Do not put your hope in deceptive words that say, ‘Here is the temple of the Lord,’ that imply you are his temple. They are only trying to assure you that you will never be left by God as though God would decide to preserve his blessed temple and would save his priests even though they are wicked. No! Do not find hope in those who flatter you with these words. If you have not corrected what you are doing, then you are no temple of God, and God will not save you on account of the sacredness of his temple that is desecrated by you. His soul is disgusted by the multitude of your sacrifices that you offer in your wickedness.

Wash! Make yourselves clean! Put away evil from your hearts. Learn to do well. Seek judgment, protect the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.^[1] And again: Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips that they speak no guile. Depart from evil, and do good. Seek peace, and pursue it.^[2] In preaching these things, the prophets sought the fruits of righteousness.

If heaven and earth must pass away, obviously all things that are earthly must also pass away. Therefore the spots that witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection profit those only who bear their several crosses, who day by day rise again with Christ and who thus show themselves worthy of an abode so holy. Those who say, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, should give ear to the words of the apostle: you are the temple of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you. Access to the courts of heaven is as easy from Britain as it is from Jerusalem, for the kingdom of God is within you.

He instructs both the people of Judea of that time and us today, who are seen to be constituted as the church. We are not to put our faith in the splendor of its buildings. Nor are we to put faith in its golden ceilings and decorated walls of marble. We are not to say this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. For the temple of the Lord is there where the true faith dwells, in holy living and the chorus of all the virtues. Then he infers, If you make your ways straight and if your thoughts do not follow error, and if you will do justice and refrain from evil, nor shed innocent blood or scandalize the little ones.^[1] If you do not walk after alien gods, honoring perverse doctrines that you simulate in your own hearts for evil purposes.^[2] I will dwell with you in that place that you call the temple of God and in the land that I gave to your ancestors, who were obviously apostles and apostolic men. Or at least I will cause you to dwell there from beginning to end in security. This can be compared with the virgin who spreads modesty and freely prefers chastity, who has another conscience and knows only that virginal purpose of the apostle that she be holy in body and in spirit.^[3] For what good is a chaste body to a corrupt spirit that does not have the other virtues that this prophetic word describes?

Has not this house, in which my name is invoked, been made a den of thieves before your eyes? I who am, I have seen it, says the Lord. I believe that it was from here that the Gospel took: It is written, ‘My father’s house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves,^[1] or, according to another Gospel, a house of trade.^[2] The church of God is turned into a den of thieves when robbery, murder, adultery, perjury, sacrilege, heretical inventions and other evils are practiced within it. When its leaders burn with greed and when cheap or not so cheap palliums [the distinctive mantle worn by archbishops] possess the riches formerly of kings. Hence, he infers, I who am, I have seen it, says the Lord. In other words, My eyes have beheld what you thought was hidden. The darkness of your treasures do not escape my consciousness. He who, though he was rich, became poor for our sake,^[3] is now ashamed at our riches and says, Woe to you wealthy, who have your consolation now!

Let us now proceed to consider the mode of his loving discipline, with the aid of the prophetic testimony. Admonition, then, is loving care’s censure and produces understanding. Such is Christ the Educator in his admonitions, as when he says in the Gospel, How often would I have gathered your children, as a bird gathers her young ones under her wings, and you did not allow it!^[1] And again, the Scripture admonishes, saying, And they committed adultery with wood and stone and burned incense to Baal.^[2] For it is a very great proof of his love, that, though knowing well the shamelessness of the people who had kicked and bounded away, he notwithstanding exhorts them to repentance and says by Ezekiel, Son of man, you live in the midst of scorpions; nevertheless, speak to them, if perhaps they will hear.^[3]

Brothers, by doing the will of God our Father, we shall belong to the first church, the spiritual one established before the sun and the moon. But if we do not do the will of the Lord, we shall verify the Scripture that says, My house has become a den of thieves. 2

Just as God knows how to heal, so does he furthermore know how to smite. He knows how to make peace but likewise permits evils. He prefers repentance but moreover commands Jeremiah not to pray for the reversal of ills on behalf of the sinful people. He says, If they will fast, I still will not listen to their plea.^[1] And again: Do not pray to me on behalf of the people, and do not request on their behalf in prayer and supplication, since I will not listen to them in the time when they shall have invoked me, in the time of their affliction.^[2] And further he, the same One who prefers mercy above sacrifice, says, And do not pray to me on behalf of this people, and do not request that they may obtain mercy, and do not approach me on their behalf, since I will not listen to them in the time wherein they shall have invoked me, in the time of their affliction.

Rightly, then, is it said, Who shall entreat for him? It implies that it must be such a one as Moses to offer himself for those who sin. Or such as Jeremiah, who, though the Lord said to him, Pray not for this people, yet prayed and obtained their forgiveness. For at the intercession of the prophet and the entreaty of so great a seer, the Lord was moved. And Jerusalem, which had meanwhile repented for its sins, had said, O Almighty Lord God of Israel, the soul in anguish and the troubled spirit cries to you. Hear, O Lord, and have mercy.

He did the same thing in explaining himself to Noah about the flood that he did to Ezekiel when while living in Babylon he caused him to see the people’s evil deeds in Jerusalem. And when he told Jeremiah not to pray, there too he explained himself adding, Do you not see what they do? And he does the same thing everywhere as he does here [in Matthew]. For what does he say? The people of Nineveh shall rise up and shall condemn this generation, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and, behold, a greater one than Jonah is here.

This is why God threatens punishment, so that by fear he may destroy contempt, and when the threat alone is sufficient to cause fear in us he does not permit us to undergo the actual trial. See, for instance, what he says to Jeremiah, Do you not see what they do? Their fathers light a fire, their children gather sticks together, their women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. It is to be feared lest the same kind of thing be said also concerning us.

You will find at least in the book of Jeremiah the words of God censuring by the mouth of the prophet the Jewish people for doing obeisance to such objects and for sacrificing to the queen of heaven and to all the host of heaven. The writings of the Christians, moreover, show, in censuring the sins committed among the Jews, that when God abandoned that people on account of certain sins, these sins of idol worship also were committed by them.

God is jealous and does not wish the soul that he betrothed to himself in faith to remain defiled by sin,^[1] but he wishes it to be purified immediately, wishes it to cast out all its impurities immediately, if it has been, by chance, snatched away by some of them. But if the soul continues in sins and says, We will not hear the voice of the Lord, but we will do what we wish and will burn incense to the ‘queen of heaven,’ a practice condemned by the prophet, it will then be held over for that judgment of Wisdom: Since I indeed called you and you did not listen but jeered at my words, therefore I will laugh at your ruin, too,^[2] or is that judgment that has been placed on those in the Gospel when the Lord says, Depart from me into the eternal fire that God has prepared for the devil and his angels.^[3]

It is made clear also from this that the obsolete prescriptions of the law had been imposed because of Israel’s limitations. Since they had learned in Egypt how to sacrifice to idols, he wanted to separate them from those practices—in all the prophets he rejects them, remember—yet out of consideration for their limitations he utters this remark, Eat flesh, that is, Although I reject the sacrifices, I shall not oppose your partaking of flesh. After all, he declares in the law that those wishing to partake of flesh in their own cities and towns should perform the sacrifice, but pour out the blood on the ground and then partake of the sacrifice, not as though they were offering it as a sacrifice but as ordinary flesh, as part of the prohibition imposed on performing sacred rites outside the designated place.^[1]

You are blessed who are delivered from the curse. Christ, the Son of God, by his coming has confirmed and completed the law but has taken away the additional precepts, although not all of them, yet at least the more grievous ones. He confirmed the former and abolished the latter, and he has again set the free will of humankind at liberty. He does not subject them to the penalty of a temporal death but gives laws to them according to another constitution. For this reason, he says, If anyone will come after me, let him come.^[1] And again, Will you also go away?^[2] And besides, before his coming he refused the sacrifices of the people, while they frequently offered them, when they sinned against him and thought he was to be appeased by sacrifices but not by repentance.

He has abolished these things so that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human offering. And again he says to them, Did I command your ancestors, when they went out from the land of Egypt, to offer to me burnt offerings and sacrifices? But this rather I commanded them, Let no one of you cherish any evil in his heart against his neighbor and love not an oath of falsehood. We ought, therefore, being possessed of understanding, to perceive the gracious intention of our Father. He speaks to us, desirous that we, not going astray like them, should ask how we may approach him. To us, then, he declares, A sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. A smell of sweet savor to the Lord is a heart that glorifies him that made it.^[1] We ought, therefore, carefully to inquire concerning our salvation, lest the wicked one, having made his entrance by deceit, should hurl us forth from our [true] life.

Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people; and you will walk in all my ways, which I have commanded you. This was God’s invitation. But, it says, they did not listen, nor inclined their ear. This was Israel’s refusal. They departed, and walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart.^[1] I have bought a field, I have purchased oxen, I have married a wife. So again he adds: I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, rising early even before daylight—this would be the Holy Spirit who calls to those who are feasting—Yet my people did not listen to me, nor inclined their ear, but stiffened their neck.

When I said, Hear my voice and I will be your God, they did not listen or incline their ears but followed the desires of their own hearts and, contrary to the principle of the apostle, who forgot what was in the past and strived for what lay before him,^[1] they did the opposite, pining for the past and despising the future. He also reports that they acted offensively against the Lord from the day on which their ancestors left the land of Egypt until the present time. Hence, the grace of the gospel was necessary to save them, not due to their own merits but to the Lord’s mercy.

When the whole world was oppressed by the darkness of the devil. When the gloom brought on by sin had laid hold of the world. At the last age, when night had already fallen, this sun deigned to bring forth the rising of his birth. Before the light, before the sun of justice shone, he sent the oracle of the prophets as a kind of dawning, as it is written: I sent my prophets before the light.

The wrath of the Lord, therefore, is just. It is kindled and poured out on a contemptuous and stiff-necked people who are unwilling to hear the words of God. Yet, as we said above, how God continued to send prophets to them all day long and even through the night!^[1]

Have no doubt, he says, that they are stiff-necked and that their works are worse than those of their ancestors. Behold, I give them a place of penance. I do not speak that they may repent, but I only predict what is coming. In any event, you will now speak my word to them and they will not listen to you, and you will call them and they will not answer you, for they are so prideful that when you ask them for a hearing, no one will even bother to respond. And you should then say to them: This is the generation who did not listen to the voice of the Lord their God or accepted his discipline. It is beautiful, as I said before, not that he calls his own people, but that he calls the human race. For, although at the time of the prophets, it was done in part and as a foreshadowing,^[1] it was only fulfilled in Christ, when they refused to accept discipline and despised the voice of their Lord. Thus, Jeremiah has the apt phrase: faith has perished—which is distinctive of Christians—and was removed from their mouth, clearly referring to the confession of faith of the child of God.

Last of all he sent to those unbelievers his own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the wicked husbandmen cast out of the vineyard when they had killed him.^[1] For this reason, the Lord God gave it up (no longer hedged around but thrown open throughout all the world) to other tenants, who render the fruits in their seasons—the beautiful elect tower being also raised everywhere. For the illustrious church is now everywhere, and everywhere is the winepress dug. Those who do receive the Spirit are everywhere. Because the former tenants have rejected the Son of God and cast him out of the vineyard when they killed him, God has justly rejected them and given to the Gentiles outside the vineyard the fruits of its cultivation. This is in accordance with what Jeremiah says: The Lord has rejected and cast off the nation that does these things. The children of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord.