Of course this devotion to the humanity of Christ is a gift, a great gift of the Spirit. I have called it carnal with comparison to that other love which does not know the Word as flesh so much as the Word as wisdom, as justice, truth, holiness, loyalty, strength, and whatever else could be said in this manner. Christ is truly all these things. "He became…

The angelic creature gazes with the unreflected keenness of mind upon the great abyss of the divine judgments, and, blessed with the ineffable delight of their supreme equity, glories moreover that these are committed to execution through its ministry and made manifest; and therefore it rightly loves the Lord Christ. "Are they not all," he says,…

But someone says: How will she believe without a preacher, since faith is from hearing, and hearing through the word of preaching? (Rom 10:14, 17.) God will provide for this. And behold, already at hand are those who may instruct and form the new bride, who is to be wed to the heavenly Bridegroom, in what is fitting, and teach her the faith, and hand on…

Come now, we are free! We said in yesterday's sermon what sort of guides we would wish to have on this way in which we walk, not what sort we have. We find them far dissimilar. Not all are friends of the bridegroom whom you see today standing on this side and that beside the bride, and who, as the common saying goes, seem to escort her, as it were. Very…

That the Bride, That Is the Church of the Elect, Was Predestined by God Before the Ages, and Prevented by Him So That She Might Seek Him and Be Converted. 1. At the word "finding," if I remember rightly, we stopped there and lingered, hearing somewhat scrupulously that the bride said she had been found by her preachers. Moreover the causes of our…

1. "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" O love headlong, vehement, burning, impetuous, who does not allow anything to be thought of besides yourself, who disdains all other things, who despises everything besides yourself, content with yourself! You confound all order, you disregard custom, you know no measure; everything that seems to belong to…

On the Twofold Charity, Namely Actual and Affectual; and Its Ordering. 1. You perhaps expect the following verses to be treated, thinking the little verse which was most recently treated to be finished. But I am contriving something else: for I have something yet to set before you from the fragments of yesterday's banquet, which I had gathered for myself…

In moral discipline likewise three things are to be noticed, as it were three cells in one storeroom. And perhaps for this reason she said storerooms in the plural, and not storeroom, thinking of this number of cells. Further on, indeed, she glories in having been brought into the "wine cellar" (Song 2:4). We therefore, because we read, "Give occasion to…

How Charity Is Ordered Through Discretion, So That All the Members of the Church, That Is, the Elect, May Be Bound Together With One Another. 1. "The king has brought me into the wine cellar, he has ordered charity in me" (Song 2:4). As indeed the letter of the proposed chapter seems to sound, after having enjoyed a sweet and quite familiar conversation…

But let us take a look at those who may rightly boast of possessing an abundance of it. "They left the presence of the Sanhedrin glad to have had the honor of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name of Jesus." They whose gentleness remained unshaken in the face both of reproaches and blows, had surely been filled from the overflowing richness of…

"Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." The bride's modesty is a delicate thing; and I feel that at the Bridegroom's reproof a warm flush suffused her face, so heightening her beauty that she immediately was greeted with: "Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." You must not give an earthbound meaning to this coloring of the corruptible…

1. "Your neck is like jewels" (Song 1:9). The neck is accustomed to be adorned with jewels, not to be compared to them. But let those do this for whom, because beauty does not inhere of their own, it is necessary to beg from elsewhere that by which they may feign themselves beautiful. For the neck of the bride is so beautiful in itself, and so becomingly…