AMBROSE TO BELLICIUS, GREETING.
1. YOU have sent me word that while you were lying afflicted by a severe sickness you believed in the Lord Jesus, and straightway began to recover. This sickness therefore was unto salvation, bringing greater pain than danger, for you had long deferred your promise. This is the meaning of the text, Deut. xxxii. 39. I wound, and I heal. He wounded by sickness, He healed by faith. For He saw that the inward affection of your mind was not without pious desires, but that they were shaken and unsettled by delays, and so He thought fit to admonish you, in a way which while it did not injure your health, excited your devotion.
2. For how should He do an injury to health Who is wont to say, as we read in the Gospel, S. Matt. viii. 7. I will come and heal him. Being invited by your friends to visit your house He doubtless said, I will come and heal him; Although you heard Him not, He, as God, spoke to you imperceptibly, and although you saw Him not, still beyond doubt He visited you in spirit.
3. But in truth you have seen Him, for you have believed in Him, you have seen Him, for you have received Him into the dwelling of your mind, you have seen Him in the Spirit, you have seen Him with your inward eyes. Take care then not to let this new Guest depart, long expected, late received, even Him Acts xvii. 28. in Whom we live and move and have our being. You have tasted the first beginnings of faith, let not the word be hidden in your heart. Herein lies all grace and every gift. For no man judges of the secret recesses of a house by its entrance, since all thefruit is within; nor is it the part of a wise man to look from the window into the house, and it is folly for a man to listen at the door.
4. The mysteries of the more perfect Sacraments are of one kind; for the Scripture says, 1 Cor. ii. 9. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. Of another kind are the things which the prophets have announced concerning future glory, 1 S. Pet. i. 12. unto whom it was revealed, and to whom the saints have preached the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the Angels desired to look into. Of another kind again are those mysteries wherein is the redemption of the world, the remission of sins, the distribution of graces, the participation of the Sacraments: when you receive these you will wonder that a gift so transcendent should have been bestowed on man, Exod. xvi. 15, 16. as to make the manna which we wonder should have been rained down from heaven on the Jews seem to you to have possessed neither so much grace nor so much efficacy towards salvation. For all who received this manna in the wilderness died, Numb. xxvii. 12. save Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb, whereas he who tastes this Sacrament shall never die.
May the Lord Jesus send you restoration. Farewell.
LETTER LXXX.
S. AMBROSE here shews that the case of the man who was blind from his birth was the work of Divine power, and censures the question which the disciples asked about him; and dwells on some of the details of the miracle.
AMBROSE TO BELLICIUS.