'Thou didst see a thief and didst run together with him.'
Again it has been written in the Gospel:
'But when God shall have left a man, he remains an empty vessel, but the unclean spirit wandering through desert places, says, in his hunger : " My house is empty," that is to say, He who had shut me out has been Himself shut out. " I will go back and dwell therein." And he brings with him seven others more wicked, and he shall dwell there, and that man's last state shall be worse than his first.'
That is:
'Thou didst see a thief and didst run together with him, and with adulterers didst cast thy lot.'
He terms heretics adulterers, and their churches adulterous, which Christ contemns and disowns in the Canticle of Canticles, as though He should say:
'Why do you make churches that "are not wanted "?' |195
'One is My beloved, one is My Spouse, one is My dove'
that is, the Catholic Church, in which you too might be. And yet by rebaptising you have chosen to cast your lot amongst adulterers.
It has been most clearly proved by divine witness that you are sinners. It has also been shown that thine auxiliaries have warred against thee, for thou hast brought up to thy relief the saying of the Prophet:
'The sacrifice of the sinner, is as of one who would offer in sacrifice a dog.'
Now, if you have any shame, recognise with grief that you are the sinners.
VII. In what sense it has been said: Let not the oil of the sinner anoint My Head.
Also learn this, whose Word it is:
'Let not the oil of the sinner anoint My Head.'
For whose voice is this thou hast not understood? It is surely the voice of Christ, who had not yet been anointed, when He prayed that the oil of the sinner should not soil His Head. Thou hast said, without |196 understanding, that David the Prophet feared the oil of the sinner.
The Psalmist had already been anointed by Samuel. There was then no reason why he should be anointed a second time. Consequently it is the voice of Christ, which says:
'Let not the oil of the sinner anoint My Head.'
It is a prayer, not a command; the expression of a desire, not a precept. For, were it a command, He would have said:
'The oil of the sinner shall not anoint My Head.'
It is therefore the Voice of the Son of God, even then fearing to meet the oil of the sinner, that is of any man whomsoever, for no man is without sin, but God alone. Accordingly His Son feared the oil of man, for it would have been shameful that God should be anointed by man. Accordingly He prays the Father that He should not be anointed by man, but by God the Father Himself. It is then the Son who asks; let us see whether the Father has granted the request.
This the Holy Spirit points out and makes clear in the forty-fourth Psalm, wherein He says to the Son Himself:
'The Lord thy God shall anoint Thee with the oil of gladness differently from Thy fellows.'
His fellows had been the priests and kings of the Jews, each of whom was known to have been anointed |197 by men. But, since it was right that the Son should be anointed by the Father----God by God----as the Son asked and the Spirit announced that it had been promised----this the Father fulfilled in the Jordan. For when the Son of God, our Saviour, came there, He was pointed out to John with these words :
'Behold the Lamb of God; He it is who taketh away the sins of the world.'