Jeremiah 2

The prophets say, "And the Word of the Lord came to me." … All these messages proscribe in every light the Arian heresy and signify the eternity of the Word, and that he is not foreign but proper to the Father's essence.

Israel is a false wife, but Her heavenly Husband cannot forget the happier days; "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thy espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness."

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying. This is not found in the Seventy, but was added under asterisks from the edition of Theodotion, who translated the Hebrew word 'carath', for which we said 'cry' or 'preach', as 'read'. For by its ambiguity it signifies reading and crying out and preaching. But the ears of Jerusalem we ought to take as the ears of its inhabitants.

Thus says the Lord: I have remembered you, pitying your youth and the love of your betrothal, when you followed me in the wilderness, in a land that is not sown. LXX: thus says the Lord: I have remembered the mercy of your youth and the love of your perfection. This is said more fully in Ezekiel, when the Lord joins Jerusalem to himself in marriage and, under the person of a wife, unites her to his embraces, or, to show a more ardent affection, calls her a girl and a young maiden and betrothed; for what we have not yet obtained, we desire the more to obtain. 'When', he says, 'you followed me in the solitude, and in the manner of betrothal gifts and a dowry I distributed to you the ornaments of the law and the necklaces of words'. And all this he refers not to her merit but to his own mercy, through which love too followed. This also, which we have set down: in the wilderness, in a land that is not sown, is not found in the Seventy.

Consider by how many testimonies the Word of the Lord urges us to recite the Holy Scriptures in order that we may possess through faith what we have repeated with our mouth.… And elsewhere it is written, I remembered the mercy of your youth.

Israel is holy to the Lord, the firstfruits of his crops; all who devour him shall transgress; evils shall come upon them, says the Lord. When he calls Israel the firstfruits of the Lord's crops, he shows that the people gathered from the nations comes after the firstfruits, according to that which is written in another place: Remember your congregation, which you have possessed from the beginning. But firstfruits are owed to the priests and not to enemies. What follows: all who devour him shall transgress; evils shall come upon them, says the Lord, has this sense: just as those who devour the firstfruits, being in no way of priestly stock, are guilty of a crime, so those who defile Israel will be subjected to evils, according to that which the holy man says in Psalm 26 (27): While the harmful draw near against me to eat my flesh, those who trouble me, my enemies themselves have become weak and have fallen. For they will not be immune from punishment on the ground that they carry out God's sentence, and evils will come upon them; for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to him through whom offences come!

Hear the word of the Lord, house of Jacob and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What iniquity did your fathers find in me, that they went far from me and walked after vanity and became vain? Another prophet too testifies to this sense: My people, what have I done to you, and how have I been troublesome to you? Answer me; for I brought you out of the land of Egypt and freed you from the house of servants. Now both names — Israel too — are set down, not according to the two and ten tribes, but for the whole people, since Jacob himself too was afterwards called Israel. And he traces the offense from the fathers, not so that the sins of the fathers are imputed to the sons, but so that the sons too, having the likeness of their fathers, are punished both for their own crime and for their parents'. We often read that God has mercy on sons for the sake of holy fathers. Now the fathers of the sinful people forsook God — and not briefly, but for a long time — and instead of God followed vanity, namely idols, which profit their worshipers nothing, and they became like them, according to that which is written: Let those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them.

God in the Old Testament expostulates with men on the basis of their own conceptions of gratitude, fidelity, and fair play: and puts Himself, as it were, at the bar before His own creatures--"What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me?"

Again, elsewhere he says, "What fault have your fathers found in me?" That which is said is great and marvelous, because what he says means, "What wrong have I done?" God tells human beings, "What sin have I committed?"—something that not even slaves tolerate that their master utter.

And elsewhere again, "What transgression have your fathers found in me?" And again, "O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I grieved thee?" showing their thankless disposition, and that when in the enjoyment of all things, they requited it by the contraries; but here He expresses it with yet greater force. For He doth not plead, Himself, saying, "What ought I to have done that I have not done?" but brings in themselves to judge, that nothing hath been wanting, and to condemn themselves.

And they did not say: Where is the Lord, who made us go up from the land of Egypt, who led us across through the wilderness, through a land uninhabitable and pathless, through a land of thirst and the image of death, through a land in which no man walked nor did a human being dwell? For 'human being' the Seventy translated 'son of man', and for 'image of death' 'shadow of death' was added from Theodotion. Since this is plain according to the history, this must be considered according to anagōgēn [the higher, spiritual sense]: that as long as we are in this world and are being led out of Egypt, we go up little by little, and first we cross deserts and a land uninhabitable, which the holy man ought not to inhabit, and pathless, to show the difficulty of the journey; through a land of thirst, where we always desire greater things and are not content with things present, and the image or shadow of death — for we always stand in danger, and everywhere the devil sets his snares —, through a land in which no man walked, who is of the perfect age in Christ — for we shall all rise again to a perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ — ; nor does he who is a man of God, or a son of man, ever dwell in it, but he always hastens on to greater things. From this it is clear that perfection is not on the way, but at the end of the way and in the dwelling that is prepared for the saints in the heavenly places, and to whom it is said: you who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. In vain, therefore, does the new heresy sprung from the old suppose that perfect victory is here, where there is battle and contest and an uncertain outcome of things to come.

And I brought you into the land of Carmel, that you might eat its fruit and its good things, and having entered you defiled my land and made my inheritance an abomination. 'For the toil of a very hard journey I gave you an abundance of all things'; for this is what 'Carmelus' signifies, which in Hebrew is called 'Chermel' and in our language sounds as 'knowledge of circumcision'. And as that people polluted and violated with idolatry the holy land, fertile in all things, so we, receiving the knowledge of the true circumcision, eat its fruit and, if negligence creeps in, defile the land of God and make his inheritance abominable.

Jeremiah was known before he was formed, and sanctified from the womb. … He longs for water over his head and a fountain of tears for his eyes that he may adequately weep for Israel. No less does he lament the depravity of its rulers. God speaks to him to rebuke the priests: "The priests did not say, 'Where is the Lord?' Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me." Again he says to him, "The shepherds are stupid, and do not inquire of the LORD; therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered." Again, "Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trampled down my portion, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness." He further attacks the pastors again: " 'Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!' says the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: 'You have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.' "

The priests did not say: Where is the Lord? And those who held the law did not know me, and the shepherds transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and followed idols. After such great benefits they turned the privileges of their dignity into contempt, so that the priests did not seek the Lord, the teachers of the law, who ought to have taught others, did not know him, and the shepherds became transgressors through negligence, and the prophets, who discourse among the peoples, speak not for God but for an idol, and venerate their own fabrications. These words must be used against the teachers of our own order, who devour the people of God like bread for food and by their evil works do not call upon the Lord.

God has also entrusted a deposit to us: the brothers' way of life. While laboring on their behalf, we look forward to future rewards, lest this be said of us as well, "Let this people go," and lest, if we forsake the traditions of our ancestors, this be hurled at us: "Those who have my law do not know me; the shepherds have rebelled against me."

Therefore I will still contend with you in judgment, says the Lord, and with your sons I will dispute. Lest he seem to strike through power, he contends by reason as with equals, according to that which David sings and the Apostle adopts: that you may be justified in your words and may prevail when you are judged. And in setting down 'still', he testifies that he has often done so; and in adding 'with your sons', he shows a like obstinacy also in the sons of the wicked. And covertly he signifies that their sons too, at the coming of the Lord, followed the ancient denial of God.

This alone among all evils is without comparison. This is a new act of shamelessness in life. "Go over to the islands of Kittim and see," the Lord says. "Send to Kedar and consider carefully whether anything like this has ever been done—if a nation has changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.)." But the virgin "has changed her glory," and her glory is in her shame.

Pass over to the islands of Kittim and see, and send to Kedar and consider earnestly, and see whether such a thing has been done: if a nation has changed gods — or its gods — ; and surely they are not gods. But my people has changed its glory into an idol or, for that from which nothing will profit it. He makes a comparison of a thing that is incomparable, and sets the true God beside lying ones. 'Go', he says, 'to the islands of Kittim', which we ought to take as those either of Italy or of the western regions, from the fact that the island of Cyprus, in which a city is called by this name, is near the land of Judea; from it too came Zeno, the chief of the Stoics. Kedar, however, is a region of the wilderness and of the Ishmaelites, whom they now call Saracens, against which a prophecy of this very prophet is woven in his final parts, and which David mentions, saying: I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Kedar; my soul has long been a sojourner. And the sense is: 'Either go to the west or send into the wilderness, and see whether any nation has done what you have done. For none of them has spurned its gods, nor, by comparison with golden ones, exchanged its wooden and stone ones; but following its ancient error it has kept what it had received from its ancestors; and this surely, although none of them is a god, but they are images fashioned by the hand of men. But my people has changed the truth for a lie and preferred to me an idol, which will not be able to profit them in the time of need'. We can say this also against those who follow vices with greater zeal than virtues, whom the Apostle admonishes, saying: I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. As you yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now yield your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification.

Those who are not saved always are taking care of those things that do not profit or benefit them in any way. So what kind of excuse is there for a Christian who withdraws from the assembly of the church? Such a person does not even imitate the Gentiles but by reason of his absence grows indifferent and careless. He stands aloof and does evil. The Lord said, … You have not walked in my statutes or kept my ordinances, and have not even acted according to the rules of the nations that are all around you, "you were more corrupt than they in all your ways." How, then, shall the indifferent excuse himself, since he has no zeal for the assembly of the church? If anyone takes the occasion of worldly business to withdraw, let him know this: the trades of the faithful are called works of surplus, for their true work is religion. Pursue your trades, therefore, as a work of surplus, for your sustenance, but let your true work be religion.

The same erroneous notion by which they used to worship devils formed in the figure of people they use even now in thinking that the incomprehensible and ineffable glory of the true Deity should be worshiped under the limitations of some figure. They think they are unable to grasp and hold anything if they do not have some image set before them that they can continually address while they are at their devotion and that they can carry about in their mind and have always fixed before their eyes.… Jeremiah also says, "My people have changed their glory for an idol."

For since you are not persuaded out of the Scriptures, I am compelled to shame you by them that are without. This God also did unto the Jews, when He said, "Go ye forth unto the Isles of Chittim, and send unto Kedar, and know if nations will change their gods; which yet are no gods." And to the brutes likewise He sends us oftentimes, saying on this wise, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and emulate her ways:" and "go forth to the bee."

And what wonder? for He permitted opinions erroneous, and unworthy of Himself, to prevail, as that He was a body formerly, and that He was visible. In opposition to which He says, "God is a Spirit." Again, that He delighted in sacrifices, which is far from His nature. And He utters words at variance with His declarations of Himself, and many such things. For He nowhere considers His own dignity, but always what will be profitable to us. And if a father considers not his own dignity, but talks lispingly with his children, and calls their meat and drink not by their Greek names, but by some childish and barbarous words, much more doth God. Even in reproving He condescends, as when He speaks by the prophet, "Hath a nation changed their gods?", and in every part of Scripture there are instances of His condescension both in words and actions.

Who that witnessed these things, or that has merely heard of them, will not be greatly amazed, and cry aloud unto the Lord, saying, 'Wilt Thou make a full end of Israel?' Who that is acquainted with these proceedings, will not with good reason cry out and say, 'A wonderful and horrible thing is done in the land;' and, 'The heavens are astonished at this, and the earth is even more horribly afraid.' The fathers of the people and the teachers of the faith are taken away, and the impious are brought into the Churches? Who that saw when Liberius, Bishop of Rome, was banished, and when the great Hosius, the father of the Bishops, suffered these things, or who that saw so many Bishops banished out of Spain and the other parts, could fail to perceive, however little sense he might possess, that the charges against Athanasius also and the rest were false, and altogether mere calumny? For this reason those others also endured all suffering, because they saw plainly that the conspiracies laid against these were founded in falsehood.

And not only Paul, but generally all those to whom is committed any ministry of the word, never cease from testifying, but call heaven and earth to witness on the ground that now every deed that is done is done within them, and that in the examination of all the actions of life they will be present with the judged. So it is said, "He shall call to the heavens above and to earth, that he may judge his people." And so Moses when about to deliver his oracles to the people says, "I call heaven and earth to witness this day;" and again in his song he says, "Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak, and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth;" and Isaiah, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;" and Jeremiah describes astonishment in heaven at the tidings of the unholy deeds of the people: "The heaven was astonished at this, and was horribly afraid, because my people committed two evils."

Reproof is the bringing forward of sin, laying it before one. This form of instruction God employs as necessary in the highest degree by reason of the feebleness of the faith of many. For he says by Isaiah, "You have forsaken the Lord and have provoked the holy One of Israel to anger." He says also by Jeremiah: "Heaven was astonished at this, and the earth shuddered exceedingly. My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that will not be able to hold water."

Here too let the prophet Jeremiah say of the race of Israel, "Who will grant for my head to be waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I may weep for this people day and night?" "For what lamentation can suffice for those who fell into the pit of destruction because of their wicked conduct to Christ, and for guilt so great, that not with words only did they grieve him, and mock him with blasphemous cries, but even laid sinful hands upon him and prepared the snare of death for him?… "The heavens themselves were astonished, and shuddered very greatly," says the Lord. For the Lord of earth and heaven, the Creator and Maker of all, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, he who is of such surpassing greatness in glory and majesty, the foundation of everything, and that in which all things exist and abide—for all things exist in him—he who is the breath of all the holy spirits in heaven is scorned like one of us and patiently endures beatings.

Let us further inquire whether the Lord took any care to foreshadow the water [of baptism] and the cross. Concerning the water, indeed, it is written, in reference to the Israelites, that they should not receive that baptism which leads to the remission of sins, but should procure another for themselves. The prophet therefore declares, "Be astonished, O heaven, and let the earth tremble at this, because this people hath committed two great evils: they have forsaken Me, a living fountain, and have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns. Is my holy hill Zion a desolate rock? For ye shall be as the fledglings of a bird, which fly away when the nest is removed."

For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth. Those, therefore, who do not partake of Him, are neither nourished into life from the mother's breasts, nor do they enjoy that most limpid fountain which issues from the body of Christ; but they dig for themselves broken cisterns out of earthly trenches, and drink putrid water out of the mire, fleeing from the faith of the Church lest they be convicted; and rejecting the Spirit, that they may not be instructed.

Be astonished, O heavens, at this, and, its gates, be utterly desolate, says the Lord; for my people has done two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold waters. LXX: the heaven was astonished at this and shuddered beyond measure and exceedingly, the rest likewise. The heaven, to which it was said: Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak and: Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, seeing the precepts of God trampled underfoot, shudders and cannot hide its astonishment. For every creature groans together and grieves together over the sins of men. Now the people of God has done two contrary things: first, that they forsook God, who is the fountain of life and gave the precept, saying: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; second, what is written in the same place: You shall have no gods in my sight; instead of which it followed demons, whom he calls broken cisterns because they cannot keep the commandments of God. And this must be noted, that the fountain is perpetual and has life-giving waters, but cisterns and pits are filled either from torrents or from the turbid waters of the earth and from rains. And he calls those the gates of the heavens of which it is also written in Psalm 23 (24): Lift up, O gates, your heads, and the king of glory shall enter; for which the Seventy translated: Lift up your gates, O princes; of these more will be said fully in its proper place. And let it trouble no one that Aquila and Symmachus translated 'heavens', but the Seventy and Theodotion 'heaven'. For the Hebrew 'samaim' is of common number, and both 'heavens' and 'heaven' are called by the same name, like Thebes, Athens, Salonae.

So she went down to the fountain of wisdom, whether the Church or the soul, to fill her entire vessel and to draw from the pure disciplines of wisdom that the Jews refused to draw from the flowing fountain. Who is this fountain, listen to the one saying: "They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water." To this fountain ran the thirsting soul of the prophets, as David also says: "My soul thirsts for the living God"; so that it could quench its thirst with the richness of divine knowledge and wash away the blood of foolishness with the flow of spiritual waters.

So when the whole world was parched with the drought of Gentile superstition, then came that dew of the heavenly visits on the fleece. But after that the lost sheep of the house of Israel (whom I think that the figure of the Jewish fleece shadowed forth), after that those sheep, I say, "had refused the fountain of living water," the dew of moistening faith dried up in the breasts of the Jews, and that divine Fountain turned away its course to the hearts of the Gentiles. Whence it has come to pass that now the whole world is moistened with the dew of faith, but the Jews have lost their prophets and counsellors.

Is it right to say that what is God's offspring and proper to him exists out of nothing? Or, is it reasonable in the very idea that what is from God has accrued to him, that someone should dare to say that the Son does not always exist? For in this again the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends human thoughts, that we become parents of our own children in time, since we ourselves first did not exist and then came into being. But God, in that he always exists, is always Father of the Son. And the origination of humankind is brought home to us from parallel experiences. However, since "no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son, and the one to whom the Son will reveal him," therefore the sacred writers to whom the Son has revealed him have given us a certain image from things visible, saying, "Who is the brightness of his glory and the expression of his person"; and again, "For with you is the well of life, and in your light shall we see lights." And when the Word chides Israel, he says, "You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom," and this is the fountain that says, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters." Although the illustration is rather ordinary and vague compared with what we would like, it is still nonetheless possible from it to understand something above humanity's nature, instead of thinking the Son's generation is on a level with ours. For who can even imagine that the radiance of light ever did not exist so that he should dare to say that the Son has not always existed or that the Son did not exist before his generation? Or who is capable of separating the radiance from the sun or to conceive of the fountain as always void of life that he should madly say, "The Son exists from nothing," when it is the Son who says, "I am the life"? Or, who can conceive of him as "alien to the Father's essence," who says, "He that has seen me, has seen the Father"? For the sacred writers, wishing us to understand things in this way, have given these illustrations. It is unseemly and truly irreligious, when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others that are neither in Scripture nor have any religious bearing.

Doubtless the heretics, who follow the teachings of demons, who think up false systems under the impulse of their spirit, who let it be known that they have seen visions that they have not seen and by their deadly arguments sow their seed in foolish and credulous hearts—doubtless these are the ones who do not hold the head, namely, Christ, the source of truth. Whatever is opposed to his teaching is without sense, and these are the "blind, leaders of the blind," of whom I think it is said, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water."

Iniquity lies to itself either by corrupting the nature you have made and ordained or by perverting it. It lies to itself when it practices an immoderate use of things permitted or when it burns for things forbidden to that use which is against nature. It lies to itself when convicted, raging with heart and voice against you as it kicks against the goads, or when—breaking through the pale of human society—they audaciously rejoice in private cliques or divisions on the basis of whether they have been pleased or offended. These things happen whenever you are abandoned and whenever, from a self-willed pride, they choose to align themselves instead with something false that they cherish instead of you, O Fountain of life, the one, true Creator and Ruler of the universe.

The arrogance of pride, the pleasure of lust and the poison of curiosity are the motions of a dead soul. It is not that it is dead in such a way as to lack all movement; rather, it dies by "abandoning the fountain of life" and thus is taken up by the transitory world and is conformed to it.

Is he not one who bewitches the sheep of our patriarch, that they may not drink from the pure water that springs up unto life everlasting but may draw down on themselves the saying of the prophet: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water"? Because they should confess that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, as the divine Word teaches and as they who have pondered it more deeply have taught.

"He has opened a pit and dug it." We do not find the name of "pit" ever assigned in the divine Scriptures to something good or a "well" of water to something bad. That into which Joseph was thrown by his brothers is a pit. There is a slaughter "from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the captive woman that was in prison." In the Psalms, "I am counted among those who go down to the pit." In Jeremiah it is said, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—civilisations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. That is what Satan has done to us humans.

When we were together in council, dearest brethren, we read your letter which you wrote to us concerning those who seem to be baptized by heretics and schismatics, (asking) whether, when the), come to the Catholic Church, which is one,4 they ought to be baptized. On which matter, although you yourselves hold thereupon the truth and certainty of the Catholic rule, yet since you have thought that of our mutual love we ought to be consulted, we put forward our opinion, not as a new one,5 but we join with you in equal agreement, in an opinion long since decreed by our predecessors, and observed by us,-judging, namely, and holding it for certain that no one can be baptized abroad outside the Church, since there is one baptism appointed in the holy Church. And it is written in the words of the Lord, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out broken cisterns, which can hold no water."

O blessed change! Once the body wept, but now laughs forevermore. Once it desired the broken cisterns of which the prophet speaks, but now it has been satisfied in the Lord, the fountain of life.

Let him "possess his vessel in sanctification and honor," let him drink of his own wells, not out of the dissolute cisterns of the harlots that cannot hold within them the pure waters of chastity.

Between a well and a pit, that is, a cistern, there is this difference: a well has perpetual waters, flowing from a living spring; a cistern, which keeps water cool, holds waters that are external and brought in from outside. Hence God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug for themselves cisterns which cannot hold water.

Still the Anomoeans have another well-rehearsed argument. What is that? Scripture says, "God is spirit." Tell me, then, does that bring his essence to light? Will anyone accept that argument if he has even drawn a little way near to the doors of the divine Scriptures? According to that argument, God will also be fire, just as it has been written that God is spirit, so has it been written, "Our God is a consuming fire," and again, "a fountain of living water." Not only will God be a spirit and a fountain and a fire; he will also be a soul, a wind, a human mind, and other things far more absurd than these.

And our hearts are thus circumcised from evil, so that we are happy to die for the name of the good Rock, which causes living water to burst forth for the hearts of those who by Him have loved the Father of all, and which gives those who are willing to drink of the water of life. But you do not comprehend me when I speak these things; for you have not understood what it has been prophesied that Christ would do, and you do not believe us who draw your attention to what has been written. For Jeremiah thus cries: "Woe unto you! because you have forsaken the living fountain, and have digged for yourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. Shall there be a wilderness where Mount Zion is, because I gave Jerusalem a bill of divorce in your sight?"

Hence also Jacob, as I remarked before, being himself a type of Christ, had married the two handmaids of his two free wives, and of them begat sons, for the purpose of indicating beforehand that Christ would receive even all those who amongst Japheth's race are descendants of Canaan, equally with the free, and would have the children fellow-heirs. And we are such; but you cannot comprehend this, because you cannot drink of the living fountain of God, but of broken cisterns which can hold no water, as the Scripture says. But they are cisterns broken, and holding no water, which your own teachers have digged, as the Scripture also expressly asserts, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."

Nor do we receive that useless baptism of cisterns, for it has nothing to do with this baptism of life. Wherefore also God has announced that you have forsaken Him, the living fountain, and digged for yourselves broken cisterns which can hold no water.

By reason, therefore, of this laver of repentance and knowledge of God, which has been ordained on account of the transgression of God's people, as Isaiah cries, we have believed, and testify that that very baptism which he announced is alone able to purify those who have repented; and this is the water of life. But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves are broken and profitless to you. For what is the use of that baptism which cleanses the flesh and body alone? Baptize the soul from wrath and from covetousness, from envy, and from hatred; and, lo! the body is pure.

But since many heresies have existed and the people of God have been torn apart at the instigation of demons, the truth must be briefly exposed by us and placed in its own peculiar dwelling place, so that if any one shall desire to draw the water of life, he may not be born to broken cisterns that hold no water but may know the abundant fountain of God. Watered by this fountain, he may enjoy perpetual light.

Yea, rather with us is the living water, the very water which springeth from Christ; but thou, separated from the everlasting Fountain, whence receivest thou thy birth? Nor hath the Holy Spirit departed from the chief mother; whence then came He to thee? Unless perchance He hath followed one that is in strife, and abandoning so many priests, nor pleased to abide in His consecrated dwelling-place, hath preferred the broken cisterns of an adulterated fountain? Whence have your people the Spirit, not having been sealed by an anointed priest? Whence the water, being separated from its mother's womb? Whence renewal, who have lost the cradle of Bridal Peace?

This "tree" is a mystery. In ancient times, Moses sweetened the bitter water with it. The people who were perishing of thirst in the desert drank and were revived because of it. We do this, too. We were drawn out from the calamities of the world in which we were lingering, perishing with thirst (that is, deprived of the divine Word). We drank "by the faith which is on him," the baptismal water of the "tree" of the passion of Christ. We have revived the faith from which Israel has fallen away, as foretold through Jeremiah, who says, "Send, and continue to ask whether such things have been done, whether nations will change their gods (and these are not gods!). But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled at this, O heavens!"—and when were they appalled? Undoubtedly when Christ suffered—"and be shocked," he says, "utterly desolate."

Now, here he clearly reveals to us the mystery of the holy Trinity: he called the only-begotten Word of God a fountain of life. This is the name, too, remember, God personally gave himself through the prophet Jeremiah: "They have forsaken me, a fountain of living water, taken their leave and dug for themselves cracked cisterns incapable of holding water."

Is Israel a slave, or one born in the house? I think it was from this passage that the Jews, puffed up with pride, said to the Savior: We are the seed of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone; how do you say: You shall be free?, not knowing that everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin, and that each one serves him by whom he is overcome. Born, then, of Abraham, the friend of God, by their own vice they became as it were sons of Ham, to whom it was said: Cursed be Canaan; he shall be a slave to his brothers.

Why then has he become a prey? Lions have roared over him and given their voice; they have made his land a wilderness, and his cities have been burned, and there is none who dwells in them. The divine word asks so that it may itself reply. And by lions he means the princes of Babylon, who made his land a wilderness and destroyed his cities by fire. Or at any rate, according to anagōgēn, let us understand the lions as the adverse powers or the leaders of the heretics, who, desolating the land of the Church, have laid waste all its cities with heretical fire, and with that fire of which it is written: All committing adultery, their hearts are like an oven. For they truly give their voice, and in this same prophet, under the person of the partridge, they cry out and gather what they did not bring forth, and they make riches not with judgment. But for this reason its cities have been laid waste and destroyed, because they do not have God as their inhabitant, as Scripture says: and there is none who inhabits them.

The sons also of Memphis and Tahpanhes have debauched you even to the crown of the head. Has not this been done to you because you forsook the Lord your God at the time when he was leading you along the way? This, which we said: at the time when he was leading you along the way, is not found in the Seventy. Now he names two very great cities of Egypt, Memphis and Tahpanhes, and says that their sons debauched Israel even to the crown of the head, in that sense in which Isaiah set it down: From the sole of the foot even to the crown of the head there is no soundness in him. And so great was the lust of the Egyptians, who are great of flesh, that they spared no member but debauched everything. According to the letter, refer it to the idols of the Egyptians; according to the spiritual understanding, to the teachers of perverse doctrine, who pollute the purity of the Church with their own filthiness. And these things will befall him for this reason, because he forsook the Lord his God, and that above all at the time when he ought to have followed him as his guide.

For the fool does not know that those who depart far from God shall perish. And besides, there is the restraint of the prophetic admonition that says, 'What have you to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Gihon? And what have you to do in the way of Ashur, to drink the waters of the rivers?"

If we are not false servants of God, if there is in us a spark of that fire whereby "charity seeks not its own," we certainly should make our good works appear, not only before God but even before people, for fear that, while drinking of quiet waters in our own conscience, we should be constrained by careless feet to drive the sheep of the Lord to drink the troubled waters.

It is fitting first to take in Scripture, then to chew it, and finally to assimilate it. What does it serve a man to drink dirty water? "And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the troubled water?" Drink instead healthy water, that is, wisdom.

The intellect especially strays when the eyes wander and the belly is at ease.… If you patiently endure in the desert, you will not be tempted, for there you will see no women, nor [will you encounter] anything harmful to your mode of life, nor will you hear unseemly cries. "And what hast thou to do with the way of Egypt, to drink the water of Geon?" Understand what I say. Show the enemy your patience and experience in small matters so that he does not seek great things from you. Let these small matters be a pattern for you, that through your struggles in small things you may lay a trap for him and give him no leisure to contrive great snares for you.

Woe to you, devil, or Antichrist, or perverse doctrine of the heretics, who with your teachings and your turbid potion make drunk the peoples of the deceived, and overturn their former faith, giving them a potion not from Siloam, not from the Jordan, not from the springs of Israel, but from the brook Kidron, and from the river of Egypt, of which Jeremiah says: What have you to do with the way of Egypt, that you should drink the water of Gihon? For this in the Hebrew is written sior, that is, turbid and muddy; for although the rivers of Egypt are believed to go out from the paradise of the Scriptures, yet because they are trampled by the feet of Pharaoh, they have lost their splendor, and, defiled by the Egyptian mud, have been turned into torrents, at having escaped which the holy one rejoices, saying: Our soul has passed through the torrent.

And now what do you want on the way of Egypt, to drink the water of Sior? And what have you to do with the way of the Assyrians, to drink the water of the river? For 'Sior' we translated 'turbid', which is what the Hebrew word signifies; for it the common edition has 'Geon'. Since, then, he had set down above the sons of Memphis and Tahpanhes, who debauched Israel even to the crown of the head, he now names Egypt itself more plainly. And no one doubts that the Nile has turbid waters, and that by the river of the Assyrians he signifies the Euphrates, as Scripture says that the land of promise extends from the torrent of Egypt even to the great river Euphrates. But those who have forsaken Christ, the fountain of life, and have dug for themselves the pits of the heretics, which cannot hold the waters of doctrines, must needs be subjected to the lions, who reduce their land to a wilderness and destroy all the churches, and be polluted even to the crown of the head, and drink turbid waters and the streams of the Assyrian river and of the north, whence evils blaze up upon the earth.

Truly, I fear that our parents according to the flesh will be found to condemn us and to quote the words of Scripture, "How have you become wretched, greatly put to shame? Great is your affliction; a fire is kindled on you; your branches have become useless." For this cause they have become a prey. The lions have roared at it and have given out their voice against it. For this reason, the beloved are like the abhorred and the crown of your head is taken away. Cities that face the south, how are you shut off? There is nobody to give access to you. Let indeed the wicked be removed, that he may not see the glory of the Lord.

My child, flee to God, for it is he who created you. It was for you that he underwent these sufferings. For he said, "I gave my back to the whips and my cheek to the slaps. I did not turn my face away from the shame of spittle." O mortal, what is the good of your going to Egypt, to drink the water of the Geon that is churned up?

"Know and see that it is evil and bitter that you have forsaken the Lord your God, and that the fear of me is not in you." If you do not fear God, you have lost grace, you have lost justice, and you have lost true wisdom. "See" therefore "how evil and bitter it is that you have forsaken the Lord your God." Where there is no fear, there is neither wisdom nor justice nor grace.

The Lord has therefore endured all these things on our behalf, in order that we, having been instructed by means of them all, may be in all respects circumspect for the time to come, and that, having been rationally taught to love God, we may continue in His perfect love: for God has displayed long-suffering in the case of man's apostasy; while man has been instructed by means of it, as also the prophet says, "Thine own apostasy shall heal thee;" God thus determining all things beforehand for the bringing of man to perfection, for his edification, and for the revelation of His dispensations, that goodness may both be made apparent, and righteousness perfected, and that the Church may be fashioned after the image of His Son, and that man may finally be brought to maturity at some future time, becoming ripe through such privileges to see and comprehend God.

Your malice shall reprove you — or your transgression shall instruct you — and your turning away shall rebuke you. Know and see that it is an evil and bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord your God and that the fear of me is not with you, says the Lord God of hosts. It must be noted that malice too, or transgression, after it has glutted the transgressor and, like the quails, has come to the point of nausea, instructs the one who does repentance; and he is commanded to see what he has forsaken, what he has followed, and how, spurning good and sweet things, he has chosen evil and bitter ones. And all this happened because he forsook the Lord his God, and the fear of him is not with him. For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; and because he did not have it, he is handed over to evil and bitterness.

So also that unwearied goodness of God and his unchanging nature hurt no one indeed, but we ourselves by falling from on high and tending to the depths are the authors of our own death, or rather the very fall becomes death to the one who falls.… For "your own wickedness shall reprove you, and your apostasy shall rebuke you. Know and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for you to have left the Lord your God"; for "everyone is bound by the cords of his sins."

This then is that body of death from which we cannot escape, confined in those who are perfect, who have tested "how gracious the Lord is," daily feel with the prophet "how bad for himself and bitter it is for a man to depart from the Lord his God."

When he does not convince with his word, God many times permits the experience of things to be the teaching, something that he also said to the Jews. When he expended myriads of words though the prophets, he neither persuaded nor embraced the Jews. Allowing them to be educated through punishment, he said to them, "Your apostasy shall correct you, and wickedness shall reprove you."

From of old you have broken my yoke — or your —, you have burst my bonds — or your — and said: I will not serve. For on every lofty hill and under every leafy tree you lay prostrate as a harlot or there you poured yourself out in fornication. He speaks to Israel as to a harlot, because she broke the marriage covenant and said: I will not serve — 'the Lord' or 'the husband' is understood —, but on every lofty hill and under every leafy tree lay prostrate to idolatry; for pleasant and lofty places are always dedicated to idols. This can also be said to him who, a Christian from the beginning and in part instructed in the sacred letters, afterwards, through desire for secular literature, which is signified in the hills, and for the pleasant things of eloquence, which are shown in the leafy trees, prostrates himself to demons, who, under the pretext of learning and lofty knowledge, pollute the souls of believers and make them spread their feet for every passer-by.

Yet if the husband's power allures you, pray tell me who it was that spoke in the prophet, saying, "O Lord, make it known to me that I may know. Then I saw their thoughts. I was led as a harmless lamb to the slaughter and knew it not. They took counsel together against me, saying, Come, let us throw wood into his bread." For if the Son here spoke of the mystery of his coming incarnation—because it was blasphemous to suppose that the words are spoken concerning the Father—then surely it is the Son who speaks in an earlier passage: "I have planted you as a fruitful vine—how did you become bitter, and a wild vine?"

For it is by similitude, and not by any personal propriety, that He is thus called a vine; just as He is also termed a sheep, a lamb, a lion, a rock, a corner-stone, and other names of a like kind, which are themselves rather the true ones, from which these are drawn as similitudes, not as realities. But when He says, "I am the true vine," it is to distinguish Himself, doubtless, from that vine to which the words are addressed: "How art thou turned into sourness, as a strange vine?" For how could that be a true vine which was expected to bring forth grapes and brought forth thorns?

All they that refuse Christ for King become strangers. Wherefore strangers are they made? Because even that vine, though by Him planted, when it had become sour what heard it? "Wherefore hast thou been turned into sourness, O alien vine?" It hath not been said, My vine: because if Mine, sweet; if sour, not Mine; if not Mine, surely alien.

Sin is a terrible thing, and the most grievous disease of the soul is iniquity, which corrupts the fiber of the soul and makes it liable to eternal fire. It is an evil freely chosen, the product of the will. The prophet clearly declares that we sin of our own free will: "I had planted you, a choice vine of fully tested stock; how could you turn into bitterness, a spurious vine?" The planting was good, but the fruit coming from the will is evil. So the planter is blameless, but the vine will burn with fire since it was planted for good and bore evil fruit of its own will.

Learn this also, that before the soul comes into the world, it has committed no sin. But though we came into the world sinless, we now of our own choice commit sin.… Remember also how God again accuses them and says, "I have planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed; how then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?"

So also God is introduced by the prophet as saying to the person who had become evil by his own choice, "Yet I had planted you a fruitful vine. How have you turned back into a wild vine?" Anywhere it is said that evils happen to the wicked from God, it must be understood as an accidental coincidence of name. This name is given to the chastisements that God in his goodness is said to send not for the hurt of those who are chastised but for their benefit and profit, in the same way that a physician might be thought to apply bad things in his painful and bitter remedies to save the sick.

God through Jeremiah reproaches the evil of the human will in such a way that he teaches that it is foreign to him. He says, "Yet I planted you as a choice vine.… How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?" He says that the vine is foreign to him not because of some defect in the divine creation but by the avoidance of his own will, which is justly blamed because it brought forth bitterness, something God did not produce in it. It had the bitterness not from God's predestination or from God's work but from the evil of its own will. Because of that bitterness, God rebukes it a second time through the prophet mentioned above: "Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God: the fear of me is not in you." Since, therefore, it is evil and bitter for a person to have left the Lord and not to have in him a fear of God, who is contrary to the truth in such a way that he thinks it comes from a good and kind God.

And they gave him wine mixed with gall to drink, and when he had tasted it he would not drink. God speaks to Jerusalem: I planted you a true vine; how have you turned into the bitterness of a foreign vine? A bitter vine makes bitter wine, which it gives the Lord Jesus to drink, so that what is written might be fulfilled: They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. But what is said: when he had tasted it he would not drink, indicates that he tasted indeed the bitterness of death for us, but on the third day he rose again.

But I planted you a choice vineyard, wholly a true seed; how have you been turned for me into what is crooked, a strange vineyard? LXX: But I planted you a fruitful vineyard, wholly true; how have you been turned into bitterness, a strange vine? For the 'choice' or 'fruitful' vineyard the Hebrew has 'sorec', which is set down in the song of Isaiah. Now it is a kind of the finest vine, with which slip the Lord says he planted Israel too, and he marvels how the true seed and choice vineyard has been turned into bitterness and has therefore become a strange vineyard. And let no one be secure, if both the planting of the Lord and the true seed and the vineyard sorec is so changed by its own vice that through bitterness it withdraws from the Lord and becomes a strange vine. And in this the clemency of the Creator must be considered, that he who said in the Gospel: I am the true vine, granted also to his disciples and to the people believing in him to be a choice or true vine, if it wills to remain in that in which it has been planted.

Hence God gave the gift of prayer. But this He doth, not as Himself standing in need of entreaty, but that we might not, from being saved without effort, grow indifferent. ... Wherefore to Jeremiah also He said, "Pray not for this people, for I will not hear thee," not as wishing to stop his praying (for He earnestly longeth for our salvation), but to terrify them: and this the prophet also seeing did not cease praying. And that you may see that it was not through a wish to turn him from it, but to shame them that He said this, hear what it says. "Seest thou not what these are doing?" And when He says to the city "Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thou art stained before Me," it is not that He may cast them into despair that He so speaks, but that He may rouse them to repentance. For as in the case of the Ninevites, by giving the sentence without limitation, and holding out no good hope, He scared them the more, and led them to repentance, so He doth here also, both to rouse them, and to render the prophet more venerated, that in this way at least they may hear him.

"God did not make death, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living; for he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are salutary, and in them there is no poison of destruction, nor is the kingdom of Hades upon the earth." Then, passing over a little of the text, I will say whence death entered: "but by the envy of the devil death entered into the world." If, then, God has made everything that is best concerning us, while we ourselves have created for ourselves wickedness and sins — for this reason here too the beginning of the reading in the prophet says, as it were in a manner of raising a difficulty, to those who have acquired in their soul a bitterness contrary to the sweetness which God fashioned for it: "How were you turned to bitterness, O alien vine?" As if it said: God did not make lameness, but made all men sound of foot; what, then, has become the cause of those who are lamed? And God made all the members sound at the outset, but what has become the cause of some suffering harm? In the same way the soul came to be "according to the image" not of the first man only, but of every man. For the words "let us make man according to our image and likeness" reach unto all men. And just as in Adam there is that which is prior — which most people understand as the "according to the image" of what was taken up together with him, when because of sin he bore "the image of the man of dust" — so in all men the "according to the image of God" is prior to the worse image. We, being sinners, "have borne the image of the man of dust"; let us, repenting, "bear the image of the heavenly man." Yet the creation came to be in the image of the heavenly man. Here, then, the word is at a loss, speaking reprovingly to those who sin: "How were you turned to bitterness, O alien vine? For I planted you a fruit-bearing vine, wholly true." It has been said in what precedes, and taking up a few points again I will persuade you that God planted a good vine, the soul of man, but each one, having turned aside, has become contrary to the will of the one who created him. "But I planted you a fruit-bearing vine, wholly" — not "true" in part, nor partly true and partly false, but — "I planted you a fruit-bearing vine, wholly true; how were you turned?" — When I made you wholly a true vine, how were you turned to bitterness and become an alien vine?

Just as Paul too glories that the observances of the law, and all the glory of the Jewish institution, were to him only as dung, that he might be found in Christ not having his own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God. As Paul, therefore, having received the faith of Christ, did not keep his own vineyard — namely, the observances of the Jewish tradition; and perhaps he did not keep it because, when the true vine had been planted by God, it was turned into the bitterness of a strange vine, and their vineyard was already the vine of Sodom, and their branch from Gomorrah, and the cluster of bitterness in them, and their wine the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps.

Let us try, therefore, to discuss the third exposition also, according to the moral topic. If there is anyone who, while evils increase and vices overflow, is able to turn himself away from fluid and perishing and falling things and to hear the word of God and the heavenly precepts, this one builds within his heart an ark of salvation and consecrates within himself, so to speak, a library of the divine word, and places in it length and breadth and height — faith, charity, and hope. He stretches the faith of the Trinity to the length of life and immortality, he founds the breadth of charity by the affection of pardon and kindness, he raises the height of hope to the heavenly and lofty things; for, walking upon the earth, he has his "conversation in the heavens." But the sum of his acts he brings back to one. For he knows that "all indeed run, but one receives the prize" — namely, the one who has not been manifold through the variety of thoughts and the instability of mind. But this library he builds not out of rough and unpolished timbers, but out of squared ones directed according to the line of equity — that is, not out of the volumes of secular authors, but out of the prophetic and Apostolic ones. For these are the ones who, hewn by diverse temptations, with all vices cut away and excised, keep a squared life balanced on every side. For the authors of secular books can indeed be called "lofty timbers" and "shady timbers" — for "under every lofty and leafy tree" Israel is accused of having committed fornication — because they indeed speak lofty things and use flowery eloquence, yet they did not act as they spoke; and therefore they cannot be named "squared timbers," because in them life and word by no means balance out.

The God who "brings forth the sun on the evil and the good" is a desert to no one. To no one is he who "rains on the just and unjust" ever a land made dry. How is he a desert, when he brings forth the day and causes the night to rest? How is he a desert, when he causes the land to bear fruit? How is he a desert, when he provides for each person in his soul so that it is endowed with reason, so that it can grasp knowledge and exercise its intelligence, and in the body so that it has healthy sense faculties? And so with respect to the way of what is universal, God is not a desert.

Now, those who were called children and were enrolled in the ranks of children made themselves foreign by proving ungrateful for favors done, limping in respect of the faith and abandoning the path of godliness. Thus God said through the prophet Jeremiah, "How did you turn into bitterness to me, a foreign vine, whereas I planted every vine to be genuine and fruitful?"

If you wash yourself with nitre and multiply for yourself the herb borith, you are stained with your iniquity before me, says the Lord God. For 'herb borith', which we have rendered as it is set down in the Hebrew, the Seventy translated poan, to signify the fullers' herb, which, after the manner of the province of Palestine, grows in green and moist places and has the same power for washing away dirt as nitre does; but our 'nitre' and 'fullers' herb' is repentance. The preaching of the Church too, which reproves and rebukes and corrects the offender, has the likeness of a more biting nitre. He who is stained with the light dirt of sins is cleansed by lighter admonitions. But grave sins, which drag to death, can be washed away neither by nitre nor by the herb borith, but need heavier torments. For each one's work, of what sort it is, the fire will test, and in fire it will be revealed. And beautifully he added: you are stained with your iniquity in my sight, because, even if you seem clean to men, you are not clean to me, who know the consciences of each one. Hence too in another place it is said: no one living shall be justified in your sight.

After this let us look at the words: "though you wash yourself with nitre and multiply soapwort for yourself, you are stained in your iniquities before me, says the Lord." Did some sinful soul suppose that, by taking nitre and washing herself with perceptible nitre, she would cease from the stain and cease from sin? And did someone imagine that, by taking this soapwort which springs up from the earth, and washing and scrubbing himself with it, his soul would be cleansed — since here the word says to her who was turned to bitterness and became an alien vine: "though you wash yourself with nitre and multiply soapwort for yourself, you are stained in your iniquities before me, says the Lord"? But one must know that the word has every power; and just as it has the power of every writing, so the word has the power of every medicine, and it is the power of everything that cleanses, and is most effective for scouring: "for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword." And whatever you may say, where there is need, this lies in the power of the word. There is, then, a certain word that is nitre, and there is a certain word that is soapwort, which, when spoken, cleanses such filth. But since not every sin is healed by such a word which is nitre, and by such a word which is soapwort — but there are sins that need neither nitre nor soapwort — it is said to her who thinks she has sins such as can be washed away by nitre and soapwort: "though you wash yourself with nitre and multiply soapwort for yourself, you are stained before me in your iniquities, says the Lord." And just as of wounds there are some that are healed with a poultice, and others healed with oil, and others need a bandage and are thus made whole, but there are other wounds concerning which it is said: "there is no poultice to apply, nor oil, nor bandages; but your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire" — so there are certain sins which defile the soul, and for these sins a man needs a word of nitre, a word of soapwort; but there are certain sins which are not healed in this way, for they are not even comparable to filth. Therefore the Lord in Isaiah, knowing the differences of sins, see how he says: "the Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and will cleanse away the blood from their midst by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning." Filth and blood: filth by a spirit of judgment, blood by a spirit of burning. If you have sinned, though not "unto death," you are defiled. "The Lord will wash away," then, "the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and will cleanse away the blood from their midst." Then there is the correspondence: for "the filth" a "spirit of judgment," and for "the blood" a "spirit of burning"; and the many of us, when we commit worse sins, have need not of nitre nor of multiplying soapwort, but of the spirit of burning.

For this reason Jesus baptizes (perhaps now I find the meaning) "in [the] Holy Spirit and fire." Not that he baptizes the same person "in the Holy Spirit and fire," but the holy one "in the Holy Spirit," while the one who, after believing, after being counted worthy of the Holy Spirit, has again sinned, he washes in "fire" — so that the same person is not baptized by Jesus "in the Holy Spirit and fire." Blessed, then, is the one baptized in the Holy Spirit and having no need of the baptism that comes from fire. But thrice-wretched is that one who has need to be baptized with fire. Yet Jesus has both. For "there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up out of the root." A "rod" upon those who are punished, a "flower" upon the righteous. Thus "God is a consuming fire," and "God is light": a consuming fire to sinners, light to the righteous and holy. And "blessed is the one who has a part in the first resurrection," the one who has kept the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Who is the one saved in another resurrection? The one who has need of the baptism that comes from fire, when he comes to that fire, and the fire tests him, and that fire finds wood, hay, and stubble, so as to burn them up. Therefore, since these things are said, let us with all our power gather together the words of the Scriptures, and lay them up in our heart, and try to live according to them, if perchance we may be able to become pure before our departure, and, having prepared our works for the departure, may go forth in those very good things and be taken up in them and be saved in Christ Jesus, to whom is the glory and the might unto the ages of ages. Amen.

How do you say: I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals? See your ways in the vale or valley, which in Hebrew is called 'ge' and by the Seventy is translated polyandrion, which in our language can be called 'the tomb of a multitude'. 'In vain', he says, 'are you unwilling to confess your crimes, and do you boast of cleanness, you who are polluted with the filth of idolatry, and shamelessly deny that you worshiped the idol of the Baals. Look back at the vale of the sons of Hinnom, which is watered by the springs of Siloam, and there you will see the shrine of Baal, whom you venerated, having forsaken God'. And what is added: know what you have done, opens the closed eyes of her who denies, so that she may see what she blushes to look upon. According to tropology, let us refute by their works the shameless brow of those who will not confess their vices. For men of this kind do not walk in the strait and narrow way that leads to life, but in the broad and spacious one, by which very many enter, which leads to death. Hence too it was significantly named polyandrion, or else according to the history, because there a multitude of the people was slain and perished through the evil of idolatry.

A light runner unfolding her ways, a wild ass accustomed to the wilderness, in the desire of her soul has drawn in the wind of her love; none shall turn her away. All who seek her shall not fail; in her monthly courses they shall find her. LXX: toward evening her voice howled, she widened her ways over the waters of the wilderness, in the desire of her soul she was borne by the spirit, she was handed over. Who will turn her back? All who seek her shall not toil; in her humiliation they will find her. In this passage the Seventy's edition disagrees greatly with the Hebrew truth; yet each has its own sense. Because above she said: I am not defiled, and he was speaking as if to a woman who had behaved shamefully, he describes her fornication. 'As', he says, 'a light roe' — which we called 'runner' in the common gender, and which Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion translated more expressively dromas kouphē [a light runner, in the feminine] — 'unfolds her ways and is carried swiftly to the pastures, and as a wild ass accustomed to the wilderness draws in, in the desire of her soul, the wind or spirit of her love' — for among the Hebrews both 'wind' and 'spirit' are called by one name, 'ruha' —, 'so too Israel, or Jerusalem, was borne with all her impetus toward the desire of lust and burned with every love of idols, and there is no one who can turn her from this impetus by his warnings, not that the inability of the prophets brought this about, but the perverse malice of her who desires'. Whoever, he says, seek her will not toil greatly; in her monthly courses and in her uncleanness they will find her, for which Aquila translated neomēnian, that is, 'the Kalends', Symmachus 'month', the Seventy and Theodotion 'humiliation'. But according to the Seventy this is the sense: the harlot Jerusalem, like that woman who is described in Proverbs, toward evening howled with her voice and provoked lovers to lust, opened the ways of her shamefulness, and spread her feet for every passer-by. And there was a place having the pleasantness of flowing waters, which becomes more delightful when there is solitude all around, so that no one sees her fornicating. In the desire, he says, of her soul epneumatophoreito [she was borne along by a spirit], or by a perverse spirit she was led, or she drew the refreshment of love, or at any rate she sang the songs of her shamefulness. She was handed over, he says, to her vices and to lust; no one will be able to turn her back. All who wish to find her will find her in the humiliation of her shamefulness, so that she can never be sated with the love of pleasure.

Nothing makes God as angry as when people from despair of better things cling to those that are worse. Indeed, this despair in itself is a sign of unbelief. One who despairs of salvation can have no expectation of a judgment to come. For if he dreaded such, he would by doing works prepare to meet his Judge. Let us hear what God says through Jeremiah: "Withhold your foot from a rough way and your throat from thirst," and again, "shall they fall, and not arise? Shall he turn away, and not return?"

Restrain your foot from nakedness and your throat from thirst. And you said: I have despaired, by no means will I do it; for I have loved strangers, and after them I will walk. LXX: turn back your foot from the rough way and your throat from thirst. She said: I will act manfully, because she loved strangers and walked after them. Those who are about to keep the Passover are commanded to have shoes on their feet. And the Apostle proclaims shod the feet of those who are prepared by the Gospel, lest, while they walk through the wilderness of this world, they lie open to venomous creatures, which ought to be trampled and crushed by the Gospel foot. We restrain the throat from thirst when we receive the precepts of the Savior, who says: Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink. She, out of despair of better things, denied that she would do what the Lord commanded, and set out the reason, saying: I have loved strangers, and I will follow them, thinking by a shameless confession to escape her crimes. But according to the Seventy, the way of sinners is rough, and it is turned by the Lord into a level way. Whoever follows heretics is branded by the verdict of these verses, because he has said: I have despaired — or, in an evil purpose, I will act manfully — and in my error I will be strengthened. And it is necessary that whoever follows a doctrine strange to the Church's should love strangers and follow their footsteps, either demons or the leaders of the heretics, because they are strangers to God.

Against those who, in the greatness of their wickedness, have scorned God's goodness and rejected the Savior, there is decreed wrath and misery.… For those who are in their sins are full of shame. For so it is somewhere said of the Israelites, who violated the law of Moses: Like the shame of a thief when he is caught, so will the children of Israel be ashamed. But those who are in Christ by faith, escaping from the pollutions of sin, are certainly not full of shame but also have that boldness that becomes those who are free.

As a thief is confounded when he is caught, so are the house of Israel confounded, they and their kings, princes and priests and their prophets. Although the face of thieves is shameless and bold, yet it blushes when it has been caught in theft. And so Israel too, saying to wood: You are my father, and to stone: You have begotten me, so as to call those his parents whom he himself had fashioned, is confounded when he has been caught in his idolatry. And lest we think that he says this of the common people, he sets down kings and princes and priests and their prophets. Let us use this testimony if ever our princes, and those who are reckoned leaders in the Church, are caught in shameful sins.

How is a person wise who looks not for his Maker but says to a stone, "You are my father"? Who says to the devil as the Manichaean does, "You are the author of my being"? How is Arius wise, who prefers an imperfect and inferior creator to one who is a true and perfect one? How can Marcion or Eunomius be wise, who prefer to have an evil rather than a good God? And how can one be wise who does not fear his God? For "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

It is adultery, if you abandon the ecclesiastical and true knowledge and the opinion about God, and consent to false and incompatible opinion, either by deifying any created object or by making an idol of anything that does not exist, so as to overstep, or rather step away from, knowledge.… For this reason, the noble apostle calls one of the kinds of fornication, idolatry. In following the prophet says, "My people have committed fornication with wood and stone. They have said to the wood, 'you are my father' and to the stone, 'you have begotten me.' "

With unspeakable mercy, God deigned to be called the Father of humankind. He is in heaven, they on earth. He is the eternal Maker. They are made in time. He holds the earth in the hollow of his hand. They are like grasshoppers on the earth. Yet people forsook their heavenly Father and said to wood, "you are my father, and to the stone, you have begotten me." And for this reason, I think, the psalmist says to humankind, "Forget your own people as well, and your father's house."

They have turned to me the back and not the face. Those who cast the words of God behind them themselves turn their back against him and not their face. For when a master gives instruction, it is a sign of one who obeys if he listens with his head bowed before him; but if he turns his back, it is a sign of one who despises, as it is written in another place: and they turned to me a withdrawing shoulder. 'So far', says God, 'have they despised my precepts that they would not even hear, but showed the swelling of their mind by the gesture of their body'.

And in the time of their affliction they will say: Arise and deliver us. Those who did not perceive God through benefits, let them perceive him through torments.

Where are your gods, which you made for yourself? Let them arise and deliver you in the time of your affliction. It is a shameless request, in time of need and distress, to seek help from him whom they despised in peace. And it is to be read with the feeling of one rebuking: 'Let your gods, which you made for yourself, deliver you; so that, since God is the creator of men but man has made a god, necessity may prove what they can do whom you formerly worshiped when you were secure.'

According to the number of your cities were your gods, O Judah. The several cities worshiped either the same gods or single and different ones, so that they did not seem to have agreement even in impiety, but a superstition fighting against itself followed diverse error. And what follows: and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem they sacrificed to Baal, was added by the Seventy.

Why do you wish to contend with me in judgment? You have all forsaken me, says the Lord. Human perversity is prone to excuse itself, so that whatever men suffer deservedly they appear to suffer unjustly, and they refer their own fault to the judgment of God. 'In vain', therefore, he says, 'do you put forward complaints and plead that the judge is unjust, since what you suffer comes from your impiety.' And what follows: and you have all acted unjustly against me, was likewise added by the Seventy.

"Some of those measures do not succeed," you say. Is a remedy, then, to be discontinued because the illness of some patients is incurable? You are looking at those who are so hardened that they are not affected by such correction. Concerning these it has been written: "In vain have I struck your children. They have not received correction."

Behold, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree. This refers to the three captivities in which the Israelites were taken away as captives, so that they might be chastened, but they were not chastened. In vain have I smitten your children, but they have not taken correction. To show that even after these things he was still patient, he said to the vinedresser, Cut it down. The vinedresser replied to him, Leave it, Lord, for another year. He agreed to be patient with the Israelites.

In vain have I struck your sons; they did not receive discipline, for which the Seventy set down: you did not receive. And the sense in the Hebrew is: 'They themselves, who were struck, were unwilling to receive discipline,' but in the Seventy: 'I struck your sons for this reason, that by their death you might be instructed. And lest perhaps you should say: You were unwilling to correct us when we sinned, learn from the blows dealt your sons that I desired to cure you with a harsher remedy.'

Your sword has devoured your prophets. 'Not my prophets but yours, and by no means my sword but yours, has devoured them, the sword which you suffered for your sins'. But the Seventy do not have 'your', but translated simply: the sword has devoured your prophets, 'so that it may be shown to be either the enemy's sword or my sword, by which I have pierced your sins.'

Like a ravaging lion is your generation. LXX: like a ravaging lion, and you did not fear. 'The sword', he says, 'which devoured your prophets' — there is no doubt that he means the soothsayers of Baal and of the idols —, 'has laid everything waste like a lion, and yet your generation, which ought to have been amended by the slaying of a few, has persevered entire in crime'. But according to the Seventy this is the sense: 'Thus the sword of the Lord, which has displayed the sword of the adversaries, has devoured and torn your false prophets like a lion, which most greedily tears the prey it has found, and yet not even by the punishment of your prophets could you be turned to better things.'

See the word of the Lord: Have I become a wilderness to Israel, or a late-yielding land? Why then has my people said: We have withdrawn, we will come to you no more? LXX: hear the word of the Lord: thus says the Lord: Have I become a wilderness to Israel, or a land full of thorns, because my people said: We will not serve, nor will we come to you? Moses too saw the voice of God, and John the apostle says that he saw and handled the word of God. And he marvels how the people of Israel held God as a wilderness, while it followed idols as though they were the throng of cities. A late-yielding land is one that does not receive the rains of doctrines nor the discipline of the Gospel; and full of thorns, because it had not been cultivated. The people, then, that was once God's is the more wicked in this, that it withdrew from the Lord and is unwilling to return again to its God. It is a great offense to be unwilling to appease him whom you have offended.

At the beginning of what has been read, the Lord says concerning Israel that he did not become a "wilderness" to him, nor "a parched land." Who then, coming to this passage, would not inquire, examining the intention of what is written? Grant that God did not become a wilderness in Israel, that he did not become in Israel a parched land: has the Lord then become a wilderness to Israel today, or is he now to him a parched land? And what of this: when to Israel he was neither a wilderness nor a parched land, was he to the nations a wilderness and a parched land? For if to all he is always not a wilderness, and to all he is always not a parched land, what need was there for it to be said to Israel in particular and by way of exception, "Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a parched land?" But it is possible to come first to the universal benefactions of God, and then, after his universal benefactions, to the particular ones.

To no one is God a wilderness, "making his sun to rise upon the wicked and" — and to no one is he a parched land, "sending rain upon" the just "and the unjust." How is he a wilderness, who makes the day to rise and the night for rest? How is he a wilderness, who makes the earth to bear fruit? How is he a wilderness, who administers each person according to the soul, that it may be rational, that it may take up knowledge, that its faculty of understanding may be trained with respect to the body, that it may have "the organs of perception" in vigor? Therefore, as regards the universal account, God is a wilderness to no one. But as regards the particular account, I come to the affairs of Israel and say: he was neither a wilderness nor a parched land, when in Egypt he was working the signs and the wonders for the people. But if there was any time when they were forsaken, he became, as it were, a wilderness to them — though he himself was not a wilderness. When, however, to Israel he was not a wilderness nor a parched land, to the nations, according to the particular account, he was a wilderness and a parched land. But when he turned away from Israel and became to that Israel a wilderness and a parched land, then the grace was poured out upon the nations, and Christ Jesus has now become to us not a wilderness but full, and not a parched land but bearing fruit; for "many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her that has the husband." And he threatens those to whom he did not become a wilderness nor a parched land, saying: I indeed have not become to you "a wilderness" nor "a parched land," but you have said, "We will not be lorded over; we will not come to you any longer." Have the sons of Israel then said, in their reckless folly, according to the wording, "We will not be lorded over" […]

It is the virgin Mary of whom God by the mouth of Jeremiah speaks, saying, "Can a maid forget her ornaments or a bride her attire?" Concerning her we read of a great miracle in the same prophecy—that a woman should compass a man and that the Father of all things should be contained in a virgin's womb.

The band covers the breast, and holds that place in women which the Rational holds in the High Priests. Of this breast-band Jeremiah too spoke in mystical speech: If a bride can forget her adornment, or a virgin her breast-band, I too will forget you, says the Lord (Jer 2:32). The virgin, such as the Apostle desires to present us to Christ (2 Cor 11), so long as she is not corrupted in Egypt and her breasts, which are bound with the breast-band, are not broken, is joined to the bridegroom; and though daily she bears sons of the virtues, she by no means ceases to be a virgin. But if at some time she has spread her feet to every passer-by and followed her lovers, and, according to the prophecy of Hosea, the Lord has hedged in her ways and shut off her paths, she will return to her former husband and will hear: Put off the garments of mourning, and put on the garments of your glory (Hos 2).

Will a virgin forget her ornament, a bride the band of her breast? But my people has forgotten me days without number. Through these words we learn that Christ is the bridegroom of the virgin Church, which has no spot or wrinkle. And if he himself is the bridegroom, the words are his, of whom John the Baptist also speaks: He who has the bride is the bridegroom. He, therefore, loses his ornament who withdraws from the Lord, and he loses the understanding of doctrines, which is signified in the breast. Hence also John the Evangelist reclines upon the breast of the Lord, and for the priests, among other things, the breast of the victims is set apart. But the greater the number of the times in which we forget God, the greater the penalty of the sin, because it could not be tamed even by the length of ages.

Why do you strive to show your way good, to seek love? You who moreover have also taught your wickednesses, your ways, and on your wings — or in your hands — has been found the blood of the souls of the poor and innocent. Not in pits did I find them, but in all these or under every oak. 'In vain', he says, 'do you desire to defend yourself by the art of words and to show your works as good, so as to merit love, you who besides have also taught others your ways and been an example of evil works to all. And on your wings indeed — or in your hands — has been found the blood of the innocent, whom you sacrificed to idols, or whose souls you destroyed by the likeness of sacrifices'. 'The poor' we set down from the Hebrew; they are not found in the Seventy. 'But these,' he says, 'poor and innocent ones I did not find slain in pits' — which usually happens through the ambushes of robbers —, 'but in all the things which I have mentioned above, or under the oak' — which in Hebrew is called 'ella,' which indeed also signifies 'these', so that the sense is: 'in all these, or under the oak and terebinth' —, 'under whose shade and leaves, as in pleasant places, you enjoyed the crimes of idolatry'.

It makes God angry for us to imagine that we are free from all impurity. He is even found saying to one of those who led polluted lives, Behold, I have a suit with you because you say I have not sinned, in that you have acted very contemptuously in repeating your ways. For the repetition of the way to sins is for us, when we are overtaken by offenses, to refuse to believe that we are guilty of the defilement that arises from them.

Let us, therefore, pray without ceasing, according to the expression of the blessed Paul. Let us be careful to do so aright.… Remember him who says by the voice of Isaiah, Declare your sins first, that you may be justified; remember too that he rebukes those who will not do so and says, Behold, I have a judgment against you, because you say I have not sinned. Examine the words of the saints, for one says, "The righteous is the accuser of himself in the beginning of his words," and another says, "I said, I will confess against myself my transgression to the Lord; and you forgave the iniquity of my heart."

For God readily accepts and has mercy on those who do not forget their offenses but fall down before him and ask of him forgiveness. But he is severe, and very justly so, on the hardhearted and the proud, and on one who in his great ignorance acquits himself of blame. For God said to one thus disposed, Behold, I have a suit against you, because you say, I have not sinned. For who can boast that he has a pure heart? Or who can have confidence that he is undefiled by sins? The road then to salvation, and which delivers those who earnestly walk on it from the wrath of God, is the confession of offenses, and to say in our prayers to him who purifies the wicked, Forgive us our sins.

And you said: I am without sin and innocent, and therefore let your fury be turned away from me. Behold, I will contend with you in judgment, because you said: I have not sinned. How exceedingly vile you have become — or since you have greatly despised — repeating your ways! These words must be used against those who will not acknowledge their sins, but in the time of affliction and distress say that they suffer unjustly what they suffer, and provoke the wrath of God the more, since it is another and greater sin not to mourn what they have done, but to put forward vain excuses for their sins. In judgment, he says, I will contend with you because you said: I have not sinned, as though it were something greater than this sin to hold one thing in the conscience and to utter another in speech. Let the new heresy sprung from the old hear that it is the very greatest wrath of God to be unwilling to confess sin humbly, and instead to boast shamelessly of righteousness.

And you shall be confounded by Egypt, as you were confounded by Assyria; for from this one too you shall go out, and your hands shall be upon your head, since the Lord has crushed your confidence — or hope — and you shall have nothing prosperous in it. To avoid the onset of the Egyptians they fled for refuge to the Assyrians, whose protection was vain; for we read that they were conquered by the Egyptians. Again, to escape the wrath of the Assyrian they relied on the help of the Egyptians, who, as history relates, were overcome by the Assyrians. They are rebuked, therefore, because, abandoning hope in God, they rely on the help of men, which has all been crushed and so overthrown that they can find nothing of use in it. Hence he says: and from this one you shall go out, that is, from Egypt, as you went out from the Assyrians, and your hands shall be upon your head, and you will mourn that you vainly expected protection from the Egyptians. Let us recall the history, when Tamar, corrupted and violated by Amnon, her most wicked brother, placed her hands upon her head sprinkled with ash and so returned to her house.

Our soldiers were brought low by a similar disdaining pride and by the same outcome. That saying of the prophet was brought home to our army: "The Lord shall cast aside your confidence, and you shall not have prosperity." We were confident in our own wisdom and strength, contrary to the command of God, who says, "Let not the wise person glory in his wisdom or the strong person in his strength, but let him who glories glory in this, to know and understand me, because I am the Lord."