Sermons on the Song of Songs

OF THE TWO KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TWO KINDS OF IGNOR- ANCE: THE EVILS OR INJURIES CAUSED BY THESE.

I THINK that there is no need to-day to urge you not to yield to sleep, because the exhortation given to you so recently as yes terday will doubtless be still in your minds, and being addressed to you in a kindly spirit has, I hope, produced a good effect. You remember, then, that you agreed with me in holding that no one is saved without a knowledge of himself, because from that knowledge is born humility, which is the mother of salvation, and the fear of the Lord which, as it is the beginning of wisdom, so it is the beginning of salvation. No one, I say, is saved without that knowledge; at least, no one who is of an age and capability to have it This exception is made to cover the case of young children and of those wanting in the powers of reason, to whom another principle applies.

But if you have not the knowledge of God, could there be a hope of salvation for you without that knowledge? No, not even a hope. For you cannot love One whom you do not know, nor have eternal happiness in the possession of One whom you do not love. Attain, then, to the knowledge of yourself, that you may fear God; and attain to the knowledge of Him, that you may love Him also. In the one is the beginning of wisdom, in the other is the consummation of it, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. cxi. 10), and love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. xiii. 10). So great reason is there for your guarding against both the one and the other kind of ignorance, since without the fear and the love of God salvation is not possible. Other things are indifferent; the knowledge of them does not ensure salvation, nor does ignorance of them prevent it.

2. Yet I must not be understood to say that the knowledge of literature is either to be neglected or despised, since it both instructs and adorns the soul, and renders it capable of instructing others. But it is needful and expedient that those two things, in which, as we have said above, consist the essentials of salvation, should precede that knowledge. Did not the Prophet have that order in view, and intend to inculcate it, when he said: Sow to yourselves righteousness, reap the hope of life? And then, after that, light for yourselves, he says: the light of knowledge.1 He has placed knowledge the last, as it were a picture, which cannot be drawn on the.empty air; and he has set in the first place the two things which form, so to speak, the solid substance upon which the picture is to be superposed. I may, then, apply myself in all security to gaining knowledge if I have previously received good assurance of life by the blessing of hope. You have, then, sown for yourself to righteousness if you have learned, from a true knowledge of yourself, to fear God; if you have humbled yourself, wept sincerely for your sins, given liberal alms, and done other works of piety; if you have afflicted your body with fasts and vigils and your breast with blows; if, finally, you have wearied heaven with your prayers. This is indeed to sow to righteousness. Good works, pious pursuits, tears of penitence — these are the seeds. Going, they went, says the Psalmist, and wept, easting their seeds. But what, shall they weep always? By no means. They shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves (Ps. cxxvi. 6). Rightly is it said with jcyfulness, since they bring back fruits of glory, as it were, sheaves of grain. But that, you say, shall be in the resurrection at the last day; and that is a very long time to await. But be not discouraged, do not in mere failure of heart lose hope; in the meantime you have the first-fruits of the Spirit, which, even at the present time, you reap with joy. Sow to yourselves righteousness; reap the hope of life. He does not merely put you off to the last day, when the object desired shall be possessed, not hoped for: but he speaks of the present Our joy, no doubt, and exultation shall be very great indeed when [eternal] life shall come to be in our actual possession.

3. But shall the hope of so great a joy be itself without joy? Rejoicing in hope, says the Apostle (Rom. xii. 12). And David said, not that he should rejoice, but that he did rejoice, because he hoped to go into the house of the Lord (Ps. cxxi. 1). He did net yet possess [eternal] life, but he had attained the hope of life; and he experienced in himself the truth of that saying of Scripture that not only the reward, but the hope itself, of the righteous shall be gladness (Prov. x. 28). That gladness is produced in the soul of him who has sown to himself righteousness, by the assurance that his offences are pardoned, provided that the efficacy of the grace which he has received to live more holily for the future attests for him the certitude of that pardon. Everyone among you who feels this working in himself knows what saith the Spirit, whose words and whose working are never contrary the one to the other. That which is heard outwardly with the ears is felt inwardly by the heart, and therefore it is that the teachings of the Spirit are understood with full sympathy. For it is one and the same Spirit who speaks in us and who works in you, dividing to every man severally as He will (1 Cor. xii. 11); giving to some the grace to speak, to others the grace to do that which is good.

4. Whosoever, then, of you, after the first stages (so bitter and full of tears) of his conversion, has the happiness to breathe freely in hope, and to be raised as upon the wings of grace into the peaceful air of heavenly consolations, is even now reaping the harvest and receiving the fruit of the tears which for a time he shed; he has attained to see God, and has had the happiness to hear Him say: Give to [him] of the fruit of his hands (Prov. xxxi. 31). For how can it be that he who has tasted and seen how sweet the Lord is (Ps. xxxiv. 8) has not seen God? How full, O Lord Jesus, of sweetness and kindness has that soul felt Thee to be who has not only received of Thy bounty pardon for sins, but also the gift of holiness! Nor is even that all, for, as if to load him with blessings, there has been added to it the promise of eternal life. Happy is he who has already reaped as much as this, and who has in the meantime his fruit unto holiness, and in the end eternal life! It was with good ground that he who wept and lamented at the sight of himself as he really was, rejoiced when he had seen the Lord, since to the sight of that marvellous mercy he owed it that he returned home bearing sheaves of glory so great: remission, sanctification, most of all the hope of [eternal] life. How true is the prediction which we read in the Psalm: They that sow in tears shall reap in joy (Ps. cxxvi. 5). In it is briefly referred to each kind of knowledge: the one the knowledge of ourselves, which causes us to sow in tears; the other the knowledge of God, which enables us to reap in joy.

5. If, then, we begin with this twofold experience — the knowledge of God and of ourselves — any knowledge which we may be able afterwards to add to this will not make us vainglorious, inasmuch as any worldly gain or honour which it can possibly bring us is far below the hope which we have conceived and the joy which that hope brings to us, and which is profoundly rooted in the soul. And that hope maketh not ashamed, because the lo7>e of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given u?ito us (Rom. v. 5). It makes us not to be ashamed, because it fills the heart with an assured and settled conviction [of the mercy of God]. By this the Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God (Rom. viii. 16). What, then, can come to us from any knowledge of our own, however great it be, which is not far below this glory, to be counted among the sons of God? That is indeed too little to say, for the whole earth and all that it contains, if it were possible to put that into the possession of each one of us, would not deserve to be put into comparison with a gift so precious. But if we be ignorant of God, how is it possible for us to hope in One whom we know not? And if we be ignorant of ourselves, how can we be humble, since we think ourselves to be something, while we are nothing? But we know well that neither those who are proud, nor those who are without hope in God, have any part or lot in the inheritance of the saints.

6. Consider, then, now with me with what care and solicitude we ought to repel from us both these kinds of ignorance, of which the one produces the beginning, the other the consummation, of every kind of sin; just as, on the contrary, of the two corresponding kinds of knowledge, the one is the beginning of wisdom, and the other its perfection — that is to say, the one produces the fear of the Lord, the other the love of Him. But with regard to these two kinds of knowledge, we have explained above; let us now consider the two kinds of ignorance. Now, just as the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ecclus. i. 14), so pride is the beginning of every sin (Ecclus. x. 13); and as the love of God is justly considered as the perfection of wisdom, so despair [of His love and mercy] is both the startingpoint and completion of malice. And in like manner, as from the knowledge of thyself is caused in thee the fear of God, and equally from the knowledge of God the love of Him, so, on the contrary, from ignorance of thyself comes pride, and from ignorance of God despair. For ignorance of yourself produces in you pride, inasmuch as your mind, being at the same time deceived and deceiving, causes you to think yourself better than you really are. In this way pride is the beginning of all sin, since you are greater in your own eyes than in the eyes of God, or than you are in fact and reality. And therefore the Scripture, speaking of him who first committed this great sin (I mean the devil), declares that he abode not in the truths but was a liar from the beginning? inasmuch as he was not in truth what he was in his own imaginations. But suppose that he had erred from truth in thinking himself lesser and lower than he really was, what then? Doubtless ignorance would then have been an excuse for him; he would have escaped the snare of pride, and, instead of being brought into disgrace by [this] his iniquity, would perhaps have been brought back into grace and favour by his humility. For if we could know clearly the condition in which each of us individually is before God, we might have an opinion of ourselves which should be neither too high nor too low, but which should conform in all respects closely to the truth.2 But since it has pleased God that this should be hidden from us, so that no man knows whether he be worthy of love or of hatred (Eccles. ix. i), it is assuredly both more fitting and more safe to choose for ourselves the lowest place, according to the advice of the Truth Himself; from this we may afterwards be transferred to a higher, and that with honour, instead of being obliged to cede with shame the higher place to another (Luke xiv. 10).

7. There is, then, no danger, howsoever much you may humble yourself, that you will regard yourself as much less than you really are — that is to say, than truth holds you to be. But it is a great evil and a peril to be guarded against, to exalt yourself even in a small degree more than the truth, or in your own thoughts to prefer yourself even to one person whom, perhaps, the Truth regards as equal to you, or, perhaps, even superior. To explain this by a familiar illustration: when you pass through a low doorway you have nothing to fear from stooping, however low you may stoop; but if you raise your head higher than the doorway, though it were but by the breadth of a finger, you will strike against the frame and injure yourself by the blow. So also with the soul: there is nothing to be feared from humbling yourself, to however great an extent, but much to be apprehended from even the least presumptuous self-exaltation. Therefore beware, O man, of comparing yourself either with those who are greater than you, or those who are less; with many or with one. For how do you know whether that very one, whom you perhaps regard as the vilest and most miserable of mankind, at whose life you shudder as being infamous and defiled with crimes beyond all others; whom you think is to be scorned therefore, not only in comparison with yourself, who are living, as you confidently think, in temperance, righteousness, and piety, but even in comparison with other criminals, as being of all the ungodly the worst; how do you know, I say, whether he may not one day be made, by an exertion of the power of the Most High, to be better than you, and than those whom you prefer to him, or whether he is not so even now in the sight of God? And for these reasons it is that the Lord has willed us to take our place, not in the midmost ranks, not in the lower, nor even among 1 John viii. 44. 8 See Sermon XX., De Diversts.

the lowest, but has said: Sit down in the lowest place (Luke xiv. 10) — that is to say, alone and last of all; and do not presume, I say not to prefer yourself to any, but even to put yourself in comparison with one. See what great evil is caused by ignorance of ourselves, since it produces the sin which is that of the devil, and is the beginning of all others— namely, pride. What is produced by ignorance of God we will see on another occasion. For, as we assembled today a little late, the shortness of the time will not permit of more now. Let it suffice on this occasion for each of us that he is warned against ignorance of himself; warned, not merely by this discourse, but by the condescension and goodness of Him who is the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is above all, God