Numbers 25

I might say that those who deny Christianity on oath at the tribunals or before they have been put on trial do not worship but only bow down to idols when they take "God" from the name of the Lord God and apply it to vain and lifeless wood. Thus the people who were defiled with the daughters of Moab bowed down to idols but did not worship them. Indeed, it is written in the text itself, "They invited them to the sacrifices of their idols, and the people ate of their sacrifices, and they bowed down to their idols, and performed the rites to Baal Peor." Observe that it does not say "and they worshiped their idols"; for it was not possible after such great signs and wonders in one moment of time to be persuaded by the women with whom they committed fornication to consider the idols gods.

If Phinehas by his zeal in slaying the evildoer appeased the wrath of God, shall not Jesus, who slew no other but "gave himself a ransom for all," take away God's wrath against humanity?

Now if we have been conformed to his death, sin henceforth in us is surely a corpse, pierced through by the javelin of baptism, as that fornicator was thrust through by the zealous Phinehas.

Slaughter has brought about righteousness, and mercy has been a cause of condemnation more than slaughter, because the latter has been according to the mind of God, but the former has been forbidden. It was reckoned to Phinehas for righteousness that he pierced to death the woman who committed fornication, together with the fornicator. But Samuel, that saint of God, although he wept and mourned and entreated for whole nights, could not rescue Saul from the condemnation which God issued against him, because he saved, contrary to the design of God, the king of the alien tribes whom he ought to have slain.

As far as that goes, we too have examples from this same past in favor of our own way of thinking, examples of a judgment on fornication which was not only not remiss but rather immediately executed. It is quite enough, I should think, that so great a number of the chosen people, twenty-four thousand, perished at one stroke after they had fornicated with the daughters of Midian. I prefer, however, for the glory of Christ, to derive ecclesiastical discipline from Christ.

And lest we appear to you to bring these things forth from our own understanding rather than from the authority of the divine Scriptures, go back to the book of Numbers and recall what Phinehas the priest did when he saw a harlot of the Midianite people with an Israelite man clinging in impure embraces in the eyes of all. Filled with the wrath of divine jealousy, he drove a sword, which he had seized, through the breast of both. This work was imputed to him by God for righteousness when the Lord says, "Phinehas appeased my rage, and it shall be imputed to him for righteousness." That earthly food of anger therefore becomes our food when we use it rationally for righteousness.

Neither, then, was God unjust, nor His purpose mutable; for He detected Balaam's mind and the secrets of his heart, and He therefore tried him as a diviner, He did not choose him as a prophet. Surely he ought to have been converted if it were only by the grace of such great oracles and the sublimity of his revelations, but his mind, full of iniquity, brought forth words but did not yield belief, seeking to frustrate by its counsels that event which it had predicted. And since he could not defeat the prophecy, he suggested deceitful counsels whereby the fickle people of the Jews were tempted but not overcome; for by the righteousness of one priest all the counsel of this wicked man was overthrown, and that the host of our fathers could be delivered by one man was much more wonderful than that it could be deceived by one man.