The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^7. Lastly, there follows the reason why I say this: “for You are my patience”. Now if He is patience rightly, He is that also which follows, “O Lord, my hope from my youth.” My patience, because my hope: or rather my hope, because my patience. “Tribulation,” says the Apostle, “works patience, patience probation, but probation hope, but hope confounds not.” With reason in You I have hoped, O Lord, I shall not be confounded for everlasting. “O Lord, my hope from my youth.” From your youth is God your hope? Is He not also from your boyhood, and from your infancy? Certainly, says he. For see what follows, that you may not think that I have said this, “my hope from my youth,” as if God noways profited mine infancy or my boyhood; hear what follows: “In You I have been strengthened from the womb.” Hear yet: “From the belly of my mother You are my Protector”. Why then, “from my youth,” except it was the period from which I began to hope in You? For before in You I was not hoping, though You were my Protector, that led me safe unto the time, when I learned to hope in You. But from my youth I began in You to hope, from the time when You armed me against the Devil, so that in the girding of Your host being armed with Your faith, love, hope, and the rest of Your gifts, I waged conflict against Your invisible enemies, and heard from the Apostle, “There is not for us a wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and powers,” etc. There a young man it is that does fight against these things: but though he be a young man, he falls, unless He be the hope of Him to whom he cries, “O Lord, my hope from my youth.” “In You is my singing always.” Is it only from the time when I began to hope in You until now? Nay, but “alway.” What is, “alway”? Not only in the time of faith, but also in the time of sight. For now, “So long as we are in the body we are absent from the Lord: for by faith we walk, not by sight:” there will be a time when we shall see that which being not seen we believe: but when that has been seen which we believe, we shall rejoice: but when that has been seen which they believed not, ungodly men shall be confounded. Then will come the substance whereof there is now the hope. But, “Hope which is seen is not hope. But if that which we see not we hope for, through patience we wait for it.” Now then you groan, now unto a place of refuge you run, in order that you may be saved; now being in infirmity you entreat the Physician: what, when you shall have received perfect soundness also, what when you shall have been made “equal to the Angels of God,” will you then perchance forget that grace, whereby you have been delivered? Far be it.

8. “As it were a monster I have become unto many”. Here in time of hope, in time of groaning, in time of humiliation, in time of sorrow, in time of infirmity, in time of the voice from the fetters— here then what? “As it were a monster I have become unto many.” Why, “As it were a monster”? Why do they insult me that think me a monster? Because I believe that which I see not. For they being happy in those things which they see, exult in drink, in wantonness, in chamberings, in covetousness, in riches, in robberies, in secular dignities, in the whitening of a mud wall, in these things they exult: but I walk in a different way, contemning those things which are present, and fearing even the prosperous things of the world, and secure in no other thing but the promises of God. And they, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” What do you say? Repeat it: “let us eat,” he says, “and drink.” Come now, what have you said afterwards? “for tomorrow we die.” You have terrified, not led me astray. Certainly by the very thing which you have said afterwards, you have stricken me with fear to consent with you. “For tomorrow we die,” you have said: and there has preceded, “Let us eat and drink.” For when you had said, “Let us eat and drink;” you added, “for tomorrow we die.” Hear the other side from me, “Yea let us fast and pray, 'for tomorrow we die.'” I keeping this way, strait and narrow, “as it were a monster have become unto many: but You are a strong helper.” Be with me, O Lord Jesus, to say to me, faint not in the narrow way, I first have gone along it, I am the way itself, I lead, in Myself I lead, unto Myself I lead home. Therefore though “a monster I have become unto many;” nevertheless I will not fear, for “You are a strong Helper.”

9. “Let my mouth be fulfilled with praise, that with hymn I may tell of Your glory, all the day long Your magnificence”. What is “all the day long”? Without intermission. In prosperity, because You comfort: in adversity, because You correct: before I was in being, because You made; when I was in being, because You gave health: when I had sinned, because You forgave; when I was converted, because You helped; when I had persevered, because You crowned.