Deliver me in your righteousness and rescue me; incline your ear to me and deliver me. When he says in your righteousness, he seeks divine mercy. In other words it pertains to his righteousness to spare a suppliant. For thus it pleased his righteousness to forgive a person who is known to condemn his own deeds. He says, Deliver me from the pressing dangers; rescue me from the power of the devil, so that he may not be condemned with him forever. When he says incline, he professes that he is humbly prostrate, because unless divine grace is inclined to freeing someone, he is not able to arrive by his own merits at that mercy which he desires. For it is not the merit of anyone that reaches God, but rather he himself is merciful and comes straightaway to sinners.

For this John, my dearest brothers, was one of those mountains about which it has been written, Let the mountains receive peace for your people; and the hills justice. The mountains are eminent souls; the hills are little souls. But the mountains receive peace for this very reason, so that the hills can receive justice. What is the justice that the hills receive? Faith, because the just person lives by faith.^[1] The lesser souls, however, would not receive faith if the greater souls, who were called mountains, were not illuminated by wisdom itself, so that they can convey to the little ones what the little ones are able to grasp, and so that the hills can live by faith because the mountains receive peace. By these very mountains it was said to the church, Peace be with you. And the mountains themselves, in announcing peace to the church, did not set themselves apart in regard to him from whom they receive peace so that they might announce peace truly and not deceitfully.^[2]

We saw the martyr so patiently enduring the most monstrous torments; but his soul was submitting itself to God, because it was from him that his patience came. And lest human frailty should fail through lack of patience and deny Christ, and contribute to the enemy’s joy, he knew to whom he should say, My God, rescue me from the hand of the sinner, from the hand of the lawbreaker and the wicked, since you are my patience. In this way, you see, the person who sang these words signified how Christians should ask to be rescued from the hands of their enemies; not, certainly, by suffering nothing but by enduring what they suffer with perfect patience. Rescue me from the hand of the sinner, from the hand of the lawbreaker and the wicked. But if you ask how he wants to be rescued, look at what follows: since you are my patience. You will find a glorious passion, wherever there is this devout confession, so that whoever boasts, may boast in the Lord.^[1]

We have been watching a magnificent spectacle with the eyes of faith, the holy martyr Vincent^[1] everywhere victorious. He was victorious in his words, victorious in the pains he endured; victorious in his confession, victorious in his tribulations; victorious when burned with fire, victorious when submerged in the waves. When his flesh, which was a kind of tribute to the victorious Christ, was thrown into the sea from the boat, it silently said, We are cast down but not lost.^[2] Who can have endowed this soldier with such patience but the one who first shed his blood for him? The one to whom it says in the psalm, Since you are my patience, Lord, my hope from my youth. A great contest earns great glory; not human or temporal glory, but divine and eternal. Faith is doing battle; and when faith is doing battle, nobody can overthrow the flesh. Because even if it is mangled and torn to shreds, when can anyone perish who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ? A powerful person cannot lose what he has bought with his gold, and can Christ lose what he bought with his blood?

Then follows the clause because I have not known business transactions. That part of the verse is recognized to create a problem unless it is well investigated. For if every person of business must be altogether condemned, not even those who are known to exercise the remaining arts are able to escape this condemnation. For what else is business other than to wish to make more expensive those things which can be sold for cheaper? We read in the lives of the fathers that that most holy man, Paphnutius, was obtained by a businessman in accordance with a revelation,^[1] and today in the church of God there are those who handle merchandise but are in the faith. A most foul deed is condemned, not an honest matter, just as we read that a rich man will not enter into the kingdom of heaven,^[2] although Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the patriarchs were nonetheless wealthy in their possessions. Therefore, this passage is thinking of those horrible people of business, who give no thought at all to the righteousness of the Lord but, owing to their immodest quest for money, are contaminated by their burdening their merchandise more with their perjuries than by their prices. The Lord threw such people out of the temple and said, Do not make the home of my Father a place of business, a den of thieves.^[3] Therefore, as I think, we must adopt the following understanding so as to read, My mouth proclaimed your righteousness because I did not know business transactions, namely those which are stained with bad deeds.

Hear now also the Son’s statements about the Father: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.^[1] He speaks of himself likewise to the Father in the psalm: Forsake me not, until I have declared the might of your arm to all the generations that are to come. Also with the same substance in another psalm: O Lord, how many are they that trouble me!^[2] But almost all the psalms that prophesy of the person of Christ, represent the Son as conversing with the Father—that is, represent Christ [as speaking] to God. Observe also the Spirit speaking of the Father and the Son, in the character of a third person: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.^[3] Likewise in the words of Isaiah: Thus says the Lord to the Lord my anointed.^[4]