Elijah lived a virgin life; so also did Elisha and many of the sons of the prophets. To Jeremiah the command came: You will not take a wife. He had been sanctified in his mother’s womb,^[1] and now he was forbidden to take a wife because the captivity was near. The apostle gives the same counsel in different words: I think, therefore, that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely, that it is good for a person to be as he is.^[2] What is this distress that does away with the joys of wedlock? The apostle tells us, in a later verse: The time is short. It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.^[3]

The apostles were fishermen, and the Lord said to them, I will make you fishers of people.^[1] Moreover, it is said by the prophet that God intended to send fishers at first, and afterwards hunters. At first, he did send fishers, and now, afterwards, he is sending hunters. Why fishers? Why hunters? Because, from the abyss and from the depth of the sea of idolatrous superstition, the believers fished with the nets of faith. But why have the hunters been sent? Because those people were wandering through the mountains and the hills, that is, through the pride of humankind, through the worldly obstacles. One mountain was Donatus, another Arius, a third was Plotinus and the last was Novatus. Through such mountains they were straying, and their wanderings called for hunters. Therefore, the duties of fishers and of hunters have been assigned, lest, by chance, they should say to us, Why did the apostles force no one, urge no one? Because one who is a fisher throws nets, calling out in this fashion: Let it not go in that direction. Let it not go in this direction. Head it off there, strike it, terrify it. Do not let it get out, do not let it escape. But our net is our life. Let love alone be preserved. Do not worry about how annoying you may be to him, but about how dear he is to you. What kind of devotion is it if you spare him and he perishes?

Deceit should be far from your thoughts, and you should not indulge in slander against your neighbor. God has made you a hunter, not a harrier, for he says, Behold, I will send you many hunters—hunters not of crime but of absolution from it. Hunters certainly not of sin but of grace. You are a fisher of Christ, for whom it is said, From now on, you shall make people live.^[1]

He rains on the wicked snares.^[1] Without any doubt, it is the Lord who contrives snares for sinners, in order to entrap those who abuse their freedom and to compel them to tread the right path under his bridle, thereby making it possible for them to advance through him who says, I am the way.^[2] Wherefore, in Jeremiah, the Lord sends fishers and hunters to spread nets for the lost fish tossed about in whirlpools and to hunt down and save the beasts that wander through mountains and hills. This and the following verses do not promise punishment to sinners, as many believe, but rather give them promise of healing.

In this great household of the church not only are there vessels of every kind—gold, silver, wooden and earthen^[1]—but also a great variety of pursuits. The house of God, which is the church of the living God,^[2] has hunters, travelers, architects, builders, farmers, shepherds, athletes, soldiers. To all of these this short admonition will be appropriate, for it will produce in each proficiency in action and energy of will. You are a hunter sent forth by the Lord, who says, Behold, I send many hunters, and they shall hunt them on every mountain. Take good care, therefore, that your prey does not elude you, so that, having captured them with the word of truth, you may bring back to the Savior those who have been made wild and savage by iniquity.

He who was caught by the fishers of Jesus and who comes up from the sea, he also dies, but he dies to the world. He dies to sin, and after having died to the world and to sin, he is made to live by the Word of God and receives another life. If you could apprehend hypothetically when the soul of the fish changed, after coming out from the fishly body, it became something better than the fish. . . . Having come up from the sea, falling into the nets of the disciples of Jesus, after you come out, you change the soul. You are no longer a fish that struggles in the salty waves of the sea, but your soul immediately changes and transforms itself and becomes better and more godly than what it was formerly. But that it does transform itself and change, hear Paul, who says, And we all with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of God, are being transformed to the same image from glory into glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.^[1] And this transformed fish that was caught by the fishers of Jesus, after it has abandoned the way of life in the sea, makes his way in the mountains so that he no longer needs the fishers who brought him.

So the shepherds came from nearby to see, and the Magi came from far away to worship. This is the humility for which the wild olive deserved to be grafted into the olive tree and against nature to produce olives,^[1] because it deserved to change nature through grace. They come, you see, from the uttermost bounds of the earth, saying, according to Jeremiah, Truly our fathers worshipped lies.^[2] And they come, not just from one part of the world, but as the gospel according to Luke says, from East and West, from North and South,^[3] to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.^[4]

As in the provocation and in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your ancestors put me to the test,^[1] let such no more be your ancestors: do not imi-tate them. They were your ancestors, but if you do not imitate them, they shall not be your ancestors. Yet as you were born of them, they were your ancestors. And if the heathen who came from the ends of the earth, in the words of Jeremiah, To thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: ‘Our fathers have inherited nought but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit,’ if the heathen forsook their idols to come to the God of Israel, ought Israel, whom their own God led from Egypt through the Red Sea, in which he overwhelmed their pursuing foes,^[2] whom he led out into the wilderness, fed with manna,^[3] never took his rod from correcting them, never deprived them of the blessings of his mercy, ought they to desert their own God, when the heathen have come to him?

Further, Jeremiah says of Christ, Behold the days come, says the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch. A king shall reign and shall be wise. He shall execute justice and judgment in the earth. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently. This is the name that they shall call him: The Lord our just one.^[1] On the calling of the Gentiles that he foresaw and we today see as realized, the prophet had this to say: O Lord, my might and my strength, and my refuge in the day of tribulation; to you the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth and shall say, ‘Surely our ancestors have possessed lies, a vanity that has not profited them.’

Having been brought near, they make Christ their glorying. For again, God the Father has said of them, And I will strengthen them in the Lord their God, and in his name shall they glory, says the Lord.^[1] This also the blessed psalmist teaches, speaking as it were to Christ the Savior of all and saying, Lord, they shall walk in the light of your countenance, and in your name shall they exult all the day, and in your righteousness shall they be exalted. For you are the glorying of their strength.^[2] We shall find also the prophet Jeremiah calling out to God, Lord, my strength and my help, and my refuge in the day of my evils, to You shall the heathen come from the ends of the earth, and say, ‘Our fathers took for themselves false idols, in which there is no help.’ ^[3]

For I am very much God’s debtor, who gave me such great grace that many people were reborn in God through me and afterwards confirmed, and that clerics were ordained for them everywhere, for a people just coming to the faith, whom the Lord took from the utmost parts of the earth, as he once had promised through His prophets: To you the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth and shall say, ‘How false are the idols that our ancestors got for themselves, and there is no profit in them.’^[1] And again: I have set you as a light among the Gentiles, that you may be for salvation unto the utmost part of the earth.^[2]

Hermes Trismegistus lamented these vain, deceptive, pernicious, sacrilegious things because he foresaw that the time was coming when they would be abolished. He was as impudent in his grief as imprudent in his prophecy, since the Holy Spirit had made no revelation to him as to the holy prophets who exultantly proclaimed their inspired visions: Shall a person make gods to himself, and they are not gods? And again: And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord of hosts, that I will destroy the names of idols out of the earth, and they shall be remembered no more.^[1] It is relevant to recall that holy Isaiah uttered a particular prophecy concerning Egypt: And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst thereof^[2] and the rest.

Although Hermes calls these idols gods, he nevertheless admits that they were made by people whose example we should not follow, and thus, willy-nilly, he proves that these idols should not be worshiped by people who are unlike the people who made them, that is, by wise, believing and religious people. Moreover, he implies that the fabricators brought on themselves the guilt of reckoning as gods things that are not gods. Very true is that prophecy: Shall a person make gods to himself, and they are not gods? This, then, is what Hermes means by fabricated gods. Such gods, made and adored by such people, are but evil spirits imprisoned by magic in idols and bound there by the chains of their own passions.

If a person will make gods for himself. Not only do people make gods for themselves from statues, but you will also find people making gods for themselves from their imaginations. Such people can imagine another god and creator of the world other than the divine plan of the world recorded by the Spirit, other than the true world. These all have made gods for themselves, and they have worshiped the works of the hands. So, too, I believe is the case either among the Greeks, who generate opinions, so to speak, of this philosophy or that, or among the heretics, the first who generate opinions. These have made idols for themselves and figments of the soul, and by turning to them they worship the works of their hands, since they accept as truth their own fabrications.