As for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, who can fully understand or adequately explain them? The first of them seems to compose not a prophecy but a gospel. The second speaks of a rod of an almond tree^[1] and of a seething pot with its face toward the north,^[2] and of a leopard that has changed its spots.^[3] He also goes four times through the alphabet in different meters.^[4]

Bringing someone to his senses is censure, which makes one think. And he does not abstain from this form of instruction either, but says by Jeremiah, How long shall I cry, and you not hear? So your ears are uncircumcised. O blessed forbearance! And again, by the same: All the heathen are uncircumcised, but this people is uncircumcised in heart, for the people are disobedient children, he says, in whom faith does not exist. . . . Bewailing one’s fate is latent censure and artfully helps to bring salvation, albeit under stealth. He made use of this by Jeremiah: How did the city sit solitary that was full of people! She that ruled over territories became as a widow; she came under tribute; weeping, she wept in the night. . . . In the end, the system God pursues to inspire fear is the source of salvation. And it is the prerogative of goodness to save: The mercy of the Lord is on all flesh, while he reproves, corrects and teaches as a shepherd does his flock. He pities those who receive his instruction and those who eagerly seek union with him. . . . For according to the greatness of his mercy, so is his rebuke.^[1] For it is indeed noble not to sin, but it is good also for the sinner to repent, just as it is best to be always in good health but well to recover from disease. So he commands by Solomon, Strike your son with the rod, that you may deliver his soul from death.^[2] And again, Do not abstain from chastising your son but correct him with the rod, for he will not die.^[3] For reproof and rebuke, as also the original term implies, are the stripes of the soul, chastising sins, preventing death and leading to self-control for those who are out of control. . . . And so we, too, who in our lives are sick with shameful lusts and reprehensible excesses and other inflammatory effects of the passions, need the Savior. And he administers not only mild but also stringent medicines. The bitter roots of fear then arrest the eating sores of our sins. This is why fear is also salutary, if bitter. Sick, we truly stand in need of the Savior; having wandered, of one to guide us; blind, of one to lead us to the light; thirsty, of the fountain of life, of which whoever partakes shall no longer thirst;^[4] dead, we need life; sheep, we need a shepherd; we who are children need a tutor, while universal humanity stands in need of Jesus; so that we may not continue intractable and sinners to the end and thus fall into condemnation but may be separated from the chaff and stored up in the paternal garner.

Call for the mourning women,^[1] the prophet Jeremiah says. In no other way can the burning heart cool down, swelling as it is with its affliction, unless it relieves itself by sobs and tears. . . . You have heard certain mournful and lamenting words of Jeremiah that he used to mourn Jerusalem as a deserted city and how among other expressions of passionate grief he added this, The ways of Zion do mourn.^[2] These words were uttered then, but now they have been realized. For when the news of our calamity^[3] shall have been spread abroad, then will the ways be full of mourning crowds and the sheep of his flock will pour themselves forth and like the Ninevites utter the voice of lamentation,^[4] or, rather, will lament more bitterly than they. For in their case their mourning released them from the cause of their fear, but with these no hope of release from their distress removes their need of mourning. I know, too, of another utterance of Jeremiah, which is reckoned among the books of the Psalms. It is that which he made over the captivity of Israel. The words run thus: We hung our harps on the willows and condemned ourselves as well as our harps to silence.^[5] I make this song my own. For when I see the confusion of heresy, this confusion is Babylon.^[6] And when I see the flood of trials that pours in on us from this confusion, I say that these are the waters of Babylon by which we sit down and weep because there is no one to guide us over them. Even if you mention the willows, and the harps that hung there, that part also of the figure shall be mine. For, in truth, our life is among willows, the willow being a fruitless tree, and the sweet fruit of our life having all withered away. Therefore we have become fruitless willows, and the harps of love we hung on those trees are idle and the strings no longer vibrate. If I forget you, O Jerusalem, he adds, may my right hand be forgotten. Suffer me to make a slight alteration in that text. It is not we who have forgotten the right hand but the right hand that has forgotten us; and the tongue has cleaved to the roof of his own mouth and barred the passage of his words, so that we can never again hear that sweet voice. But let me have all tears wiped away, for I feel that I am indulging more than is right in this sorrow for our loss.

Our Bridegroom has not been taken from us. He stands in our midst, although we see him not. The Priest is within the holy place. He has entered into that within the veil, where our forerunner Christ has entered for us.^[7] He has left behind him the curtain of the flesh. No longer does he pray to the type or shadow of the things in heaven, but he looks on the very embodiment of these realities. No longer through a glass darkly does he intercede with God, but face to face he intercedes with him; and he intercedes for us^[8] and for the negligences and ignorances of the people. He has put away the coats of skin,^[9] no need is there now for the dwellers in paradise to wear such garments as these; but he wears the clothing that the purity of his life has woven into a glorious dress. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death^[10] of such an individual, or rather it is not death but the breaking of bonds, as it is said, You have broken my bonds asunder. Simeon has been allowed to leave.^[11] He has been freed from the bondage of the body. The snare is broken, and the bird has flown away.^[12] He has left Egypt behind, this material life. He has crossed not this Red Sea of ours but the black, gloomy sea of life. He has entered on the land of promise and holds lofty conversations with God on the mountain. He has loosed the sandal of his soul, that with the pure step of thought he may set foot on that holy land where there is the vision of God. Having therefore this consolation, you who are conveying the bones of our Joseph to the place of blessing should listen to the exhortation of Paul: Do not mourn as others who have no hope.^[13]

In the early days of the church, all was well. The present elaborate, far-fetched and artificial treatment of theology had not made its way into the schools of divinity, but playing with pebbles that deceive the eye by the quickness of their changes or dancing before an audience with varied and effeminate contortions were looked on as all one with speaking or hearing of God in a way unusual or frivolous. But since the Sextuses and Pyrrhos, and the antithetic style, like a dire and malignant disease, have infected our churches, and babbling is reputed culture, and, as the book of the Acts says of the Athenians, we spend our time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.^[1] O, what Jeremiah will bewail our confusion and blind madness; he alone could utter lamentations befitting our misfortunes.

The beginning of this madness was Arius (whose name is derived from frenzy). He paid the penalty of his unbridled tongue by his death in a profane spot, brought about by prayer not by disease, when he like Judas burst asunder^[2] for his similar treachery to the Word. Then others, catching the infection, organized an art of impiety and, confining Deity to the Unbegotten, expelled from Deity not only the Begotten but also the proceeding one, and honored the Trinity with communion in name alone or even refused to retain this for it. Not so that blessed one who was indeed a man of God and a mighty trumpet of truth: but being aware that to contract the three persons to a numerical unity is heretical and the innovation of Sabellius, who first devised a contraction of Deity; and that to sever the three persons by a distinction of nature is an unnatural mutilation of Deity; he both happily preserved the unity, which belongs to the Godhead, and religiously taught the Trinity, which refers to personality, neither confounding the three persons in the unity nor dividing the substance among the three persons but abiding within the bounds of piety by avoiding excessive inclination or opposition to either side.

Repentance came by John, grace by Christ. He, as the Lord, gives the one; the other is proclaimed, as it were, by the servant. The church, then, keeps both that it may attain to grace and not cast away repentance, for grace is the gift of One who confers it; repentance is the remedy of the sinner.

Jeremiah knew that penitence was a great remedy, which he in his Lamentations took up for Jerusalem and brings forward Jerusalem itself as repenting when he says, She wept sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks, nor is there one to comfort her of all who love her. The ways of Zion do mourn. And he says further, For these things I weep, my eyes have grown dim with weeping, because he who used to comfort me is gone far from me. We notice that he thought this the bitterest addition to his woes, that he who used to comfort the mourner was gone far from him. How, then, can you take away the very comfort by refusing to repentance the hope of forgiveness?

But let those who repent learn how they ought to carry it out, with what zeal, with what affection, with what intention of mind, with what shaking of the inmost bowels, with what conversion of heart: Behold, he says, O Lord, that I am in distress; my bowels are troubled by my weeping; my heart is turned within me.

Here you recognize the intention of the soul, the faithfulness of the mind, the disposition of the body: The elders of the daughters of Zion sat, he says, on the ground, they put dust on their heads, they girded themselves with haircloth, the princes hung their heads to the ground, the virgins of Jerusalem fainted with weeping, my eyes grew dim, my bowels were troubled, my glory was poured on the earth.^[1]

So, too, did the people of Nineveh mourn and escaped the destruction of their city.^[2] Such is the remedial power of repentance, that God seems because of it to change his intention. To escape is, then, in your own power; the Lord wants to be asked, he wants people to hope in him, he wants supplication to be made to him. You are a human being, and you want to be asked to forgive, and you think that God will pardon you without asking him?

The Lord wept over Jerusalem, that, inasmuch as it would not weep itself, it might obtain forgiveness through the tears of the Lord. He wills that we should weep in order that we may escape, as you find it in the Gospel: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves.^[3]

In describing loftily the sweetness of contemplation, you have renewed the groans of my fallen state, since I hear what I have lost inwardly while mounting outwardly, though undeserving, to the topmost height of rule. Know then that I am stricken with so great sorrow that I can scarcely speak, for the dark shades of grief block up the eyes of my soul. Whatever is beheld is sad; whatever is thought delightful appears to my heart lamentable. For I reflect to what a dejected height of external advancement I have mounted in falling from the lofty height of my rest. And, being sent for my faults into the exile of employment from the face of my Lord, I say with the prophet, in the words, as it were of destroyed Jerusalem, He who should comfort me has departed far from me. But when, in seeking something similar to express my condition and title, you frame periods and declamations in your letter, certainly, dearest brother, you call an ape a lion. Herein we see that you do as we often do, when we call mangy whelps leopards or tigers. For I, my good man, have, as it were, lost my children, since through earthly cares I have lost works of righteousness. Therefore call me not Naomi that is fair; but call me Mara, for I am full of bitterness.^[1]