Sermons on the Song of Songs

Let us have the patience to investigate more closely still the privacy of this bed and this nocturnal hour, lest perchance some spiritual truth, which it would be well to bring to light, remains there as yet undiscovered. Well, then, if you will allow me to suppose that by the bed is designated human weakness, and by the darkness of night human ignorance, what can be more reasonable or more natural than that the Word, Who is the Power and the Wisdom of God, should be most earnestly sought as a divine remedy against both those evils inherent in our nature? For surely it is a most proper thing to oppose Power to weakness and Wisdom to ignorance. But lest any doubt should remain still in the minds of the more simple concerning the truth of this interpretation, let them hear what the Royal Prophet has to say on the same subject, “The Lord (doth) help him on his bed of sorrow: Thou hast turned all his couch in his sickness.” This relates only to the bed. With regard to the night of our ignorance, can anything be clearer than the words of the same Prophet, where he says in another psalm, “They have not known nor understood; they walk on in darkness”? There can be no doubt that he is alluding here to the spiritual ignorance of the whole human race, and in which we have all been born. It is the same ignorance as I think, which the blessed Apostle acknowledges himself to have been born in, and boasts of having been rescued from, when he says, speaking of the Father, “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness.” Hence in another place he writes, “We are not children of the night nor of darkness.” And to the faithful in general he says, “Walk then as children of the light.”