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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
Hear, moreover, what proclamation the holy prophet Malachi has made against you. You …
Hear, moreover, what proclamation the holy prophet Malachi has made against you. You priests who despise my name, and have said: Wherein have we despised thy name? By offering polluted loaves upon mine altar, and ye have said: Wherein have we polluted them? in that ye say: The table of the Lord is as nothing, and what was spread upon it ye have despised; because, if ye bring the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? If ye bring forth the lame or weak, is it not evil? Offer it now to thy chief; Will he receive it? Will he accept thy person? saith the Lord Almighty. And now intreat ye the face of your God and beseech him: these things were done by your hand, will I accept your persons among you? Again: And ye have brought of your plunder the lame and weak, and have brought it as a gift. Shall I accept that of your hand? saith the Lord. Cursed be the deceiver which hath in his flock a male, and in fulfilling a vow sacrificeth the weak unto the Lord; for I am a great king, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is terrible among the gentiles. A nd now this commandment is for you, O ye priests. If ye will not hear and put it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will send poverty unto you, and will curse your blessings, because ye have not laid it to heart. Behold I will stretch forth my arm against you and will spread over your face the dung of your solemn feasts.
But meanwhile that you may the more eagerly prepare the instruments of evil for good, listen to what he says of the holy priest, if there remains ever so little of the inner hearing in you. My covenant was with him—he spoke of Levi or Moses in point of history1—of life and peace; I gave him. fear and he feared me, and stood in awe before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth and iniquity was not found in his lips; in peace and equity walked he with me, and did turn many from iniquity. For the priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth, because he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. Now he changes his meaning, and ceases not to rebuke the evil ones, saying: Ye have departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble in the law, and ye have made the covenant with Levi of no effect, saith the Lord of hosts. Wherefore I have also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, and have had respect of person in the law. Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why doth every one despise his brother? Again: Behold the Lord of hosts will come, and who can think of the day of his coming? And who shall stand to see him? For he himself shall come forth like burning fire, and as the washers soap, and he shall sit refining and purifying silver, and he shall purge the sons of Levi, and shall cleanse them like gold and like silver. After a while: Your words have become strong against me, saith the Lord, and ye said: Vain is he that serveth God, and what profit is it that we have kept his precepts, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts? Therefore, now we will call the proud blessed, because they that work wickedness are built up; they have tempted God and have been delivered.
Notes
- Secundum historiam. From Origen the western church, especially through the writings of Jerome and Augustine, had come to recognise three senses in the words of Scripture: the literal, the historical, and the moral or spiritual. At the end of c. 93, Gildas speaks of his attempt to interpret all things in their “historical or moral sense” (utcumque historico vel morali sensu); here he finds that Malachi is speaking of Levi or Moses in the first—the historical—sense, but at the next quotation he represents him as having changed into the second (mutavit sensum).