16… Your eyes did see Mine imperfect one, and in Your book shall all be written, not only the perfect, but also the imperfect. Let not the imperfect fear, only let them advance. Nor yet, because I have said, let them not fear, let them love their imperfection, and remain there, where they are found. Let them advance, as far as in them lies. Daily let them add, daily let them approach; yet let them not fall back from the Body of the Lord: that, compacted in one Body and among these members, they may be counted worthy to have that said of them. By day shall they wander, and none among them. The Day was yet on earth, even our Lord Jesus Christ. Whence He said, Walk while you have the day. But by day shall His imperfect ones wander. They too thought that our Lord Jesus Christ was only man, that He had not within Him the hidden Godhead, that He was not secretly God, but that He was that only which was seen: this they too thought…But what is, In the day they shall wander? Shall they perish? Where then is, In Your book shall all be written? When then did they wander in the day? When they understood not the Lord set upon earth. And what follows? But to me Your friends are made very honourable, O God; those very ones, who wandered in the day, and none was in them, became Your friends, and were made very honourable to me. That bone was made in them in secret after the resurrection of the Lord, and they suffered for His Name, at whose death they had been amazed. Mightily strengthened were their chieftainships. They became Apostles, they became leaders of the Church, they became rams leading their flocks, mightily strengthened.

17. I will number them, and they shall be multiplied above the sand. By means of them, who wandered in the day, lo! There has been born all this great multitude, which now is like the sand innumerable, save by God. For He said, they shall be multiplied above the sand, and yet He had said, I will number them. The very same who are numbered, shall be multiplied above the sand. For by Him is the sand numbered, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered. I have risen, and yet am I with You. Already have I suffered, says He, already have I been buried; lo! I have risen, and not yet do they understand that I am with them. Yet am I with You, that is, not yet with them, for not yet do they recognise Me. For thus do we read in the Gospel, that after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, when He appeared to them, they did not at once know Him. There is another meaning also: I have risen, and yet am I with You, as though He would signify this present time, wherein He is as yet hidden at the right hand of the Father, before He is revealed in the brightness, wherein He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

18. And then He tells what meanwhile, during this whole time when He already has risen, and remains still with the Father, He suffers by the intermixture of sinners in His Body, the Church, and by the separation of heretics. If Thou, O God, shall slay the sinners (since You shall say in Your thought, Depart from Me, you men of blood), they shall receive in vanity their cities (ver. 19-20). The words seem to be connected in this order; If Thou, O God, shall slay the sinners, they shall receive in vanity their cities. Thus are sinners slain, because, having their understandings darkened, they are alienated from the life of God. For on account of elation they lose confession, and so they are slain, and in them is fulfilled what Scripture says, Confession perishes from the dead, as from one that is not. And so they receive in vanity their cities, that is, their vain peoples, who follow their vanity; when, puffed up by the name of righteousness, they persuade men to burst the bond of unity, and blindly and ignorantly follow them, as being more righteous…But now the Body of Christ, the Church, says, Why do the proud speak falsely against me, as though I were stained by other men’s sins, and so, by separating themselves, receive in vanity their cities? Have not I hated those who hated You, Lord?. Why do those who are worse themselves require of me to separate myself in body as well as spirit from the wicked, so as to root up the wheat, together with the tares, before the time of harvest, that before the time of winnowing I lose my power of enduring the chaff; that before all the different sorts of fishes are brought to the end of the world, as to the shore, to be separated, I tear the nets of peace and unity? Are the sacraments which I receive, those of evil men? Do I; by consent, communicate in their life and deeds?…But where is, Love your enemies? Is it because He said yours, not God’s? Do good to them that hate you. He says not, who hate God. So he follows the pattern, and says, Have not I hated those who hated You; Lord? He says not, Who have hated me. And at Your enemies did I waste away. Yours, he said, not mine. But those who hate us and are enemies unto us, only because we serve Him, what else do they but hate Him, and are His enemies. Ought we then to love such enemies as these? Or do not they suffer persecution for God’s sake, to whom it is said, Pray for them that persecute you? Observe then what follows. With a perfect hatred did I hate them. What is, with a perfect hatred? I hated in them their iniquities, I loved Your creation. This it is to hate with a perfect hatred, that neither on account of the vices thou hate the men, nor on account of the men love the vices. For see what he adds, They became mine enemies. Not only as God’s enemies, but as his own too does he now describe them. How then will he fulfil in them both his own saying, Have not I hated those that hated You, Lord, and the Lord’s command, Love your enemies? How will he fulfil this, save with that perfect hatred, that he hate in them that they are wicked, and love that they are men? For in the time even of the Old Testament, when the carnal people was restrained by visible punishments, how did Moses, the servant of God, who by understanding belonged to the New Testament, how did he hate sinners when he prayed for them, or how did he not hate them when he slew them, save that he hated them with a perfect hatred? For with such perfection did he hate the iniquity which he punished, as to love the manhood for which he prayed.

19. Since then the Body of Christ is in the end to be severed in body also from the unholy and wicked, but now meanwhile groans among them, what does the love of Christ among the daughters, as the lily among thorns? What are her words? What her conscience? What is the appearance of the king’s daughter within? Lo, hear what she says. Prove me, O God, and know my heart. Do Thou, O God, Thou prove me, Thou know; not man, not an heretic, who neither knows how to prove, nor can know my heart, whereas You prove, and know that I consent not to the deeds of the wicked, while they think that I can be defiled by the sins of others; so that, while I in my long wandering do what I mourn in another Psalm, that is, while I labour for peace among them that hate peace, until I come to that Vision of peace, which is called Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all, the city eternal in the heavens; they, contending, and falsely accusing and separating themselves, may receive, not, evidently, in eternity, but in vanity, their cities. Why this? Observe what follows.

20. And see, says he, if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Search, he says, my paths, that is, my counsels and thoughts. What else says he, but lead me in Christ? For who is the way everlasting, save He that is the life everlasting? For everlasting is He who said, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. If then you find anything in my way which displeases Your eyes, since my way is mortal, do Thou lead me in the way everlasting, wherein is no iniquity; for even if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins; He is the Way everlasting without sin; He is the Life everlasting without punishment.

21. These are great mysteries, brethren. How does the Spirit of God speak with us? How does it make us delights in this night? What is this, we ask you, brethren, whence are they sweeter, the darker they are? He mixes us our potion after His love, in certain wondrous ways. He makes His own sayings wondrous, so that while we were speaking what ye already knew, yet forasmuch as it was dug out of passages which seemed obscure, the knowledge itself seemed to be made new. Did ye not know, brethren, that the wicked are to be tolerated in the Church, and schisms not to be made? Did ye not already know, that within those nets which hold both good and bad fishes, we must abide even to the shore, nor must the nets be burst, because on the shore the good shall be separated into vessels, and the bad thrown away? You know this already; but these verses of this Psalm ye did not understand; that which you did not understand is explained; that which you knew has been renewed.