Sermons on the Song of Songs

CONCERNING THE ERRORS OF HERETICS WITH RESPECT TO MARRIAGE, TO THE BAPTISM OF INFANTS, TO PURGATORY, TO PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD, AND TO THE INVOCATION OF THE SAINTS.

' Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the irines.' — Cant. ii. 15.

WITH these foxes I am still busied. They are those who wander out of the path and lay waste the vineyard. They are not content with quitting the road [of right], but turn the vineyard into a desert by their wicked falsehoods. It is not enough for them to be heretics; they must, as if to fill up the measure of their wrongdoing, be hypocrites also. These are they who come in sheep's clothing to strip the sheep and despoil the rams. Does it not seem to you that this is what they have done when, on the one hand, they rob the people of their faith, and, on the other, deprive the priests of their people? Who are these robbers? They are sheep in appearance, but foxes in cunning, and in their actions have the cruelty of wolves. They are men who desire to seem good, but are not; who desire not to seem evil, but are so. Evil they are, yet they wish to be thought good, lest they should be left alone in their evil; and they fear to appear evil, lest they should not thus have sufficient power for evil. For open malice has always been less dangerous; nor is a person who is good ever deceived, except by a pretence of goodness. They study, then, to appear good in order to do injury to the good, and shrink from appearing evil that they may thus give their evil designs fuller scope. For they do not care to cultivate virtues, but only to colour their vices with a delusive tinge of virtues. Under the veil of religion they conceal an impious superstition; they regard the mere refraining from doing wrong openly as innocence, and thus take for themselves an outward appearance of goodness only. For a cloak to their infamy they make a vow of continence. They think that infamy consists only in having wives, whereas it is marriage alone that is pure. Coarse they are, and stupid, and altogether contemptible; but, I assure you, not on that account tp be disregarded; for they succeed in doing much evil, and their word eateth as doth a cancer (2 Tim. ii. 16, 17).

2. Nor has the Holy Spirit overlooked such as these, since He has plainly prophesied of them long since by the mouth of the Apostle: Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving (1 Tim. iv. 1-3). It was evidently of those people that He spake. They forbid marriage, they abstain from the food which God created; of which latter subject I will presently speak. But now see if all these things are not rather an illusion of demons than a mere mistake of men, according to that which had been foretold by the Holy Spirit. Ask of them who is the author of their sect; they will name no one. Yet what heresy has not had from among men its own leader (haresiarcham)? The Manicheans had Manes for chief and for master; the Sabellians, Sabellius; the Arians, Arius; the Eunomians, Eunomius; the Nestorians, Nestorius. So is it with all the other, plagues of this kind; each of them has some man for its master, from whom it has drawn at once its origin and its name. But what name or what title will you consider should be bestowed upon these people? Truly, none at all x \ for their heresy is not of man, nor have they received it by man. God forbid that we should say that they had it by the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. L 12), but, rather, and without doubt, as the Holy Spirit foretold, by the suggestions and artifices of seducing spirits, speaking lies in hypocrisy, and forbidding marriage.

3. They talk also with hypocrisy, and with a vulpine cunning pre tend that they speak from mere love of chastity, whereas they have no other purpose than to foment and multiply impurity. It is so evident that this is their intention that I wonder how any Christian man could ever be persuaded that it was otherwise, unless, indeed, he were so wanting in insight as not to perceive that he who condemns marriage loosens the reins to every kind of uncleanness; or so full of wickedness, and absorbed in diabolical malignity, as to shut his eyes to what he cannot but perceive, and rejoice at the destruction of men. If you take away from the Church marriage, which is honourable and undefiled (Heb. xiii. 4), will you not fill the Church with persons guilty of every kind of uncleanness? Choose, then, which alternative you prefer; either that all these monsters of wickedness are saved, or that the number of the saved is reduced to the few who have kept continence unbroken; in the one case you include too few, in the other case too many. Neither of these alternatives is suited to the Saviour. What! shall infamy be crowned? Nothing is less suitable to the source of purity. Or, on the other hand, shall men be universally condemned, with the sole exception of the very few who have preserved their continence? That is not to be a Saviour. Continence is rare upon the earth; and if it were not for a very few persons that fulness of grace would have expired altogether. And how have we all received of that fulness (John i. 16) if a share of it is vouchsafed to those only who are continent? There is no reply that can be made to that argument, nor yet, I think, to the other

alternative. If there is for purity only a place in heaven, if there is no companionship between purity and impurity, just as there is no fellowship of light with darkness, then it is certain that no one who is unclean has any place in the land of salvation. If anyone thinks otherwise, an Apostolic voice shall convict him of error, asserting expressly: They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. v. 21). From what cavern shall this artful fox now creep forth? I think that he is taken in his burrow, in which he has made for himself two holes, one to enter by, the other to give him egress. This it is his custom to do. See now by what means each of these is closed to him. If he maintains that only the continent have a place in heaven, he denies salvation to the vast majority of people; if, on the contrary, he holds that those guilty of every kind of defilement have a place there equally with the continent, he causes purity to perish. But it is more accurate to say that he perishes himself, being unable to escape in either direction; and, thus shut up for ever, remains a prisoner in the pit which he has digged.

4. Certain persons among them, differing from the rest, declare that marriage is permitted, but only to those who are virgins. But I do not perceive on what ground of reason they make this distinction, except it be that they contend with each other to tear and rend asunder, each at his own pleasure, as it were with the teeth of serpents, the Sacraments of the Church, which are, so to speak, the bowels of their mother. For as to what they allege, that our first parents were virgins when their marriage took place: what is there in that fact, I ask, to prejudice the liberty of marriage, so that it may not be entered into between those who are not virgin? But I know not what declaration they whisper that they have found in the Gospel, which they wrongly imagine favours their absurd folly. I believe that it is the word which Our Lord spake after He had recalled that testimony in the book of Genesis: God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him: male and female created He them; He then added: What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (Gen. i. 27; Matt. xix. 6). These, they say, were both virgins whom God joined together, and it was then not lawful to separate them; but no union of those who are otherwise [than virgin] shall be presumed to be from God. But who has told you that God joined those two together, because they were virgins? This the Scripture does not assert. But were they not virgins? replies the objector. They were; but it is not the same thing to unite those who were virgins, and to unite them because they were virgins. Again, although they were virgins, you will not find the fact even expressly stated [much less given as the reason for their union]. Their diversity of sex is expressly stated, not their virginity, since it is declared: Male and female created He them. And rightly so, for the marriage relation requires, not necessarily virginity of body, but difference of sex in the two persons who enter into it. With entire iitness, then, did the Holy Spirit, in the record of the institution of marriage, make mention of sex, but preserve silence as to virginity, so as not to give occasion to those guileful foxes to misapply the text, which unquestionably they would have done with great willingness, but in vain. For what if the Holy Spirit had said that * God created them virgins?' Would you not have forthwith inferred that it was permitted to virgins alone to be joined in marriage? How you would have assumed airs of triumph upon the strength of this single statement! How scornfully you would have rejected second and third marriages! How you would have insulted the Church Catholic, inasmuch as she willingly joins together even persons who have fallen and become infamous, because she regards this as assuredly the means for enabling them to pass from a state of shame to a state of honour! Perhaps you would even blame God for having commanded one of His prophets to take to wife a woman of that class (Hosea i. 2); but now the entire ground is wanting for your doing all this, and it pleases you to be a heretic of your own accord. For the statement that you have unjustly adduced to support your error is found, on the contrary, to destroy it; it does nothing in your favour, but much against you.

5. But now listen to another Scripture which ought to confound you entirely, or correct you, and which, at all events, crushes and pulverizes your heresy. The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband Irveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will: only in the Lord (1 Cor. vii. 39). It is St. Paul who allows to a widow to marry whom she will, and you, on the contrary, prescribe that none but a virgin shall marry; nor may she marry whom she will, but only a man who is likewise virgin. Why do you restrain the Hand of God? Why do you restrict the abundant benediction bestowed on marriage, and narrow to the virgin alone that which is vouchsafed to all her sex? St Paul would not permit this unless it were lawful. But it is too little to say that he permits it; he also desires it to be done. / will therefore, he says, that the younger women marry (1 Tim. v. 14), and there is no doubt that he speaks of widows. What can be plainer- than this? That therefore which he permits, because it is lawful, he also desires, because it is expedient. That, then, which is permitted, and is expedient, shall a heretic presume to forbid? He will convince men of nothing by this prohibition, except that he is a heretic.

6. It remains that we should correct those people a little on the other points included in the Apostolic prophecy. For they abstain, as is there predicted, from various kinds of food which God has created to be received with thanksgiving, and thus prove themselves to be heretics, not simply because they abstain, but because they abstain in an heretical spirit. For I, too, sometimes abstain from food; but my abstinence is a satisfaction for sins, and not due to superstition and impiety. Shall we blame St Paul when he kept under his body, and brought it into subjection (1 Cor. ix. 27)? I will abstain from wine, because in it is excess (Eph. v. 18); or, if I am weak, will use a little, according to the counsel of St. Paul (1 Tim. v. 23). I will abstain from eating flesh, lest it should too much pamper my flesh, and with it the lusts of the flesh. I will study to take even bread by measure that I may not, through fulness of stomach, stand wearily and reluctantly to pray to God, and that I may not be open to the reproach of the Prophet that I have eaten my bread in fulness (Ezek. xvi. 49). I will not accustom myself to drink immoderately even of pure water, lest it may excite in me feelings corrupt. It is quite otherwise with the heretic. He turns from milk, and all that is made of it; in fact, from everything which is the result of that function. That would be acting rightly and Christianly, if it were done, not because it was the result of that function, but from a motive of prudence.

7. But how does it come about that everything thus resulting is avoided in this manner? That minute scrutiny of kinds of food, so significantly expressed, is to me a cause for suspicion. If you bring forward this as a medical rule, I do not blame this care for the physical health, provided it be not excessive; for no one ever hated his own flesh. If as a part of the discipline of abstinence, that is, of the school of spiritual medicine, I even approve it as a virtue, by which you bring the flesh under due rule, and restrain its desires. But if, by the madness of the Manichean, you set bounds to the beneficence of God, so that the food which He has created and given to men to be partaken of with thanksgiving you, as a rash and ungrateful critic, pronounce unclean, and abstain from it as from an evil thing, then, far from praising your abstinence, I hold in execration your blasphemy, I hold you to be yourself impure, in considering that anything is impure in itself. To the pure all things are pure, says an excellent judge of things; and nothing is impure except to him who regards it as such; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving^ he adds, is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled (Titus i. 15). Woe to you who reject food which God has created, judging it impure and unworthy to pass into your bodies; wherefore the Body of Christ, which is the Church, has rejected you yourselves as defiled and impure.

8. I am not unmindful that they boast that they, and they alone, are the Body of Christ; but that is not astonishing, since they persuade themselves also that they have the power to consecrate1 daily at their tables the Body and Blood of Christ, to nourish them to become His members and His Body. For they boast that they are successors of the Apostles, and call themselves Apostolicals, though they are not able to show any sign of their apostolate. How long shall the lantern remain under a bushel? Ye are the light of the world, was said to the Apostles, and therefore are they set upon a candlestick, that they may enlighten the whole world. Let these successors of the Apostles be ashamed to be the light, not of the world, but of a bushel, and to the world to be but darkness. Let us say to them, Ye are the darkness of the world, and pass on to other things. They say that they are the Church, but they contradict Him who said, A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid (Matt. v. 14). Do you believe that the stone, which was cut out without hands, and then became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth (Dan. ii. 34, 35), is shut up in your caverns? Nor ought we to stop even here. Their opinion is content with whispering in private, and avoids being known openly. Christ has, and will always have, His entire inheritance, and the ends of the earth are His possession. Those who attempt to withdraw from Him this great inheritance rather cease to form a part of it themselves.

9. See now those detractors, those dogs. They make it a cause of ridicule against us that we baptize children, that we pray for the dead, that we entreat the suffrages of the Saints. They hasten to proscribe Christ in people at every age and of either sex; in children and in adults, in the living and in the dead; forbidding [the new Birth in Him through Baptism] to infants because of the weakness of their age, and to adults also because of the difficulty of continence. They deprive the dead of the succour of the living, and the living of the suffrages of the Saints who have died. But God forbid that it should be so. The Lord will not give up His people, who are as the sand of the sea; nor will He who redeemed ail be contented with a small number, and those, heretics. For His Redemption is not small, but great and abounding. What is the pettiness of their number to the greatness of the price He paid? Those who attempt to empty it [of its efficacy], deprive themselves of it. Of what importance is it that an infant is not able to speak for himself, while the voice of the Blood of his Brother, and of a Brother so great and prevailing, cries to God from the ground for him? The Church, which is his Mother, arises and lifts up her voice on his behalf also. And what of the child himself? Does it not seem to you that in his inarticulate infantine cries he opens his mouth, gasping, if I may so speak, for the Saviour's fountains of grace, and crying out to God in his plaints, Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me (Is. xxxviii. 14). It demands eagerly the help of grace, because it suffers violence from nature.1 It cries because it is innocent and unhappy, because it is ignorant and small, because it is weak and doomed to suffer. All these things thus cry out together: the Blood of a Brother, the faithfulness of a Mother, the abandoned condition of the unhappy child, and the misery of it as abandoned; and these cries rise up to the Father; and He, because He is the Father, is not able to deny Himself.

10. I,et no one object to me that a child has not faith, for its Mother [that is, the Church] communicates to it her own, wraps it in this faith, so to speak, as in a cloak, in the Sacrament of Baptism, which she bestows upon it; so that it becomes worthy to receive and to develop that faith in its purity, if not by its own active powers, yet with its passive assent. Is it not a short and narrow cloak which cannot cover two? The faith of the Church is great. Surely it is not less than the faith of the Canaanitish woman, which we know was sufficient both for her daughter and herself. Therefore she had the happiness to hear: O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt (Matt. xv. 28). Nor is it less than the faith of those who let down the paralytic through the roof before Jesus, and obtained for him the saving both of soul and of body. For we read: Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee; and a little after: Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house (Matt. ix. 2-6). He who believes these things will be easily persuaded that the Church may presume with good reason, not only of the salvation of those little children who are baptized in her faith, but also of the crown of martyrdom for those infants who were slain for Christ. And as this is the case, those who are regenerate will not suffer prejudice from that which is said in another Scripture, Without faith it is impossible to please God ( Heb. xi. 6); since they who have received the grace of Baptism for a testimony of faith are not without faith. Neither will they be hurt by that other declaration: Be that believeth not shall be damned (Mark xvi. 16). For what is it to believe but to have faith? Therefore, also, a woman shall be saved in child-bearing, ' if they continue in faith and charity and holiness, with sobriety n (i Tim. ii. 15); and children shall be succoured by the Regeneration of Baptism. Adult persons also, who are not able to contain, redeem themselves by the thirtyfold (Matt. xiii. 8) fruit of marriage. The dead also, who shall have need of the prayers and sacrifices of the living, and shall be worthy of them, shall receive them by the good offices of the Angels; and from those who have already attained, comforts and consolations shall in no wise be wanting to the living, because of the affection which they have in God, who is everywhere, and the charitable care they feel for those who are absent; for to this end Christ both died and rose and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living (Rom. xiv. 9). To this end, also, He was born as an Infant, and passed through all degrees of age, till He became a perfect Man, that He might be wanting to no age.

1 1. They do not believe that there remains a purgatorial fire after death; but that the soul, when released from the body, passes at once either to rest or to damnation. Let them, then, ask of Him, who declared of a certain sin that it should not be forgiven, ' neither in this world, nor in the world to come 9 (Matt. xii. 32), why He said this, if there were no forgiveness at all in the world to come. But it is not wonderful that those who do not acknowledge the Church should make light of the Orders of the Church; that they should not receive her Institutions; that they should despise her Sacraments, and refuse to obey her commands. * The successors of the Apostles,' they say, 4 are all sinners, Archbishops, Bishops, and Presbyters, and therefore are not fit either to administer Sacraments or receive them.' Are, then, these two things, to be a Bishop and to be a sinner, so incompatible as that they can never be found in the same person? That is not the case. Caiaphas was a Bishop; and how great a sinner was he, who pronounced sentence of death upon the Lord? If you deny that he was a Bishop, the testimony of St. John, who declares that he was High Priest for that year, and prophesied (John xi. 51), shall convict you of error. Judas was an Apostle, and even chosen by the Lord; yet he was covetous, and a man accursed. Do you hesitate to allow that he had the apostolate whom the Lord Himself chose? He Himself said: Have I not chosen you ttvelve, and one of you is a devil? (John vi. 70). You hear that the same man was a chosen Apostle, and showed himself a devil; and do you deny that a man who is a sinner can possibly be a Bishop? The Scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses* seat; and those who did not obey them (as obedience is in like manner due to Bishops) were guilty, in fact, of disobedience to the Lord Himself, who gives these commands, and says: Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do (Matt xxiiL 2, 3). It is clear, then, that although they were Scribes, although they were Pharisees, although they were even the greatest of sinners, yet for the sake of the chair [of authority] of Moses which they occupy that saying, nevertheless, applies to them: He thai hearcth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me (Luke x. 16).

1 2. There are many other erroneous and evil opinions which are urged upon this foolish and undiscerning people by those spirits of evil, who speak lies in hypocrisy; but it is not needful to make reply to all. For who is acquainted with all these errors? Besides, the labour of doing so would be unending; nor is it in the least necessary. For as for those people, neither are they convinced by reasons, because they do not understand them, nor corrected by the weight of authorities, for they do not receive them; nor are they influenced by persuasions, because they are entirely perverted. It has been shown by experience that they prefer to die rather than be converted. Of these men the end is destruction; at the last the fire awaits them. Long ago the type of them was shown forth in the foxes to whose tails Samson applied the fire (Judg. xv. 4, 5). Often the faithful have laid hands on some of them, and brought them into public notice. When they have been questioned upon those points of their belief on which they were suspected, they, according to their custom, refused entirely to give any answer; and when examined by the judgment of water,1 they have been found liars. But when they have been discovered, and were not able to make denial, nor received the water at all; then taking, as the saying is, the bit in their teeth, they were so unhappy as to profess openly their impiety, to maintain it as the true faith, and to declare that they were prepared to suffer death on its behalf. Nor were those who were present less prepared to inflict it. Therefore the people, rushing in upon them, made of them new martyrs to their unbelief. Their zeal we approve, but we do not advise the imitation of their action, because faith is to be produced by persuasion, not imposed by force. Although it would, without doubt, be better that they should be coerced by the sword of him ' who beareth not the sword in vain,' than that they should be allowed to draw away many other persons into their error.1

13. Some persons are astonished that they go to their death, not only patiently, but, as it seems, even with joy; but such persons do not consider how great is the power of the devil, not only over the bodies, but also over the hearts of those whom, when once permitted, he has taken possession of. Is it not more astonishing still that a man should lay violent hands upon himself than that he should endure violence willingly from another person? But we know by experience that the devil has frequently exerted that power, namely, over many whom he has caused to drown or to hang themselves. Thus Judas hanged himself (Matt, xxvii. 5) doubtless by the instigation of the devil. Yet I find it still more strange, and a greater cause for wonder, that he should have been able to put it into the heart of Judas to betray his Lord (John xiii. 2) than that he should have caused him to hang himself. There is nothing resembling the constancy of the martyrs in the obstinacy of these men, because in the former it is piety, in the latter hardness of heart, tliat causes a contempt of death.2 Also the Psalmist has said, perhaps with the voice of a martyr: Their fieart is curdled like milk; but I have meditated on Thy law (Ps. cxix. 70, Douay), to show that although the suffering seemed the same, yet the intention was very different; for whilst the one was hardening his heart against the Lord, the other was meditating on His holy law.

14. This being the case, there is no need, as I have said, to say much against men who are foolish and obstinate in the extreme; it suffices to take note of them that they may be avoided. Wherefore, that they may be discovered, they must be obliged either to send away the women, by retaining whom in their houses they give scandal to the Church, or to leave the Church. It is much to be lamented that not only secular princes, but also, as it is said, certain of the c^rgy, and even of the order of Bishops, whose special duty it is to seek them out, support them for the sake of gain, and for the presents which they receive from them. ' How/ say they, ' shall we condemn men who do not confess error, nor are convicted of it?' That reason, or rather pretext, is frivolous. By this means alone, if there were no other, you will easily discover them; if, as I have said, you separate the one from the other, obliging the women to live with those of their own sex who have taken the same vow as themselves, and the men to do likewise. In this way you will have consulted both the interest of their vow, and their reputation, in giving them both witnesses and guardians of their good behaviour. If they do not submit to this, they will most justly be expelled from the Church to which they give scandal. Let this suffice, then, for the discovery of the wiles of those foxes that they may be known and guarded against by the Church, which is the beloved and glorious Bride of our Lord Jesus Christ,

OF THE WONDERFUL EXPRESSION OF THE LOVE OF THE BRIDE, WHICH IS CALLED FORTH BY THE AFFECTION OF HER BRIDE- GROOM CHRIST.

' My Beloved is mine, and I am His.1 — Cant. ii. 16. T T ITHERTO we have had the words of the Bridegroom. May

He now be present with us, and aid us worthily to expound the words of His bride, to His glory and to our salvation. For they are such as cannot be considered and discussed by us in a manner that is worthy of the subject unless He Himself shall be the guide of our words. For as they are sweet in the grace which they contain, so they are fruitful in senses and deep in mysteries. To what shall I liken them? They are as food which surpasses all other by a threefold excellence; delicious in taste, solid in nutriment, and efficacious as a remedy. It is thus with each word of the Bride. By the sweetness of its sound it charms the feelings; by its richness in teaching it nourishes and fertilizes the mind; and by the depth of the mysteries it contains it exercises and awes the spirit, and at the same time remedies in a wonderful manner the pride and inflation caused by knowledge. For if any one of those who perhaps seem to themselves learned, wishing to penetrate into these things with too curious a scrutiny, finds the powers of his intellect overpowered and baffled, and brought, as it were, into captivity, will he not be humbled and obliged to take these words for his own: Such knmvledge is tor* wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it f (Ps. cxxxix. 6). And without going any farther, with what a marvel of Sweetness is the beginning of this sentence filled! For see what a declaration the Bride makes as a commencement: My Beloved^ she says, is mine, and