Sermons on the Song of Songs

How incongruous, my brethren, is such a combination of simplicity and duplicity! How unbecoming to raise so bad a superstructure upon a foundation so excellent! It was with duplicity of this kind that the serpent covered himself of old, when, in order to deceive our first parents, he offered himself as a counsellor and feigned to be their friend. It was to the same the two dwellers in paradise had recourse when, having been seduced by the tempter, they endeavoured to conceal their now shameful nakedness amidst the shadow of the trees, and with garments of fig-leaves and words of excuse. How universally thenceforth and all down through the centuries has the poison of hypocrisy, inherited from them, infected their posterity! Can you show me one amongst the children of Adam who, I do not say is willing, but can even endure, to be known for what he is? Nevertheless along with this hereditary duplicity, her natural simplicity persists in every soul, so that the union of opposite properties makes the confusion worse confounded. The soul’s immortality likewise endures, but dimmed and darkened by the invading dense cloud of temporal death. For although she is not herself deprived of the gift of perennial life, she yet has not sufficient power to vindicate the same gift for her body. And not only that, but she has not even preserved her own spritual life. “The soul that sinneth the same shall die,” as the Prophet Ezechiel speaks. Does it not seem to you, my brethren, that the immortality, such as it is, which remains with her, is rendered very obscure and miserable by the invasion of this twofold death? Moreover, her desire for the things of earth, which are all only capable of destroying her, increases her darkness to such an extent that in the soul thus living nothing appears visible on any side save the pallid countenance, so to speak, and the lugubrious image of death. Wherefore, then, does not she that is immortal, seek after those things which are likewise immortal and eternal, so that she may show herself to be what she really is, and may live according as she has been made? But no, she longs for and relishes only what is contrary to her nature; and thus, by her unworthy conversation conforming herself to mortal creatures, she darkens the lustre of her immortality with the pitchy hue, as it were, of death-bearing conduct. For surely it is to be expected that an immortal being, by loving things mortal, should become like unto these and unlike herself. “He that toucheth pitch,” says the Wise Man, “shall be defiled with it.” The soul that takes delight in what is mortal puts on the semblance of mortality. Yet by assuming the likeness of death she does not put off but merely discolours the robe of her immortality.

Consider the case of Eve, how her immortal soul, through an inordinate affection for mortal objects, caused the glory of her immortality to be overlaid and obscured by the duskiness of a supervening liability to death. For since she was immortal, why did she not rather despise all that was mortal and transitory, and content herself with things like herself, things immortal and eternal? But, as we read, “The woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold.” It appertains not to thee, O woman, neither that goodness, nor that fairness, nor that delightfulness. Or if it does appertain to thee according to thy material part, it appertains not to thee alone, but is equally the property of all the beasts of the earth. That which is thine, which properly belongs to thee, comes from another source and has another nature; for it is from eternity and is itself eternal. Wherefore wouldst thou impress upon thy soul another form, especially an alien form, nay, what is more a deformity than a form? For the pleasure which the soul feels in acquiring temporal goods is accompanied with the fear of losing them; and this fear is a kind of colour, because it stains and so disguises the liberty of her will, and makes it look unlike itself. How much more worthy of her origin would it have been to desire nothing which could become a cause of uneasiness to her, that so she might defend her inborn freedom against this servile fear, and preserve it in all its natural strength and beauty! But alas! it has not been so. The finest colour has lost its brilliancy. And so thou, poor Eve, fleest away and concealest thyself; thou hearest the voice of God and dost hide thyself. Why is this unless because thou art now afraid of Him Whom erstwhile Thou didst love, and because the form of the slave has superseded that of the free-born child?

But that voluntary necessity also and that “contradicting law” imposed on the bodily members (whereof I treated in my last discourse) militate against the same liberty, and by means of his own will reduce to servitude, whilst alluring him, man, a creature naturally free, “filling his face with shame”; so that even in spite of himself he has to serve with his flesh the “law of sin.” Therefore, because he neglected to defend the nobility of his nature by probity of life, it has come to pass by the just judgment of his Creator, not indeed that he is deprived of his native liberty, but that he is “clothed over with his confusion as with a double cloak.” Very appropriate is this image of a double cloak. For man wears now a double mantle, so to speak, because whilst his freedom still remains on account of his will, his slavish manner of life is a proof of his servitude. And such is the case, as you may notice, not alone with the soul’s liberty, but also with her simplicity and with her immortality. In fact, if you examine the matter closely, it will appear to you that there is nothing at all in her which is not similarly covered with this double cloak of likeness and unlikeness to God. Have you not there a double cloak where duplicity exists, not as a natural quality, but as something superadded to a native simplicity, fastened and sewed on to it, as it were, with the needle of sin; and where in the same manner death is combined with immortality, and necessity with freedom? For simplicity of essence is not excluded by duplicity of heart, nor immortality of nature by either the voluntary death of sin or the involuntary death of the body, nor liberty of will by the constraint of a willing servitude. Accordingly, accidental evil supervening on the good of nature is not substituted for, but rather coexists with that good: it does not destroy but dishonours it; it confounds without expelling it. Hence it is that the soul is made unlike to God, aye, and made unlike to herself also; hence she “is compared to senseless beasts and is become like to them”; hence it is said of her that she “hath changed her glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass”; hence men, like foxes, have formed for themselves cunning refuges of craft and duplicity, and because they have lowered themselves to the level of foxes, “they shall be the portions of foxes”; hence, according to the words of Solomon, “The death of man and of beast is one.” Why should he not resemble them in his death, if he has resembled them in his mode of life? In the manner of the beast he bends down to the earth, therefore he shall leave the earth also in the manner of the beast. And listen to something more. What wonder is it that man’s end should be found similar to the brute’s, since there has been the same similarity in their beginnings? For that intemperate heat of passion and that excess of violent pain which attend our origin and our entrance into this world, whence come they except from our likeness to the beast? And thus, in his conception and in his birth, in his life and in his death, man “is compared to senseless beasts and is become like them.”