We have a parallel in Balaam, that dealer in auguries and prodigies and in the vanity of unfounded conjectures, for the name Balaam is by interpretation “vain.” The law-book declares that he cursed the Man of Vision, though in words he uttered prayers of blessing, for it considers not what he actually said, words restamped under God’s providence, like a true coin substituted for the false, but his heart, in which he cherished thoughts of injury rather than of benefit. There is a natural hostility between conjecture and truth, between vanity and knowledge, arid between the divination which has no true inspiration and sound sober wisdom. And indeed if a man makes a treacherous attempt against another’s life, but is unable to kill him, he is none the less liable to the penalty of the homicide, as is shewn by the law enacted for such cases. “If,” it runs, “a man attacks his neighbour to kill him by guile and flees to refuge, thou shalt take him from the altar to put him to death” (Ex. 21:14). And yet he merely “attacks” him and has not killed him, but the law regards the purpose of murder as a crime equal to murder itself, and so, even though he takes sanctuary, it does not grant him the privileges of sanctuary, but bids him be taken even from the holy place, because the purpose he has harboured is unholy. Its unholiness does not merely consist in this, that it plans death to be dealt by the arm of wickedness against the soul which might live for ever by the acquisition and practice of virtue, but in that it lays its abominable audacity to the charge of God. For the words “flee to refuge” lead us to the reflexion that there are many who, wishing to shirk all charges to which they are liable and claiming to escape the penalties of their misdeeds, ascribe the guilty responsibility, which really belongs to themselves, to God who is the cause of nothing evil, but of all that is good. And therefore it was held no sacrilege to drag such as these from the very altar. The punishment which he decrees against those who “build” up and weld together arguments for godlessness is indeed extreme, though perhaps some foolish people will imagine it to be beneficial rather than injurious. “Nothing shall fail from them of all that they attempt to do,” it says (Gen. 11:6). What a misery, transcending limitation and measurement, that everything which the mind in its utter infatuation attempts should be its obedient vassal not backward in any service whether great or small, but hastening as it were to anticipate its every need.
On the Confusion of Tongues 31
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