730 And Christ will wash their feet from worldly defilements.

HOMIL. 6. Then turning her regard to them who have, in whatLVII. ever sort, the ability to preach, to win new flocks and to rule

12.

them, and so to open unto Christ, but in the difficulties of these active duties fear to sin, she saith, I have washed my James feet; how shall I defile them? For whosoever in word 3, 1.2. offendeth not, the same is a perfect man. And who is perfect? who is there that offendeth not in such abounding of iniquity, such waxing cold of charity? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? While I read, and hear, My brethren, be not many masters, since ye receive greater condemnation; for in many things we offend all:—I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? But behold, Matt. 6, I arise and open. O Christ, wash them: Forgive us our debts, seeing our charity is not extinct, for we also forgive Ps. 51, our debtors. When we hear Thee, the bones that were humbled exult with Thee in the heavenly places. But when we preach Thee, we tread upon earth that we may open unto Thee: so, if we are blamed, we are troubled; if praised, puffed up. Wash our feet, once cleansed, but while we walk through earth to open unto Thee, again defiled. Let this content you for to-day, my dearly beloved. If in any thing, speaking otherwise than was meet, we have belike offended, or by your praises have more than was meet been elevated; obtain ye cleansing for our feet, by your God-pleasing prayers.

8.

HOMILY LVIII.

JOHN xiii. 10-15.

And ye are clean, but not all. For He knew who should betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean. So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call Me Master and Lord and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.

1. THOSE words of the Gospel, where the Lord, washing the feet of His disciples, said, He that is once washed, needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit, we have already expounded to you, my beloved, as the Lord vouchsafed to bestow: now let us see what follows: And ye, v. 10. saith He, are clean, but not all. That we should not have to ask what this means, the Evangelist himself hath opened it, adding, For He knew who should betray Him: therefore v. 11. said He, Ye are not all clean. What can be plainer than this? Then let us pass on to what follows.

2. So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His v. 12. garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Now is the time that blessed Peter should receive the payment of that which was promised; for he was put off, when, as he shrunk back and

LVIII.

v. 6. 7.

732

Self praise is odious in man:

HOMIL. Said, Thou shalt not wash my feet, for ever, it was said to him in answer, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Behold, now is that "hereafter": now is the time that he should he told that, which a little while before was deferred. Accordingly, the Lord, mindful that He has all along promised them the knowledge of that which He has done, an action so unthought of, so marvellous, which they must needs recoil from in such dismay, and, had He not put them in great fear, could in no wise have suffered-that the Master, not of them only but of Angels, and the Lord, not only of them but of all things, should wash the feet of His own disciples and servants: I say then, because He had promised them the knowledge of this so astonishing action, saying, But thou shalt know hereafter; He now begins to teach them what this thing was that He had done.

v. 13.

Prov. 27, 2.

3. Ye, saith He, call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well, for so I am. Ye say well, because ye say true; for I am that which ye say. To man the precept is given, Let not thine own mouth praise thee, but let the mouth of thy neighbour praise thee. For, to be pleased with himself is perilous to one who has need to beware lest he wax proud. But how much soever He that is above all may praise Himself, to extol or lift Himself higher is not for the Most High: and "arrogant" is not a word that can be rightly applied to God. For, that we know Him, is good for us, not for Him: nor can one get to know Him, unless He that knoweth Him, that is, unless God, Himself make Him known. If then it should be His will, by not praising Himself, to shun the appearance of arrogancy, then must He deny us wisdom. And this, indeed, that He calls Himself Master, none even though accounting Him to be no more than man, would take amiss, since therein He professes but what even men in their sundry crafts profess, and are so far from being thought arrogant for professing, that they are even called professors. But, that one should affirm himself to be Lord of his disciples, whereas they too, in respect of this world, are free-born men, who would bear this in a mere man? But it is God that speaketh. Here is no self-elation in Him Whose Highness is so great, no lie in Him Who is the Truth: His is an Highness to which it is for

XIII.

14. 15.

Oratore.

but there can be no over-weening in the Most High. 783 our own good that we be subject, for our own good that we JOHN be servants to the Truth. That He calleth Himself Lord is in Him no wrong, but is to us a benefit. A certain secular author is praised for his words, where he saith', "While all! Cicero inQuint. arrogancy is odious, the arrogancy of wit and eloquence is Cæcil. most especially annoying:" and yet the same person, speaking of his own eloquence, says, "I would say that it is per- 2 Id. de fect, if I judged it to be so; nor would I shrink from the truth for fear of being called arrogant." If then that most eloquent man on behalf of truth would not fear to be thought arrogant, how should Truth Itself be afraid of the charge of arrogancy? Let Him call Himself Lord, Who is Lord; let Him call Himself True, Who is Truth: lest I learn not the thing that is good for me, while He forbears to speak the thing that He is. The most blessed Paul, not indeed the Only-Begotten Son of God, but of God's Only-Begotten Son a servant and an apostle; not the Truth, but a partaker of the Truth; saith frankly and firmly, And though I were fain 2 Cor. 12, 6. to glory, I should not be a fool, for I say the truth. For not in himself, but in the Truth Itself, Which is higher than he, would he both humbly and truly glory; since he has himself enjoined, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. What, 1 Cor. should he not fear to be thought unwise, were he fain to 1, 31. glory, who was a lover of wisdom, and should Wisdom Itself in its own glory fear to be thought unwise? He feared not to be thought arrogant, who said, In the Lord shall my soul Ps.34,2. be praised and should the power of the Lord, in which the soul of the servant is praised, fear to be thought arrogant in Its own praise? Ye, saith He, call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well: for so I am. Ye say well, because I am. so: for were I not what ye say, ye would say ill, although ye praised Me. How then should the Truth deny what the Truth's disciples affirm? how, what they affirm which have learned, should That deny from Which they learned? How shall the Fountain deny what he that drinks thereof doth tell forth? how the Light hide what he that sees thereby doth make known?

4. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your v.14.15. feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to

LVIII.

734

We "wash one another's feet," by humility,

HOMIL. you. This is that, O blessed Peter, which thou knewest not, when thou wouldest not suffer it to be done. This it is, that He promised thou shouldest know thereafter, when He frightened thee into suffering it, He, thy Master and thy Lord, washing thy feet. We have learnt, my brethren, lowliness from the Most High; let us lowly do one to another, what was lowly done by the Most High. Great is this commendation of humility: and in fact the brethren do this one to another, even in the visible work itself, when they receive one another to be their guests: for the most make a custom of this humility, even to the action in which it is beheld expressed. Whence the Apostle, commending a well1 Tim. deserving widow, saith, If she have entertained strangers, if 5, 10. she have washed the saints' feet. And among the saints, wheresoever this custom is not, yet, what they do not with. hand, they do in heart, if they be of the number of those to Hymn whom we say in the hymn of the three blessed men, O ye dicite holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord. But it is (Dan. much better, and without controversy truer, that it should LXX.) also be done with the hands: and what Christ did, let not a Christian man disdain to do. For when the body is bowed even to the feet of a brother, then in the heart itself the affection of humility is either excited, or if it was there already, is confirmed".

'Bene

3, 87.

5. But, apart from this moral sense, we remember that we bade you lay to heart the depth of meaning in this action of the Lord, in this way, that in washing the feet of the disciples already washed and clean, the Lord signified, in respect of the human affections wherewith we move about on earth, that, how great soever may be the progress we have made in the apprehending of righteousness, we should know ourselves to be not without sin: which, ever and anon, He washeth off by making intercession for us, when we pray our Father Matt. 6, Which is in heaven to forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Then what can it have to do with this sense,

12.

S. Aug. de Cura pro Mortuis, §. 7. ("Seventeen Short Treatises," p. 524.) "And I know not how it is that, while these motions of the body cannot be made but by a motion of the mind preceding, yet by the same being visibly

in outward sort made, that inward invisible one which made them is increased: and thereby the heart's affection which preceded that they might be made, groweth because they are made."