It is known that the Moabites and the Ammonites, because they were born from incest,^[1] figuratively represent heretics, whose authors through their faulty understanding corrupt the teaching of the Fathers from which they themselves were instructed, just as the daughters of Lot secretly and in darkness and illegitimately use the seed of their father; and for this reason the offspring of such ones (i.e., adherents of heresies) can never have any part in the Lord’s church. For those who are set straight from these heresies will no longer be the offspring of such mothers. Now they would meet the children of Israel with food and water as they are coming from Egypt if they themselves, living well and dwelling in catholic peace, were to bestow the solace of God’s Word on those who, recently rescued from the servitude of sins through the water of baptism as if through the waves of the sea, are panting for the freedom of the celestial homeland.

You also, whatever infidelity and uncleanness you discover among the faithful, immediately cast it out so that after the hearts of believers (which are the Lord’s storerooms, since they are full of the riches of the virtues), have been purified, the vessels of the Lord may be brought in—that is to say, those same hearts that just before were vessels of error through sin may again become vessels of the Lord through correction, and there let the sacrifice of good works and the incense of pure prayer be found where before there was a den of thieves.^[1] But the vessels of Tobiah the Ammonite are also cast out from the temple storeroom, and God’s vessels as well as the sacrifice and the incense are returned to that place by those who, after they have excommunicated or anathematized heretics and false catholics and expelled them from the church, substitute in their place catholic servants of Christ such as may serve him faithful deeds and prayers. Clearly, we ought to compare this zeal of Nehemiah with that of the Lord Savior, when finding vendors and buyers in the temple, he made a whip from cords and drove them all outside.^[2] Nehemiah, in this as in his other undertakings, aptly conveyed a type of true consoler and cleanser.

We are commanded by the Law to do for six days the things that are necessary and to rest on the seventh.^[1] The general mystery of this command is clear: namely, that in this world, which lasts for six ages,^[2] all the elect should labor for eternal rest, but on a day that is to come, as it were on the seventh, should hope for that rest itself from the Lord. But according to tropology (i.e., the moral sense), the elect even in this life keep the sabbath holy for the Lord when, having separated themselves at the appropriate time from worldly concerns, they make time for prayer and raise their minds, which have been purified, to the contemplation of heavenly things. For when we lawfully carry out those things that care for the body’s demands with a sincere heart and not with desires contrary to the precept of the apostle,^[3] we are, so to speak, performing our necessary work in the six days, since we are occupied with those things that we have need of in this world.

It is in all respects an apt and appropriate end to the work of building the holy city and the temple of the Lord that when the citizens have been purified by God from all the filth of foreign pollution, which is alien to God, the orders of the priests and the Levites should be duly preserved in their own ministry in order that the teachers of the church who have been instructed according to rule may continually exhort the people now cleansed from all sin to remain henceforth in goodness and to grow. Among other things, the people offer wood to the Lord to feed the fire of the altar when they perform works of virtues that are assuredly worthy of divine consecration. For if wood did not sometimes symbolize something good, the prophet would not say, Then shall all the wood of the forests rejoice in the presence of the Lord.^[1] Now the wood burns and is consumed in the altar of the burnt offering when in the hearts of the elect works of righteousness are perfected in the flame of love.