The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^3. Let us hear, therefore, what follows: “When Saul sent and guarded his house in order that he might kill him.” This though not to the Cross of the Lord, yet to the Passion of the Lord does belong. For Crucified was Christ, and dead, and buried. That sepulchre was therefore as it were the house: to guard which the government of the Jews sent, when guards were set to the sepulchre of Christ. There is indeed a story in the Scripture of the Reigns, of the occasion when Saul sent to guard the house in order that he might kill David....But in like manner as Saul effected not his purpose of slaying David: so this could not the government of the Jews effect, that the testimony of guards sleeping should avail more than that of Apostles watching. For what were the guards instructed to say? We give to you, they say, as much money as you please; and say ye, that while you were sleeping there came His disciples, and took Him away. Behold what sort of witnesses of falsehood against truth and the Resurrection of Christ, His enemies, through Saul figured, did produce. Enquire, O unbelief, of sleeping witnesses, let them reply to you of what was done in the tomb. Who, if they were sleeping, whence knew it? If watching, wherefore detained they not the thieves? Let him say therefore what follows.

4. “Deliver me from mine enemies, my God, and from men rising up upon me, redeem Thou me”. There has been done this thing in the flesh of Christ, it is being done in us also. For our enemies, to wit the devil and his angels, cease not to rise up upon us every day, and to wish to make sport of our weakness and our frailness, by deceptions, by suggestions, by temptations, and by snares of whatsoever sort to entangle us, while on earth we are still living. But let our voice watch unto God, and cry out in the members of Christ, under the Head that is in heaven, “Deliver me from mine enemies, my God, and from men rising up upon me, redeem Thou me.”

5. “Deliver me from men working iniquity, and from men of bloods, save Thou me”. They indeed were men of bloods, who slew the Just One, in whom no guilt they found: they were men of bloods, because when the foreigner washed his hands, and would have let go Christ, they cried, “Crucify, Crucify:” they were men of bloods, on whom when there was being charged the crime of the blood of Christ, they made answer, giving it to their posterity to drink, “His blood be upon us and upon our sons.” But neither against His Body did men of bloods cease to rise up; for even after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the Church suffered persecutions, and she indeed first that grew out of the Jewish people, of which also our Apostles were. There at first Stephen was stoned, and received that of which he had his name. For Stephanus does signify a crown. Lowly stoned but highly crowned. Secondly, among the Gentiles rose up kingdoms of Gentiles, before that in them was fulfilled that which had been foretold, “There shall adore Him all the kings of the earth, all nations shall serve Him:” and there roared the fierceness of that kingdom against the witnesses of Christ: there was shed largely and frequently the blood of Martyrs: wherewith when it had been shed, being as it were sown, the field of the Church more productively put forth, and filled the whole world as we now behold. From these therefore, men of bloods, is delivered Christ, not only Head, but also Body. From men of bloods is delivered Christ, both from them that have been, and from them that are, and from them that are to be; there is delivered Christ, both He that has gone before, and He that is, and He that is to come. For Christ is the whole Body of Christ; and whatsoever good Christians that now are, and that have been before us, and that after us are to be, are an whole Christ, who is delivered from men of bloods; nor is this voice void, “And from men of bloods save Thou me.”

6. “For behold they have hunted my soul....There have rushed upon me strong men”. We must not however pass on from these strong men: diligently we must trace who are the strong men rising up. Strong men, upon whom but upon weak men, upon powerless men, upon men not strong? And praised nevertheless are the weak men, and condemned are the strong men. If it would be perceived who are strong men, at first the devil himself the Lord has called a strong man: “No one,” He says, “is able to go into the house of a strong man, and to carry off his vessels, unless first he shall have bound the strong man.” He has bound therefore the strong man with the chains of His dominion: and his vessels He has carried off, and His own vessels has made them. For all unrighteous men were vessels of the devil....But there are among mankind certain strong men of a blameable and damnable strength, that are confident indeed, but on temporal felicity. That man does not seem to you to have been strong, of whom now from the Gospel has been read: how his estate brought forth abundance of fruits, and he being troubled, hit upon the design of rebuilding, so that, having pulled down his old barns, he should construct new ones more capacious, and, these having been finished, should say to his soul, “You have many good things, soul, feast, be merry, be filled.”...There are also other men strong, not because of riches, not because of the powers of the body, not because of any temporally pre-eminent power of station, but relying on their righteousness. This sort of strong men must be guarded against, feared, repulsed, not imitated: of men relying, I say, not on body, not on means, not on descent, not on honour; for all such things who would not see to be temporal, fleeting, falling, flying? But relying on their own righteousness....“Wherefore,” say they, does your Master eat with publicans and sinners? O you strong men, to whom a Physician is not needful! This strength to soundness belongs not, but to insanity. For even than men frenzied nothing can be stronger, more mighty they are than whole men: but by how much greater their powers are, by so much nearer is their death. May God therefore turn away from our imitation these strong men....The same are therefore the strong men, that assailed Christ, commending their own justice. Hear ye these strong men: when certain men of Jerusalem were speaking, having been sent by them to take Christ, and not daring to take Him (because when he would, then was He taken, that truly was strong): Why therefore, say they, “could ye not take Him?” And they made answer, “No one of men did ever so speak as He.” And these strong men, “Hath by any means any one of the Pharisees believed on Him, or any one of the Scribes, but this people knowing not the Law?” They preferred themselves to the sick multitude, that was running to the Physician: whence but because they were themselves strong? And what is worse, by their strength, all the multitude also they brought over unto themselves, and slew the Physician of all....