that we on our part knock, that it may be opened unto us; while they, by disowning Christ, refused to enter for salvation, and preferred remaining outside to be destroyed. Li as far, then, as we listen to these words with a pious mind, in as far as, before we understand them, we believe them to be true and divine, we stand at a great distance from these men. For when two persons are listening to the words of the gospel, the one impious, the other pious, and some of these are such as neither perhaps understands, the one says, It has said nothing; the other says. It has said the truth, and what it has said is good, but we do not understand it. This latter, because he believes, now knocks, that he may be worthy to have it opened up to him, if he continue knocking; but the other still hears the words, *' If ye believe not, ye shall not understand."- Why do I draw your attention to this? Even for this reason, that when I have explained as I can these obscure words, or, because of their great abstruseness, I have either myself failed to arrive at an understanding of them, or wanted the faculty 'of explaining what I do understand, or every one has been so dull as not to follow me, even when I give the explanation, yet should he not despair of himself; but continue in faith, walk on in the way, and hear the apostle saying, "And if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless whereto we have already attained, let us walk therein." ^ 8. Let us begin, then, with hearing His exposition of what we have heard Him propounding. " Tiien said Jesus unto them again. Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep." See, He has opened the very door which was shut in His former descnj)tion. He Himself is the door. We have come to know it; let us enter, or rejoice that we are already witliin. ".Ml that ever came are thieves and robbers." Wliat is this, Lord, "All that ever came "? How so? hast Thou not come? But understand; I said, "All that ever came," meaning, of course, exclusive of myself. ■• Let us recollect then. Before His coming came the prophets: were they thieves and robbers? God forbid. They dill not come apart from Him, for they came - Is.i. vii. q, according to the ScpHia^int, which, howt-ver, can hardly be said hcri' ti>).;ivf the mcanmic "f the llt-brcw Ic-xt. Our Kn>;lish version givL-s u pretty corrt-ct tr.iii'.l.iiion of the latter. -- Tk.
^ Phil. iii. is, 16.
* t'lirlcr till-: /it'sit/i-s, afmrt /ruin, tnyscl/. These words are an explanation suKnested by Aunustin himself. The words, " TTjju f^ou," " before me,' of the received text, which are undoubtedly K*'nuine, were wanting; in the version here us<'d by Aufjustin, just lis ill the Valerate. It is supposed that the authors t>f thesi' versions had brrn tempted to omit them, liecause of the use made of their, by some early heretics to throw discredit on the Old 'I'estumcnt Scri|)tures.— I'k.
[Tractate XLV.
[Tractate XLV.
with Him. Wlien about to come, He sent iieralds, but retained possession of the hearts of His messengers? Do you wish to know that they came with Him, who is Himself ever existent? Certainly He assumed human flesh at the time appointed. But what means that "ever"? "In the beginning was the Word."' With Him, therefore, came those who came with the word of God. "I am," said He, "the way, and the truth, and the life."^ If He is the truth, with Him came those who were truthful. As many, therefore, as were apart from Him, were "thieves and robbers," that is, had come to steal and to destroy.
9. 'But the sheep did not hear them." This is a more important point, *' the sheep did not hear them." Before the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, when He came in humility in the flesh, righteous men preceded, believing in the same way in Him who was to come, as we believe in Him who has come. Times vary, but not faith. For verbs themselves also vary with the tense, wHen they are variously declined. He is to come, has one sound; He has come, has another: there is a change in the sound between He is to come, and He has come:^ yet the same faith unites both, — both those who believed that He would come, and those who have believed that He is come. At different times, indeed, but by the one doorway of faith, that is, by Christ, do we see that both have entered. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin, that He came in the flesh, suffered, rose again, ascended into heaven; all this, just as you hear verbs of the past tense, we believe to be already fulfilled. In that faith a partnership is also held with us by those fathers who believed that He would be born of the Virgin, would suffer, would rise again, would ascend into heaven; for to such the apostle pointed when he said, " But we having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak." ■* The prophet said, " I believed, therefore have I spoken: " s the apostle says, *' We also believe, and therefore speak." But to let you know that their faith is one, listen to him saying, "Having the same spirit of faith, we also believe." So also in another place, " For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea: and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all •2 Chap. xiv. 6.
3 Ven/urus est, et venit, 5 Ps. cxvi. 10.
drink the same spiritual drink." The Red Sea signifies baptism; Moses, their leader through the Red Sea, signifies Christ; the people, who passed through, signify believers; the death of the Egyptians signifies the abolition of sins. Under different signs there is the same faith. It is with different signs as with different words [verbs]; for verbs change their sounds through the tenses, and verbs are indeed nothing else than signs. For they are words because of what they signify: take away the meaning from a word,"^ and it becomes a senseless sound. All, therefore, have become signs. Was not the same faith theirs by whom these signs were employed, and by whom were foretold in prophecy the very things which we believe? Certainly it was: but they believed that they were yet to come, and we, that they have come. In like manner does he also say, " They all drank the same spiritual drink; " " the same spiritual," for it was not the same material [drink]. For what was it they drank? "For they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed 'them; and that Rock was Christ."' See, then, how that while the faith remained, the signs were varied. There the rock was Christ; to us that is Christ which is placed on the altar of God. And they, as a great sacramental sign of the same Christ, drank the water flowing from the rock: what we drink is known to believers. If one's thoughts turn to the visible form, the thing is different; if to the meaning that addresses the under- I standing, they drank the same spiritual drink. As many, then, at that time as believed, whether Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Moses, or the other patriarchs or prophets who foretold of Christ, were sheep, and heard Christ. His voice, and not another's, did they hear. The Judge was present in the person of the Crier. For even when the judge speaks through the crier, the clerk* does not make it. The crier said; but the i judge said. But others there are whom the j sheep did not hear, in whom Christ's voice jhad no place, — wanderers, uttering falsehoods, prating inanities, fabricating vanities, misleading the miserable.
10. Why is it, then, that I have said. This is a more important point? What is there about it obscure and difficult to understand? Listen, I beseech you. See, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself came and preached. Much more surely was that the Shepherd's voice which was uttered by the very mouth of the 6 Augustin seems here to use verhutn sometimes in its gram, matical, sometimes in its general, meaning.— Tu.
7 I Cor. X. 1-4.
8 Exceptor: the person employed to take down notes of the i decisions, sentences, etc., in the public courts or assemblies. — Tr.
Tractate XLV.]
Shepherd. For if the Shepherd's voice came through the prophets, how much more did the Shepherd's own tongue give utterance to the Shepherd's voice? Yet all did not hear Him. But what are we to think? Those who did hear, were they sheep? Lo? Judas heard, and was a wolf: he followed, but, clad in sheep-skin, he was laying snares for the Shepherd. Some, again, of those who crucified Christ did not hear, and yet were sheep; for such He saw in the crowd when He said, " When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He."' Now, how is this question to be solved? They that are not sheep do hear, and they that are sheep do not hear. Some, who are wolves, follow the Shepherd's voice; and some, that are sheep, contradict it. Last of all, the sheep slay the Shepherd. The point is solved; for some one in reply says. But when they did not hear, as yet they were not sheep, they were then wolves: the voice, when it was heard, changed them, and out of wolves transformed them into sheep; and so, when they became sheep, they heard, and found the Shepherd, and followed Him. They built their hopes on the Shepherd's promises, because they obeyed His precepts.
II. That question has been solved in a way, and perhaps satisfies every one. But I have still a subject of concern, and what concerns me I shall impart to you, that, in some sort inquiring together, I may through His revelation be found worthy with you to attain the solution. Hear, then, what it is that moves me. By the Prophet Ezekiel the Lord rebukes the shepherds, and among other things says of the sheep, " The wandering sheep have ye not recalled." - He both declares it a wanderer, and calls it a sheep. If, while wandering, it was a sheep, whose voice was it hearing to lead it astray? For doubtless it would not be straying were it hearing the shepherd's voice: but it strayed just because it heard another's voice; it heard the voice of the thief and the robber. Surely the sheep do not hear the voice of rolibers. "Those that came," He said, -and we are to understand, apart from me, -tliat is, "those that came apart from me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear tliem." Lord, if the sheej) did not hear them, liow can the sheep wander? If the sheep hear only Thee, and Thou art the truth, whoever heareth the truth cannot certainly fall into error. But they err, and are called sheep. For if, in the very midst of their wandering, they were not called sheep, it would not be said by Ezekiel, "The wandering sheep have ye not recalled." How is it at the same time a wanderer and a sheep? Has it heard the voice T)f another? Surely "the sheep did not hear them." Accordingly many are just now being gathered into Christ's fold, and from being heretics are becoming catholics. They are rescued from the thieves, and restored to the shepherds: and sometimes they murmur, and become wearied of Him tliat calls them back, and have no true knowledge of him that would murder them; nevertheless also, when, after a struggle, those have come who are sheep, they recognize the Shepherd's voice, and are glad they have come, and are ashamed of their wandering. When, then, they were glorying in that state of error as in the truth, and were certainly not hearing the Shepherd's voice, but were following another, were they sheep, or were they not? 1/ they were sheep, how can it be the case that the sheep do not listen to aliens? If they were not sheep, wherefore the rebuke addressed to those to whom it is said, " The wandering sheep have ye not recalled "? In the case also of those already become catholic Christians, and believers of good promise, evils sometimes occur: they are seduced into error, and after their error are restored. When they were thus seduced, and were rebaptized, or after the companionship of the Lord's fold were turned back again into their former error, were they sheep, or were they not? Certainly they were catholics. If they were faithful catholics, they were sheep. If they were sheep, how was it that they could listen to the voice of a stranger when the Lord saith, "The sheep did not hear them "?
12. You hear, brethren, the great importance of the question. I say then, " The Lord knoweth them that are His."^ He knoweth those who were foreknown, He knoweth those who were predestinated; because it is said of Him, "For whom He did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many bretiiren. Moreover, whom He did predcstinnte, them He also call'jtl; and whom He calleii, them He also justified; and whom He justifieil, them He also glorified. If dotl be for us, who can be against us?".'\dd to this: " He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how hath He not with Him also freely given us nil tilings?" But what "us"? Those who are foreknown, predestinated, justified, glorified; regarding ' Chap. viii. 28.
a Ezek. xxxiv. 4.
3 a Tim.
11. 19.
[Tractate XLV.
whom there follows, " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?'' ' Therefore " the Lord knoweth them that are His; " they are the sheep. SucTi sometimes do not know themselves, but the Shepherd knoweth them, according to this predestination, this foreknowledge of God, according to the election of the sheep before the foundation of the world: for so saith also the apostle, "According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world." - According, then, to this divine foreknowledge and predestination, how many sheep are outside, how many wolves within! and how many sheep are inside, how many wolves without! How many are now living in wantonness who will yet be chaste! how many are blaspheming Christ who will yet believe in Him! how many are giving themselves to drunkenness who will yet be sober! how many are preying on other people's property, who will yet freely give of their own! Nevertheless at present they are hearing the voice of another, they are following strangers. In like manner, how many are praising within who will yet blaspheme; are chaste who will yet be fornicators; are sober who will wallow hereafter in drink; are standing who will by and by fall! These are not the sheep. (For we speak of those who were predestinated,- — of those whom the Lord knoweth that they are His.) And yet these, so long as they keep right, listen to the voice of Christ. Yea, these hear, the others do not; and yet, according to predestination, these are not sheep, while the others are.
13. There remains still the question, which I now think may meanwhile thus be solved. There is a voice of some kind, — there is, I say, a certain kind of voice of the Shepherd, in respect of which the sheep hear not strangers, and in respect of which those who are not sheep do not hear Christ. What a word is this! " He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved." ^ No one of His own is indifferent to such a voice, a stranger does not hear it: for this reason also does He announce it to the former, that he may abide perseveringly with Himself to the end; but by one who is wanting in such perseveringcontinuance with Him, such a word remains unheard. One has come to Christ, and has heard word after word of one kind and another, all of them true, all of them salutary; and among all the rest is also this utterance, " He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved." He who has heard this is one of the sheep. But there was, perhaps, some one listening to it, who treated it with dislike.
I Rom. vii. 29-33.
Eph.
1.4.
3 Matt. X. 22.
with coldness, and heard it as that of a stranger. If he was predestinated, he strayed for the time, but he was not lost for ever: he returns to hear what he has neglected, to do what he has heard. For if he is one of those who are predestinated, then both his very wandering and his future conversion have been foreknown by God: if he has strayed away, he will return to hear that voice of the Shepherd, and to follow Him who saith, " He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved." A good voice, brethren, it is; true and shepherd-like, the very voice of salvation m the tabernacles of the righteous.'* For it is easy to hear Christ, easy to praise the gospel, easy to applaud the preacher: but to endure unto the end, is peculiar to the sheep who hear the Shepherd's voice. A temptation befalls thee, endure thou to the end, for the temptation will not endure to the end. And what is that end to which thou shalt endure? Even till thou reachest the end of thy pathway. For as long as thou hearest not Christ, He is thine adversary in the pathway, that is, in this mortal life. And what doth He say? "Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him.^' ^ Thou hast heard, hast believed, hast agreed. If thou hast been at enmity, agree. If thou hast got the opportunity of coming to an agreement, keep not up the quarrel longer. For thou knowest not when thy way will be ended, and it is known to Him. If thou art a sheep, and if thou endurest to the end, thou shalt be saved: and therefore it is that His own despise not that voice, and strangers hear it not. According to my ability, as He gave me the power, I have either explained to you or gone over with you a subject of great profundity. If any have failed fully to understand, let him retain his piety, and the truth will be revealed: and let not those who have understood vaunt themselves as swifter at the expense of the slower, lest iii/their vaunting they turn out of the track, and the slower more easily attain the goal. But let all of us be guided by Him to whom we say, "Lead me, O Lord, in Thy way, and I will walk in Thy truth. "<^ 14. By this, then, which the Lord hath explained, that He Himself is the door, let us find entrance to what He has set forth, but not explained. And indeed who it is that is ihe Shepherd, although He hath not told us in the lesson we have read to-day, yet in that which follows He very plainly tells us: "I am the good Shepherd.'' And although He had not said so, whom else but Himself ought 4 Ps. cxviii.
IS- 5 Matt. V. 25.
6 Ps. Ixxxvi. II.
Tractate XLV.]
we to have understood in those words where He saith, " He that entereth in by the door is the Shepherd of the sheep. To Him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear His voice: and He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, ^nd t.he sheep follow Him: for they know His voice "? For who else calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them hence unto eternal life, but He who knoweth the names of those that are fore-ordained? Hence He said to His disciples, " Rejoice that your names are written in heaven; " ' for from this it is that He calleth them by name. And who else putteth them forth, save He who puttech away their sins, that, freed from their grievous fetters, they may be able to follow Him? And who hath gone before them to the place whither they are to follow Him, but He who, rising from the dead, dieth no more; and death shall have no more dominion over Him;'' and who, when He was manifest here in the flesh, said, " Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am"?^ Hence it is that He saith, " I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." In this He clearly shows that not only the Shepherd, but the sheep also enter in by the door.
15. But what is this, " He shall go in and out, and find pasture "? To enter indeed into the Church by Christ the door, is eminently good; but to go out of the Church, as this same John the evangelist saith in his epistle, "They went out from us, but they were not of us," '' is certainly otherwise than good. Such a going out could not then be commended by the good Shepherd, when He said, "And he shall go in and out, and find pasture." There is therefore not only some sort of entrance, but some outgoing also that is good, by the good door, which is Christ. But what is that praiseworthy and blessed outgoing? I might say, indeed, that we enter when we engage in some inward exercise of thought; and go out, when we take to some active work without: and since, as the apostle saith, Christ dwelleth in our hearts by faith, 5 to enter by Clirist is to give ourselves to thought in accordan.ce with that faith; but to go out by Christ is, in accordance also with that same faith, to take to outside works, that is to say, in the presence of others. Hence, also, we read in a psalm, " Man goeth forth to his work; "'^ and the Lord Himself saith, " Let your works shine before men." ' But I am better pleased that the Truth Himself, like a good Shepherd, and therefore a good Teacher, hath in a certain measure reminded us how we ought to understand His words, " He shall go in and out, and find pasture," when He added in the sequel, " The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." For He seems to me to have meant. That they may have life in coming in, and have it more abundantly at their departure. For no one can pass out by the door — that is, by Christ — to that eternal life which shall be open to the sight, unless by the same door— that is, by the same Christ — he has entered His church, which is His fold, to the temporal life, which is lived in faith. Therefore, He saith, " I am come that they may have life," that is, faith, which worketh by love;*^ by which faith they enter the fold that they may live, for the just liveth by faith: ^ "and that they may have it 1 more abundantly," who, enduring unto the end, pass out by this same door, that is, by the faith of Christ; for as true believers they die, and will have life more abundantly when they come whither the Shepherd hath preceded them, where they shall die no more.
Although, therefore, there is no want of pasture even here in the fold, -for we may understand the words " and shall find pasture " as referring to both^that is, both to their going in and their going out,- yet there only will they find the true pasture, where they shall be filled who hunger and thirst after righteousness,'"- such pasture as was found by him to whom it was said, " 'I'o-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." " But how He Himself is the door, and Himself the Shepherd, so that He also may in a certain respect be understood as going in and out by Himself, and who is the porter, it would be too long to inquire to-day, and, according to the grace given us by Himself, to unfold in the way of dissertation.
.1 Chap. xvii. 24.
[Tractate XLVI.
TRACTATE XLVI.
Chapter X. 11-13.
1. The Lord Jesus is speaking to His sheep — to those already so, and to those yet to become such — who were then present; for in the place where they were, there were those who were already His sheep, as well as those who were afterwards to become so: and He likewise shows to those then present and those to come, both to them and to us, and to as many also after us as shall -yet be His sheep, who it is that had been sent to them. All, therefore, hear the voice of their Shepherd saying, "I am the good Shepherd." He would not add "good," were there not b?d shepherds. But the bad shepherds are those who are thieves and robbers, or certainly hirelings at the best. For we ought to examine into, to distinguish, and to know, all the characters whom He has here depicted. The Lord has already unfolded two points, which He had previously set forth in a kind of covert form: we already know that He is Himself the door, and we know that He is Himself the Shepherd. Who the thieves and robbers are, was made clear in yesterday's lesson; and to-day we have heard of the hireling, as we have heard also of the wolf. Yesterday the porter was also introduced by name. Among the good, therefore, are the door, the doorkeeper, the shepherd, and the sheep: among the bad, the thieves and robbers, the hirelings, and the wolf.
2. We understand the Lord Christ as ^the door, and also as the Shepherd; but who is to be understood as the doorkeeper? For the former two, He has Himself explained: the doorkeeper He has left us to search out for ourselves. And what doth He say of the doorkeeper? "To him," He saith, " the porter [doorkeeper]' openeth." To whom doth he open? To the Shepherd. What doth he open to the Shepherd? The door. And who is also the door? The Shepherd Himself. Now, if Christ the Lord had not Himself explained, had not Himself said, " I am the Shepherd," and " I am the door," would any of us have ventured to say that Christ is Himself both the Shepherd and the door'* For had He said, " I am the Shepherd,'' and had not said, "I am the door," we should be setting ourselves to inquire what was the door, and perhaps, mistaken in our views, be still standing before the door. His grace and mercy have revealed to us the Shepherd, by His calling Himself so; have revealed to us also the door, when He declared Himself such; but He hath left us to search out the doorkeeper for ourselves. Whom, then, are we to call the doorkeeper^ Whomsoever we fix upon, we must take care not to think of him as greater than the door itself; for in men's houses the doorkeeper is greater than the door. The doorkeeper is placed before the door, not the door before the doorkeeper; because the porter keepeth the door, not the door the porter. I dare not say that any one is greater than the door, for I have heard already what is the door: that is no longer unknown to me, I am not left to my own conjecture, and I have not got much room for mere human guess work: God hath said it, the Truth hath said it, and we cannot change what the Unchangeable hath uttered, 3. In respect, then, of the profound nature of this question, I shall tell you what I think: let each one make the choice that pleases him, but let him think of it reverently; as it is written, " Think of the Lord with goodness, and in simplicity of heart seek Him." ' Perhaps we ought to understand the Lord Himself as the doorkeeper: for the shepherd and the door are in human respects as much different from each other as the doorkeeper and the door; and yet the Lord has called Himself both the Shepherd and the door. Why, then, may we not understand Him also as the doorkeeper? For if we look at His personal qualities, 3 the Lord ^hrist is neither a shepherd, in the way we are accustomed to know and to see shepherds; nor is He a door, for no artisan made Him: but if, because of some point of similarity. He is both the door and the Shepherd, I venture to say. He is also a sheep. True, the sheep is under the shepherd; yet He is both the Shepherd and a sheep. Where is He the Shepherd? Look, here thou hast it; read the Gospel: "I am the good Shepherd." Where is He a sheep? Ask the prophet: " He was led as a s loep to the slaughter."'* Ask the friend of the bridegroom: " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.' s Moreover, ' Ostiarius.
1'r.ACTATE XLVI.]