Annotation CXCII

”Labor not for the food which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting.” — John 6:27

The commentaries of John Ferus have this exposition of the present passage: “Christ does not forbid laboring for the body’s food; nay, this is enjoined upon all: ‘In the sweat,’ he says, ‘of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.’¹ And David: ‘The labors of thy hands thou shalt eat.’ And Paul: ‘He that laboreth not, let him not eat.’” Domingo de Soto disapproves this doctrine of Ferus, because he seems to teach that bodily labor is a precept [binding] on all without any distinction — which indeed seems to condemn the institution of the mendicant monks, who, having omitted the labor of the hands, provide sustenance for themselves by begging alone. Michael Medina’s Apologia refutes this with these words: “Here there is no reason why Soto should torture himself with suspicions. For ‘precept’ is not always taken for ‘law’: for sometimes ‘precept’ is taken for doctrine, counsel, or persuasion. By which reasoning Plutarch calls conjugal precepts ‘doctrine,’ or ‘matrimonial counsels.’ By which reasoning also we call military and paternal precepts the institutions of soldiers or of sons — concerning which Solomon:² ‘KEEP, my son, the precepts of thy father,’ and afterward in the following chapter he says, ‘MY SON, keep my words, and lay up my precepts with thee.’ We call [it] a ‘precept,’ then, in the plain manner of speaking, whatsoever is enjoined upon anyone by way of an imperative, even if it does not induce the obligation of sin; in which manner we call a ‘precept’ that benediction which God imparted to the first parents and to all living creatures at the first beginning of things, saying,³ ‘INCREASE, and multiply, and fill the earth.’ By which manner also the divine maledictions, twisted into the form of an imperative, are likewise called precepts — such as that first one inflicted on the woman,⁴ ‘IN sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy children’; and this one, which the author adduces in this place,⁵ ‘IN the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.’ Nay, and besides this looser acceptation of ‘precept,’ the Apostolic precept also — according to the proper notion of precept — about working with the hands, [is directed to] those who from elsewhere have not whence to sustain [their] life, [and] is enjoined by Paul the Apostle upon certain [men] (who were walking inordinately), commanding:⁶ ‘LET him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor with his own hands’; and elsewhere, ‘He that will not labor, let him not eat.’ That this precept is divine and natural is not to be doubted. Therefore the author sinned in nothing: who, in order to show by those words, ‘Labor not for the food that perisheth,’ etc., that bodily labor is not forbidden, said [that] the same [labor] is [enjoined] through a precept enjoined — as if he should say [that] it was not only not forbidden, but is the matter of a precept. Of a precept, I say, taken in that larger signification, or in the stricter [one], by which it induces the obligation of sin, if we regard [those] who wander and walk inordinately. And so Calepinus should rather have been consulted, before the author [were] accused in this part.” These [things] Michael Medina [says]. Thou hast [things] pertaining hereto below, Annotation 317.