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Part Fourth
Plainly, if you show by what patronages of heavenly precedents and precepts it is that you open to adultery alone—and therein to fornication also—the gate of repentance, at this very line our hostile encounter will forthwith cross swords. Yet I must necessarily prescribe you a law, not to stretch out your hand after the old things,[749] not to look backwards:[750] for “the old things are passed away,”[751] according to Isaiah; and “a renewing hath been renewed,”[752] according to Jeremiah; and “forgetful of former things, we are reaching forward,”[753] according to the apostle; and “the law and the prophets (were) until John,”[754] according to the Lord. For even if we are just now beginning with the Law in demonstrating (the nature of) adultery, it is justly with that phase of the law which Christ has “not dissolved, but fulfilled.”[755] For it is the “burdens” of the law which were “until John,” not the remedial virtues. It is the “yokes” of “works” that have been rejected, not thoseof disciplines.[756] “Liberty in Christ”[757] has done no injury to innocence. The law of piety, sanctity, humanity, truth, chastity, justice, mercy, benevolence, modesty, remains in its entirety; in which law “blessed (is) the man who shall meditate by day and by night.”[758] About that (law) the same David (says) again: “The law of the Lord (is) unblameable,[759] converting souls; the statutes of the Lord (are) direct, delighting hearts; the precept of the Lord far-shining, enlightening eyes.” Thus, too, the apostle: “And so the law indeed is holy, and the precept holy and most good”[760]—“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” of course. But he had withal said above: “Are we, then, making void the law through faith? Far be it; but we are establishing the law”[761]—forsooth in those (points) which, being even now interdicted by the New Testament, are prohibited by an even more emphatic precept: instead of, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” “Whoever shall have seen with a view to concupiscence, hath already committed adultery in his own heart;”[762] and instead of, “Thou shalt not kill,” “Whoever shall have said to his brother, Racha, shall be in danger of hell.”[763] Ask (yourself) whether the law of not committing adultery be still in force, to which has been added that of not indulging concupiscence. Besides, if any precedents (taken from the Old Dispensation) shall favour you in (the secrecy of) your bosom, they shall not be set in opposition to this discipline which we are maintaining. For it is in vain that an additional law has been reared, condemning the origin even of sins—that is, concupiscences and wills—no less than the actual deeds; if the fact that pardon was of old in some cases conceded to adultery is to be a reason why it shall be conceded at the present day. “What will be the reward attaching to the restrictions imposed upon the more fully developed discipline of the present day, except that the elder (discipline) may be made the agent for granting indulgence to your prostitution?” In that case, you will grant pardon to the idolater too, and to every apostate, because we find the People itself, so often guilty of these crimes, as often reinstated in their former privileges. You will maintain communion, too, with the murderer: because Ahab, by deprecation, washed away (the guilt of) Naboth’s blood;[764] and David, by confession, purged Uriah’s slaughter, together with its cause—adultery.[765] That done, you will condone incests, too, for Lot’s sake;[766] and fornications combined with incest, for Judah’s sake;[767] and base marriages with prostitutes, for Hosea’s sake;[768] and not only the frequent repetition of marriage, but its simultaneous plurality, for our fathers’ sakes: for, of course, it is meet that there should also be a perfect equality of grace in regard of all deeds to which indulgence was in days bygone granted, if on the ground of some pristine precedent pardon is claimed for adultery. We, too, indeed have precedents in the self-same antiquity on the side of our opinion,—(precedents) of judgment not merely not waived, but even summarily executed upon fornication. And of course it is a sufficient one, that so vast a number—(the number) of 24,000—of the People, when they committed fornication with the daughters of Madian, fell in one plague.[769] But, with an eye to the glory of Christ, I prefer to derive (my) discipline from Christ. Grant that the pristine days may have had—if the Psychics please—even a right of (indulging) every immodesty; grant that, before Christ, the flesh may have disported itself, nay, may have perished before its Lord went to seek and bring it back: not yet was it worthy of the gift of salvation; not yet apt for the office of sanctity. It was still, up to that time, accounted as being in Adam, with its own vicious nature, easily indulging concupiscence after whatever it had seen to be “attractive to the sight,”[770] and looking back at the lower things, and checking its itching with fig-leaves.[771] Universally inherent was the virus of lust—the dregs which are formed out of milk contain it—(dregs) fitted (for so doing), in that even the waters themselves had not yet been bathed. But when the Word of God descended into flesh,—(flesh) not unsealed even by marriage,—and “the Word was made flesh,”[772]—(flesh) never to be unsealed by marriage,—which was to find its way to the tree not of incontinence, but of endurance; which was to taste from that tree not anything sweet, but something bitter; which was to pertain not to the infernal regions, but to heaven; which was to be precinct not with the leaves of lasciviousness, but the flowers of holiness;[773] which was to impart to the waters its own purities—thenceforth, whatever flesh (is) “in Christ”[774] has lost its pristine soils, is now a thing different, emerges in a new state, no longer (generated) of the slime of natural seed, nor of the grime of concupiscence, but of “pure water” and a “clean Spirit.” And, accordingly, why excuse it on the ground of pristine precedent? It did not bear the names of “body of Christ,”[775] of “members of Christ,”[776] of “temple of God,”[777] at the time when it used to obtain pardon for adultery. And thus if, from the moment when it changed its condition, and “having been baptized into Christ put on Christ,”[778] and was “redeemed with a great price”—“the blood,” to wit, “of the Lord and Lamb”[779]—you take hold of any one precedent (be it precept, or law, or sentence,) of indulgence granted, or to be granted, to adultery and fornication,—you have likewise at our hands a definition of the time from which the age of the question dates.
You shall have leave to begin with the parables, where you have the lost ewe re-sought by the Lord, and carried back on His shoulders.[780] Let the very paintings upon your cups come forward to show whether even in them the figurative meaning of that sheep will shine through (the outward semblance, to teach) whether a Christian or heathen sinner be the object it aims at in the matter of restoration. For we put in a demurrer arising out of the teaching of nature, out of the law of ear and tongue, out of the soundness of the mental faculty, to the effect that such answers are always given as are called forth (by the question,—answers), that is, to the (questions) which call them forth. That which was calling forth (an answer in the present case) was, I take it, the fact that the Pharisees were muttering in indignation at the Lord’s admitting to His society heathen publicans and sinners, and communicating with them in food. When, in reply to this, the Lord had figured the restoration of the lost ewe, to whom else is it credible that he configured it but to the lost heathen, about whom the question was then in hand,—not about a Christian, who up to that time had no existence? Else, what kind of (hypothesis) is it that the Lord, like a quibbler in answering, omitting the present subject-matter which it was His duty to refute, should spend His labour about one yet future? “But a ‘sheep’ properly means a Christian,[781] and the Lord’s ‘flock’ is the people of the Church,[782] and the ‘good shepherd’ is Christ;[783] and hence in the ‘sheep’ we must understand a Christian who has erred from the Church’s ‘flock.’” In that case, you make the Lord to have given no answer to the Pharisees’ muttering, but to your presumption. And yet you will be bound so to defend that presumption, as to deny that the (points) which you think applicable to Christians are referable to a heathen. Tell me, is not all mankind one flock of God? Is not the same God both Lord and Shepherd of the universal nations?[784] Who more “perishes” from God than the heathen, so long as he “errs?” Who is more “re-sought” by God than the heathen, when he is recalled by Christ? In fact, it is among heathens that this order finds antecedent place; if, that is, Christians are not otherwise made out of heathens than by being first “lost,” and “re-sought” by God, and “carried back” by Christ. So likewise ought this order to be kept, that we may interpret any such (figure) with reference to those in whom it finds prior place. But you, I take it, would wish this: that He should represent the ewe as lost not from a flock, but from an ark or a chest! In like manner, albeit He calls the remaining number of the heathens “righteous,” it does not follow that He shows them to be Christians; dealing as He is with Jews, and at that very moment refuting them, because they were indignant at the hope of the heathens. But in order to express, in opposition to the Pharisees’ envy, His own grace and goodwill even in regard of one heathen, He preferred the salvation of one sinner by repentance to theirs by righteousness; or else, pray, were the Jews not “righteous,” and such as “had no need of repentance,” having, as they had, as pilotages of discipline and instruments of fear, “the Law and the Prophets?” He set them therefore in the parable—and if not such as they were, yet such as they ought to have been—that they might blush the more when they heard that repentance was necessary to others, and not to themselves.
Similarly, the parable of the drachma,[785] as being called forth out of the same subject-matter, we equally interpret with reference to a heathen; albeit it had been “lost” in a house, as it were in the church; albeit “found” by aid of a “lamp,” as it were by aid of God’s word.[786] Nay, but this whole world is the one house of all; in which world it is more the heathen, who is found in darkness, whom the grace of God enlightens, than the Christian, who is already in God’s light.[787] Finally, it is one “straying” which is ascribed to the ewe and the drachma: (and this is an evidence in my favour); for if the parables had been composed with a view to a Christian sinner, after the loss of his faith, a second loss and restoration of them would have been noted.
I will now withdraw for a short time from this position; in order that I may, even by withdrawing, the more recommend it, when I shall have succeeded even thus also in confuting the presumption of the opposite side. I admit that the sinner portrayed in each parable is one who is already a Christian; yet not that on this account must he be affirmed to be such an one as can be restored, through repentance, from the crime of adultery and fornication. For although he be said to “have perished,” there will be the kind of perdition to treat of; inasmuch as the “ewe” “perished” not by dying, but by straying; and the “drachma” not by being destroyed, but by being hidden. In this sense, a thing which is safe may be said to “have perished.” Therefore the believer, too, “perishes,” by lapsing out of (the right path) into a public exhibition of charioteering frenzy, or gladiatorial gore, or scenic foulness, or athletic vanity; or else if he has lent the aid of any special “arts of curiosity” to sports, to the convivialities of heathen solemnity, to official exigence, to the ministry of another’s idolatry; if he has impaled himself upon some word of ambiguous denial, or else of blasphemy. For some such cause he has been driven outside the flock; or even himself, perhaps, by anger, by pride, by jealousy, (or)—as, in fact, often happens—by disdaining to submit to chastisement, has broken away (from it). He ought to be re-sought and recalled. That which can be recovered does not “perish,” unless it persist in remaining outside. You will well interpret the parable by recalling the sinner while he is still living. But, for the adulterer and fornicator, who is there who has not pronounced him to be dead immediately upon commission of the crime? With what face will you restore to the flock one who is dead, on the authority of that parable which recalls a sheep not dead?
Finally, if you are mindful of the prophets, when they are chiding the shepherds, there is a word—I think it is Ezekiel’s: “Shepherds, behold, ye devour the milk, and clothe you with the fleeces: what is strong ye have slain; what is weak ye have not tended; what is shattered ye have not bound; what has been driven out ye have not brought back; what has perished ye have not re-sought.”[788] Pray, does he withal upbraid them at all concerning that which is dead, that they have taken no care to restore that too to the flock? Plainly, he makes it an additional reproach that they have caused the sheep to perish, and to be eaten up by the beasts of the field; nor can they either “perish mortally,” or be “eaten up,” if they are left remaining. “Is it not possible—(granting) that ewes which have been mortally lost, and eaten up, are recovered—that (in accordance also with the example of the drachma (lost and found again) even within the house of God, the Church) there may be some sins of a moderate character, proportionable to the small size and the weight of a drachma, which, lurking in the same Church, and by and by in the same discovered, forthwith are brought to an end in the same with the joy of amendment?” But of adultery and fornication it is not a drachma, but a talent, (which is the measure); and for searching them out there is need not of the javelin-light of a lamp, but of the spear-like ray of the entire sun. No sooner has (such a) man made his appearance than he is expelled from the Church; nor does he remain there; nor does he cause joy to the Church which discovers him, but grief; nor does he invite the congratulation of her neighbours, but the fellowship in sadness of the surrounding fraternities.
By comparison, even in this way, of this our interpretation with theirs, the arguments of both the ewe and the drachma will all the more refer to the heathen, that they cannot possibly apply to the Christian guilty of the sin for the sake of which they are wrested into a forced application to the Christian on the opposite side.
But, however, the majority of interpreters of the parables are deceived by the self-same result as is of very frequent occurrence in the case of embroidering garments with purple. When you think that you have judiciously harmonized the proportions of the hues, and believe yourself to have succeeded in skilfully giving vividness to their mutual combination; presently, when each body (of colour) and (the various) lights are fully developed, the convicted diversity will expose all the error. In the self-same darkness, accordingly, with regard to the parable of the two sons also, they are led by some figures (occurring in it), which harmonize in hue with the present (state of things), to wander out of the path of the true light of that comparison which the subject-matter of the parable presents. For they set down, as represented in the two sons, two peoples—the elder the Jewish, the younger the Christian: for they cannot in the sequel arrange for the Christian sinner, in the person of the younger son, to obtain pardon, unless in the person of the elder they first portray the Jewish. Now, if I shall succeed in showing that the Jewish fails to suit the comparison of the elder son, the consequence of course will be, that the Christian will not be admissible (as represented) by the joint figure of the younger son. For although the Jew withal be called “a son,” and an “elder one,” inasmuch as he had priority in adoption;[789] although, too, he envy the Christian the reconciliation of God the Father,—a point which the opposite side most eagerly catches at,—still it will be no speech of a Jew to the Father: “Behold, in how many years do I serve Thee, and Thy precept have I never transgressed.” For when has the Jew not been a transgressor of the law; hearing with the ear, and not hearing;[790] holding in hatred him who reproveth in the gates,[791] and in scorn holy speech?[792] So, too, it will be no speech of the Father to the Jew: “Thou art always with Me, and all Mine are thine.” For the Jews are pronounced “apostate sons, begotten indeed and raised on high, but who have not understood the Lord, and who have quite forsaken the Lord, and have provoked unto anger the Holy One of Israel.”[793] That all things, plainly, were conceded to the Jew, we shall admit; but he has likewise had every more savoury morsel torn from his throat,[794] not to say the very land of paternal promise. And accordingly the Jew at the present day, no less than the younger son, having squandered God’s substance, is a beggar in alien territory, serving even until now its princes, that is, the princes of this world.[795] Seek, therefore, the Christians some other as their brother; for the Jew the parable does not admit. Much more aptly would they have matched the Christian with the elder, and the Jew with the younger son, “according to the analogy of faith,”[796] if the order of each people as intimated from Rebecca’s womb[797] permitted the inversion: only that (in that case) the concluding paragraph would oppose them; for it will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel.[798] Thus, even if some (features in the parable) are favourable, yet by others of a contrary significance the thorough carrying out of this comparison is destroyed; although (albeit all points be capable of corresponding with mirror-like accuracy) there be one cardinal danger in interpretations—the danger lest the felicity of our comparisons be tempered with a different aim from that which the subject-matter of each particular parable has bidden us (temper it). For we remember (to have seen) actors withal, while accommodating allegorical gestures to their ditties, giving expression to such as are far different from the immediate plot, and scene, and character, and yet with the utmost congruity. But away with extraordinary ingenuity, for it has nothing to do with our subject. Thus heretics, too, apply the self-same parables where they list, and exclude them (in other cases)—not where they ought—with the utmost aptitude. Why the utmost aptitude? Because from the very beginning they have moulded together the very subject-matters of their doctrines in accordance with the opportune incidences of the parables. Loosed as they are from the constraints of the rule of truth, they have had leisure, of course, to search into and put together those things of which the parables seem (to be symbolical).
We, however, who do not make the parables the sources whence we devise our subject-matters, but the subject-matters the sources whence we interpret the parables, do not labour hard, either, to twist all things (into shape) in the exposition, while we take care to avoid all contradictions. Why “an hundred sheep?” and why, to be sure, “ten drachmas?” And what is that “besom?” Necessary it was that He who was desiring to express the extreme pleasure which the salvation of one sinner gives to God, should name some special quantity of a numerical whole from which to describe that “one” had perished. Necessary it was that the style of one engaged in searching for a “drachma” in a “house,” should be aptly fitted with the helpful accompaniment of a “besom” as well as of a “lamp.” For curious niceties of this kind not only render some things suspected, but, by the subtlety of forced explanations, generally lead away from the truth. There are, moreover, some points which are just simply introduced with a view to the structure and disposition and texture of the parable, in order that they may be worked up throughout to the end for which the typical example is being provided. Now, of course the (parable of) the two sons will point to the same end as (those of) the drachma and the ewe: for it has the self-same cause (to call it forth) as those to which it coheres, and the selfsame “muttering,” of course, of the Pharisees at the intercourse between the Lord and heathens. Or else, if any doubts that in the land of Judea, subjugated as it had been long since by the hand of Pompey and of Lucullus, the publicans were heathens, let him read Deuteronomy: “There shall be no tribute-weigher of the sons of Israel.”[799] Nor would the name of publicans have been so execrable in the eyes of the Lord, unless as being a “strange”[800] name,—a (name) of such as put up the pathways of the very sky, and earth, and sea, for sale. Moreover, when (the writer) adjoins “sinners” to “publicans,”[801] it does not follow that he shows them to have been Jews, albeit some may possibly have been so; but by placing on a par the one genus of heathens—some sinners by office, that is, publicans; some by nature, that is, not publicans—he has drawn a distinction between them. Besides, the Lord would not have been censured for partaking of food with Jews, but with heathens, from whose board the Jewish discipline excludes (its disciples).[802]
Now we must proceed, in the case of the prodigal son, to consider first that which is more useful; for no adjustment of examples, albeit in the most nicely-poised balance, shall be admitted if it shall prove to be most hurtful to salvation. But the whole system of salvation, as it is comprised in the maintenance of discipline, we see is being subverted by that interpretation which is affected by the opposite side. For if it is a Christian who, after wandering far from his Father, squanders, by living heathenishly, the “substance” received from God his Father,—(the substance), of course, of baptism—(the substance), of course, of the Holy Spirit, and (in consequence) of eternal hope; if, stripped of his mental “goods,” he has even handed his service over to the prince of the world[803]—who else but the devil?—and by him being appointed over the business of “feeding swine”—of tending unclean spirits, to wit—has recovered his senses so as to return to his Father,—the result will be, that, not adulterers and fornicators, but idolaters, and blasphemers, and renegades, and every class of apostates, will by this parable make satisfaction to the Father; and in this way (it may) rather (be said that) the whole “substance” of the sacrament is most truly wasted away. For who will fear to squander what he has the power of afterwards recovering? Who will be careful to preserve to perpetuity what he will be able to lose not to perpetuity? Security in sin is likewise an appetite for it. Therefore the apostate withal will recover his former “garment,” the robe of the Holy Spirit; and a renewal of the “ring,” the sign and seal of baptism; and Christ will again be “slaughtered;”[804] and he will recline on that couch from which such as are unworthily clad are wont to be lifted by the torturers, and cast away into darkness,[805]—much more such as have been stripped. It is therefore a further step if it is not expedient, (any more than reasonable), that the story of the prodigal son should apply to a Christian. Wherefore, if the image of a “son” is not entirely suitable to a Jew either, our interpretation shall be simply governed with an eye to the object the Lord had in view. The Lord had come, of course, to save that which “had perished;”[806] “a Physician” necessary to “the sick” “more than to the whole.”[807] This fact He was in the habit both of typifying in parables and preaching in direct statements. Who among men “perishes,” who falls from health, but he who knows not the Lord? Who is “safe and sound,” but he who knows the Lord? These two classes—“brothers” by birth—this parable also will signify. See whether the heathen have in God the Father the “substance” of origin, and wisdom, and natural power of Godward recognition; by means of which power the apostle withal notes that “in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom knew not God,”[808]—(wisdom) which, of course, it had received originally from God. This (“substance”), accordingly, he “squandered;” having been cast by his moral habits far from the Lord, amid the errors and allurements and appetites of the world,[809] where, compelled by hunger after truth,[810] he handed himself over to the prince of this age. He set him over “swine,” to feed that flock familiar to demons,[811] where he would not be master of a supply of vital food, and at the same time would see others (engaged) in a divine work, having abundance of heavenly bread. He remembers his Father, God; he returns to Him when he has been satisfied; he receives again the pristine “garment,”—the condition, to wit, which Adam by transgression had lost. The “ring” also he is then wont to receive for the first time, wherewith, after being interrogated,[812] he publicly seals the agreement of faith, and thus thenceforward feeds upon the “fatness” of the Lord’s body,—the Eucharist, to wit. This will be the prodigal son, who never in days bygone was thrifty; who was from the first prodigal, because not from the first a Christian. Him withal, returning from the world to the Father’s embraces, the Pharisees mourned over, in the persons of the “publicans and sinners.” And accordingly to this point alone the elder brother’s envy is adapted: not because the Jews were innocent, and obedient to God, but because they envied the nation salvation; being plainly they who ought to have been “ever with” the Father. And of course it is immediately over the first calling of the Christian that the Jew groans, not over his second restoration: for the former reflects its rays even upon the heathen; but the latter, which takes place in the churches, is not known even to the Jews. I think that I have advanced interpretations more consonant with the subject-matter of the parables, and the congruity of things, and the preservation of disciplines. But if the view with which the opposite party is eager to mould the ewe, and the drachma, and the voluptuousness of the son to the shape of the Christian sinner, is that they may endow adultery and fornication with (the gift of) repentance; it will be fitting either that all other crimes equally capital should be conceded remissible, or else that their peers, adultery and fornication, should be retained inconcessible.
But it is more (to the point) that it is not lawful to draw conclusions about anything else than the subject which was immediately in hand. In short, if it were lawful to transfer the parables to other ends (than they were originally intended for), it would be rather to martyrdom that we would direct the hope drawn from those now in question; for that is the only thing which, after all his substance has been squandered, will be able to restore the son; and will joyfully proclaim that the drachma has been found, albeit among all (rubbish) on a dungheap; and will carry back into the flock on the shoulders of the Lord Himself the ewe, fugitive though she have been over all that is rough and rugged. But we prefer, if it must be so, to be less wise in the Scriptures, than to be wise against them. We are as much bound to keep the sense of the Lord as His precept. Transgression in interpretation is not lighter than in conversation.
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