the Wilderness, in St. Augustine, vol. 10, sermons 8 and 34, and our Hieronymus Platus, 3 On the Good of the Religious State, 37.
But he chiefly censures the sect of the Agapetae, which arose a little before the time of St. Jerome and greatly spread itself, and therefore most of the Fathers, such as Sts. Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, Nazianzen, Basil, in his book On Virginity, sharply inveigh against it. They were called in Greek ἀγαπηταί, that is, "beloved ones" (likewise adoptive sisters, as St. Chrysostom says), because under the pretext of love they cohabited with spiritual men, as if to be instructed and formed by them in piety and virtue, but under this pretext they lived shamefully, as is even now done in some places. Wherefore the Fathers already cited teach that virgins and devout women ought plainly to be separated from men, even spiritual ones. Hear St. Jerome to Eustochium, book On Guarding Virginity: "It shames me to say (oh wickedness!) — it is sad, but it is true. Whence has the plague of the Agapetae crept into the Churches? Whence the other name of wives without weddings? Nay, whence the new kind of concubines? I will go further: Whence the harlots married to one man? They are kept in the same house, in one chamber, often in one little bed, and they call us suspicious if we think anything from this. The brother forsakes the virgin sister; the virgin spurns her unmarried brother and seeks a stranger. And while they pretend to be in the same purpose, they seek the spiritual solace of strangers, that they may have carnal commerce at home. Such men Solomon in the Proverbs spurns, saying: Can a man bind fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn? Or can he walk upon coals of fire, and his feet not be scorched?" Again the same Jerome, a little above in the same place: "These are they," he says, "who are wont to say: All things are clean to the clean, my conscience suffices for me. God desires only a pure heart. Why should I abstain from foods which God created to be used? And if at any time they wish to live festively and merrily, when they have gulped down their wine, joining sacrilege to drunkenness, they say: Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ. And when they have seen one pale and sad, they call her wretched and a Manichaean. And consequently to such a purpose, fasting is heresy. These are they who walk publicly in a notable manner, and with the stealthy nods of their eyes draw flocks of young men after them, who always hear through the Prophet: Thou hast had a harlot's forehead, thou wast shameless. Only a thin purple in the garment, and looser, that the locks may fall down, the head bound: a meaner shoe, and a hyacinth cloak fluttering martially over the shoulders; tight sleeves clinging to the arms, and a broken gait with loosened knees. This among them is the whole of virginity."
Verse 22: For That of the True Proverb Has Happened to Them: The Dog Is Returned to His Vomit; and, the Sow That Was Washed, to Her Wallowing in the Mire
22. The dog returned to his vomit. — He compares the Gentiles who relapsed from Christianity into the heresy of the Gnostics to dogs. First, because such men, like dogs, return to their vomit, that is, to the errors, gluttonies, and lusts which they had vomited up and cast off in Christianity. Furthermore, to swallow back one's vomit is a foul and abominable thing. Whence St. Augustine, sermon on Psalm 30: "See," he says, "to how horrible a thing he has compared them. A horrible thing indeed is it to swallow back one's own vomit, something never undertaken by anyone even in the extremity of hunger." Second, because they are shameless and unchaste like dogs, which copulate in public. Hence the impure Diogenes, on account of his canine obscenity and shamelessness, was called the Cynic, that is, "dish and dog," as Laertius testifies. Furthermore the term "dog" denotes the wandering and promiscuous lusts and adulteries of the Gnostics: for such are dogs; whence the proverb: "The male dog has countless lairs." Third, because heretics bark at the truth and the true faith, and assail the orthodox by word and writing like barking dogs: so St. Chrysostom, in his homily On the Cross of the Lord: "All heretics," he says, "are dogs who stretch out the speeches of blasphemies against their Creator." Fourth, because the dog is a vile and foul animal and legally unclean, as is plain in Deuteronomy 23:18; such also are heretics. Hence Sirach 13:22: "What fellowship," it says, "has a holy man with a dog?" And Isaiah, last chapter, 3: "He who slays an ox is as he who brains a dog;" and Christ, Matthew 7:6: "Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine." Alluding to this passage, Peter takes up both of Christ's comparisons, namely of dogs and of swine. Fifth, because, as St. Jerome says to Rusticus: "They go forth in public on the litters of pageants to exercise canine eloquence," namely speech composed solely for cursing and quarrelling, which is called canine, from the brawling and barking of dogs. Now this cursing argues the timidity, falsehood, and distrust of the heretics. For just as the most timid dogs bark the most, because they dare not bite, or are unable; while silent dogs bite and do not bark: so heretics, because they fear and distrust their own cause, as being false and erroneous, are eager to cover it with shouts and curses and to obtain by these the victory which they know they cannot obtain by arguments and reasonings. Sixth, dogs are beggars: for they beg by standing at the master's table, intent on him, awaiting a morsel and bones. Hence the proverb: "A dog helping a beggar." For dogs are hostile to beggars as if they were ὁμοτέχνοις, that is, those who exercise the same craft with them and snatch away their bread: hence beggars are accustomed to win them over by throwing the dogs a scrap. Thus the heretics beg, and gape after the tables and purses of the rich, and like dogs prowl about the meat-market and the entrails. "For the dogs have a keen scent," and wherever they smell food, there they insinuate themselves. Seventh, the dog is prone to vengeance, but stupidly bites back the stone thrown at him; the thrower, however, he lets go, as if he dared not touch him, says Plato in book 5 of the Republic. So heretics are prone to vengeance, and when they cannot attack and avenge themselves on the truth and on the learned who attack them, they fall upon the unlearned common folk. Eighth, dogs live idly and securely off another's goods, according to that saying: "A dog living off the magdalia," that is, off bran, oil-residue, and other refuse from the hands; and: "A dog sailing as it were to Delos," usually said of one who is supine, idle, secure, and leading a voluptuous life: for the voyage from Athens to Delos was easy and safe. The heretics live the same kind of life. Hence Paul: "Beware," he says, "of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision," Philippians 3:2. Ninth, dogs eagerly pursue the wild beast in the hunt and surround it until they catch and tear it; "for keen is the breed of wolves and dogs," says Virgil, Georgics 3.
And hares, and does, with dogs you shall hunt down,
in the same place. And Ovid in the Ibis:
The greedy dogs shall rend your treacherous heart.
Thus the heretics hunt souls as it were hares, and do not desist until they capture and slay them.
Tenth, dogs howl horribly, which Lucretius calls "baubare." Hence the poets say that in the underworld there is a three-headed dog, namely Cerberus, like a horrible monster, who bites and torments the damned. Similar is the howling, biting, horror, and torment of the heretics, especially in Gehenna. Hence Cerberus was so called as if κρεοβόρος, that is, "flesh-devouring," of whom Virgil, Aeneid 6:
Here huge Cerberus makes these realms ring with his three-throated barking,
Lying monstrous in his cave opposite:
and soon after:
He, gaping with three throats with rabid hunger,
Snatches what is thrown to him, and unfurls his enormous back.
Morally St. Gregory, Part 3 of the Pastoral Rule, admonition 31, applies this saying of St. Peter to any who return to sins they have given up. For St. Peter is alluding to that of Proverbs 26:11: "As a dog returns to his own vomit, so is the imprudent man who repeats his own folly." For those, says St. Gregory, must be admonished who lament their sins yet do not forsake them; and otherwise those who forsake them, yet do not lament them. For those must be admonished who lament their sins and yet do not forsake them, that they may know to consider carefully that they cleanse themselves in vain by weeping, who defile themselves by living wickedly, since they wash themselves in tears for this very purpose, that being clean they may return to filth. For hence it is written: "The dog returned to his own vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." For the dog, when it vomits, surely throws up the food which weighed down its breast; but when it returns to its vomit, by which it had been relieved, it is again burdened. And those who lament their sins surely cast forth by confession the wickedness with which they had been ill satiated, and which depressed the depths of their mind, but when after confession they repeat it, they take it up again. The sow, however, when she is washed in the wallowing of mire, is rendered fouler still. And he who laments the sin he has committed yet does not forsake it, subjects himself to the punishment of a graver guilt, because he despises even the very pardon which by weeping he could have obtained, and rolls himself as it were in muddy water, since while by his weeping he claims purity of life, before the eyes of God he makes his very tears themselves filthy; and a little further down: "Hence by a certain wise man (Sirach 34) it is said: He who is baptized from the dead, and again touches him, what does his washing profit him? For he is baptized from the dead who is cleansed from sin by tears: but after baptism he touches the dead, who repeats his fault after tears."
William of Paris, in the book On Penance, chapter 12, aptly and piously teaches that in confession sins are vomited up, and therefore those are detestable who afterwards return to their sins, and swallow back again the venomous works which they once vomited out. See St. Augustine on Psalm 83, just after the beginning, where he urges the example of Lot's wife, who looking back toward Sodom was turned into a pillar of salt, and citing this passage of St. Peter: "The dog," he says, "returned to his own vomit. For the conscience of sins was weighing down your breast; once indulgence was received, your breast was relieved as if you had vomited. A good conscience was made out of a bad conscience. Why do you again turn back to your vomit? If a dog doing this is dreadful to your eyes, what shall you be to the eyes of God?"
The washed sow (returning, and again wallowing) in the wallowing of mire. — Whence the Greek has it more clearly: "The washed sow to the wallowing of mire," namely returning. The wallowing-place is the muddy spot where swine roll, of which Virgil speaks in Georgics, book 3:
Often you shall pursue with barking the boars driven from their forest wallows.
And Horace, book 1, epistle 2:
And the sow that loves the mud.
He is denoting the Gnostics, both because the pig, says Horus, and from him Pierius, Hieroglyphics 9, is the symbol of men who spurn the truth, of the profane, the harmful, and of those who are utterly turned away from God, such as the Gnostics were; and also because the Gnostics were called Borborites, that is, "muddy" or "filthy," from βόρβορος, that is, "mud" or "mire." "For these, as Philastrius says, On Heresies, going into the mud, and then smeared with mud, used to bear about deforming their faces and limbs;" and St. Augustine, heresy 6: "Some," he says, "call them, the Gnostics, Borborites, as it were the muddy, on account of the excessive baseness which they are said to practice in their mysteries." Similar are the new muddy Gnostics, recently sprung up from the Anabaptists in Holland, whose sect is called "the dung-cart"; because it carries a bilge of most putrid errors and blasphemies, and casts off all care for religion, says Rescius from Ulemberg in his Centuries of Sects; where also from Hosius he reckons another sect of those who are called Suists, because they follow the dreams of their own head. "A rustic," they say, "was Luther, a monk Bucer, a branded man Calvin, a hangman Sudrovius; therefore each must follow the counsels of his own spirit: by his own spirit, from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, let each interpret Holy Scripture, and have wisdom and counsel for himself." Truly Suistic, indeed swinish, is this saying of theirs.
Morally Origen, in homily 4 on Psalm 37, rightly compares sinners to swine. First, because as swine love foul and stinking things, and have them as their delights, of fairest beauty and sweetest odor, so also do sinners: "They are said," he says, "to be like swine who delight in the stenches of sins as the pigs do, who seek out every stench as if it were the sweetest odor. Consider therefore the sinner who delights in his sins and is glad in his evils, for he too wallows in stinking dung and has no perception of the stench which arises from the dung of sin, and as though in the highest pleasures and most welcome delights, he is gratified." Cicero too, On the Response of the Soothsayers, says: "As a certain sow wallows in mud, so does he delight in defilements;" and Horace:
A pig from the herd of Epicurus.
Second, because the sinner is in himself filthy and foul like a pig, especially the sow, which is a hot, obscene, and foul animal. Hence some think that a covenant (foedus) was so called because in striking it a foul (foedum) animal was sacrificed, namely a sow, according to that line of Virgil, Aeneid 8:
They stood, and were ratifying the covenants over the slain sow.
From this came the phrases "to strike, to make, to beat a covenant," because, namely, the sow was struck to seal the covenant. Hence the devil loves swine, and often appears in the form of a pig, and assumes either the body or the form of a pig, as is plain from the Life of St. Anthony; and indeed he asked of Christ the power of entering into the swine, Matthew 8:31: especially because all the pigs in Italy and the neighboring places are black (whence Alba, the city near Rome, its parent and rival, was so called from the prodigy of the white sow which there contrary to custom brought forth thirty sucklings); but the devil is most black, not in color, but in habits and in the burnings of Gehenna.
Third, because the sow is fed on filthy things, so also is the glutton; whence the proverb: "The sow feasts." Again the sow is fattened in order to be slaughtered: thus the sinner fattens himself in order to be slaughtered and to provide a banquet for the devil in Gehenna.
Fourth, the pig, prone upon its belly, looks upon nothing but the earth, lies upon the earth, and is nothing other than a fleshly, earthly, and heavy mass: so too the sinner gapes after earthly things and lies upon his belly and flesh. Hence Luther used to call his Lutherans, prone upon their belly, swine, as I said above. Hear Lactantius, book 4, chapter 17, who, giving the reason why the eating of swine's flesh was forbidden to the Jews, speaks thus: "For this is a muddy and unclean animal, and never looks upon heaven, but cast down upon the earth with all its body and mouth, always serves its belly and its fodder, and can render no other use while it lives, as the other animals can, which either provide a vehicle for sitting, or help in the cultivation of fields, or draw wagons by the neck, or carry burdens on their back, or furnish clothing from their hides, or abound in plenty of milk, or watch over the home. He therefore forbade them to use swine's flesh, that is, that they should not imitate the life of swine, who are reared only for death; nor, by serving their belly and their pleasures, become useless for doing justice and be punished with death. Likewise that they should not plunge themselves into foul lusts, like the sow that gorges itself in mud, nor serve earthly idols and stain themselves with mud; for they smear themselves with mud who venerate gods, that is, who venerate mud and earth."
Fifth, because the sow is shameless, and does not even recognize her master when he feeds her; indeed, sometimes when made savage while suckling her young, she falls upon children, kills them, and devours them. Hear Aristotle, History of Animals 6, chapter 18: "Sows when they are stirred by lust, which is called 'subare,' even attack human beings." So the sinner is shameless, ungrateful, and infamous, because he does not acknowledge God his Creator, does not care for Him, and does not fear Him. See what is said of the sow and pig, Leviticus 11:7.
Sixth, the continual eating of swine's flesh produces leprosy and other grave diseases: so do pleasures produce in the sinner diseases of body and torments of soul. Finally, of the sow Pliny, book 8, chapter 51: "This animal," he says, "is the most brutish of all, and its soul is not unwittily reckoned to have been given to it instead of salt." Thus the sinner is a brute, and out of man has nothing of man except the soul, which like salt preserves the body from putrefaction and corruption.
Seventh, the ferocity of boars and wild swine is enormous, so that they dig up plants and trees, and even tear them up and rend them in pieces: so does lust and every sin make a man savage, and render him fierce and cruel. Hear Aristotle, History of Animals 1, chapter 1: "Some animals," he says, "are spirited, obstinate, altogether brutish, like the wild swine." Finally, the dullness and stupidity of swine appears from the bristly hair, the swinish face, eyes, snout, grunting, etc.
Hence the proverb in Suidas: "An ass to the lyre, a stupid sow has heard the trumpet," said of those who hear excellent things, but neither understand nor admire them; and that one: "A sow to Minerva," when some stupid person wishes to teach the wise; and that one: "A sow to the cudgel," when someone stupidly hurls himself into present danger and ruin; and that one: "A sow among the roses," said of rustic and intractable persons: for a sow cannot be led among roses without befouling them; and that one:
You shameless sow, you eat the grape clusters,
that is, you pay for a small advantage with a great evil. All these things are easy to apply to the sinner, who most stupidly hurls himself into every evil for a crumb or a drop of pleasure.
This, then, is the picture of the heretic, which throughout this whole chapter St. Peter has graphically painted with these traits, as it were with colors drawn from life. First, in verse 1: Heretics, he says, are false prophets and lying teachers. Second, they introduce sects of perdition. Third, they deny the Lord who bought them. Fourth, in verse 2, many follow their excesses. Fifth, through them the way of truth is blasphemed. Sixth, in verse 3, in covetousness they trade with the demon over the body and soul of the faithful. Seventh, they are hypocrites and flatterers: for they use feigned and flattering words, composed to seduce. Eighth, their perdition hastens. Ninth, in verse 4, they are like Lucifer and the demons. Tenth, in verse 5, they are like the carnal who were submerged in the flood, and like the Sodomites. Eleventh, in verse 10, they walk after the flesh in the uncleanness of concupiscence. Twelfth, they despise dominion. Thirteenth, they are bold. Fourteenth, self-pleasing. Fifteenth, blasphemers. Sixteenth, in verse 12, they are like irrational beasts born for capture and destruction. Seventeenth, they blaspheme what they do not understand. Eighteenth, in verse 13, they are voluptuaries, defilements and stains, abounding in delights. Nineteenth, luxuriating in feasts, having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin. Twentieth, in verse 14, they entice unstable souls. Twenty-first, they have a heart trained in covetousness. Twenty-second, they are sons of malediction. Twenty-third, in verse 15, forsaking the right way they go astray. Twenty-fourth, they follow the way of Balaam, who loved the wages of iniquity, and therefore perished. Twenty-fifth, in verse 17, they are wells without water. Twenty-sixth, they are clouds tossed by whirlwinds, for whom the gloom of darkness is reserved. Twenty-seventh, in verse 18, they speak proud words of vanity. Twenty-eighth, by the bait of pleasures and lust they entice those newly converted from her. Twenty-ninth, in verse 19, they promise liberty, while they themselves are slaves of corruption. Thirtieth, in verse 20, the latter things become worse for them than the former. Thirty-first, in verse 22, they are like dogs that have returned to their vomit, and like washed sows returning to the wallowing of mire.