There are two types of sinners. One type believes the law, but is not strong enough to fulfill its commands because of the weakness of its flesh. . . . The other type is brash, beyond hope, blasphemous, for it makes plans for itself to commit sin by its free will. This type of sinner despises all things and it grumbles to itself, confident in the notion that God does not trouble himself with the affairs of mortals.

The lawbreaker thinks his sinning is [hidden] within—that is, he believes that he is escaping notice in sinning. . . . Now, it is typical of the person employing deceit to think that schemers escape notice, because they are always under that impression when they use flattering language; after all, unless they expected to escape notice, they would not have persisted in their deceitful pretense.

The wicked person speaks, and the inner conscience is mangled. Every word he utters is laden with malice and trickery. Who undergoes punishment greater than that which he inflicts on himself, when every word he says is piercing him through and through? The serpent pours out his poison into others; the unjust pours it into himself. Whatever he spills forth, he is spilling into his own self.

All the sinner has in his sights is fear of other people; he does not dare to make a public declaration of his iniquity, lest he be rebuked or condemned by others. He withdraws from human observation, but where to? Into himself! He ushers himself within, where no one can see him. There within himself no one watches him as he plans his trickery, his ruses and his crimes. He would not be able to plot, even there within himself, if he considered that God is scrutinizing him; but because there is no fear of God before his eyes, he thinks he has no one to fear once he has withdrawn from human view into his own heart. But God is present there, isn’t he? Assuredly, but in the sinner’s outlook there is no room for the fear of God.

There is no fear of God in the sight of one who sins against himself that he may find his own iniquity and hate it. He praises injustice as the unjust one is praised. He does not wish to understand good actions by which he will be made worthy in the recesses of his own heart. He meditates on evil as he draws near to the way that is not good, and he does not abhor evil.

He so distracts himself, he is saying, and banishes the fear of God from his own sight that his lawlessness, which in fact is obvious, is seen and discovered by everyone and thus attracts loathing. He has given himself unswervingly to lawlessness. Now, he adopts this ignorance so willingly that he is not prepared to assess what he has done or loathe his evil exploits.

Many are dishonest in the way they look for their iniquity; they go about it without sincerely wanting to find it and hate it. Consequently, because there is dishonesty in their search, there will be an attempt to defend the iniquity when it comes to light. Once it is found, its true character will be out in the open, and the sinner will not be able to deny that it is iniquity indeed. Don’t do it, you say. And what do they reply, these people who faked the search and now that they have found the sin do not hate it? Oh, but everybody does it, they say. You won’t find anyone who doesn’t do that. Do you imagine that God is going to send the whole lot of us to hell? Or at any rate they protest, If God really did not want these things to be done, would the people who do them have been left alive? Don’t you see that you were being dishonest when you pretended to look for your iniquity? If you had not been dishonest, but had acted with sincerity, you would have found it by now and found it hateful; but as things are, you have found it, and you defend it. This proves that you were acting deceitfully when you were searching.

If he had the fear of God before his eyes, he would not have employed deceit in the belief that he was escaping our notice (realizing that it was not possible to escape God, everything being known to him, who knows and understands everything clearly). If he really had dread of the Lord, he would have shown much zeal in guarding against sin.

[This is] the very place where one should meditate on the truth. For in bed we should weep bitterly for our sins—lament sin rather than commit it. As the prophet says, The things you say in your hearts, be sorry for them on your own beds.^[1]

Our bedroom is our heart, for there we toss and turn if we have a bad conscience, but there, if our conscience is easy, we find rest. . . . But the person of whom our psalm is speaking retired there to hatch his evil plots, where no one would see him. And because such wickedness was the subject of his meditation, he could find no rest, even in his heart.

If we cannot be free from wickedness, at least let us hate it. When you have begun to hate it, you are unlikely to be tricked into committing a wicked act by any stealthy temptation. . . . Hate sin and iniquity, so that you may unite yourself to God, who will hate it with you. Already you are at one with God’s law in your mind, for in your mind you are servant of God’s law. If in your carnal nature you are still enslaved to the law of sin because the pleasures of the flesh are still powerful in you, remember that they will be there no longer when your fight is over. To be free from the need to fight, to enjoy true and everlasting peace—this is something quite different from fighting and winning, different from fighting and being vanquished, different yet again from declining even to fight and being carried off as a prisoner. For there certainly are some people who do not put up a fight, like this one of whom the psalm says, He did not hate wickedness; for how could he have been fighting against something for which he felt no hatred? Such a person is dragged away by wickedness without even resisting. There are others who do begin to fight, but because they rashly rely on their own strength, and God wants to prove to them that is he who wins the victory if we enlist under his leadership, they are worsted in the battle. They have apparently begun to hold fast to righteousness, but they become proud, and consequently they are knocked out. People like this fight but are overcome. Who is it who fights and is not overcome? The one who says, I am aware of a different law in my members that opposes the law of my mind. Look at this fighter. He does not presume on his own strength, and that is why he will be the victor. What does the next line say? Who will deliver me from this death-ridden body, wretch that I am? Only the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.^[1] He relies on the One who has commanded him to fight, and he defeats the enemy because he is helped by his Commander. But the other person we heard about did not hate wickedness.

He did not pass through this world’s life like those who are confident that they have left it behind but have still remained in it and have become stuck in it.

It is from heaven that mercy must be sought; it is from the oracle of the prophets that truth must be gathered—for they like clouds veil the mysteries of divine knowledge. God made darkness his covering,^[1] so that you would first receive the downpour of mystical fruitfulness, and then, refreshed with heavenly dew, have strength to gaze on the splendor of heavenly light.

Mercy abides in heaven, but it is reached by the exercise of it on earth.

Who could have any idea of the heavenly mercy of God, unless God had announced it to human beings? How did he announce it? By sending his truth to the clouds. And what are these clouds? The preachers of God’s word. . . . Truly, brothers and sisters, these clouds are the preachers of the word of truth. When God utters threats through his preachers, he is thundering through his clouds. When he works miracles through his preachers, he is sending brilliant flashes of lightning through his clouds. He terrifies us through his clouds, and through them waters the earth with rain. These preachers, through whom the gospel of God is proclaimed, are God’s clouds. Let us hope for mercy, then, but let it be the mercy that is in heaven.

While those people turn their hand to such things as though no one were watching, you, Lord, possess immeasurable mercy, incalculable truth and righteousness comparable to the highest mountains. Now, your truth comes to human beings through the inspired authors as though through some clouds, regaling them with saving rain. Your judgments are like the great deep: possessing such wonderful truth and righteousness, why you show long-suffering I do not know; your judgments resemble the impenetrable depths. That is to say, just as the bottom of the sea is beyond human vision, so an understanding of your judgments is beyond our grasp.

An abyss is a depth of water that we can neither measure nor peer all the way into. Who could discern what lies within the deep ocean, or who could comprehend its broad-ranging spaces? So also we are neither able to embrace God’s judgments with our mind, nor are we able to define them through some action of reason.

The truth is Christ, whose justice is just like the mountains of God, whose judgments are an abyss, who saves people and beasts by his advent, that is, both Jews and Gentiles. For people who, being without hope, standing in the sin of Adam, hope in the protection of his wings, that is, in the expanse of his hands fixed on the cross.

His decisions and decrees, which he applies in judging and examining human beings, are immeasurable, like the deep. Thus, it is impossible to find out why he allows righteous people often to suffer at the hands of the unrighteous, as I find happening in my own case. While the fact that his care and providence for us is wonderful is clear from his never allowing our sufferings to be unbearable, I am unable to discover precisely why he does not leave us in perfect peace but permits us for a time to be pursued unjustly by them. Hence, your judgments strike me as more inaccessible than any deep.

Human beings, being ignorant of the judgments of God, which are a great abyss, are accustomed to complain against God and to say, Why do unjust people and unjust robbers and impious and wicked ones suffer nothing adverse in this life but everything yields prosperity to them, honors, riches, power, health, and the health and strength of the body even serves them. On the contrary, innumerable tribulations come on the innocent and pious worshipers of God; they live rejected, humble, contemptible, under the blows of the powerful. Sometimes even more severe diseases dominate them in their body. But as I said, the ignorant complain about what order there is in the divine judgments. For however much more severely they want those to be punished whose power and iniquities they lament, there is that much greater necessity that the penalties be differed, that if they are not differed, . . . it is certain that they will be eternal and last forever. On the contrary, therefore, if they wanted good things to be given to the just and innocent in the present age, the good things themselves would also be temporal and would have to come to a quick end; but the more they are deferred into the future, by so much the more will they be perpetual and not know an end.

But people will hope in the shadow of your wings; that is, they have you as helper and protector, and they will be illuminated and spiritually refreshed by Christ—the true light and spring of life [who is] with you.

We have been given a joy beyond all telling. The human mind almost vanishes, becoming in some sense divinized, and is inebriated by the rich abundance of God’s house.

It is good to be inebriated on the cup of salvation. There is also the intoxication arising from the riches of Scripture. There is, too, the inebriation that follows on the infusion of the Holy Spirit. We read in the Acts of the Apostles^[1] of those who spoke in foreign tongues and appeared, to those who heard them, to be drunk on new wine. In brief, the house is the church; the riches of the house is the abundance of grace; the torrent of delight is the Holy Spirit.

They will become inebriated, an expression that usually describes the corrupt habit of people who become inundated with too much wine and become sluggish by this affliction of their mind, is here directed to the situation of good people. So this heavenly inebriation blocks the remembrance of worldly matters and causes fleshly things to depart from the mind, just like the intoxication of wine separates our actions from our senses. . . . What an incredibly praiseworthy inebriation! This intoxication we must pursue in all our prayers as the source of moderation and for the soundness of mind that is acquired through it. This inebriation does not produce tipsiness, confusion, delirium or blackouts. But the healthier the soul becomes, the more it is filled with drunkenness. So let us consume this drink eagerly, not with our physical lips, but with the purest disposition of the heart. From this drink one does not receive temporal happiness, but rather the joys of eternal life.

The word for drunkenness, dearly beloved, is not always used in sacred Scripture for that failing only, but also for satiety. . . . Listen, after all, to David’s words: They will become intoxicated from the richness of your house, that is, they will be filled. [By contrast], those who give themselves up to drunkenness never have their fill; the more wine they imbibe, the more they burn with thirst, and indulgence proves to be a constant fueling of their thirst; by the time all that remains of the pleasure has disappeared, the thirst proves to be unquenchable and leads the victims of drunkenness to the very precipice.

Water rushing with a mighty force is called a torrent. God’s mercy will flow with a mighty force to water and inebriate those who in this present life fix their hope beneath the shadow of his wings. What is that delight? It is like a torrent that inebriates the thirsty. Let any who are thirsty now fix their hopes there; let the thirsty have hope, because one day, inebriated, they will have the reality. Until they have the reality, let them thirstily hope.

You flood us with life, abundantly supplying us with it from the great number and variety of what is given us by you for sustenance and life. . . . Without light we can see nothing that exists, for when we are deprived of light and plunged into darkness, we have no recognition of what is at hand; whereas when light is available, we see and discern by recognition. So for discerning other things we need light, whereas light itself requires nothing else any longer for our being able to see; instead, with the aid of light itself we succeed in seeing everything through light and discern everything, including even light itself. . . . His meaning was to present the utter generosity and abundance of God’s gift—thus his mention of these two things in particular: the light (he made clear that from it he provided us both with existence itself and with sustenance) and enjoyment of the light, through which he conveyed the pleasure of life.

It is a good fountain that cools us after the heat of this life and with its flood tempers the aridity of our heart.

Without the light of the Scriptures we are unable to see God, who is Light, or his justice, which is filled with light. The effort involved in reading the Scriptures is thus greatly beneficial to us, all the more so since it causes us to become illumined in prayer. For anyone whose soul, after having labored in reading and been purified by spiritual meditation, is fervent with love for God will pray in a luminous manner when he turns to prayer. . . . His mind has labored in mediating on divine providence and so is filled with joy. In his soul he carries the model for virtue that he has received from training through the agency of the Spirit; he has depicted before his eyes, as though in a picture, the lovely beauty of the saints’ way of life: wrapped up in reading about these things, he will exult over them and become fervent in spirit, so that the words of his Office and the incense of his prayer become illumined and pure, seeking that they flow out from the pure spring of his heart.

In human usage, light and fountains are quite distinct, or rather, in opposition to one another, since a fountain snuffs out the light of flames. But with God, these two images find a unity even though whatever you might say about him is both true and also ultimately inadequate. We say that God is Light, because he enlightens every person who comes into the world;^[1] he is a Fountain, because he satisfies the hungry and empty. . . . This verse properly says about the Savior, in your light we will see light; namely, the light of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, since through the Son’s preaching the entire Trinity was revealed to us.

What other light of God can we speak of, in which a person sees light, except God’s spiritual power, which when it lightens a person causes him either to see clearly the truth of all things or to know God, who is called the truth? Such then is the meaning of the saying, In your light shall we see light; that is, in your word and your wisdom, which is your Son, in him shall we see you, the Father.

Since the fount is life and life is Christ, the fount is Christ. . . . By meditating on what is made we will see Christ, and in understanding Christ, we will see God.

Here he clearly reveals to us the mystery of the holy Trinity: he called the Only-begotten Word of God a fountain of life. This is the name, too, remember, God personally gave himself through the prophet Jeremiah: They have forsaken me, a fountain of living water, taken their leave and dug for themselves cracked cisterns incapable of holding water.^[1] So he says this fountain is in the presence of the Father, according to the following Gospel teaching: I in the Father and the Father in me. In your light we shall see light: Illumined by the all-holy Spirit we shall perceive the rays of your Only-begotten; Scripture says, No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit,^[2] and God revealed to us through his Spirit.^[3] We have consequently come to a precise knowledge of the three persons in the one divinity through the inspired words.

The Light of the Father is Christ. In Christ we will see the light of the Holy Spirit in the light of the Father.

And now we have both seen and proclaim concisely and simply the doctrine of God the Trinity, comprehending out of light [the Father], light [the Son], in light [the Spirit].

Our psalm prophesies the coming into the world of the Lord and Savior, who would say, The Father and I are one.^[1] This means: We are one light even as we are one name; one in light, and one in name, we two are one. Truly, in substance the Trinity is one; in distinction of persons it is three. A trinity signifies distinction of persons; unity signifies power. It can be said to the Father: With you is the fountain of life.^[2] From him proceeded the life that was the Word, that ever was and always was the Word, so it can be said, With you was the Word. Through him and in him all things were made,^[3] and he himself is the life of all people. He has shown you, Father, to us. He has enlightened the hearts of people that they might know your majesty. ^[4] ONE SUBSTANCE. ATHANASIUS (VIA THEODORET OF CYR): The bishops [at the Council of Nicea], having detected the Arians’ deceitfulness in this matter, collected from Scripture those passages that say of Christ that he is the glory, the fountain, the stream and the express image of the person; and they quoted the following words: In your light we shall see light; and likewise, I and the Father are one. They, then, with still greater clearness, briefly declared that the Son is of one substance [homoousios] with the Father; for this, indeed, is the signification of the passages that have been quoted. ^[1]

Christ . . . is man and God. He prays as man and gives what he prays for as God. Now what you have to grasp is that he assigns everything to the Father for the simple reason that the Father is not from him, but he is from the Father. He gives everything to the fount from which he is derived. But he too is the fount born of the Father; he is himself the fountain of life. So the Father as fount begot the fountain; fountain indeed begot fountain; but begetting fountain and begotten fountain are one fountain. Just as God begetting and God begotten, namely, the Son born of the Father, are one God. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father; the Father is not from the Son, the Son is from the Father; but still Father and Son are one thing . . . because of their inseparable divinity.

They were formed by you so as to be able, if they wished, both to know you and to hope in you, and to enjoy the good things stemming from this.

He extends his mercy, not because they know him but in order that they may know him: he extends his righteousness whereby he justifies the ungodly, not because they are upright in heart but that they may become upright in heart. This consideration does not lead astray into pride—the fault that arises from trust in self and making the self the spring of its own life. To go that way is to draw back from the fountain of life, whose draught alone gives the righteousness that is good life, and from that changeless light by whose participation the reasonable soul is as it were set burning so as to be itself a light made and created.

Advance on the road to sublimity by the footstep of humility. He himself exalts those who follow him humbly, who was not ashamed to descend to the fallen.

Oh, beware of pride, for it plants its foot when all is going well and prosperously. Adam fell in paradise far more ruinously that if he had fallen on earth. To fall from great heights is precipitous; to fall on level ground is simply a case of losing one’s footing. The foot of the proud person strays, because he has lost his head.^[1] As Scripture says, The eyes of a wise person are in his head.^[2] Is it any wonder that feet go astray if a person has no eyes in his head? The eye leads, and the foot follows. You, who are on a journey, how can you make your way in the dark? We stumble easily by night, unless perhaps the moon, like a sort of eye of the world, should lend its beams and light the way. You are in the night of this world; let the church shed its light on your journey; let the sun of justice^[3] illumine you from on high. In that way, you need have no fear of falling.

The foot of pride approached him, and the hand of the sinner dislodged him, the proud hand of the devil. . . . So it was that we fell by pride and were reduced to this mortal condition. And so too, as it was pride that wounded us, humility makes us whole. Our humble God came to heal humankind of its grievous wound of pride. . . . Why did he call it the foot? Because by growing proud, humankind abandoned God and walked away.

Pride is an unsound vehicle, and one who gets into it is quickly thrown. The humble person always stands firm, and the foot of pride will never trip him.

Let not the actions of sinful people make me stir from the way of justice. For very often when we see sinners abounding in prosperity and enjoying great success, we waver in our allegiance; a sort of hand steals out from these sinners, and we are plucked from the root of virtue. Beware, beware, do not let the hand of the enemy uproot those whom the hand of God has planted in his house.