Appendix to Augustine's Sermones: Sermones supposititii, Sermones 16-29

we must enter into the kingdom of God (Acts 14:21).

4. The first mention of the sacred name Jesus in the Scriptures. So, when war was threatening the children of Israel, Moses calls Jesus [i.e. Joshua], and says to him: Choose men for yourself, and fight against Amalek. Up to this place mention of this blessed name, that is, Jesus, has nowhere been made. Here for the first time the splendour of this word shone forth. Moses calls Jesus; the Law calls upon Christ. Choose, he says, mighty men for yourself. Moses could not choose mighty men: it is Jesus alone Who can choose mighty men; He indeed Who said to His apostles: You did not choose Me, but I chose you (John 15:16). He it is Who entered the house of the strong man and plundered his vessels (Matt. 12:29).

5. Moses raised his hands, he did not stretch them out. What it is to raise the hands. By prayer the fight is won. Now Moses went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass that when Moses raised his hands, Israel was winning. Take note, brothers: Moses indeed raises his hands, yet he does not stretch them out. For whom, then, was it reserved to stretch out His hands, if not for our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, stretched out on the cross, about to embrace the whole world, spread out the arms of His love? Moses therefore raised his hands: and although he did not spread them out, yet by the very raising he showed forth the mystery of the cross. See, brothers, how even then the hostile nations were overcome through the sacrament of the cross. And we too, dearly beloved brothers, if with the Lord's help we lift up our hands, overcome the devil. By hands we ought to understand works. If, then, your works are such that you can raise them on high in the sight of the Lord, you too can also extinguish your adversaries within yourself. Who raises his hands well, except he who through almsgiving continually lays up treasure in heaven? Who, then, raises his hands well, except he who constantly supplies food and clothing to the poor? Who raises his hands well? He indeed who fulfils that saying of the Apostle: Lifting up, he says, pure hands without anger and disputing (1 Tim. 2:8). Since, then, a fight against the hostile powers threatens both us and you daily, if we wish to conquer, let our hands, that is, our acts and our way of life, not be on earth: but, as the Apostle says, walking upon the earth, let us have our way of life in heaven (Phil. 3:20). It is written, however, that as a calf licks up the green grass in the fields, so the people of Israel will lick up the people of Amalek upon the earth (Num. 22:4). By which it seems to be indicated that the people of God fought not so much with hand and arms as with voice and tongue, that is, they poured out prayer to God; and therefore they overcame their adversaries. So you too, if you wish to conquer, hear the Apostle saying: Persevering in prayer, and watching in it (Col. 4:2). This is the most glorious fight of the Christian: not to presume on his own strength, but always to implore the help of God, to Whom is honour and dominion with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto ages of ages. Amen.

Sermon 27. On the children of Israel.

1. Thus says the Lord to Moses: Let Me alone, that I may make you into a great nation (Exod. 32:10). It is a grave thing to examine the person who falls into unbelief, while he loses the greater thing that he received. Who does not know the indissoluble knots of the Jews? Who does not lay aside faithlessness and audacity? They read their own records, that in the transgression of their fathers punishment had not been lacking. Angry severity is brought forth, and contumacy is not amended: clemency is angered more lightly, because it shows mercy more quickly. His will be the judgement, both to approve the worthy and to have pardoned sin to wrongdoers. What am I saying? Did God abhor them, or did He love them? Far from it. If He abhorred

sinners, He despised [them]: but He loved [them]; therefore He often pardoned. Return, He says, to Me, and I will return to you (Mal. 3:7). Theirs indeed are the crimes, either a guilty tongue or a criminal conscience. You, He says, are of your father the devil (John 8:44). Vengeance cannot be deferred, retribution will not be postponed. For so great are the crimes conceived through usurpation that they do not spare the offspring, since they are seen to be guilty against their author. They cried, it says, to the Lord, when they were in tribulation (Ps. 106:6): a leader is sent to set the Israelite people free. Worthy and innumerable plagues of ignominy are prepared for the Egyptians; for vengeance the gnats came forth, the caterpillar took the vineyards, the locust laid waste the fruit-bearing trees: terror and hail, sores, tumults, voices, flames, cattle condemned, herds laid low, waters changed into blood, frogs laid low, fish killed: the elements are hardened with no frost, the streams are dried up, bent back in the miracle of the event, and the wave is suspended as a wall: the waves marvel at an unaccustomed path, and the people marvel too.

2. Why, unbelieving people, do you despair in the night? Your sign will be the pillar which Christ illuminates. Go secure on the way you take; Christ will go before you. And since Christ escorts [you], there ought to be confidence, not terror: you will come secure to the promises; and would that you did not rebel. The Egyptians enter the opened sea, and the waves pouring round them, rushing back in haste, destroy them. The sand of the middle of the sea felt the hoof, the sea bore the charges of the horsemen. But this vengeance was owed, that he should perish the more quickly who refused to attain salvation. Why do you have doubts about the enemy? Go forward now in safety, you will see him dead, you will verify that he is deceased whose slave you were before.

3. They go out into the desert, and the insult is not delayed. They murmur, they ask for onions and melons, rightly insipid, and those whom the salt of grace does not season long for cheap food. He says onions, so that tears gathered from their offence might be wrung from them. The nature of the waters in the rivers does not degenerate, [yet] bitterness had made the common liquid sad; wood is thrown in, sweetness is restored. The rock struck by the rod gave drink to the thirsty: nor did their garments grow old and come apart: in the barren field manna was not lacking. Relish is demanded, everything is granted to their desires. Each one perceived in his mouth the taste he wished while he ate.

4. They ask for something to worship for themselves: and would that they had asked simply. But the people which had received the dowry tablets by the law of the husband plans corruption and thinks of adultery. Why, faithless one, do you wish to join yourself to a worthy partnership? Your mother displeased, repudiated by a bill of divorce, as Isaiah declares (Isa. 50:1), and you are not worthy of the highest gift, since by execrable deeds you are seen to be ungrateful. You shall not serve, He says, a strange god (Deut. 7:16). Gold is set to the fire, and the ungrateful seek an ill-omened crime, they adore an image which the kindled fire had cast out. Where is what was commanded, Hear, Israel; the Lord your God is one God (Deut. 6:4)? Where was your calf when Christ was preparing paths for you in the sea: He opened the sea, He gave drink to the thirsty, He restored those weary with fasting? Luxurious heathenism, after surfeit, seeks play. The people, it says, sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play (Exod. 32:6). And would that these things had been said in words, not committed in deeds. Behold, now father Abraham is transformed into a great nation. Behold what crime the first-born commits, what grace the second merits. You sold me your birthright, made by your offence a little servant to your brother. A foreign root indeed bears me, but new grace anoints my head. So the Lord offered Himself as leader to an ungrateful people; the unknown way through inaccessible places and the trackless deserts of the earth did not throw the army of Christ into disorder. Therefore, at the devil's assault, a profane temptation arises; the people suddenly becomes ungrateful for the divine benefits, its mind falls away from the truth, it deserted the Giver of life, and followed the author of death. Whence the blind folly of those who worship images, nay the unbearable madness, to think divine a calf formed by mortal hand? The more bitter indignity of the affair is that the figure of a beast should be an object of dread, and when God

had subjected all animals to man, he himself of his own accord cast himself down into servitude to cattle. To such a degree is a calf formed, gilded by the contributions of fools: and the one whom no natural motion bent in any direction, the madness of the faithless carried with subjugated neck: and the one whose ears no hearing penetrated, nor any sensible commotion stirred, the foolish prayer of a mad people beat upon them in vain: and the one to whom the craftsman's fancy had not given sight, with eyelids moving in vital motion, nor had mother nature conferred it, those ungrateful to God adored it as suppliants when they saw it. A fashioned calf lacking breath went before the people in the desert, so that the mad people might have such a leader as they themselves had become through their offences.

5. And lest the example of so great an evil should flow down to posterity without punishment, it is at once punished upon the guilty. For when a limit is set to evils, the licence of sinners is broken. For discipline is often corrected by blows, if the exhortations of the just achieve nothing: punishment restrains from damnable deeds men whom the benefits of God cannot hold to good works. For if the divine censure did not take counsel at the first lapses of sinners, but postponed the encounter with vengeance into the future, without doubt the audacity of all the wicked would have advanced more widely. In short, if you wish the discipline of your own people to advance, exercise censure. Where concern for God's future vengeance dwells, there either no sin is committed, or wrong is done more slowly. For through censure certain people sometimes undergo punishment, so that many may be corrected in a few; lest afterwards, moved by anger, He should begin to rage against many. Frequent laughter corrupts morals, and also loosens the tightened sinews of strictness: but a severe countenance is the guardian of discipline. For if you frequently indulge wrongdoers, the sinner does not advance towards salvation.

Sermon 28. On the spies and on the cluster of grapes.

1. Two men carrying a grape cluster: the two Testaments and the two commandments. Christ in the midst of the two Testaments. Just now, when the divine reading was being read, we heard that at the time when the twelve spies were sent to survey the land of promise, two of them brought to the children of Israel on a pole a cluster of grapes of wondrous size (Num. 13:24). These two, dearly beloved brethren, can be understood in many ways. For they are believed, not unfittingly, to have signified both the two Testaments and the two commandments by which God and neighbour are loved. They can also be understood as history and allegory. And that they bore a type of the two Testaments, we recognize clearly from this: that just as the grape cluster is read to have been carried in the midst of those two, so in the midst of the two Testaments Christ the Lord is clearly recognized; according to what is written, In the midst of two living creatures Thou shalt be known (Hab. 3:2, according to the LXX), that is, in the midst of the New or the Old Testament. But when it says, In the midst, it is not to be understood that Christ was in the middle between the New and the Old Testament in such a way that He was contained neither in the New nor in the Old. It is not so, dearest brethren. But as to its saying, In the midst of two living creatures Thou shalt be known: this is to be taken to mean that He is in the midst of the Old Testament and in the midst of the New, that is, within, in the inner and spiritual understanding; not in the letter, which has been wont to kill not only the Jews but also all heretics, but in the Spirit, Who gives life to all Christians who understand spiritually. This, then, is In the midst of two living creatures Thou shalt be known: in the inner sense of the New or the Old Testament.

2. Mary the land of promise. The grape cluster, then, was carried by two. Now these two who were found worthy to bring the grape cluster from the land of promise, as we have already said, can

also be understood as the two commandments of love, that is, You shall love God; and You shall love your neighbour. Finally, consider, brothers, that just as those two carried the hanging cluster of grapes, so also of these two, that is, of the love of God and of neighbour, it is said, On these two commandments the whole Law hangs, and the Prophets (Matt. 22:37–40). For just as that cluster prefigured Christ God, so also the land of promise, in which He was born, seems to have borne the image of holy Mary. For in her was fulfilled what is written, Truth has sprung from the earth (Ps. 84:12) But how was blessed Mary not the land of promise, she who was promised through the prophet long before? For through blessed Isaiah the Lord promised her many spans of years beforehand: for thus he says, Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son (Isa. 7:14). For the cluster was brought forth from the land of promise. For it is the one of which we read, They sucked honey from the rock, and oil from the firm rock (Deut. 32:13). And of it it is written, But the rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4); and that saying, With the fat of the kidneys and the blood of the grape; and again, He shall wash His robe in wine, and His garment in the blood of the grape (Gen. 49:11). This cluster, I say, hung upon the wood, is carried by the service of two, and for us indeed, as has already been said, it is represented by the oracles of the two Testaments; it hung upon the wood of the cross, and its wine flowed forth as our price through the pressing of the passion.

3. The two carrying the cluster, the Jewish people and the Christian. Christ is salvation to the one who believes, a burden to the one who does not believe. But it is worth the effort for the secrets of the sacraments to be opened up by the effects of things. Two carry this cluster, hanging from a pole put through it. These two can also figure the Christian and the Jewish people. These, then, are the two, that is, the peoples of the Synagogue and of the Church. And because the people of the Jews was first, the Jew goes in front and the Christian follows: the latter carries his salvation before his sight, the former behind his back; the latter shows service, the former contempt. Therefore the Prophet also testifies concerning the Jews, Let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see, and bow down their back always (Ps. 68:24). The two advance under the sacred load each in his own order: the latter always sees, the former always leaves it behind. The Jew, moreover, reckons himself nearest; but he keeps himself away. The Christian therefore enjoys the gift that is present; the Jew is weighed down by the burden alone; for Christ, just as He is salvation to the one who believes, so is He a burden to the one who does not believe. For He was announced especially to the Jews, of whom it was said, He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him (John 1:11); He became for them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence (Rom. 9:32–33): and Him whom Israel did not know, the faith of the Gentiles received. And therefore the latter follows behind; but, having his hope before his eyes, he goes ahead and makes progress: the former walks first; but he abandons and withdraws. The Jew indeed carries Christ in the Law; but he is turned away from the grace that he carries in the mysteries: for Him whom the chosen one received through preaching, the unbeliever loses in his heart; and Him whom the one scorns in the Law, the other marvels at in the body. Hence the Lord of both and our Redeemer is borne by the one, who adores Him, and is hung up by the other, who turns away from Him. And thus was fulfilled in the Jews, They have turned their backs to Me, and not their faces (Jer. 18:17).

4. The burden of Christ lifts up, it does not press down. Everyone is under the yoke either of Christ or of the world. And since we, coming afterwards, have been found worthy to adore and to carry Christ the Lord, whom the earlier people of the Jews both left behind their back and crucified, according to that saying of the Apostle: Glorify and carry God in your body (1 Cor. 6:20); let us labour as much as we can, with His help, so that we do not put down so holy a burden from our necks through evil works. For the burden of Christ is accustomed to lift up, not to press down. So He Himself also said in the Gospel: My yoke is sweet, and My burden