Sermon 66 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
On the Errors of the Heretics Concerning Marriage, the Baptism of Infants, Purgatory, Prayers for the Dead, and the Invocation of the Saints.
1. "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards" (Song 2:15). Behold, I go after these foxes. They are the ones who pass beyond the way and who plunder the vineyard. They are not content to desert the way, unless they can also lay waste the vineyard, adding transgression. It is not enough for them to be heretics, unless they be also hypocrites, so that sin may be sinful beyond measure. These are they who come in sheep's clothing to strip the sheep bare and to despoil the rams. Does not each of these things seem to you to have been fulfilled, where both the people have been robbed of their faith and the priests of their people? Who are these robbers? They are sheep in garb, foxes in cunning, wolves in deed and in cruelty. These are they who wish to seem good, not to be so; who wish not to seem evil, but to be so. They are evil, and they wish to seem good, lest they be evil alone; they fear to seem evil, lest they be insufficiently evil. For malice openly practiced has always done less harm, and no good man was ever deceived except by the pretense of goodness. And so they strive to appear good, for the ruin of the good; they do not wish to appear evil, so that more license may be given to their malignity. For it is not their way to cultivate virtues, but to color over vices with a certain vermilion, as it were, of virtues. And so the impiety of superstition they entitle with the name of religion. Innocence they define as merely not harming openly, thereby claiming for themselves only the color of innocence. As a covering for their turpitude, they mark themselves with the vow of continence. Moreover, they consider turpitude to consist only in having wives: whereas the only case in which turpitude in intercourse is excused is that which is with a wife. They are rustic men and unlearned, and altogether contemptible: but there is no dealing negligently with them, I tell you. For they advance greatly unto impiety, and their speech spreads like a cancer (2 Tim 2:16-17).
2. And so the Holy Spirit did not neglect this, who once prophesied concerning them so manifestly, the Apostle saying: "Now the Spirit manifestly says that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and to doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving" (1 Tim 4:1-3). It was precisely these, precisely these he was speaking of. These forbid to marry, these abstain from foods which God created, concerning which we shall see afterward. But now see whether this is not properly a mockery of demons and not of men, according to what the Spirit had foretold. Inquire of them the author of their sect; they will give you none. What heresy has not had from among men its own heresiarch? The Manicheans had Mani as their founder and teacher, the Sabellians Sabellius, the Arians Arius, the Eunomians Eunomius, the Nestorians Nestorius. So all the other plagues of this kind are known to have had, each one, individual masters, men from whom they drew both their origin and their name. By what name or title will you designate these? By none; since their heresy is not from man, nor did they receive it through man. Far be it, however, that it should be through a revelation of Jesus Christ; rather and without doubt, as the Holy Spirit foretold, it is through the insinuation and fraud of demons, "speaking lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry!"
3. In hypocrisy plainly and with fox-like craftiness they speak this, feigning that they say it from love of chastity, which they have rather devised for the sake of fostering and multiplying turpitude. Yet the matter is so much in the open that I wonder how any Christian man could ever have been persuaded of it, except that these are either so bestial that they do not perceive how he who condemns marriage gives free rein to every uncleanness; or else so full of wickedness and swallowed up in diabolical malignity that, perceiving, they dissemble, and rejoice in the destruction of men. Take away from the Church honorable marriage and the undefiled bed (Heb 13:4); will you not fill her with fornicators, the incestuous, those who waste their seed, the effeminate, men who lie with men, and indeed every kind of unclean persons? Choose therefore whichever you will: either all these monstrosities of men are to be saved, or the number of those to be saved is to be reduced to the small number of the continent. How sparing in the one! How lavish in the other! Neither of these befits the Savior. What? Shall turpitude be crowned? Nothing less becomes the author of honor. Shall the whole world be damned except a few continent ones? This is not what it means to be a Savior. Continence is rare upon the earth, and not for so small a gain did that fullness empty itself to the earth. And how have we all received from that fullness, if he granted participation in himself to the continent alone? They have nothing they can answer to this. But neither, I believe, to the following. If there is a place in heaven for what is honorable, but there is no fellowship between the honorable and the base, just as there is no partnership of light with darkness: then assuredly no place of salvation awaits any of the unclean. If anyone thinks otherwise, the apostolic voice will refute him, asserting without all ambiguity: "For those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:21). By what way now will this treacherous little fox come out of her den? I think she has been caught in the pit in which she has made for herself, as it were, two openings: one by which to enter, another by which to exit. For she is accustomed to do so. See therefore how the exit is blocked for her on both sides. If she places only the continent in heaven, salvation perishes for the most part; if she places all filthiness together with the continent, what is honorable perishes. But more justly she herself perishes, who shall go out neither by this way nor by that, shut up in perpetuity and caught in the pit which she has made.
4. Certain ones, however, dissenting from the others, confess that marriage can be contracted only between virgins. But what reason they can offer in this distinction, I do not see: except that each one, according to his own pleasure, strives in competition with the others to tear apart the sacraments of the Church, as the mother's womb, with the tooth of a viper. For as to what they are said to allege concerning the first married couple, that they were virgins: how, I ask, does this prejudice the freedom of marriage, so that it should not be lawfully contracted also between non-virgins? But I know not what they whisper about having found in the Gospel, which they vainly suppose to support their foolishness. It is this, I believe: that the Lord, having first set forth the testimony from Genesis, "And God created man in his own image and likeness; male and female he created them," afterward added: "Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Gen 1:27; Mt 19:4, 6). These, they say, God joined together because both were virgins, and thereafter it was not permitted to be separated: but a coupling presumed otherwise will not be from God. Who told you they were joined by God on account of the fact that they were virgins? For Scripture does not say this. Were they not virgins? one asks. They were; but it is not the same thing, to have been coupled as virgins and to have been coupled because they were virgins. Although not even this will you find stated by name, that they were virgins, even though they were. What was expressly stated was the diversity of sexes, not virginity, when it was said: "Male and female he created them." And rightly so. For the marital coupling of bodies does not require integrity, but the aptitude of sexes. Well therefore did the Holy Spirit, instituting this very thing, express the sex and was silent concerning virginity, and gave no occasion for entrapping a word to the treacherous little foxes. Which they would readily have done; though even that would have been in vain. For what if he had said: "Virgins he created them"? Would you therefore immediately have established that only virgins may be lawfully joined? And yet how you would have exulted at the mere occasion of the word! How you would have blown away second and third marriages! How you would have insulted the Catholic Church, which all the more willingly joins harlots and pimps to each other, inasmuch as it does not doubt that thereby they pass from the base to the honorable! Perhaps you would also have reproved God for commanding the prophet to take a fornicating woman (Hos 1:2): but now even the occasion is lacking, and it pleases you to be a heretic gratuitously. For the testimony which you usurped to build up your error has been found to be of greater force for destroying it; it does nothing for you, everything against you.
5. But now hear that which either altogether confounds or corrects you, and utterly crushes and shatters your heresy. "A woman is bound to her husband as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of her husband; let her marry whom she wishes, only in the Lord" (1 Cor 7:39). It is Paul who grants to a widow that she may marry whom she wishes: and you on the contrary prescribe: "No one may marry except a virgin, and she only to a virgin," so that not even she herself may marry whom she wishes. Why do you shorten the hand of God? Why do you restrict the ample blessing of marriage? Why do you claim as proper to a virgin what has been granted to the sex? Paul would not concede this unless it were lawful. But I say too little, he concedes: he also wills it. "I wish," he says, "the younger women to marry" (1 Tim 5:14): and there is no doubt that he is speaking of widows. What is more manifest? Therefore what he concedes, because it is lawful, he also wills, because it is expedient. What is lawful and expedient, the heretic forbids? He will persuade nothing by this prohibition except that he is a heretic.
6. It remains that we also pursue them somewhat concerning the rest of the apostolic prophecy. For these abstain, as he foretold, "from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving" (1 Tim 4:3): by this also proving themselves heretics, not indeed because they abstain, but because they abstain heretically. For I too abstain at times; but my abstinence is a satisfaction for sins, not a superstition in the service of impiety. Do we reprove Paul for chastising his body and bringing it into subjection? (1 Cor 9:27). I will abstain from wine, because in wine there is wantonness (Eph 5:18); or if I am weak, I will use a little, according to Paul's counsel (1 Tim 5:23). I will abstain from meats, lest while they nourish the flesh too much, they nourish at the same time the vices of the flesh. I will endeavor to take bread itself with measure, lest with a burdened stomach it should be wearisome to stand for prayer, and lest the prophet also reproach me, because I have eaten my bread in satiety (Ezek 16:49). But neither will I accustom myself to gorge on even plain water, lest the distension of the stomach reach all the way to the titillation of lust. The heretic does otherwise. Indeed he shudders at milk and whatever is made from it: and lastly at everything that is procreated from coitus. Rightly and in a Christian manner, if not on account of its being from coitus, but lest they provoke to coitus.
7. But what does it mean that everything that is generated from coitus is thus universally avoided? This observance of foods so pointedly expressed generates suspicion in me. Nevertheless, if you bring this forward to us from the rules of physicians, we do not reprove the care of the flesh, which no man ever hated, provided it is not excessive. If from the discipline of abstainers, that is, from the school of spiritual physicians, we approve even the virtue by which you tame the flesh and bridle lust. But if from the madness of Mani you prescribe against the beneficence of God, so that what he created and gave to be received with thanksgiving, you, not only ungrateful but also a rash censor, should decree unclean and should abstain from it as from something evil; I will by no means commend the abstinence, but will execrate the blasphemy: and I would call you yourself more unclean, who think something unclean. "All things are clean to the clean," says that best evaluator of things: "and nothing is unclean, except to him who thinks something unclean: but to the unclean and unfaithful nothing is clean, but their mind and conscience are polluted" (Tit 1:15). Woe to you who reject foods which God created, judging them unclean and unworthy for you to convey into your bodies: whereas on that very account the body of Christ, which is the Church, has spewed you out as polluted and unclean.
8. I am not unaware that they glory that they alone are the body of Christ: but let those persuade themselves of this who are also persuaded that they have the power daily at their table to consecrate the body and blood of Christ for nourishing themselves into the body of Christ and its members. Indeed they boast that they are successors of the apostles, and call themselves apostolics, yet they are able to show no sign of their apostleship. How long is the lamp under a bushel? "You are the light of the world," was said to the apostles: and therefore the apostles are upon the lampstand, so that they might shine upon the whole world. Let the successors of the apostles be ashamed to be the light not of the world but of a bushel, and to be the darkness of the world. Let us say to them: You are the darkness of the world: and let us pass on to other things. They call themselves the Church. But they contradict him who says: "A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden" (Mt 5:14-16). Do you believe that the stone cut from the mountain without hands, which has become a mountain and fills the world (Dan 2:34-35), is enclosed in your caves? But neither should we linger here. The opinion itself shuns being published, content with its own whispering. Christ has, and always will have, his inheritance intact, and his possession the ends of the earth. They rather withdraw themselves from this great inheritance, who strive to take it away from Christ.
9. Behold the detractors, behold the dogs. They mock us because we baptize infants; because we pray for the dead; because we seek the intercession of the saints. In every kind of men and in both sexes they hasten to proscribe Christ: in adults and in little ones, in the living and the dead; on the one hand prescribing against infants from the impossibility of nature, and on the other against adults from the difficulty of continence. Furthermore, they defraud the dead of the helps of the living, and despoil the living no less of the intercession of the saints who have departed. Far be it! The Lord will not forsake his people, which is as the sand of the sea, nor will he be content with the small number of heretics, he who redeemed all. For redemption with him is not small, but truly plentiful. But how great is their number in comparison with the greatness of the price? They rather defraud themselves of the price, who strive to empty it of its value. For what if an infant cannot speak for himself, on whose behalf the voice of the blood of his brother, and of such a brother, cries to God from the earth? The mother Church also stands and cries. But what of the infant? Does he not also seem to you to gape in a certain way toward the fountains of the Savior, to cry out to God, and by his very wailings to clamor: "Lord, I suffer violence, answer for me"? (Isa 38:14). He begs the aid of grace, because he suffers violence from nature [alternatively, from his origin; alternatively, from sin]. The innocence of the wretched one cries out, the ignorance of the little one cries out, the weakness of the condemned one cries out. And so all these things cry out: the blood of the brother, the faith of the mother, the destitution of the wretched one, and the wretchedness of the destitute: and the cry is to the Father. Now the Father cannot deny himself: for he is a father.
10. Let no one say to me that the infant does not have faith, when the mother imparts her own to him, wrapping him in it in the Sacrament, until he becomes fit to receive it, set free and pure, by his own not only understanding but also assent. Surely the cloak is not so short that it cannot cover both? Great is the faith of the Church. Is it less than the faith of the Canaanite woman, which was able, as is established, to suffice both for her daughter and for herself? Therefore she heard: "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you have asked" (Mt 15:28). Is it less than the faith of those who, lowering the paralytic through the tiles, obtained for him the health of soul and body alike? Indeed you have: "When he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic: Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven you; and shortly after: Take up your bed and walk" (Mt 9:2, 5-6). He who believes these things will easily be persuaded that the Church rightly presumes, by its own faith, salvation not only for baptized infants but also a crown of martyrdom for infants slain for Christ. Since this is so, those regenerated will suffer no prejudice from that which was said: "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6), since they are not without faith, who have received the grace of baptism in testimony of faith. Nor from that which was likewise said: "But he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16). For what is to believe, if not to have faith? And so also a woman will be saved through the bearing of children, if she continues in faith with gentleness (1 Tim 2:15); and infants will be succored through the regeneration of the font; and adults who cannot be continent will redeem themselves by the thirtyfold fruit of marriage; and the dead who have need of it and are worthy will receive, through the mediation of angels, the prayers and sacrifices of the living; and the consolations of those who have already arrived will by no means be lacking to those still living, through the God who is everywhere and through a love that in God is never absent from those afar. For Christ also died and rose again for this purpose, that he might be Lord both of the living and of the dead (Rom 14:9). For this reason also an infant was born, and advanced through each degree of age into manhood, so that he might be lacking to no age.
11. They do not believe that a purgatorial fire remains after death; but that the soul, once freed from the body, passes either to rest or to damnation. Let them therefore inquire of him who said that there is a certain sin that will be forgiven neither in this age nor in the age to come (Mt 12:32), why he said this, if no remission or purgation of sin remains in the future. But now, those who do not acknowledge the Church, it is no wonder if they detract from the orders of the Church, if they do not accept her institutions, if they despise the sacraments, if they do not obey the commandments. "Sinners," they say, "are the popes, archbishops, bishops, and priests: and therefore they are fit neither for giving nor for receiving the sacraments. Shall these two things ever agree, to be a bishop and to be a sinner?" It is false. Caiaphas was a bishop: and yet how great a sinner was he, who pronounced a sentence of death against the Lord? If you deny he was a bishop, the testimony of John will refute you, who relates that he even prophesied in testimony of his pontificate (Jn 11:51). Judas was an apostle: and though avaricious and wicked, he was yet chosen by the Lord. Or do you doubt his apostleship, whom the Lord chose? "Did I not choose you twelve," he says, "and one of you is a devil?" (Jn 6:71). You hear that he was at once a chosen apostle and turned out to be a devil; and you deny that one who is a sinner can be a bishop? Upon the seat of Moses sat the Scribes and the Pharisees, and those who did not obey them as bishops were guilty of disobedience, even against the Lord himself who commanded and said: "Whatever they tell you, do" (Mt 23:2-3). It is clear therefore that although they were Scribes, although Pharisees, although indeed the greatest sinners, yet on account of the seat of Moses, to them also no less pertains what he likewise said: "He who hears you hears me; and he who despises you despises me" (Lk 10:16).
12. Many other evils indeed have been persuaded upon this foolish and senseless people by spirits of error speaking lies in hypocrisy: but it is not possible to answer all of them. For who knows them all? Then the labor would be infinite and not at all necessary. For as regards these people, they are not convinced by arguments, because they do not understand; nor are they corrected by authorities, because they do not accept them; nor are they moved by persuasions, because they are perverted. It has been proven: they choose to die rather than to be converted. Their end is destruction, their last state a fire awaits. For indeed the figure of these went before them in the deed of Samson, when the tails of the foxes were set on fire (Judg 15:4-5). Often the faithful, having laid hands upon some of them, have dragged them out into the open. When asked about their faith, since they denied outright, in their usual manner, all the things of which they were suspected, they were examined by the ordeal of water and were found to be liars. And when they could no longer deny, being exposed since the water did not receive them, having taken the bit between their teeth, as they say, as wretchedly as freely they did not confess but professed their impiety, openly asserting their piety and prepared to undergo death for it. And those who stood by were no less prepared to inflict it. And so the people, rushing upon them, gave the heretics new martyrs of their own perfidy. We approve the zeal, but we do not recommend the deed; for faith is to be persuaded, not imposed. Although without doubt it is better that they be restrained by the sword, namely of him who does not bear the sword in vain, than that they be permitted to draw many into their error. For he is the minister of God, an avenger unto wrath against him who does evil (Rom 13:4).
13. Some wonder that they were led to death not only patiently, but even gladly, as it seemed; but they do not sufficiently consider how great is the power of the devil, not only over the bodies of men, but also over the hearts which, once permitted, he has possessed. Is it not a greater thing for a man to lay hands upon himself than to endure it willingly from another? But that the devil has been able to do this in many cases we have frequently experienced, of those who either drowned themselves or hanged themselves. Indeed Judas hanged himself (Mt 27:5), the devil without doubt putting it into him. Yet I consider it a greater thing, and marvel at it more, that he was able to put it into his heart to betray the Lord (Jn 13:2), than to hang himself. There is therefore no likeness between the constancy of the martyrs and the obstinacy of these; because contempt of death is wrought in the former by piety, in the latter by hardness of heart. And therefore the Prophet, perhaps with the voice of the martyr, was saying: "Their heart is curdled like milk, but I have meditated on your law" (Ps 113:70): on account of this, that even though the punishment might seem the same, the intention was far different; the one, to be sure, hardening his heart against the Lord, the other meditating on the law of the Lord.
14. Since this is so, there is no need, as I have said, to say many things in vain against men most foolish and most obstinate: it suffices that they have been made known so that they may be avoided. Wherefore, in order that they may be detected, they must be compelled either to put away their women or to go out of the Church, as those who scandalize the Church by cohabitation and companionship with women. It is greatly to be lamented that not only lay princes, but also certain men, as is said, of the clergy, and even of the order of bishops who ought rather to have persecuted them, tolerate them for the sake of gain, receiving gifts from them. "And how," they say, "shall we condemn those who are neither convicted nor confessed?" A frivolous enough excuse, not a reason but a pretext. By this alone, even if there were nothing else, you easily detect them if, as I have said, you separate the men and women who call themselves continent from one another: and compel the women indeed to live with others of their own sex and vow; and the men equally with men of the same profession. For by this provision will be made for the vow and the reputation of both alike, since they will have both witnesses and guardians of their continence. But if they do not endure this, they will be most justly expelled from the Church, which they scandalize by cohabitation that is not only notable but also illicit. Therefore let these things suffice for detecting the wiles of these foxes, to give knowledge and caution to the beloved and glorious Bride of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.