Екклезиастик (Книга Премудрости Иисуса, сына Сирахова), Глава 27, стих 11. Толкования стиха

GOD DOES NOT ABANDON ANYONE. AUGUSTINE: “You have made perfect sun and moon.” The sun indicates spiritual people; the moon, carnal ones. As carnal as one is, may he not be forsaken and may he too be made perfect. The sun, as it were, is a wise person; the moon, as it were, is an unwise person. You have not however forsaken either one. For thus it is written, “A wise person endures as the sun, but a foolish person as the moon is changed.” What then? Because the sun endures, that is, because the wise person endures as the sun, a foolish person is changed like the moon. Is one who is still carnal, still unwise, to be forsaken? And where is that which has been said by the apostle, “To the wise and unwise a debtor I am”? EXPOSITIONS OF THE PSALMS 73.19.

Далее указывает опасности торговаго сословия (27; 27, 1—3), употребление и значение дара слова (4—7), различие между беседами благочестиваго и глупаго, и с отвращением изображает болтливаго, насмешника и коварнаго (8—33).

SPIRITUAL EPILEPSY. ORIGEN: Epilepsy attacks the sufferers at considerable intervals, during which he who suffers from it seems in no way different from the person in good health, at the season when the epilepsy is not working on him. Similar disorders you may find in certain souls that are often supposed to be healthy in point of temperance and the other virtues—but then, sometimes, as if they were seized with a kind of epilepsy arising from their passions, they fall down from the position in which they seemed to stand and are drawn away by the deceit of this world and other lusts. Perhaps, therefore, you would not be in error if you said that such persons, so to speak, are epileptic spiritually, having been cast down by “the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” They are often ill at the time when the passions attack their soul; at one time falling into the fire of burnings, when, according to what is said in Hosea, they become adulterers, like a pan heated for the cooking from the burning flame; and, at another time, into the water, when the king of all the dragons in the waters casts them down from the sphere where they appeared to breathe freely, so that they come into the depths of the waves of the sea of human life. This interpretation of ours in regard to the lunatic will be supported by him who says in the book of Wisdom with reference to the even temperament of the just person, “The discourse of a pious person is always wisdom,” but, in regard to what we have said, “the fool changes as the moon.” COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 13.4.