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| Chapter XVII. How all the saints have confessed with truth that they were unclean and sinful.
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Chapter XVII.
How all the saints have confessed with truth that they
were unclean and sinful.
And therefore with daily
sighs all the saints grieve over this weakness of their nature and
while they search into their shifting thoughts and the secrets and
inmost recesses of their conscience, cry out in entreaty: “Enter
not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man
living be justified;” and this: “Who will boast that he
hath a chaste heart? or who will have confidence that he is pure from
sin?” and again: “There is not a righteous man upon earth
that doeth good and sinneth not;” and this also: “Who
knoweth his faults?”2282
| 2282 Ps. cxlii. (cxliii.) 2; Prov. xx. 9; Eccl. vii.
21; Ps. xviii. (xix.) 13. | And so they
have recognized that man’s righteousness is weak and imperfect
and always needs God’s mercy, so that one of those whose
iniquities and sins God purged away with the live coal of His word sent
from the altar, after that marvellous vision of God, after his view of
the Seraphim on high and the revelation of heavenly mysteries, said:
“Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips.”2283
And I fancy that perhaps even then he
would not have felt the uncleanness of his lips, unless it had been
given him to recognize the true and complete purity of perfection by
the vision of God, at the sight of Whom he suddenly became aware of his
own uncleanness, of which he had previously been ignorant. For when he
says: “Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips,” he shows
that his confession that follows refers to his own lips, and not to the
uncleanness of the people: “and I dwell in the midst of a people
of unclean lips.” But even when in his prayer he confesses the
uncleanness of all sinners, he embraces in his general supplication not
only the mass of the wicked but also of the good, saying: “Behold
Thou art angry, and we have sinned: in them we have been always, and we
shall be saved. We are all become as one unclean, and all our
righteousnesses as filthy rags.”2284
What, I ask, could be clearer than
this saying, in which the prophet includes not one only but all our
righteousnesses and, looking round on all things that are considered
unclean and disgusting, because he could find nothing in the life of
men fouler or more unclean, chose to compare them to filthy rags. In
vain then is the sharpness of a nagging objection raised against this
perfectly clear truth, as a little while back you said: “If no
one is without sin, then no one is holy; and if no one is holy, then no
one will be saved.”2285
For the puzzle
of this question can be solved by the prophet’s testimony.
“Behold,” he says, “Thou art angry and we have
sinned,” i.e., when Thou didst reject our pride of heart or our
carelessness, and deprive us of Thine aid, at once the abyss of our
sins swallowed us up, as if one should say to the bright substance of
the sun: Behold thou hast set, and at once murky darkness covered us.
And yet though he here says that the saints have sinned, and have not
only sinned but also have always remained in their sins, he does not
altogether despair of salvation but adds: “In them we have been
always, and we shall be saved.” This saying: “Behold Thou
art angry and we have sinned,” I will compare to that one of the
Apostle’s: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?” Again this that the prophet
subjoins: “In them we have been always, and we shall be
saved,” corresponds to the following words of the Apostle:
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In the
same way also this passage of the same prophet: “Woe is me! for I
am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips,” seems to
agree with the words quoted above: “O wretched man that I am! Who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And what follows
in the prophet. “And behold there flew to me one of the Seraphim,
having in his hand a coal (or stone) which he had taken with the tongs
from off the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Lo, with this I
have touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin is
purged,”2286
is just what
seems to have fallen from the mouth of Paul, who says: “Thanks be
to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” You see then how all the
saints with truth confess not so much in the person of the people as in
their own that they are sinners, and yet by no means despair of their
salvation, but look for full justification (which they do not hope that
they cannot obtain by virtue of the state of human frailty) from the
grace and mercy of the Lord.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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