Sermons on the Song of Songs

But both of these heights were levelled down. Man however received the more merciful judgment, because his Judge was He Who “ordereth all things in measure, and number, and weight.” For whereas the angel was punished and condemned in His fury (furore), man had experience only of His anger (ira), escaping His fury altogether, according to what we read in the Prophet Habacuc, where he says, speaking to the Lord, “When Thou art angry Thou wilt remember mercy.” Therefore, even unto this day, the seed of Adam are children, not of fury, but only of wrath. Were I not generated a child of wrath I should not need to be regenerated. But had I been generated a child of fury, regeneration would not have been granted me, or, if granted, would not have profited me. Do you wish, my brethren, to behold a child of fury? If you “saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven,” that is to say, cast headlong down by the force of the divine fury, then you would understand something of the fury of the Lord. He was not then “mindful of His mercy.” For it is only when He is angry that He will “remember mercy,” not when His wrath has been provoked to fury. Woe to the children of infidelity, even to such as belong to Adam’s race, who, born children of wrath, have by their diabolical obstinacy and to their own destruction, converted anger into fury, and the rod of discipline into the bludgeon, into the sledge-hammer of vengeance. As the Apostle says, they art “treasuring up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath.” Now, wrath which, is treasured up and accumulated, what is it but fury? They have committed the sin of the devil, and shall be struck down by the same doom as the devil. Woe also, yet a milder woe, to certain of the sons of wrath, who, after being born children of wrath, have not lived long enough to be reborn children of grace. For dying soon after their birth, they must now remain for ever children of wrath. I say children of wrath, not children of fury, because as it is most pious to believe, so also does our natural human sympathy tearfully anticipate that their sufferings are very light (mitissimae), as inflicted for no personal offence, but for a fault entirely inherited from others.

The devil therefore, was judged in fury, because his “iniquity was found unto hatred.” Man’s iniquity, on the contrary, was only found unto wrath, and hence he is chastised only in wrath. Thus every kind of self-exaltation has been brought low, as well the pride that inflates as the ambition which lifts up only in order to hurl down,—brought low by the Father, Who is zealous for the prerogatives of His Son. For both angel and man offered injury to the Son, the former by an usurpation of power against Him Who is the Power of God, the latter by presuming to seek for knowledge elsewhere than from Him Who is the Wisdom of God. “O Lord, who is like to Thee?” Surely none but He Who is the Brightness of Thy Glory and the Figure of Thy Substance: none surely but He Who is Thine own Image. He alone is in the Form of Thy Divinity. He alone “thought it not robbery to be equal to” Thee. How indeed could He be otherwise than equal to Thee, since Thou and He are but One? He is seated, not at Thy Feet, but at Thy Right Hand. And how can any creature have the presumption to usurp the place of Thine Only-Begotten? Let the invader be hurled down! He has set his seat on high: let his “chair of pestilence” be overturned! Again, who is he that “teacheth man knowledge”? Is it not Thou, O “Key of David,” Who openest to whom Thou pleasest, and shuttest against whom Thou pleasest? And without the Key, how could anyone dare attempt to enter, rather say, to intrude into the divine treasury of wisdom and knowledge? “He that entereth not by the door, the same is a thief and a robber.” Peter therefore shall enter, because Peter has received the keys. Yet not alone shall he enter. For, if he so please, he may introduce me with him, as he may also exclude another, according to his pleasure, by the wisdom and authority bestowed upon him from above.

And what are these keys, my brethren? They are the power of opening, and the power of shutting, and the power of discriminating between those who are to be admitted and those who are to be excluded. It is not in the serpent that the “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are laid up, but in Christ. Therefore the serpent could not communicate the wisdom which he did not himself possess; but it was truly communicated by Him by Whom it was truly possessed. Neither was the serpent possessed of power, since he had not received it; but Peter was a real holder of power, because he had really received it. It was given by Christ and given to Peter. Nor was the Apostle inflated with his knowledge or elated with his power. Why so? Because for neither of these endowments did he “exalt himself against the knowledge of God,” since he had sought to obtain neither of them without the knowledge of God, very different from him, who “in His sight hath done deceitfully, that his iniquity might be found unto hatred.” How, I ask, could Peter have obtained anything without the knowledge of God, since he distinctly tells us that he is an apostle “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”? Thus much in connexion with that zeal which I have represented God as exercising against the two prevaricators, the angel and man; for in both He found iniquity. And I have endeavoured to show how, in His wrath or in His fury, He has “pulled down every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God.”