no portion, nor extension, nor any empty name spiritual things I am dull, as Thy Only-begotdevised to suit some theory of Thy mode of ten says, Marvel not that I said unto thee, action. He is the Son, a Son born of Thee, ye must be born anew. The Spirit breathes God the Father, Himself true God, begotten where it will, and thou hearest the voice of it; by Thee in the unity of Thy nature, and but dost not know whence it comes or whither meet to be acknowledged after Thee, and it goes. So is every one who is born of water yet with Thee, since Thou art the eternal and of the Holy Spirit 3. Though I hold a beAuthor of His eternal origin. For since lief in my regeneration, I hold it in ignorance; He is from Thee, He is second to Thee; I possess the reality, though I comprehend it yet since He is Thine, Thou art not to be not. For my own consciousness had no part separated from Him. For we must never as in causing this new birth, which is manifest sert that Thou didst once exist without Thy in its effects. Moreover the Spirit has no Son, lest we should be reproaching Thee limits; He speaks when He will, and what He either with imperfection, as then unable to will, and where He will. Since, then, the generate, or with superfluousness after the cause of His coming and going is unknown, generation. And so the exact meaning for though the watcher is conscious of the fact, us of the eternal generation is that we know shall I count the nature of the Spirit among Thee to be the eternal Father of Thy Only- created things, and limit Him by fixing the begotten Son, Who was born of Thee before time of His origin? Thy servant John says, times eternal.

indeed, that all things were made through the 55. But, for my part, I cannot be content Son 4, Who as God the Word was in the beby the service of my faith and voice, to deny ginning, O God, with Thee. Again, Paul rethat my Lord and my God, Thy Only-begotten, counts all things as created in Him, in heaven Jesus Christ, is a creature; I must also deny and on earth, visible and invisible 5. And, that this name of 'creature' belongs to Thy while he declared that everything was created Holy Spirit, seeing that He proceeds from in Christ and through Christ, he thought, with Thee and is sent through Him, so great is respect to the Holy Spirit, that the description my reverence for everything that is Thine. was sufficient, when he called Him Thy Spirit. Nor, because I know that Thou alone art With these men, peculiarly Thine elect, I will unborn and that the Only-begotten is born of think in these matters; just as, after their Thee, will I refuse to say that the Holy Spirit example, I will say nothing beyond my comwas begotten, or assert that He was ever prehension about Thy Only-begotten, but created. I fear the blasphemies which would simply declare that He was born, so also after be insinuated against Thee by such use of this their example I will not trespass beyond that title 'creature,' which I share with the other which human intellect can know about Thy beings brought into being by Thee. Thy Holy Spirit, but simply declare that He is Holy Spirit, as the Apostle says, searches and Thy Spirit. May my lot be no useless strife knows Thy deep things, and as Intercessor of words, but the unwavering confession of for me speaks to Thee words I could not an unhesitating faith! utter; and shall I express or rather dishonour, 57. Keep, I pray Thee, this my pious faith by the title creature,' the power of His na- undefiled, and even till my spirit departs, ture, which subsists eternally, derived from grant that this may be the utterance of my Thee through Thine Only-begotten? Nothing, convictions: so that I may ever hold fast except what belongs to Thee, penetrates into that which I professed in the creed of my Thee; nor can the agency of a power foreign regeneration, when I was baptized in the and strange to Thee measure the depth of Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thy boundless majesty. To Thee belongs Let me, in short, adore Thee our Father, whatever enters into Thee; nor is anything and Thy Son together with Thee; let me strange to Thee, which dwells in Thee through win the favour of Thy Holy Spirit, Who is its searching power. from Thee, through Thy Only-begotten. For 56. But I cannot describe Him, Whose I have a convincing Witness to my faith, Who pleas for me I cannot describe. As in the revelation that Thy Only-begotten was born of Thee before times eternal, when we cease to struggle with ambiguities of language and difficulties of thought, the one certainty of His birth remains; so I hold fast in my consciousness the truth that Thy Holy Spirit is from Thee and through Him, although I cannot by my intellect comprehend it. For in Thy

says, Father, all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine, even my Lord Jesus Christ, abiding in Thee, and from Thee, and with Thee, for ever God: Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

3 St. John iii. 7, 8.

4 Ib. i. 1, 3. 6 St. John xvii. 10.

5 Col. i. 16.

HOMILIES ON PSALMS I., LIII., CXXX.

SOME account of St. Hilary's Homilies on the Psalms has already been given in the Introduction to this volume, pp. xl.-xlv. A few words remain to be said concerning his principle of exposition. This may be gathered from his own statement in the fifth section of the Instructio Psalmorum, the discourse preliminary to the Homilies :—‘There is no doubt that the language of the Psalms must be interpreted by the light of the teaching of the Gospel. Thus, whoever he be by whose mouth the Spirit of prophecy has spoken, the whole purpose of his words is our instruction concerning the' glory and power of the coming, the Incarnation, the Passion, the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of our resurrection. Moreover, all the prophecies are shut and sealed to worldly sense and pagan wisdom, as Isaiah says, And all these words shall be unto you as the sayings of this book which is sealed1.... The whole is a texture woven of allegorical and typical meanings, whereby are spread before our view all the mysteries of the Only-begotten Son of God, Who was to be born in the body, to suffer, to die, to rise again, to reign for ever with those who share His glory because they believed on Him, to be the Judge of the rest of mankind.' It is true that Hilary from time to time discriminates, and sometimes very shrewdly, between passages which must, and others which must not, be thus interpreted, but for the most part the commentary is theological and therefore mystical. The Psalter is not used for the establishment of doctrine. No position for which Hilary had not another and an independent defence is maintained on the strength of an allegorical explanation, and no deductions are drawn from such allegories. They are simply used for the cumulative confirmation of truth otherwise revealed. The result is a commentary much more illustrative of Hilary's own thought than of that of the writers of the Psalms ; and great as are the merits of the Homilies, they are counter-balanced by obvious and serious defects. There is, of course, little interest taken in the circumstances in which the Psalms were written. They are, in Hilary's eyes, essentially prophecies, and he is content as a rule to describe the writer simply as the Prophet.' And as with the history, so with the spirit of the Psalter. There is little evidence that he recognised in it the noblest and most perfect expression of human devotion towards God, and still less that he appreciated the elevation of its poetry. For the latter failure there is ample excuse. The Septuagint and Old Latin versions of the Psalms have for us venerable antiquity and sacred associations, but they can hardly be said to appeal to the imagination. Now while Hilary of course regarded the Greek translation as authoritative on account both of our Lord's use of it and of general consent, he treats it not as literature but rather in the spirit of a lawyer interpreting and applying the terms of an ancient charter. Nor is it likely that the Latin version would move Hilary as it sometimes moves us who read it to-day and find a certain dignity and power in its unpolished sentences. Its roughness could only shock, and its obscurity perplex, one who, as we have said already. (Intr. iii.), could think and express himself clearly in what was to him a living and a cultivated language. But with all his disadvantages he has produced a great and profoundly Christian work, of permanent value and interest and of abiding influence upon thought, theological and moral. For in these Homilies, and not least in those which are here translated, the Roman genius for moral reflection is manifest, and the pattern set which St. Ambrose was to follow with success in such work as his De officiis ministrorum.

1 Is. xxix. II.

HOMILIES ON THE
THE PSALMS.

PSALM I

THE primary condition of knowledge for Here, then, we are to recognise the person reading the Psalms is the ability to see as of the Prophet by whose lips the Holy Spirit whose mouthpiece we are to regard the Psalmist speaks, raising us by the instrumentality of as speaking, and who it is that he addresses. his lips to the knowledge of a spiritual mystery. For they are not all of the same uniform 2. And as he says this we must enquire character, but of different authorship and concerning what man we are to understand different types. For we constantly find that him to be speaking. He says: Happy is the the Person of God the Father is being set man who hath not walked in the counsel of the before us, as in that passage of the eighty-eighth ungodly nor stood in the way of sinners, and Psalm I have exalted one chosen out of My hath not sat in the seat of pestilence. But his people, I have found David My servant, with will hath been in the Law of the Lord, and My holy oil have I anointed him. He shall in His Law will he meditate day and night. call Me, Thou art my Father and the upholder And he shall be like a tree planted by the rills of my salvation. And I will make him My of water, that will yield its fruit in its own first-born, higher than the kings of the earth; season. His leaf also shall not wither, and while in what we might call the majority of all things, whatsoever he shall do, shall prosper. Psalms the Person of the Son is introduced, I have discovered, either from personal conas in the seventeenth: A people whom I have versation or from their letters and writings, not known hath served Me2; and in the twenty- that the opinion of many men about this Psalm first: they parted My garments among them and is, that we ought to understand it to be a cast lots upon My vesture 3. But the contents description of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that of the first Psalm forbid us to understand it it is His happiness which is extolled in the either of the Person of the Father or of the verses following. But this interpretation is Son: But his will hath been in the law of the wrong both in method and reasoning, though Lord, and in His Law will he meditate day and doubtless it is inspired by a pious tendency night. Now in the Psalm in which we said of thought, since the whole of the Psalter the Person of the Father is intended, the terms is to be referred to Him: the time and place used are exactly appropriate, for instance: He in His life to which this passage refers must shall call Me, Thou art my Father, my God be ascertained by the sound method of knowand the upholder of my salvation; and in that ledge guided by reason.

one in which we hear the Son speaking, He 3. Now the words which stand at the beginproclaims Himself to be the author of the ning of the Psalm are quite unsuited to the words by the very expressions He employs, Person and Dignity of the Son, while the whole saying, A people whom I have not known hath contents are in themselves a condemnation served Me. That is to say, when the Father of the careless haste that would use them on the one hand says: He shall call Me, to extol Him. For when it is said, and his and the Son on the other hand says: a people will hath been in the Law of the Lord, how hath served Me, they shew that it is They (seeing that the Law was given by the Son Themselves Who are speaking concerning of God) can a happiness which depends Themselves. Here, however, where we have on his will being in the Law of the Lord But his will hath been in the Law of the Lord; be attributed to Him Who is Himself Lord obviously it is not the Person of the Lord of the Law? That the Law is His He Himspeaking concerning Himself, but the person of another, extolling the happiness of that man whose will is in the Law of the Lord.

self declares in the seventy-seventh Psalm, where He says: Hear My Law, O My people: incline your ears unto the words of My mouth. I will open My mouth in a parable. And the

4 Ps. lxxvii. (lxxviii.), 1.

alogy of the happiness of the tree might be the pledge of a happy hope, that the declaration of His wrath against the ungodly might set the bounds of fear to the excesses of ungodliness, that difference in rank in the assemblies of the saints might mark difference in merit, that the standard appointed for judging the ways of the righteous might shew forth the majesty of God.

But let us now deal with the subject matter and the words which express it.

6. Happy is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly nor stood in the way of sinners, and hath not sat in the seat of pestilence. But his will hath been in the Law of the Lord, and in His Law will he meditate day and night.

Evangelist Matthew further asserts that these nected with the happy man might allure weak words were spoken by the Son, when he says: humanity to zeal for the Faith; that the anFor this cause spake He in parables that the saying might be fulfilled: I will open My mouth in parables. The Lord then gave fulfilment in act to His own prophecy, speaking in the parables in which He had promised that He would speak. But how can the sentence, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rills of water,-wherein growth in happiness is set forth in a figure--be possibly applied to His Person, and a tree be said to be more happy than the Son of God, and the cause of His happiness, which would be the case if an analogy were established between Him and it in respect of growth towards happiness? Again, since according to Wisdom 5a and the Apostle, He is both before the ages and before times eternal, and is the First-born of every creature; and since in Him and through Him The Prophet recites five kinds of caution all things were created, how can He be happy as continually present in the mind of the happy by becoming like objects created by Himself? man: the first, not to walk in the counsel For neither does the power of the Creator of the ungodly, the second, not to stand in the need for its exaltation comparison with any way of sinners, the third, not to sit in the seat creature, nor does the immemorial age of the of pestilence, next, to set his will in the Law of First-born allow of a comparison involving un- the Lord, and lastly, to meditate therein by suitable conditions of time, as would be the case day and by night. There must, therefore, be if He were compared to a tree. For that which a distinction between the ungodly and the shall be at some point of future time cannot sinner, between the sinner and the pestilent; be looked upon as having either previously chiefly because here the ungodly has a counsel, existed or as now existing anywhere. But whatsoever already is does not need any extension of time to begin existence, because it already possesses continuous existence from the date of its beginning up till the present.

the sinner a way, the pestilent a seat, and again, because the question is of walking, not standing, in the counsel of the ungodly; of standing, not walking, in the way of the sinner. Now, if we would understand the reason of 4. And so, since these words are understood these facts, we must note the precise difference to be inapplicable to the divinity of the Only- between the sinner and the undutiful 7, that begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, so it may become clear why to the sinner we must suppose him, who is here extolled is assigned a way, and to the undutiful a coun as happy by the Prophet, to be the man who strives to conform himself to that body which the Lord assumed and in which He was born as man, by zeal for justice and perfect fulfilment of all righteousness. That this is the necessary interpretation will be shewn as the exposition of the Psalm proceeds.

sel; next, why the question is of standing in the way, and of walking in the counsel, whereas men are accustomed to connect standing with a counsel, and walking with a way.

Not every man that is a sinner is also undutiful: but the undutiful man cannot fail to be a sinner. Let us take an instance from 5. The Holy Spirit made choice of this general experience. Sons, though they be magnificent and noble introduction to the drunken and profligate and spendthrift, can Psalter, in order to stir up weak man to a yet love their fathers; and with all these vices, pure zeal for piety by the hope of happiness, and, therefore, not free from guilt, may yet be to teach him the mystery of the Incarnate free from undutifulness. But the undutiful, God, to promise him participation in heavenly though they may be models of continence and glory, to declare the penalty of the Judgment, frugality, are, by the mere fact of despising to proclaim the two-fold resurrection, to shew the parent, woise transgressors than if they forth the counsel of God as seen in His award. were guilty of every sin that lies outside the It is in leed after a faultless and mature design category of undutifulness. that He has laid the foundation of this great prophecy; His will being that the hope con

5 St. Matt. xiii. 35. 5 Prov. viii. 22. 6 i.e. the Psalter.

7 Impius, which is elsewhere in the Homily translated ungodly, is here rendered undutiful, in order to preserve to some extent the sense of undutiful towards parents in which Hitary, with true Roman appreciation of the patria potestas, uses it in this passage.