Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the Word of God; consider the outcome of their life and imitate their faith.^[1] Emperors have not preached the word to you, but apostles and prophets, shepherds and teachers. When God gave commands to David concerning the house David intended to build for him, he said to him, You may not build a house for my name, for you are a warrior and have shed blood. Pay all of them their dues, the apostle Paul says, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.^[2] Political prosperity is the business of emperors; the condition of the church is the concern of shepherds and teachers. Any other method is piracy, brothers. Saul tore Samuel’s cloak, and what was the consequence? God tore the kingdom away from him and gave it to David the meek.^[3]

Consider whether the story about David and Solomon concerning the temple hints at something like this. For when David, who wages the wars of the Lord and stands firm against many personal enemies and enemies of Israel, wishes to build a temple for God, he is prevented by God through Nathan, who says to him, You shall not build me a house, because you are a man of blood.

Solomon, however, who saw God in a dream and received wisdom in a dream (for the reality [of God] was reserved for him who said, Behold, a greater than Solomon is here),^[1] who enjoyed the profoundest peace so that each person at that time rested under his own vine and under his own fig tree and who was named after the peace in his time (for Solomon means peaceful),^[2] because of this peace has time to construct the famous temple for God. The temple for God is also rebuilt in the times of Esdras, when the truth overcomes wine along with the hostile king and the women.^[3]

There is a passage in the first book of the same Chronicles that declares the choice of the will: And you, Solomon, my son, know you the God of your father and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts; if you seek him, he will be found of you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever. But these people find some room for human merit in the clause if you seek him, and then the grace is thought to be given according to this merit in what is said in the ensuing words, he will be found of you. And so they labor with all their might to show that God’s grace is given according to our merits, in other words, that grace is not grace. For, as the apostle most expressly says, to them who receive reward according to merit the recompense is not reckoned of grace but of debt.^[1]

Do you know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, him will God destroy.^[1] And in another place: The Lord is with you as long as you are with him. If you abandon him, he also will abandon you.

It is to be noted, of course, that the thirty cubits of height spoken of above reached to the middle story; from there on to the third story another thirty cubits were added until the portico that was around the temple on the south and north and east reached the roof, as we learn from Josephus’s account;^[1] from there to the top of the temple roof was another sixty cubits, and so the total height of the house according to the book of Paralipomenon amounted to 120 cubits.^[2] Also the portico that was in front of the temple to the east, according to the account of the aforesaid volume, was the same number of cubits in height. That is, the porticoes around the temple of which we have just spoken, this book calls treasuries and inner chambers. David, it says, gave his son Solomon a plan of the portico, and of the temple, and of the treasuries, and of the upper room, and of the inner chambers and of the room for the mercy seat; here too he refers to the outer houses that were outside the courtyard of the priests surrounding the temple, when he adds, As also of all the courts that he had in mind, and of the surrounding chambers for the treasuries of the house of the Lord and for the treasuries for dedicated objects. The fact that the entire height of the temple was 120 cubits refers to the same mystery as when the primitive church in Jerusalem after the passion and resurrection and ascension of the Lord into heaven received the grace of the Holy Spirit in the same number of men.^[3] For fifteen, which is the sum of seven and eight, is sometimes taken to signify the life that is now lived in the sabbath rest of the souls of the faithful^[4] but will be brought to perfection at the end of the world by the resurrection of their immortal bodies. Now this fifteen arranged in a triangle, that is, numbered with all its parts, makes 120. Hence by the number 120 the great happiness of the elect in the life to come is aptly represented, and by it the third story of the Lord’s house is aptly completed because after the present hardships of the faithful and after their souls receive their rest in the life to come, the complete happiness of the whole church will be achieved in the glory of the resurrection. To this mystery likewise refers, as we have said, the fact that the Lord on rising from the dead and ascending into heaven sent to this number of men in tongues of fire the Holy Spirit, who enabled them, though differing from each other on account of the diversity of their languages, suddenly to speak in his praise in a common tongue by giving them a knowledge of all languages.^[5] For the church too in its own turn rising from the dead and ascending to heaven in incorruptible flesh will be fully and perfectly enlightened by the gift of the Holy Spirit when, according to the promise of the apostle, God will be all in all.^[6] Then there will be complete unity of languages universally for the preaching of the wonderful works of God because all join with one mind and voice in praising the glory of the divine majesty that they see before them.