TRV
Augustine of Hippo
Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500 · 7,530 passages across 62 books
Commentary
Song of Solomon 4:12
· 3 passages
A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
Taking all these things, therefore, into consideration, I think that I am not rash in saying that there are some in the house of God after such a fashion as not to be themselves the very house of God, which is said to be built upon a rock. [The church] is called the one dove, which is styled the beauteous bride without spot or wrinkle, and a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, a well of living water, an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits. [This] house also received the keys, and the power of binding and loosing.
I think that we have sufficiently shown, both from the canon of Scripture and from the letters of Cyprian himself. [Thus] bad people, while by no means converted to a better mind, can have, and confer, and receive baptism, of whom it is most clear that they do not belong to the holy church of God, though they seem to be within it. [But] they are covetous, robbers, usurers, envious, evil thinkers, and the like; while [the church] is one dove, modest and chaste, a bride without spot or wrinkle, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits, with all similar properties that are attributed to her.
This account can be even better read as an allegory of the church, prophetical of what was to happen in the future. Thus the garden is the church itself, as we can see from the Canticle of Canticles; the four rivers are the four Gospels; the fruit-bearing trees are the saints, as the fruits are their works; and the tree of life is, of course, the Saint of saints, Christ.
Song of Solomon 5:16
His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
A person of God should so appear and conduct himself that there would be no one who would not desire to see him, no one who would not wish to hear him, no one who, having seen him, would not believe that he was a son of God. In his case the prophetic words would be fulfilled: “His throat is most sweet, and he is all lovely.”
Song of Solomon 6:6
· 2 passages
Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them.
Separated from the world, to which they were once conformed, they pass over into the members of the church. And rightly therefore are they, through whom such things are done, called teeth like to shorn sheep; for they have laid aside the burdens of earthly cares, and coming up from the bath, from the washing away of the filth of the world by the sacrament of baptism, every one bears twins. For they fulfill the two commandments, of which it is said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”: 16 loving God with all their heart, and with all their soul and with all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves.
He praises these sheep also in the Song of Solomon, speaking of some perfect ones as the teeth of his spouse the holy church.
Song of Solomon 6:8
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number.
The word queens refers to the souls that rule in the realm of the intelligible and spiritual. The word concubines [refers] to the souls that receive an earthly reward, concerning whom it is said, “They have received their reward.”
Song of Solomon 6:9
My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
“For as regards the fact that to preserve the figure of unity the Lord gave the power to Peter that whatsoever he should loose on earth should be loosed,” it is clear that that unity is also described as one dove without fault. Can it be said, then, that to this same dove belong all those greedy ones, whose existence in the same Catholic church Cyprian himself so grievously bewailed? For birds of prey, I believe, cannot be called doves, but rather hawks. How then did they baptize those who used to plunder estates by treacherous deceit and increase their profits by compound usury, if baptism is only given by that indivisible and chaste and perfect dove, that unity which can only be understood as existing among the good? Is it possible that, by the prayers of the saints who are spiritual within the church, as though by the frequent lamentations of the dove, a great sacrament is dispensed, with a secret administration of the mercy of God? [Thus] their sins also are loosed who are baptized, not by the dove but by the hawk, if they come to that sacrament in the peace of Catholic unity.
Song of Solomon 6:10
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
The church is the sun and the moon and the stars, to which it was said, “Fair as the moon, bright as the sun.” By it our Joseph is adored in this world as in Egypt, when he is raised from humble to high estate.
Song of Solomon 8:5
· 2 passages
Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.
Oh, bride of Christ, beautiful among women! Oh, you in white, coming up and leaning upon your beloved! For by his light you are illuminated that you may shine; by his help you are supported that you may not fall! Oh, how well it is sung to you in that Song of Songs, your wedding song, as it were, that “there is love in your delights!”
Therefore Christ has given a new commandment to us: that we love one another as he also has loved us. This love renews us that we may be new, heirs of the New Testament, singers of a new song. This love renewed even then those just persons of ancient times, then the patriarchs and the prophets, as it did the blessed apostles later. Even now it also renews the nations, and from the whole human race, which is scattered over the whole world, it makes and gathers a new people, the body of the new spouse, the bride of the Son of God, the Only Begotten about whom it is said in the Song of Songs, “Who is this who comes up in white?” In white, of course, because renewed. By what, except by the new commandment?
Song of Solomon 8:6
· 2 passages
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
When death comes, it cannot be resisted. By whatever arts, whatever medicines, you meet it; the violence of death can none avoid who is born mortal; so against the violence of love can the world do nothing. For from the contrary the similitude is made of death; for as death is most violent to take away, so love is most violent to save. Through love many have died to the world, to live to God.
Rightly is [love] said to be “strong as death,” either because no one overcomes it as no one overcomes death, or because in this life the measure of charity is unto death, as the Lord said: “Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Or, rather, because as death tears the soul away from the senses of the flesh, so charity tears it away from carnal passions.
Titus 1:2
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;
I confess that I do not know what ages passed before the human race was created, yet I am perfectly sure that no one creature is coeternal with the Creator. Curiously enough, the apostle uses the expression tempora aeterna in reference not to the future but to the past. Thus he says: “in the hope of eternal life which God, who does not lie, promised before the eternal times, he has in due times manifested, his word.” He seems to be saying that time stretches backward eternally; yet time is not coeternal with God, since not only did God exist “before eternal times” but he promised eternal life which he manifested in his own time, that is, in due time. Now, what he promised was his Word. For the Word is eternal life. But how did he make this promise, since it was made to those who certainly did not exist before the “eternal times”? The meaning, then, must be that what was to take place in its own time was already predestined and determined in his eternity and in his coeternal Word.
Titus 1:6
If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.
The first freedom, then, is to be without crimes. And so when the apostle Paul chose either priests or deacons to be ordained, and when anyone is to be ordained to take charge of a church, he does not say, If anyone is without sin. For if he were to say this, every person would be rejected, no one would be ordained. But he says, “if anyone is without crime,” such as homicide, adultery and uncleanness of fornication, theft, fraud, sacrilege, and other things of this sort.
Titus 1:9
Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.
If anyone says, however, that if teachers are made learned by the Holy Spirit then they do not need to be taught by educators what they should say or how they should say it, he should also say that we should not pray because the Lord says, “for your Father knows what is needful for you, before you ask him.” With such a false premise one might argue that the apostle Paul should not have taught Timothy and Titus what or how they should teach others. One upon whom is imposed the personage of a teacher in the church should have these three apostolic epistles before his eyes. Do we not read in the first epistle to Timothy … and in the second epistle is it not said … again, does he not say to Titus that a bishop should persevere in “that faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers”?
Titus 1:11
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.
But I, pierced with such grief as I am, what can I do except speak? Or do they do such things and then say to me: “Be silent”? May the Lord preserve me from such cowardice that I should hold my peace through fear of their wrath, when he commands me through his apostle, saying that “they ought to be reproved” by the bishop for “teaching the things which they ought not.” … For when God commands that we speak and preach the word and that we refute and condemn “in season and out of season” those who “teach the things which they ought not”—as I can prove by the words of the Lord and the apostles—let no man think that I can be enjoined to silence in these matters.
Titus 1:12
One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.
If you were to hear, even from one who was profane, the prayer of the priest couched in words suitable to the mysteries of the gospel, can you possibly say to him, “Your prayer is not true,” though he himself may be not only a false priest but not a priest at all? The apostle Paul said that certain testimony of a Cretan prophet (he knew not which) was true, though he was not reckoned among the prophets of God.… If, therefore, the apostle himself bore witness to the testimony of some obscure prophet of a foreign race because he found it to be true, why do not we, when we find in any one what belongs to Christ and is true even though the man with whom it may be found is deceitful and perverse? Why do we not in such a case make a distinction between the fault which is found in the man and the truth which he has not of his own but of God?
Titus 1:15
· 2 passages
Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
Those likewise are to be detested who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as his mother on earth. That dispensation did honor to both sexes male and female and showed that both had a part in God’s care; not only that which he assumed but that also through which he assumed it, being a man born of a woman.… Nor should our faith be lessened by any reference to “a woman’s internal organs,” as if it might appear that we must reject any such generation of our Lord because sordid people think that sordid. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men”; and “to the pure all things are pure.”
But now, when you abstain for the sake of chastising the body from various kinds of food that are in themselves quite permissible, remember that “to the pure all things are pure”; don’t regard anything as impure except what unbelief has defiled; “for to the impure and unbelievers,” the apostle says, nothing is pure. But naturally, when the faithful are reducing their bodies to slavery, whatever is deducted from bodily pleasure is credited to spiritual health.