Passage Search

"My mouth shall tell out Your righteousness" [Psalm 71:15]: not mine. From thence I will add to all Your praise: because even that I am righteous, if righteous I am, is Your righteousness in me, not my own: for You justify the ungodly. [Romans 4:5] "All the day long Your salvation." What is, "Your salvation"? Let no one assume to himself, that he saves himself, "Of the Lord is Salvation." Not any one by himself saves himself, "Vain is man's salvation." "All the day long Your Salvation:" at all times. Something of adversity comes, preach the Salvation of the Lord: something of prosperity comes, preach the Salvation of the Lord. Do not preach in prosperity, and hold your peace in adversity: otherwise there will not be that which has been said, "all the day long." For all the day long is day together with its own night. Do we when we say, for example, thirty days have gone by, mention the nights also; do we not under the very term days include the nights also? In Genesis what was said? "The evening was made, and the morning was made, one day." [Genesis 1:5] Therefore a whole day is the day together with its own night: for the night does serve the day, not the day the night. Whatever you do in mortal flesh, ought to serve righteousness: whatever you do by the commandment of God, be it not done for the sake of the advantage of the flesh, lest day serve night. Therefore all the day long speak of the praise of God, to wit, in prosperity and in adversity; in prosperity, as though in the day time; in adversity, as though in the night time: all the day long nevertheless speak of the praise of God, so that you may not have sung to no purpose, "I will bless God at every time, always the praise of Him is in my mouth.". ..

Then follows the clause “because I have not known business transactions.” That part of the verse is recognized to create a problem unless it is well investigated. For if every person of business must be altogether condemned, not even those who are known to exercise the remaining arts are able to escape this condemnation. For what else is “business” other than to wish to make more expensive those things which can be sold for cheaper? We read in the lives of the fathers that that most holy man, Paphnutius, was obtained by a businessman in accordance with a revelation, and today in the church of God there are those who handle merchandise but are in the faith. A most foul deed is condemned, not an honest matter, just as we read that a rich man will not enter into the kingdom of heaven, although Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the patriarchs were nonetheless wealthy in their possessions. Therefore, this passage is thinking of those horrible people of business, who give no thought at all to the righteousness of the Lord but, owing to their immodest quest for money, are contaminated by their burdening their merchandise more with their perjuries than by their prices. The Lord threw such people out of the temple and said, “Do not make the home of my Father a place of business, a den of thieves.” Therefore, as I think, we must adopt the following understanding so as to read, “My mouth proclaimed your righteousness because I did not know business transactions, namely those which are stained with bad deeds.”