But because you turn a blind eye to the interior battle and take pleasure in exterior battles, it means you do not want to belong to the new song, in which it says who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war. There is a war a person wages with himself, engaging evil desire, curbing greed, crushing pride, stifling ambition, slaughtering lust. You fight these battles in secret, and you do not lose them in public! It is for this that your hands are trained for battle and your fingers for war. You do not get this in your amphitheater show. In those shows the hunter is not the same as the guitarist; the hunter does one thing, the guitarist another. In God’s circus show they are one and the same. Touch these same ten strings, and you will be killing wild beasts. You do each simultaneously. You touch the first string by which the one God is worshiped, and the beast of superstition falls dead. You touch the second by which you do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, and at your feet is fallen the beast of the error of impious heresies that thought to do just that. You touch the third string, where whatever you do, you do in hope of resting in peace in the age to come, and something more cruel than the other beasts is slain, love of this world. It is for love of this world, after all, that people slave away at all their affairs. But as for you, make sure you slave away at all your good works, not for love of this world but for the sake of the eternal rest that God promises you. Notice how you do each thing simultaneously. You touch the strings, and you kill the beasts. That is, you are both a guitarist and a hunter. Are you not delighted with such performances, where it is not the attention of the presidential box we attract but the attention and favor of the redeemer?

But if this anomalous state of things^[1] were uniform in this life, in which, as the sacred Psalmist says, Man is like to vanity, his days as a shadow that passeth away,—so uniform that none but wicked men won the transitory prosperity of earth, while only the good suffered its ills,—this could be referred to the just and even benign judgment of God. We might suppose that they who were not destined to obtain those everlasting benefits which constitute human blessedness were either deluded by transitory blessings as the just reward of their wickedness, or were, in God’s mercy, consoled by them, and that they who were not destined to suffer eternal torments were afflicted with temporal chastisement for their sins, or were stimulated to greater attainment in virtue. But now, as it is, since we not only see good men involved in the ills of life, and bad men enjoying the good of it, which seems unjust, but also that evil often overtakes evil men, and good surprises the good, the rather on this account are God’s judgments unsearchable, and his ways past finding out.^[2]

I consider this to be connected with my present subject.^[1] For in his wonder at the knowledge of God the Word coming to people, the psalmist is astonished beyond measure at the love by which he descends from his divinity, and lessens his natural majesty and reckons the human race worthy of bearing him. So here he prays, saying, Lord, bow the heavens and descend. While in the seventeenth psalm [LXX] it is written, And he bowed the heavens and descended, and it was dark under his feet. And he rode on cherubim and flew, he flew on the wings of the winds,^[2] wherein there is a prophecy of his ascension from earth to heaven. And when there is a fit opportunity I will show that we must understand the descent and ascension of God the Word not as of one moving locally, but in the metaphorical sense that Scripture intends in the use of such conventional terms.

The psalmist is a witness of this matter^[1] when he says, All have gone astray together; they have become worthless.^[2] And Christ’s prophets, praying for help, said, Lord, bow down your heavens and descend; not that he might change the places in which all things are now located but that he might take on the flesh of human weakness for our salvation. Paul says the same thing: How, being rich, he became poor for our sakes, that by his poverty we might become rich.^[3] And he came to the earth and proceeded as a man from the virgin’s womb, which he sanctified. Confirming by this process the interpretation of his name, Emmanuel, that is, God with us, he began in a marvelous way to be what we are and did not cease to be what he was. He assumed our nature in such a way as not to lose what he himself was.

But you sent down your help from above and rescued my soul from the depths of this darkness because my mother, your faithful servant, wept to you for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death than other mothers shed for the bodily death of a son. For in her faith and in the spirit that she had from you she looked on me as dead. You heard her and did not despise the tears that streamed down and watered the earth in every place where she bowed her head in prayer.

As it is written, O God, I will sing you a new song, on a harp of ten strings I will play to you, we take the harp of ten strings to be the Ten Commandments of the law. Now to sing and play is usually the occupation of lovers. The old person, you see, is in fear; the young is in love. In this way also we distinguish the two testaments or covenants, the old and the new, that the apostle says are allegorically represented by the sons of Abraham, one born of the slave woman, the other of the free; which, he says, are two covenants.^[1] Slavery, surely, goes with fear, freedom with love, seeing that the apostle says, You have not received the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship by adoption, in which we cry out, Abba, Father.^[2] And John says, There is no fear in charity, but perfect charity throws out fear.^[3] So it is charity that sings the new song.

True, that slavish fear embodied in the old person can indeed have the harp of ten strings, because that law of the Ten Commandments was also given to the Jews according to the flesh, but it cannot sing to its accompaniment the new song. It is under the law and cannot fulfill the law. It carries the instrument but does not manage to play it; it is burdened, not embellished, with the harp. But any under grace, not under law, they are the ones who fulfill the law, because for them it is not a weight to shoulder but an honor to wear; it is not a rack for their fears but a frame for their love. Fired by the spirit of love, they are already singing the new song on the harp of ten strings.

Lord, deliver me from the hand of the sons of foreigners, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. And he explains what kind of vanity he means, and what kind of right hand. What he calls the right hand of iniquity is the prosperity of this world. Not because it is never to be found with good people, but because when good people have it they hold it in the left hand, not in the right. They hold everlasting felicity in their right hand, temporal happiness they hold in their left. Greed for eternal things and eternal felicity ought not to be mixed with greed for temporal things, that is to say, for present and temporal felicity. And that is the meaning of Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.^[1] So then, their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.

Since we know that you are devoted to the public welfare, you must see how plainly the sacred writings show that the happiness of the state has no other source than the happiness of humankind. One of the sacred writers, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks thus as he prays: Rescue me out of the hand of strange children, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is the right hand of iniquity; whose sons are as new plants in their youth; their daughters decked out, adorned round about after the similitude of a temple; their storehouse full, flowing out of this into that; their sheep fruitful in young, abounding in their goings forth; their oxen fat. There is no breach of wall nor passage nor crying out in their streets. They have called the people happy that have these things, but happy is the people whose God is the Lord.

You^[1] see that a people is not called happy because of an accumulation of earthly good fortune, except by the strange children, that is, by those who do not belong to the regeneration by which we become children of God. The psalmist prays to be rescued out of their hand, lest he be drawn by them into that false opinion and into their impious sins. Truly they speak vanity when they have called the people happy that have these things—the things that he had listed above, in which that good fortune consisted, the only good fortune that the lovers of this world seek. Therefore, their right hand is the right hand of iniquity because they have preferred those things that should have been set aside, as the right hand is preferred to the left. Happiness in life is not to be attributed to the possession of those things; they should be subordinate, not preeminent; they are intended to follow, not to lead. If, then, we were to speak to him who prayed thus and desired to be rescued from the strange children who called that people happy that have these things, and if we said, What is your own opinion? What people do you call happy? he would not say, Happy is the people whose strength is in their own mind. If he had said this, he would, it is true, distinguish that people from the former, which made happiness consist in that visible and corporeal good fortune, but he would not yet have passed beyond all the vanities and lying follies, for, as the same writings teach elsewhere, Cursed be everyone that places his hope in humankind.^[2] Therefore, he ought not to place it in himself, because he himself is a human being. Thus, in order to pass beyond the boundaries of all vanities and lying follies and to place happiness where it truly exists, he says: Happy is the people whose God is the Lord.

Now, you^[1] know, I think, not only the nature of your prayer but its object, and you have learned this not from me but from him who has deigned to teach us all. Happiness is what we must seek and what we must ask of the Lord God. Many arguments have been fashioned by many people about the nature of happiness, but why should we turn to the many people or the many arguments? Brief and true is the word in the Scripture of God: Happy is the people whose God is the Lord. That we may belong to that people and that we may be able to attain to contemplation of him and to eternal life with him, the end of the commandment is charity from a pure heart and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith.^[2] Among those same three, hope is put for a good conscience. Faith therefore, and hope and charity,^[3] lead the praying soul to God, that is, the believing and hoping and desiring soul who attends to what he asks of the Lord in the Lord’s Prayer. Fasting and abstinence from other pleasures of carnal desire—with due regard for our health—and especially almsgiving are great helps to prayer, so that we may be able to say: In the day of my trouble I sought God with my hands lifted up to him in the night, and I was not deceived.^[4] How is it possible to seek an incorporeal God who cannot be felt with the hands, unless he is sought by good works?

Blessed is the man.^[1] This is a very beautiful and apt beginning. As a result, it seems to take its beginning from blessedness, because the Holy Spirit was warning the weakness of the human race. Consequently, he invites the souls of the fearful so that the delicate hearts of mortals would not withdraw. For who would not be stirred up to some difficult tasks, when happy blessedness is mentioned in advance? Therefore, he is called a blessed man, just as the authority of our forebears have handed down to us, as is most fitting for a man who is pursued by all his desires. But the prophet reminds us in the 143rd psalm that this man is said to be blessed in two ways when he says, They said that the people are blessed who have these things, and again appends, Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. Therefore, the blessed man of the world is he who, as he thinks, is supported by very great security and perseveres in constant joy and worldly abundance. But he excellently applied man to that blessed man who is not removed from his plan by any adversity, for he is called a man (vir) from his strength (viribus), who does not know how to fail in his endurance or to boast in some elation in prosperous times, but firmly planted with a stable mind and confirmed in the contemplation of heavenly matters, he always remains dauntless.