Previously, you see, when [Christ] was showing us an example of humility in the flesh, it was said with reference to his passion that the waves of the sea rose mightily against him, to which he yielded voluntarily for our sakes, so fulfilling the prophecy, I came into the depth of the sea, and the tempest overwhelmed me. Thus he did not rebut the false witnesses or the savage roar of the crowd, Have him crucified!^[1] He did not use his power to quell the raging hearts and stop the mouths of the furious mob, but he bore it all with patience. They did to him whatever they wanted, because he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.^[2]

Just as it was said to Jesus, Why, then, will you die if you have not committed a sin that deserves the death penalty? Immediately he answered, I do what the Father has commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father. Arise, let us go.^[1] Where? To the place where he, who had done nothing deserving of death, would be handed over to death. The Father had commanded that he should die—he about whom it had been prophesied, I must repay what I did not take. He was the one who was about to suffer death without deserving it and [thereby] redeem us from the penalty of death. Adam, however, had committed sin when he reached out his hand to the tree [to pick the forbidden fruit]; he presumptuously deceived himself that he could seize the name of divinity that cannot be shared with or given to anyone [except one who is God]; divinity was conferred on the Son of God by nature, not by robbery.^[2]

Psalm 68 [LXX] also includes in its title the words for the things that will be entirely changed. This psalm sings of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, assuming to himself even certain words of his members, that is, of his faithful. For he himself did not have any sin, but he carried our sins; thus the psalm says and my offenses are not hidden from you. Here is written and foretold what we read in the Gospel as having happened: And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.^[1] In him, therefore, the old events have been changed that the title of the psalm predicted were to be changed.

The phrase It was made a reproach against me follows. The good are always a reproach to the wicked, because the good by no means acquiesce to the crimes of the wicked and withdraw from them and are not joined them by any association. They attest to those reproaches, boxings of the ears, scourgings and spittings, which our Lord the Savior endured at the hands of the maddened mob.

However, we must know that Psalm 68 [LXX], which contains the statement, The zeal of your house has devoured me, and a little later They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,^[1] both having been recorded in the Gospels, is placed in the mouth of Christ, indicating no change in the person of the speaker.

Not every one who says to me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,^[1] says the Scripture. Faith, therefore, august sovereign,^[2] must not be a mere matter of performance, for it is written, The zeal of your house has devoured me. Let us then with faithful spirit and devout mind call on Jesus our Lord, let us believe that he is God, to the end that whatever we ask of the Father, we may obtain in his name.^[3] For the Father’s will is that he be entreated through the Son, the Son’s that the Father be entreated.^[4]

And the disciples remembered that it was written, ‘The zeal for your house has eaten me up.’^[1] For by zeal for the house of God the Lord cast those men out of the temple. Brothers, let each and every Christian in the members of Christ be consumed with zeal for God’s house. Who is consumed with zeal for God’s house? One who strives that all things that he, perhaps, sees are wicked there be corrected, [who] desires that they be improved, [who] does not keep quiet. If he cannot improve it, he suffers, he moans. The grain is not shaken out elsewhere than on the threshing floor; it puts up with the chaff that it may enter the storehouse when the chaff has been separated. You, if you are grain, do not be shaken out elsewhere than on the threshing floor in front of the storehouse, that you may not be picked up by birds before you are gathered into the storehouse. For the birds of the sky, the powers on high, are on the watch to snatch something from the threshing floor, and they snatch only what has been shaken out from there. Therefore let zeal for God’s house consume you; let zeal for God’s house, in which house of God he is a member, consume each and every Christian.

For this reason, the unquenchable fire there will have to burn whatever healing penance and a salutary conversion of life here has failed to cure. The burning pit of hell will be open, and to it there will be a descent but no means of return. Souls that have been stripped of the garment of faith and are mortally dead will be buried there forever, destined to be cast into the darkness outside where they will not be visited for all eternity. They will be unhappily shut out in exterior darkness, I repeat, or rather they will still more unhappily be enclosed in it. Concerning this pit the prophet relates, Let not the abyss swallow me up, nor the pit close its mouth over me. He said, Let not the pit close its mouth over me for this reason, because when it admits the guilty, it will be closed above and opened below, extending to the depths. No breathing space will be left, no breath of air will be available when the doors press down from above. Those who say farewell to the things of nature will be cast down there; since they have refused to know God, they will no longer be recognized by him, and dying to life they will live for endless death. The happy souls who now use their wealth wisely, content with bodily necessities and generous with their possessions, pure in themselves and not cruel toward others, free themselves from the fiery night of this infernal region. This punishment will detain those who will perish for all eternity, since they have lost the grace of baptism and have not restored it through repentance. To them it is said, The chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.^[1]

Since the holy God has promised those who hope in him a means of escape from every affliction, we, even if we have been cut off in the midst of a sea of evils and are racked by the mighty waves stirred up against us by the spirits of wickedness, nevertheless endure in Christ who strengthens us, and we have not slackened the intensity of our zeal for the churches, nor do we, as in a storm when the waves rise high, expect destruction. We still hold fast to our earnest endeavors as much as is possible, sensible of the fact that he who was swallowed by the whale was considered deserving of safety because he did not despair of his life but cried out to the Lord.^[1] So, then, when we have reached the uttermost limit of evils, we do not stop hoping in the Lord, but we watch and see his help on all sides. Therefore, we have now turned also to you, our most honored brothers, whom we frequently expected to come to our aid in the time of tribulations.^[2] When we were disappointed in our hope, we also said to ourselves, I looked for one that would pity me, but there was none, and for those that would comfort me, but I found none. Our sufferings are such as to have reached even to the limits of our inhabited world; if, when one member suffers, all the members suffer along with it,^[3] surely it was proper for you in your mercy also to be compassionate toward us who have been suffering for a long time. Not the nearness of the places, but the union of spirit, is apt to engender the friendship that we believe is entertained for us by your charity.

For the apostle vituperated and abominated some who, as he said, were without natural affection.^[1] The sacred Psalmist also found fault with those of whom he said, I looked for some to lament with me, and there was none. For to be quite free from pain while we are in this place of misery is only purchased, as one of this world’s literati perceived and remarked, at the price of blunted sensibilities both of mind and body.^[2]

A second time, in fact, let us show that Christ has already come, [as foretold] through the prophets, and has suffered, and has already been received back in the heavens and will come from there according to the predictions prophesied. For, after his advent, we read, according to Daniel, that the city itself had to be destroyed; and we recognize that it has indeed happened. For the Scripture says that the city and the holy place are simultaneously destroyed together with the leader^[1]—undoubtedly [that Leader] who was to come from Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah. Whence, again, it is manifest that the city must simultaneously be destroyed at the time when its Leader had to suffer in it, [as foretold] through the Scriptures of the prophets, who say, I have outstretched my hands the whole day to a rebellious people who contradict me, who walk in a way that is not good, but after their own sins.^[2] And in the Psalms, David says, They pierced my hands and feet: they counted all my bones; they themselves, moreover, stare and gloat over me, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.^[3] David did not suffer these things so as to seem to have spoken properly of himself but of Christ who was crucified.

Now, to counter all opinions^[1] of this kind, let me dispel at once the preliminary idea on which they^[2] rest their assertion that the prophets make all their announcements in figures of speech. Now, if this were true, the figures [of speech] themselves could not possibly have been distinguished, inasmuch as the truths would not have been declared, from which the figurative language is derived. And, indeed, if all are figures, where will that be of which they are the figures? How can you hold up a mirror to your face, if your face did not exist? But, in truth, all are not figures, but there are also literal statements; nor are all shadows, but there are bodies too, so that we even have prophecies about the Lord himself, which are clearer than daylight. For it was not figuratively that the Virgin conceived in her womb; nor in a trope did she bear Emmanuel, that is, Jesus, God with us.^[3] Even granting that he was figuratively to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria,^[4] still it was literally that he was to enter into judgment with the elders and princes of the people.^[5] For in the person of Pilate the heathen raged, and in the person of Israel the people imagined vain things; the kings of the earth in Herod, and the rulers in Annas and Caiaphas, were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.^[6] He, again, was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearer, that is, Herod, is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.^[7] He gave his back to scourges, and his cheek to blows, not turning his face even from the shame of spitting.^[8] He was numbered with the transgressors.^[9] He was pierced in his hands and his feet.^[10] They cast lots for his raiment;^[11] they gave him gall and made him drink vinegar; they shook their heads and mocked him.^[12] He was appraised by the traitor for thirty pieces of silver.^[13] What figures of speech does Isaiah here give us? What tropes does David? What allegories does Jeremiah? Not even of his mighty works have they used parabolic language. Or else, were not the eyes of the blind opened? Did not the tongue of the dumb recover speech?^[14] Did not the relaxed hands and palsied knees become strong, and the lame leap as a hart?^[15] No doubt we are accustomed also to give a spiritual significance to these statements of prophecy, according to the analogy of the physical diseases that were healed by the Lord; but still they were all fulfilled literally, thus showing that the prophets foretold both senses, except that very many of their words can only be taken in a pure and simple signification and free from all allegorical obscurity, as when we hear of the downfall of nations and cities of Tyre. . . . Who would prefer affixing a metaphorical interpretation to all these events, instead of accepting their literal truth? The realities are involved in the words, just as the words are read in the realities. Thus, we find that the allegorical style is not used in all parts of the prophetic record, although it occasionally occurs in certain portions of it.

Then [the Evangelist] continues: Afterwards Jesus, knowing that all things were accomplished, that Scripture might be accomplished, says, ‘I thirst.’ Now there was a vessel set here full of vinegar, and putting a sponge full of vinegar around [a stalk of] hyssop, they raised it to his lips. When therefore Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished.’ And, bowing his head, he delivered over his spirit.^[1] Who can so organize what he does as this man organized what he suffered? But the man, the Mediator of God and man,^[2] the man about whom one reads that it was foretold: And he is a man and who can know him?^[3] For the men through whom these things happened did know the man [to be] God. For he who was hidden as God was apparent as man; he who was apparent suffered these things and he who was hidden, the very same One, organized all these things. Therefore he saw that all the things were finished that were necessary to be done before he took the vinegar and delivered over his spirit; and that this too might be accomplished that Scripture had foretold, And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink, he said, I thirst, as though he were to say, In doing this you have fallen short; give what you are. For indeed the Jews themselves were the vinegar, deteriorating from the wine of the patriarchs and prophets, and, as it were, filled from a full vessel, from the iniquity of this world, having their heart like a sponge, deceitful, so to speak, in its cavernous and tortuous hiding places. But the hyssop around which they put the sponge full of vinegar, because it is a lowly herb and cleanses the breast, we take appropriately as the lowliness of Christ that they surrounded and thought they had come round to thwarting. And in regard to this is also that [place] in the psalm, You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed.^[4] For we are cleansed by the lowliness of Christ, because unless he had humbled himself, made obedient even to the death of the cross,^[5] his blood assuredly would not have been poured out for the remission of sins, that is, for our cleansing.

And furthermore David said concerning his passion, For my food they gave gall, and for my thirst they did give me vinegar to drink. Again he said in that passage, They have persecuted him whom you have struck and have added to the affliction of him that was slain. For they added many [afflictions] to him, much that was not written concerning him, cursings and revilings, such as the Scripture could not reveal, for their revilings were hateful. But, however, the Lord was pleased to humiliate him and afflict him.^[1] And he was slain for our iniquity,^[2] and was humiliated for our sins and was made sin in his own person.^[3]

For it was proclaimed beforehand by the very same prophets that they [Jews] would not understand, because it was necessary for other things to be fulfilled, and by a hidden and just decree of God, for due punishment to be paid in accordance with their merits. For, indeed, he whom they crucified, he to whom they gave gall and vinegar—although he was hanging on the cross—he said to the Father, for the sake of those whom he would have led from the darkness into the light, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.^[1] But, for the sake of the others whom he was to abandon for more hidden causes, he said long before through the prophet, And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense and a stumbling block. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back you always bend down. Therefore, they roam about anywhere and everywhere, their darkened eyes a most remarkable proof for our cause, so that through them our arguments are upheld at the very time that this same people is rejected.

But the Jews who slew him, and would not believe in him, because it behoved him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom,^[1] where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. And very many of them, considering this, even before his passion, but chiefly after his resurrection, believed on him, of whom it was predicted, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved.^[2] But the rest are blinded, of whom it was predicted, Let their table be made before them a trap, and a retribution, and a stumbling-block. Let their eyes be darkened lest they see, and bow down their back alway. Therefore, when they do not believe our Scriptures, their own, which they blindly read, are fulfilled in them, lest perchance any one should say that the Christians have forged these prophecies about Christ which are quoted under the name of the sibyl, or of others, if such there be, who do not belong to the Jewish people.

They themselves have become full of gall and bitterness in serving food of gall and vinegar to the living Bread. How else do they look on these prophecies in the psalm: Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and how are they to be upright in order to lift up their heart, they about whom it has been foretold, and they always bend down their back together?^[1] These prophecies have not been made, however, about all the Jews; only about those to whom the predictions apply. These indictments do not concern those who believed in Christ at that time because of these very prophecies or those who have believed in Christ up to the present or who, henceforth, up to the end of the world, will believe in Christ, that is, the true Israel who will see the Lord face to face. For they are not all Israelites who are sprung from Israel; nor because they are the descendants of Abraham, are they all his children; but through Isaac shall your posterity bear your name. This is to say, they are not the children of God who are the children of the flesh, but it is the children of promise who are reckoned as a posterity.^[2] They belong to the spiritual Zion and the cities of Judah, that is, to the churches about whom the apostle says, And I was unknown by sight to the churches of Judah, which were in Christ,^[3] since a little later in the same psalm appears, For God will save Zion, and the cities of Judah shall be built up. And they shall dwell there and acquire it by inheritance. And the seed of his servants shall possess it; and they that love his name shall dwell therein.^[4] When the Jews hear these words, they take them in their natural meaning and imagine an earthly Jerusalem that is in slavery with its children, not our eternal mother who is in heaven.

You have truly and in very many places read something that pertains to the detestable wickedness of your crime and to the voluntary suffering of the Lord. He himself speaks through Isaiah: I gave my back to the scourges, my cheeks to striking hands; my face I did not shield from the insult of spittle.^[1] He says through David, They put gall in my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. On yet another occasion, he says through David, Many dogs surround me, a pack of evildoers closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones. They watched me carefully and examined me. They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothes.^[2] Lest only the kind of your crime might seem to be predicted and the power of the crucified one not foretold, you certainly did not read that the Lord descended from the cross. You did, however, read, The Lord has reigned from the cross.^[3]

Many hear the word of truth, but some believe and others speak against it. Therefore the former will to believe, but the latter do not will. Who would not know this? Who would deny it? But since in some persons the will is prepared by God and in others it is not, we must indeed distinguish what comes from his mercy and what comes from his judgment. That which Israel sought, says the apostle, he has not obtained, but the elect have obtained it, and the rest have been blinded. As it is written, ‘God has given them the spirit of insensibility: eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, until this present day.’ And David says, ‘Let their table be made a snare, and a recompense and a stumbling block to them. Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see; and bow down their back always.’^[1] Behold mercy and judgment: mercy on the elect, who have obtained the justice of God, but judgment on the others who have been blinded. And yet the former have believed, because they have willed, while the latter have not believed, because they have not willed. Hence, mercy and judgment were brought about in their own wills. Clearly, this election is through grace, not at all through merits. As the apostle had earlier said, Even so then at this present time also, there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. And if by grace, it is not now by works; otherwise grace is no more grace.^[2] Therefore, it is by grace that the elect have obtained what they have obtained; there preceded nothing that they might first give so that it might be given to them in recompense. God saved them for nothing. As to those others who were blinded, as it clearly stated here, it was done in retribution. All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.^[3] But his ways are unsearchable.^[4] Hence, the mercy by which he freely liberates and the truth by which he justly judges are both unsearchable.

That cluster of grapes that was brought from the land of promise on a lever across the shoulders of two men further prefigured Christ. Just as it was hung on the wood and brought by the services of those two men, so Christ, who came from the flesh of a virgin as from the promised land, was between both Testaments, between the two peoples of the Jews and Gentiles, and was hung on the wood of the cross. Now of the two men who walked beneath the burden of that cluster of grapes, the first one signified the Jewish people of whom it is said, Let their eyes grow dim so that they cannot see, and keep their backs always feeble. However, the man who came after prefigured our people, that is, the Gentiles who believe and keep Christ before their eyes. They intend always to follow him as a servant does his master or a disciple his teacher, as the Lord says in the Gospel: If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.^[1] Moreover, this cluster of grapes poured forth the wine of his blood that was pressed out under the weight of the cross for our salvation and gave the church that chalice of his passion to drink. For this reason it was said to the apostles at the time of the birth of the church, They are full of new wine.^[2]

May his habitation become desolate, and may there be none to dwell in it, and may another take his office.^[1] Indeed these verses are clear and plainly set forth by the blessed Peter’s interpretation. On the one hand Judas received a deserved penalty for his double-dealing, and as he went to his own proper place (namely, infernal hell), by his untimely and impious death he forsook the common dwelling place of the human way of life. On the other hand, however, by Matthias’s acceptance of the place of his [Judas’s] ministry and apostolate, the most sacred fullness of apostolic perfection was restored.^[2]

It is evident that those things^[1] do not happen in the church without causing great sadness to the saints and the faithful; may he console us who foretold all these things and who warned us not to grow cold because of the prevalence of iniquity but to persevere to the end that we may be saved. As far as I am concerned, if there is in me the smallest spark of the charity of Christ, Who of you is weak, and I am not weak; who is scandalized and I am not on fire?^[2] Do not increase my sufferings, therefore, by falling either into false suspicions or into the sins of others; do not, I beg of you, make me say of you, And they have added to the grief of my wounds. For those who take pleasure in these sorrows of ours, of whom it was long ago foretold in the person of the body of Christ, They that sat in the gate, spoke against me; and they that drank wine made me their song,^[3] are much more readily borne with; indeed, we have learned to pray for them and to wish them well. But, for what other purpose do they sit there, and what else do they aim at, except, when some bishop or cleric or monk or nun has fallen, that they may believe, assert and contend that all are like that—although it cannot be proved of all? Yet, when some married woman has been found to be an adulteress, they do not cast off their wives or accuse their mothers; but, when it is a case of those who profess a sacred calling, if some false charge has been rumored about or some true one has been published, they take it up, go to work on it, toss it about, so as to have it universally believed. Therefore, of those who take sweetness for their evil tongues from our sorrows, it is easy to compare them with those dogs, if, perchance, we are to take in an adverse sense, those who licked the sores of the beggar who lay before the rich man’s gate and who bore hard and humiliating things until he came to rest in Abraham’s bosom.^[4]

If it is possible to prove that the sacred works are one book, but the non-sacred many, we must observe in addition that there is one book in the case of the living, from which those who deserve it are blotted out, as it is written, Let them be blotted out of the book of the living. [By contrast], a plurality of books is brought in the case of those who are reserved for judgment, for Daniel says, The court convened, and the books were opened.^[1] Moses also testifies to the singleness of the divine book, saying, If you forgive the people’s sin, forgive; otherwise strike me out of the book that you have written.^[2]

For what is more fruitful or more filled with the truest confession than that passage in one of your letters in which you^[1] humbly bewail the fact that our nature did not remain as it was created but was debased by the father of the human race? In your letter you said, But I am poor and sorrowful, I, that am still hardened in the filth of an earthly image, having in me more of the first Adam than of the second, still give my attention to the senses of the flesh and to earthly acts. How shall I dare to depict myself when earthly corruption proves that I deny my heavenly image? I blush to paint what I am, I do not dare to paint what I am not. But what good will it do me, wretched as I am, to hate iniquity and to love virtue,^[2] when I do rather what I hate and am too sluggish to strive to do what I love? I am torn apart, fighting with myself in an interior warfare, while the spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit,^[3] and the law of my body under the law of sin fights against the law of my mind.^[4] Unhappy am I who have absorbed the poisonous taste of that hateful tree, not the wood of the cross! The ancestral poison hardens in me, from Adam the father, who by his fall has undone the whole race.^[5] These and many other things you said, groaning over your misery and expecting the redemption of your body, knowing yourself saved by hope, if not yet in fact.^[6]

Brothers, the Lord of the universe has need of nothing; he requires nothing of anyone, except that confession be made to him. For David, the chosen one, says, I will confess to the Lord, and it shall please him more than a young bullock with horns and hoofs. Let the poor see it and be glad. And again he says, Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and render to the All-High your vows; and call on me in the day of affliction, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.^[1] For a contrite spirit is a sacrifice to God.^[2] 1 ^[1]

And he killed for him the fattened calf.^[1] About that David sang, And it shall please God better than a young calf that has horns and hoofs. The calf was slain at this command of the Father, because the Christ, God as the Son of God, could not be slain without the command of his Father. Listen to the apostle: He who has not spared even his own son but has delivered him for us all.^[2] He is the calf who is daily and continually immolated for our food.

Let us direct the mind’s gaze and, with the Lord’s help, let us search out God. The word of the divine canticle is Seek God and your soul will live. Let us seek him who is to be found, let us seek him who has been found. He has been hidden so that he may be sought for and found; he is immeasurable so that, even though he has been found, he may be sought for. For this reason it is said elsewhere, Seek his face always.^[1] For he fills the seeker as far as he has capacity, and he makes the finder more capacious, that he may seek again to be filled when he has begun to increase his capacity.

Always indeed, dearly beloved, the earth is full of the Lord’s kindness,^[1] and the nature of things itself is the teacher to each one of the faithful in the worship of God, while heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them^[2] proclaim the goodness and power of their Creator. The wonderful beauty of the elements that serve him demands a due thanksgiving from the understanding creature.^[3]