The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^14. But do those same aliens indeed serve them who are called their own? Hear in what they serve them, observe how they are ridiculed: why has he said, “to strangers”? Because they can do them no good. Nevertheless, wherein do they seem to themselves to do good? “And their tombs shall be their house for ever”. Now because these tombs are erected, the tombs are a house. For often you hear a rich man saying, I have a house of marble which I must quit, and I think not for myself of an eternal house, where I shall always be. When he thinks to make for himself a monument of marble or of sculpture, he is deeming as it were of an eternal house: as if therein this rich man would abide! If he would abide there, he would not burn in hell. We must consider that the place where the spirit of an evil doer abides, is not where the mortal body is laid: but “their tombs shall be their house for ever. Their dwelling places are from generation to generation.” “Dwelling places” are wherein they abode for a season: “house” is wherein they will abide as it were for ever, that is to say, their tombs. Thus they leave their dwelling places, where they abode while they lived, to their families, and they pass as it were to everlasting houses, to their tombs. What profit to them are “their dwelling places, from generation to generation”? Now suppose a generation and generation are sons, grandsons there will be, and great grandsons; what do their dwelling places, what do they profit them? What? Hear: “they shall invoke their names in their lands.” What is this? They shall take bread and wine to their tombs, and there they shall invoke the names of the dead. Do you consider how loudly was invoked the name of the rich man after his death, when men drank them drunk at his monument, and there came down not one drop upon his own burning tongue? Men minister to their own belly, not to the ghosts of their friends. The souls of the dead nothing does reach, but what they have done of themselves while alive: but if they have done nought of themselves while alive, nothing does reach them dead. But what do the survivors? They will but “invoke their names in their lands.”

15. “And man though he was in honour perceived not, he was compared to the beasts without sense, and was made like to them”....They ought, on the contrary, to have made ready for themselves an eternal house in good works, to have made ready for themselves everlasting life, to have sent before them expenditure, to have followed their works, to have ministered to a needy companion, to have given to him with whom they were walking, not to have despised Christ covered with sores before their gate, who has said, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me.” However, “man being in honour has not understood.” What is, “being in honour”? Being made after the image and likeness of God, man is preferred to beasts. For God has not so made man as He made a beast: but God has made man for beasts to minister to: is it to his strength then, and not to his understanding? Nay. But he “understood not;” and he who was made after the image of God, “is compared to the beasts without sense, and is made like them.” Whence it is said elsewhere, “Be not like to horse and mule, in which there is no understanding.”

16. “This their own way is an offense to them”. Be it an offense to them, not to you. But when will it be so to you too? If you think such men to be blessed. If you perceive that they be not blessed, their own way will be an offense to themselves; not to Christ, not to His Body, not to His members. “And afterwards they shall bless with their mouth.” What means, “Afterwards they shall bless with their mouth”? Though they have become such, that they seek nothing but temporal goods, yet they become hypocrites: and when they bless God, with lips they bless, and not with heart. Christians like these, when to them eternal life is commended, and they are told, that in the name of Christ they ought to be despisers of riches, do make grimaces in their hearts: and if they dare not do it with open face, lest they blush, or lest they should be rebuked by men, yet they do it in heart, and scorn; and there remains in their mouth blessing, and in their heart cursing.

The Second Part.

1. “Like sheep laid in hell, death is their shepherd”. Whose? Of those whose way is a stumbling-block to themselves. Whose? Of those who mind only things present, while they think not of things future: of those who think not of any life, but of that which must be called death. Not without cause, then, like sheep in hell, have they death to their shepherd. What means, “they have death to their shepherd”? For is death either some thing or some power? Yea, death is either the separation of the soul from the body, or a separation of the soul from God, and that indeed which men fear is the separation of the soul from the body: but the real death, which men do not fear, is the separation of the soul from God. And ofttimes when men fear that which does separate the soul from the body, they fall into that wherein the soul is separated from God. This then is death. But how is “death their shepherd”? If Christ is life, the devil is death. But we read in many places in Scripture, how that Christ is life. But the devil is death, not because he is himself death, but because through him is death. For whether that (death) wherein Adam fell was given man to drink by the persuasion of him: or whether that wherein the soul is separated from the body, still they have him for the author thereof, who first falling through pride envied him who stood, and overthrew him who stood with an invisible death, in order that he might have to pay the visible death. They who belong to him have death to their shepherd: but we who think of future immortality, and not without reason do wear the sign of the Cross of Christ on the forehead, have no shepherd but life. Of unbelievers death is the shepherd, of believers life is the shepherd. If then in hell are the sheep, whose shepherd is death, in heaven are the sheep, whose shepherd is life. What then? Are we now in heaven? In heaven we are by faith. For if not in heaven, where is the “Lift up your heart”? If not in heaven, whence with the Apostle Paul, “For our conversation is in heaven”? In body we walk on earth, in heart we dwell in heaven. We dwell there, if there we send anything which holds us there. For no one dwells in heart, save where thought is: but there his thought is, where his treasure is. He has treasured on earth, his heart does not withdraw from earth: he has treasured in heaven, his heart from heaven does not come down: for the Lord says plainly, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”