Leviticus 10

This is not far from being a sign of our unhappy time, in which some who have attained positions as priests and teachers—merely to mention it is both distressing and sad enough—are consumed by the fire of heavenly vengeance because they prefer the fire of cupidity to the fire of heavenly love. Their eternal damnation was prefigured by the temporal death of Aaron's sons.

The sons of Aaron also, who set upon the altar a strange fire not commanded by the Lord, were at once blotted out in the sight of the avenging Lord. These examples, you will see, are being followed wherever the tradition which comes from God is despised by lovers of strange doctrine and replaced by teaching of merely human authority.

Nor do we propose this, dearest brother, without the authority of divine Scripture, when we say that all things are arranged by divine direction by a certain law and by special ordinance, and that none can usurp to himself, in opposition to the bishops and priests, anything which is not of his own right and power. For Korah, Dathan, and Abiram endeavoured to usurp, in opposition to Moses and Aaron the priest, the power of sacrificing; and they did not do without punishment what they unlawfully dared. The sons of Aaron also, who placed strange fire upon the altar, were at once consumed in the sight of an angry Lord; which punishment remains to those who introduce strange water by a false baptism, that the divine vengeance may avenge and chastise when heretics do that in opposition to the Church, which the Church alone is allowed to do.

And that He might increase in them this fear, immediately, by the mouth of offence, the rod of His chastisement was revealed, and after the offence the Chastiser gave them no respite, because their servitude was not worthy of His longsuffering. Above their head the rod of justice hung continually, and immediately they committed sin they were chastened, and at the time of their offence they were beaten, and at the entrance of the path of their sins they forthwith received rebuke; for longsuffering teacheth the foolish servant contempt, and in order that that stupid nation, which in the manner of an evil-doing servant, sat in the house of God, might not [learn] contempt, the Chastiser took away longsuffering, especially when they went forth from Egypt. And we must also understand the object of that swift punishment in another way, and that there was not longsuffering as regardeth the correction of their sins; for God the Teacher took the people, like a child, from Egypt their nurse, that He might deliver unto them the doctrine of His knowledge, and might teach them the instruction of His wisdom. But the people, in their ignorance, when instruction had been delivered unto them, forgot it, and they never kept in remembrance the meditation of the commandments of God, and they were frequently punished with severity, so that, if it were only through fear of chastisement, they might lay hold upon the remembrance of instruction. The man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day was stoned by all the congregation; and the earth opened and swallowed up others who were called by Moses, and who scorned him and came not; and fire went forth suddenly, and burnt up the bodies of others who thought lightly of his priestly office, and who sought honour for themselves; and others, who in the guise of paying honour, brought strange fire out of season, were burnt up by a tongue of fire which went forth from the tabernacle, and they perished; and others, because they asked for flesh and rejected the bread of angels, were tortured by the indigestion which came upon them; and others who went astray as concerning the calf, were pierced through by the swords of the Levites; and others, who were the cause of the revolt at the waters of trial were set apart for destruction; and others who murmured against the Lord perished by fiendish snakes; and likewise they all, because they strove against going into the land of promise, came to an end and were destroyed in the wilderness. To these offences, then, these punishments were united, and together with each act of wickedness a punishment straightway sprang up by its side, so that evil deeds might be suppressed by stripes, and sins by vengeance, and so that the people might be like a child who feareth the teacher who giveth him instruction, and that it might tremble before the Judge who would beat them like a wrongdoing slave.

Let us see, then, what it is that has now been read to us. "And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: You shall drink no wine nor strong drink, you and your sons with you, when you enter into the tabernacle of testimony, or when you approach the altar, and you shall not die. This is a perpetual statute throughout your generations, to distinguish between the midst of the holy and the profaned, and between the midst of the unclean and the midst of the clean, and to instruct the children of Israel in all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them by the hand of Moses". A plain law is given both to the priests and to the chief of the priests, that "when they approach the altar, they abstain from wine and from every drink that can inebriate", which Holy Scripture is wont to name by the native word "sicera" (strong drink). The divine word wills, therefore, that the priests of the Lord be sober in all things, inasmuch as they, "approaching the altar" of God, ought "to pray for the people" and to intervene for the offenses of others—they who have no portion in the earth, but the "Lord himself is their portion". For thus Scripture speaks of them: "To the sons of Levi", it says, "you shall not give a part in the midst of their brethren, because I, the Lord their God, am their portion". It wills, therefore, that these, to whom the "Lord himself is the portion", be sober, fasting, watchful at every time, but especially when they stand ready at the altars to beseech the Lord and to sacrifice in his sight. And these commandments preserve their force to such a degree, and are to be kept with all observance, that even the Apostle confirms these same things by the laws of the New Testament. In it, similarly laying down for the priests or the chiefs of priests the rules of life, he says that they ought "not" to be given to "much wine", but to be "sober". And sobriety indeed is the mother of all virtues, just as, on the contrary, drunkenness is of all vices. For the Apostle plainly declared, saying: "wine, wherein is riot", that he might show that from drunkenness, as a firstborn daughter, riot is begotten. Then, moreover, the Savior too, with the authority of the Lord and King, establishing laws and ordinances at once for priests and for the peoples, says: "Take heed, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with drunkenness and surfeiting and with the cares of this world, and that sudden destruction come upon you". You have heard the edict of the eternal King, and you have learned the lamentable end of "drunkenness" or "surfeiting". If some skilled and wise physician were to prescribe to you in these very words and say: Take heed to yourselves, lest anyone, for example's sake, take too greedily of the juice of this or that herb; for if he does so, sudden destruction will come upon him—I do not doubt that everyone, with regard to his own health, would keep the precepts of the physician who forewarned him. But now the physician of souls and bodies, and at the same time the Lord, bids the herb of "drunkenness" and of "surfeiting" be shunned, and likewise the deadly juices, as it were, of worldly cares be guarded against. And I know not whether any of us is not consumed in these things—not to say wounded. Drunkenness by wine, then, is pernicious in all respects; for it alone is the thing that renders both the body and the soul feeble at once. In other matters indeed it can come to pass that, according to the Apostle, when the body "is weakened", then the spirit "is the more powerful", and where "he who is without, the man, is corrupted, he who is within is renewed". But in the sickness of drunkenness the body and the soul are corrupted together, the spirit is vitiated along with the flesh. All the members are feeble, the feet, the hands, the tongue slackened; darkness veils the eyes, forgetfulness veils the mind, so that a man does not know nor perceive himself to be a man. This, then, drunkenness has first, of bodily disgrace. But now if we examine in how many ways the human mind is inebriated, we shall find drunken even those who seem to themselves sober. Wrath inebriates the soul, but fury makes it more than drunken, if indeed anything can be more than drunkenness. Cupidity and avarice render a man not only drunken but even rabid. And obscene desires inebriate the soul, just as, on the contrary, holy desires also inebriate it, but with that holy inebriation of which a certain one of the saints said: "and your inebriating cup, how excellent it is!". But hereafter we shall look at the diversity of inebriation; now meanwhile see how many are the things that inebriate the soul: both dread inebriates it, and vain suspicion; but envy and spite wear it away beyond all drunkenness. Yet they cannot be enumerated, how many are the things that afflict the unhappy soul with the vice of drunkenness. Now for the moment let us look at the priests, whom the law commands, as they approach the altar, to abstain from wine. And indeed, as far as pertains to the historical precept, let those things suffice which have been said. But as far as regards the mystical understanding, in what was said above our profession is held: that, according to the authority of Paul the Apostle, our Lord and Savior is called "the high priest of the good things to come". He, then, is "Aaron", and "his sons" are his Apostles, to whom he himself said: "Little children, yet a little while I am with you". What, then, did the law command "Aaron and his sons"? That "they drink not wine and strong drink when they approach the altar". Let us see how we may indeed fit this to Jesus Christ our Lord, the high priest, and to his priests and sons, that is, to our Apostles. And first it must be perceived how, before "he approaches the altar", this true high priest drinks wine with his priests; but when he begins "to approach the altar and to enter into the tabernacle of testimony", he abstains from wine. Do you suppose we can find any such thing done by him? Do you suppose we can fit the figures of the Old Instrument to the deeds and words of the New Testament? We can, if the very Word of God deign both to help and to inspire us. We ask, then, how our Lord and Savior, who is the true high priest, with his disciples, who are the true priests, before "he approaches the altar" of God, drinks wine, but when he has begun "to approach", does not drink. The Savior had come into this world, that he might "offer his flesh as a victim to God for our sins". Before he offered this, amid the delays of the dispensations, he was drinking wine. In short, he was called "a glutton and a wine-drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners". But when the time of his cross arrived and "he was about to approach the altar" where he might immolate the victim of his flesh: "taking", it says, "the cup he blessed it and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take, and drink of this". You, he says, "drink", who are not now about to approach the altar. But he himself, as one "about to approach the altar", says of himself: "Amen I say to you, that I will not drink of the generation of this vine, until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father". If any of you approaches with ears purified for hearing, let him gaze upon the secret of the ineffable mystery. What is it that he says: "that I will not drink of the generation of this vine, until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father"? We were saying in what went before that the promise of this good inebriation is given to the saints, when they say: "and your inebriating cup, how excellent it is!". But in many other places of Scripture also we read the like, as there: "they shall be inebriated by the abundance of your house, and you shall give them to drink of the torrent of your pleasure". In Jeremiah too the Lord says: "and I will inebriate my people". And Isaiah says: "behold, they that serve me shall drink, but you shall thirst". And you will find many things concerning inebriation of this kind mentioned in the divine Scriptures. And this inebriation without doubt is taken for the joy of the soul and the gladness of the mind, just as elsewhere too I remember we distinguished that it is one thing to be inebriated by night and another to be inebriated by day.

If, then, we have understood what the inebriation of the saints is, and how this is given to the saints in the promises for gladness, let us now see how our Savior does not drink wine, "until he drink it new" with the saints "in the kingdom" of God. My Savior even now mourns my sins. My Savior cannot be glad, so long as I remain in iniquity. Why can he not? Because he himself is "the advocate for our sins with the Father", as John, his fellow-initiate, declares, saying that "even if anyone has sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just; and he is himself the propitiation for our sins". How, then, can he who is "the advocate for" my "sins" drink the wine of gladness, whom I sadden by sinning? How can he who "approaches the altar" that he may make propitiation for me, a sinner, be in gladness, to whom the grief of my sins ever ascends? "With you", he says, "I will drink it in the kingdom of my Father". As long as we do not so act that we ascend to the kingdom, he cannot drink alone the wine which he promised to drink with us. He is therefore in mourning as long as we persist in error. For if his own Apostle "mourns certain who sinned before and did not do penance for the things which they committed", what shall I say of him himself, who is called "the Son of love", who "emptied himself" because of the love which he had toward us, and "did not seek the things which are his own", though "he was equal to God", but sought the things which are ours, and on account of this "emptied himself"? Since, then, he has thus sought the things which are ours, does he now no longer seek us, nor think of the things which are ours, nor grieve over our errors, nor weep over our perditions and contritions—he who wept over "Jerusalem" and said to it: "how often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks, and you would not"? He, then, who took up our wounds and suffered on our account, as the physician of souls and bodies, does he now neglect the festering of our wounds? For "they have festered", as the prophet says, "and our scars are corrupted from the face of our foolishness". For all these things, therefore, he "now stands before the face of God", "interceding for us", he stands at the altar, that he may offer propitiation for us to God; and therefore, as one about to approach that altar, he said: "that I will no longer drink of the generation of this vine, until I drink it new with you". He waits, therefore, that we may be converted, that we may imitate his example, that we may follow his footsteps, and that he may rejoice with us and "drink wine with us in the kingdom of his Father". For now, because "the Lord is merciful and compassionate", he himself with greater affection than his Apostle "weeps with them that weep and desires to rejoice with them that rejoice". And much more "does he himself mourn those who sinned before and did not do penance". For it must not be thought that Paul indeed mourns for sinners and weeps for the offending, but that my Lord Jesus refrains from weeping when he approaches the Father, when he stands at the altar and offers propitiation for us; and this is, being "one who approaches the altar", not to drink the wine of gladness, because he still suffers the bitternesses of our sins. He does not will, then, to drink wine alone "in the kingdom" of God; he waits for us; for thus he said: "until I drink it with you". It is we, therefore, who, by neglecting our life, delay his gladness. He waits for us, that he may drink "of the generation of this vine". Of what "vine"? Of that of which he himself was the figure: "I am the vine, you are the branches". Whence also he says that "my blood is truly drink, and my flesh is truly food". For truly "he washed his robe in the blood of the grape". What, then, is it? He awaits gladness. When does he await it? "When I shall have consummated", he says, "your work". When does he "consummate" this "work"? When he shall have made me, who am the last and viler than all sinners, consummated and perfected, then "he consummates his work"; for now his work is still imperfect, so long as I remain imperfect. In short, so long as I am not subject to the Father, neither is he himself said to be "subject" to the Father. Not that he himself needs subjection with the Father, but on my behalf, in whom he has not yet consummated his work, he himself is said not to be subject; for thus we read, that "we are the body of Christ and members in part". But let us see what it is that he said, "in part". I now, for example, am "subject" to God according to the spirit, that is, in purpose and will; but as long as in me "the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh", and I have not yet been able to subject the flesh to the spirit, I am indeed "subject" to God, but not entirely, but "in part". But if I shall be able to draw even my flesh and all my members into consonance with the spirit, then I shall be seen to be perfectly "subject". If you have understood what it is to be "subject" "in part" and what it is to be so entirely, return now also to that which we set forth concerning the subjection of the Lord, and see that, since we are all said to be his body and members, so long as there are some among us who are not yet subjected with perfect subjection, he himself is said not to be "subject". But when he shall have "consummated" his "work" and shall have brought his whole creation to the summit of perfection, then he himself is said to be "subject" in those whom he has subjected to the Father, and in whom he has "consummated the work which the Father had given him", "that God may be all in all". But to what do these things look? That we might understand that which we treated above, how he does not drink wine, or how he drinks; he drank before "he entered into the tabernacle, before he approached the altar"; but he does not drink now, because he stands at the altar and mourns my sins; and again he will drink after these things, "when all things shall have been made subject to him" and, all being saved and the death of sin destroyed, it will no longer thereafter be necessary to offer "victims for sin". For then there will be joy and gladness, and then "the humbled bones shall exult", and that shall be fulfilled which is written: "sorrow and sadness and groaning have fled away". But let us not omit even that, that it is said not only of Aaron, that "he drink not wine", but also of his sons, when they enter to the holy places. For they have not yet received their gladness—not even the Apostles—but they too wait, that I also may become a partaker of their gladness. For the saints, on departing hence, do not straightway obtain the entire rewards of their merits; but they wait even for us, though we tarry, though we are slothful. For their gladness is not perfect, so long as they grieve over our errors and mourn our sins. Perhaps you may not believe me when I say this; for who am I, that I should dare to affirm the sentence of so great a doctrine? But I bring forward a witness of these things, of whom you cannot doubt: for the "teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth" is Paul the Apostle. He, then, writing to the Hebrews, when he had enumerated all the holy fathers who were justified through faith, adds after all these also this: "but all these", he says, "having a testimony through faith, did not yet attain the promise, God providing something better for us, that they should not without us attain perfection". You see, therefore, that Abraham still waits, that he may attain the things which are perfect. Isaac too waits, and Jacob, and all the prophets wait for us, that with us they may receive perfect blessedness. On account of this, therefore, that mystery too is kept for the last day of the deferred judgment. For there is "one body" which is awaited to be justified; there is "one body" which is said to rise again in the judgment. "For although there are many members, yet one body; the eye cannot say to the hand: I have no need of you". Even if the eye be sound and not troubled, as far as pertains to seeing, if the remaining members are lacking to it, what gladness will there be for the eye? Or what perfection will it be seen to have, if it has not a hand, if the feet are lacking or the remaining members are not present? For even if there is some surpassing glory of the eye, it is chiefly in this, that either it itself be the guide of the body, or it not be forsaken by the offices of the other members. And this too I think we are taught through that vision of the prophet Ezekiel, when he says that "bone must be gathered to bone, and joint to joint and sinews and veins and skin", and each thing be restored to its own place. In short, see what the prophet adds: "these bones", he says (he did not say: they are all men, but he said: "these bones") "are the house of Israel". You will have gladness, then, on departing from this life, if you have been holy. But then there will be full gladness, when no member of the body is lacking to you. For you too will wait for others, just as you yourself were waited for. But if to you, who are a member, gladness does not seem to be perfect, if another member be lacking, how much more does our Lord and Savior, who is the "head" and author of the whole body, not reckon his gladness to be perfect for himself, so long as he sees any of the members lacking to his body! And therefore perhaps he was pouring out prayer to the Father, saying: "Holy Father, glorify me with that glory which I had with you, before the world was". He does not will, then, without you to receive his perfect glory, that is, without his people, who are his body and who are his members. For he wills, in this body of his Church and in these members of his people, himself as it were to dwell as the soul, that he may have all their motions and all their works according to his own will; that there may be truly fulfilled in us that saying of the prophet: "I will dwell in them and walk about among them". But now, so long as we are not all "perfect", but "are still in sins", he is "in part" in us, and therefore "in part we know and in part we prophesy", until one may merit to arrive at that measure of which the Apostle speaks: "but I live now, no longer I, but Christ lives in me". "In part", then, as the Apostle says, we are now "his members" and "in part we are his bones". But when "bones shall have been joined to bones and joints to joints", according to what we said above, then he himself too will say of us that prophetic word: "all my bones shall say: Lord, who is like you?". For "all" these "bones" speak and utter a hymn and give thanks to God. For they remember his benefit, and therefore "all my bones shall say: Lord, who is like you? delivering the poor man from the hand of one stronger than he". Of these bones, while they were still scattered, before he came who was to "collect and gather them into one", that prophetic word too was spoken: "our bones are scattered beside hell". Because, then, they were scattered, therefore he says through another prophet: "let bone be gathered to bone and joint to joint and sinews and veins and skins". For when this shall have been done, then "all these shall say: Lord, who is like you? delivering the needy from the hand of one stronger than he". For each one bone of "these bones" was needy and was worn down by the hand of "the stronger". For it did not have the "joint" of charity, nor the "sinews" of patience, nor the veins of a vital spirit and the vigor of faith. But when he came who "collected the scattered" and who "joined together the dispersed", associating "bone to bone and joint to joint", he began to build up the holy body of the Church. These things indeed fell in from without to this discussion, but they were necessarily explained, that the entrance of my high priest into the holy places, not drinking wine so long as he exercises the priesthood, might become more manifest. After these things, nevertheless, he will drink wine, but "new wine"; and "new wine" in "a new heaven and a new earth" and in "the new man" with "new men" and with those who "sing" to him "a new song". You see, therefore, that it is impossible for a new cup of the new vine to be drunk by him who is still "clothed with the old man with his acts". "For no one", he says, "puts new wine into old wineskins". If, then, you too wish to drink of this "new wine", be renewed and say: "even if our outer man is corrupted, yet he who is within is renewed from day to day". And of these things indeed enough has been said.

Gratuitous knowledge is called the knowledge of the Saints, because it has nothing of vice mixed in, nothing of carnality, nothing of curiosity, and nothing of vanity. Whence in Leviticus: "The Lord also said to Aaron: You and your sons shall not drink wine or anything that can intoxicate, so that you may have the knowledge of discerning between the holy and the profane." He who has the knowledge of discerning between the holy and the profane will abstain from everything that can intoxicate, that is, from every superfluous delight in creatures: this is the intoxicating wine. Whether someone on account of vanity, or on account of curiosity, or carnality inclines toward superfluous delight, which is in creatures: he does not have the knowledge of the Saints.

Priests given to wine are both condemned by the apostle and forbidden by the old law. Those who serve the altar, we are told, must drink neither wine nor shechar. Now every intoxicating drink is in Hebrew called shechar, whether it is made of corn or of the juice of apples, whether you distil from the honeycomb a rude kind of mead or make a liquor by squeezing dates or strain a thick syrup from a decoction of corn. Whatever intoxicates and disturbs the balance of the mind avoid as you would wine.

Scripture says, then: "the little breast of setting-apart and the arm of removal you shall eat in a holy place, you and your sons and your house with you; for it is given as a statute to you and a statute to your sons of the peace offerings of the children of Israel, the arm of removal and the little breast of setting-apart". Not every little breast is a "little breast of setting-apart", nor is every arm of "removal" or "separation" an "arm". But since we have recalled the person of the high priest to my Lord Jesus and to his sons the holy Apostles, let us see how he himself indeed eats the "little breast of setting-apart", and his sons, but the others cannot all eat the "little breast of setting-apart". What, then, is it that is set apart from all things and is not common with the rest, except the sole substance of the Trinity? If, then, I understand indeed the reckoning of the world, but cannot also understand concerning God as is worthy, nor has the knowledge of God been revealed to me, I eat indeed the little breast, but not the "little breast of setting-apart". Even if I shall be able to say: "for he himself gave me the true knowledge of all things that are, that I might know the reckoning of the world and the power of the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times, the vicissitudes of changes and the turnings of seasons, the cycles of the year and the positions of the stars"—the knowledge of all these, because it is rational, is the food of the little breast, but not of the "little breast of setting-apart". But if I shall be able to perceive concerning God the things that are great, that are holy, that are true and secret, then I "will eat the little breast of setting-apart", when I shall have recognized that which is eminent above and set apart from every creature. First, then, my true high priest "eats" this "little breast". How does he "eat" it? "No one", he says, "knows the Father, except the Son". In the second place "his sons also eat". "For no one", he says, "knows the Father, except the Son, and to whom the Son shall will to reveal him". But to what others does he reveal, except to his Apostles? But also the "arm of separation" or "removal", as we said above too, is the deeds and works more eminent than the rest, which indeed my Savior and Lord himself first fulfilled. How did he fulfill them? "My food", he says, "is to do the will of him who sent me, and to perfect his work". When, then, he does "the will of him who sent" him, in this he eats not the little breast, but "the arm of separation". And similarly his Apostles too, when they do the work of the Evangelist and become "workmen not to be confounded, rightly handling the word of truth", "eat the arm of separation"—or "removal". Do you wish to see still more plainly how the Savior eats "the arm of separation"? Hear what he says to the Jews: "if I have done", he says, "among you works which no other has done; for which of these do you wish to kill me?". You see how he truly "eats the arm of separation", who did works so set apart and so sublime as "no other did".