Sidenote: Heb. vi. 18.
Sidenote: Rom. iii. 4.
1. DOES God lie? Truly He lies not, because it is impossible for God
to lie. And further, does this impossibility arise from infirmity? No,
truly, for how can He be Almighty if He cannot do all things? What then
is impossible to Him? Not that which is difficult to His Power, but
what is contrary to His Nature. _It is impossible_, it is said, _for
Him to lie_. This impossibility comes not of infirmity, but of Power
and Majesty, for truth admits not of falsehood, nor God’s Power of the
weakness of error. Wherefore _let God be true and every man a liar_.
2. The truth therefore is always in Him; _He remains faithful_; change
or _deny Himself He cannot_. But if He deny that He is true, He lies,
but to lie belongs not to power but to weakness. Nor can He change, for
His nature admits not infirmity. This impossibility therefore comes of
His fulness, which cannot be diminished or increased, not of infirmity,
which, in that it increases itself, is weak. Whence we gather that this
impossibility on the part of God is indeed most powerful. For what can
be more powerful than to be ignorant of all infirmity?
Sidenote: 1 Cor. i. 25.
3. There is however another _weakness of God_ which _is stronger than
men_, and a _foolishness of God_ which _is wiser than men_, but this
has reference to the Cross, the former to His Godhead. If then His
weakness is strength, how can that which comes of His power be weak?
Let it therefore be an axiom with us that God lies not.
Sidenote: Deut. xviii. 10.
4. But there was no diviner of auguries in Israel according to the law
of God. How then was it that Balaam said that he was forbidden by the
oracle of God to go and curse the people of Israel, and yet he went,
and the Angel of the Lord who had forbidden his going, met him, and
stood in the way of the ass that carried him, and nevertheless the
Angel himself bid him go, only he must speak that which should be
put into his mouth? If there was to be no deceiver in Israel, how did
this oracle of God, declaring things for true, come to him who was a
deceiver? If he spoke as the oracle of God, whence did he derive the
grace of the Divine inspiration?
Sidenote: S. John xi. 50.
5. But you are not to wonder that the Lord should put into the mouth
of a diviner what he should speak, when you read in the Gospel that it
was put into the mouth even of the prince of the Synagogue, one of the
persecutors of Christ, that _it is expedient that one man should die
for the people_? Herein then is no merit of prophecy, but an assertion
of the truth; that by the testimony even of adversaries the truth might
be declared, so that the perfidy of unbelievers might be confuted by
the words even of their own diviners. Just so Abraham[234] the Chaldæan
is called to belief, that the superstition of the Chaldæans might be
put to silence. It is not therefore the merit of him who utters, but
rather the oracle of God Who calls, the grace of God Who reveals.
Sidenote: Numb. xxii. 12.
Sidenote: Ib. 19.
6. Now what was the guilt which Balaam incurred, but that he spoke one
thing, and designed another? For God requires a clean vessel, not one
defiled by uncleanness and pollution. Balaam therefore was tried, not
approved, for he was full of deceit and treachery. Again, when he first
enquired whether he should go to that vain people, and was forbidden,
he excused himself: afterwards, when more honourable messages were sent,
he who ought to have refused consent, seduced by ampler promises and
more abundant gifts, was led again to enquire of God, as if many gifts
could influence the mind of God.
Sidenote: Ib. 25.
7. Answer was made to him as to a covetous man, not as to one who
sought the truth, that so he might rather be deceived than rightly
informed. He set out, an Angel met him in a narrow place, and shewed
himself to the ass, but not to the diviner. To the former he revealed
himself, the latter he crushed; yet, that he might at length be
recognized by him, he opened his eyes also. He saw, but even yet he
did not believe the manifest oracle, and though his very eyes ought
to have convinced him, he answered confusedly and doubtingly.
Sidenote: Numb. xxii. 35.
Sidenote: Ib. xxiii. 8.
8. Then the Lord, being angry, said to him by the Angel, _Go with the
men, but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that shalt thou
speak_. As an empty instrument you shall give utterance to My words.
It is I Who will speak, not you; you will only echo what you hear and
do not understand. You will gain no advantage by going, because you
will return without either a reward of money or progress in grace.
Again, these are his first words, _How shall I curse whom God hath not
cursed?_ in order to shew that the benediction of the Hebrew people
depended not on his will but on the grace of God.
9. _From the top of the rocks_, he says, _I see him_; for I cannot
embrace within my ken this people, which shall dwell alone, marking
out their boundaries, not so much by the occupation of space as by
the abode of virtue, and extending them into eternal ages by the
distinctive peculiarity of their manners. For which of the bordering
nations shall be numbered with this one, which is raised above their
fellowship by its exalted righteousness? Who shall understand the
nature of its generation? Their bodies we indeed perceive to have been
compounded and fashioned of human seed, but their minds have sprung
from higher and wondrous seed-plots.
Sidenote: Ib. 10.
10. _Let my soul die with their souls_, die to this bodily life, that
with the souls of the just it may attain to the grace of that eternal
life. Herein even then was revealed the excellence of our heavenly
Sacrament and of holy Baptism, by the operation whereof men die to
original sin and to evil works; that being transformed by newness of
life into fellowship with the just they may rise again to live as do
the just. And what wonder is it that it should be so, when men die to
sin in order to live to God?
Sidenote: Ib. 11.
Sidenote: 1 Cor. xiii. 1.
Sidenote: Numb. xxiii. 21.
11. Balak hearing this, was wroth and said, ‘I brought thee to curse
and thou blessest.’ He answered, ‘I am reproved for that of which I am
not conscious; for I speak nothing of my own, but utter sounds like _a
tinkling cymbal_.’ Again, being carried to a second and a third place,
although he wished to curse, he blessed; _He hath not beheld iniquity
in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel; the Lord his God
is with him_. And afterwards he commands seven altars and sacrifices
to be prepared. He ought, indeed, to have departed, but his weak mind
and mutability of purpose led him to believe that he could turn aside
the Will of God: he himself, the while, being in a trance, desired one
thing but spoke another.
Sidenote: Ib. xxiv. 5, 6.
Sidenote: v. 19.
Sidenote: v. 8.
Sidenote: v. 7.
Sidenote: v. 9.
Sidenote: Heb. iv. 12.
12. _How goodly_, said he, _are thy tents_, O host of the Hebrews! _As
the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side and
as cedar trees beside the waters._ A man shall come out of Jacob, and
shall subdue many nations, and his kingdom shall be exalted on high:
in the earth also he shall extend his dominion in Egypt. _Blessed is
he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee._ Now to whom
did he point but to the people of Christ? God blesses him into whose
heart the Word of God enters, _even to the dividing asunder of the
soul, and of the joints and marrow_; in him Balaam would have found the
grace of the Lord if he had acted according to the intent and purpose
of his heart. But since an evil mind is confuted by its own counsels,
and the secrets of the soul are betrayed by events, his mind was thus
discovered by the treachery which followed.
13. Therefore also he met with a worthy reward of his malice. For
finding while in his trance that he could not curse, he gives his
advice to the king, saying, ‘Such is the utterance of what God has
commanded, hear now my counsel against the oracles of God. This people
is just, it has the protection of God: since it has not given itself to
divinations and auguries, but to the eternal God above; and therefore
its faith excels that of others. But sometimes even faithful minds fall
through corporeal charms and the blandishments of beauty. Numerous are
your women, and many of them not uncomely; now the male sex is in no
respect more prone to fall than through the frailty with which it is
captivated by female beauty, particularly if their minds are excited
by frequent converse, and thus become inflamed as by a torch; if,
while they drink in the hope of enjoying, their passions are kept in
suspense. Let your women therefore cast their hooks by their converse,
let them offer no obstacles to a first access, but roam abroad and
spread themselves through the camp, exposed to view and affable of
speech. Let them so artfully deal with these men as not to admit them
to carnal intercourse until they shall have proved the strength of
their love by becoming participators in sacrilege. For they may thus be
deprived of the protection of heaven, if they shall themselves depart
by sacrilege from the Lord their God.’
Sidenote: Rev. ii. 14, 15.
14. Unrighteous therefore, as the counsellor of fornication and
sacrilege, was Balaam; for thus it is plainly written in the Apocalypse
of John the Evangelist, when the Lord Jesus says to the Angel of
the Church of Pergamos; _Thou hast there them that hold the doctrine
of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the
children of Israel, to eat things sacrified unto idols, and to commit
fornication; so hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans_. Wherefore it appears that from hence has flowed the
impiety of the Manichees, like that of Manasseh, who mingle and unite
sacrilege with impurity.
Sidenote: Num. xxv. 11.
15. Neither, then, was God unjust, nor His purpose mutable; for He
detected Balaam’s mind and the secrets of his heart, and He therefore
tried him as a diviner, He did not choose him as a prophet. Surely
he ought to have been converted if it were only by the grace of such
great oracles and the sublimity of his revelations, but his mind, full
of iniquity, brought forth words but did not yield belief, seeking
to frustrate by its counsels that event which it had predicted. And
since he could not defeat the prophecy, he suggested deceitful counsels
whereby the fickle people of the Jews were tempted but not overcome;
for by the righteousness of one priest all the counsel of this wicked
man was overthrown, and that the host of our fathers could be delivered
by one man was much more wonderful than that it could be deceived by
one man.
Sidenote: Gen. xxiv. 63. to meditate E.V.
16. This little gift I have sent to your Holiness, because you wish
me to compile somewhat from the interpretations of the ancient authors.
But I had undertaken to write letters in a familiar style, savouring
of the tone of thought of our fathers; and should you relish their
flavour I shall be emboldened to send you of the same kind hereafter.
For I prefer conversing garrulously with you like an old man concerning
heavenly things, which is called in Greek ἀδολεσχῆσαι: _Isaac went
forth into the field_, ἀδολεσχῆσαι, seeing in his mind, on the approach
of Rebecca, the mysteries of the Church which was to come: this
conversing with you with the words of an old man, that I may not
seem to have abandoned my art, I prefer, I say, to uttering in a more
vehement style things no longer adapted to our studies or strength.
Farewell: love me, for I also love you.
LETTER LI.
A.D. 390.
THIS is the famous Letter addressed by S. Ambrose to Theodosius
after the massacre at Thessalonica. The details of that
occurrence are too familiar to need repeating here. In this
Letter S. Ambrose explains to the Emperor why he had avoided
meeting him on his return to Milan, and urges him with
respectful and most affectionate, but firm remonstrance, to
follow David in penitence as he had followed him in crime, and
tells him that God Himself had in a vision forbidden him to
offer the Sacrifice of the Eucharist in his behalf while he
remained impenitent. The Letter, far from deserving Gibbon’s
scornful title of ‘a miserable rhapsody on a noble subject,’
may rather be regarded as a model of dignified remonstrance,
well befitting an eminent prelate addressing a great earthly
Sovereign.