The might and fury of the demons, broken by CHRIST the Lord — and ever to be broken by all Christians — seems to me to be signified. For since (as [was] said, question 1) Amalek is a people either “licking” or “striking,” we understand [that] by CHRIST the Lord not some one demon, but a whole people, was conquered; and likewise [that] war is to be undertaken by us not against one only, but against very many — and thus against the whole race of the [powers] below. And they contrive our ruin assiduously, either by “licking” or by “striking.” They lick, when they soothe our minds with the gentle titillation of pleasure and of this world’s vain prosperity. They strike, when they lash us with the scourges of poverty, contempt, and various calamities. Or rather — that we may keep the likeness still closer, since a licking is wont to be done by a certain soft drawing of the tongue — they lick us, when they [set out] to proclaim [us] with certain vain praises, when [they] gently and pleasantly rub the outer skin of certain of our goods with a bit of vainglory, when, finally, they apply to us the most honeyed tongues of flatterers, and draw those [tongues] this way and that, [playing] softly and caressingly upon I-know-not-what outermost [parts] of ours. Here is the Amalekites’ war; here [are their] ambushes — and indeed [set] so [craftily] that let those studiously beware [of them] who are, of all [men] in the camps of the Church, the slowest [and] the most weary in the way of God’s commandments, who [are] the most languid and most feeble: for [it is] upon these [that the demons] especially rush. Nay, in one and the same man they diligently explore what in him [is] less fortified, what [is] as it were left behind among the hindmost [ranks], what [is] as it were weary and weak — and upon this they are wholly [bent], either “licking” or “striking.” Yet of these enemies — [who were] utterly to be cut off — [there] was of old a most certain foretelling through the prophets, and an asseveration of God himself equal to the sanctity and firmness of any oath whatever. There was also that admirable manner which they attributed to the Lord himself: Seventh, that ἐν κρυφαίᾳ χειρὶ — that is, “with a hidden hand” — he would exterminate the nation of Amalek. For what [is] more latent and more hidden than [that] he who, in appearance, was a mere and worthless little man, should at the same time be God, [and] govern and moderate the heavens, the lands, the seas — the whole machine of the world, in short — by his own nod alone? Then indeed he himself overthrew Amalek in a threefold way. First, by the most powerful force and efficacy of his own death, when, despoiling the principalities and powers, he led [them] forth confidently in the open, triumphing over them in his own self (Colossians 2, v. 15). Next, by the admirable example of his most holy life, when he so fled the most alluring enticements of all desires that he remained ever unwedded and most chaste; declined honors and all ambitious [things]; when sought for a kingdom, snatched himself away in flight; turned away from praises otherwise most due to himself and to his miracles; from his very first birth experienced all the hardest and poorest [things], born of lowly parents, in a servile estate and a pilgrimage, in a stable, and in the vilest swaddling-clothes. Why should I pursue the rest of [his] whole life and death? Thirdly, by [his] doctrine and exhortation — most agreeable in prosperity and adversity — against the “licking” and the flatteries of all human praises and pleasures…
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…[flatteries] — against the bitings and blows of all despairs and sicknesses. “Take heed to yourselves” (Luke 21) “lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly.” “Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5, v. 28). “Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them: otherwise you shall not have a reward of your Father who is in heaven.” As to the other kind [of enemy]: “Come to me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matthew 11, v. 28). “He that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me” (ch. 10, v. 38). “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9, v. 23). “Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do” (ch. 12, v. 4). “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” — and the rest that are delivered [in] Matthew 5 [and] 7. These are all the swords and spears by which, from JESUS CHRIST our Lord and Saviour, the whole army of the Amalekites is perpetually cut down, from generation unto generation. But for us, [there are] two [things] to be done toward achieving this victory. One: that on this road — by which, out of this world’s Egypt, we strive toward the promised seats of the heavens — we be not willing, through sloth and torpor, to be the hindmost; not too slow and slack; not, beyond what is fair, weary and dissolute. “Laying aside,” says the Apostle (Hebrews 12), “every weight and the sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us. Think diligently upon him who endured such opposition from sinners against himself, that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds” (ibid., v. 3). “Lift up the hands which hang down, and the loosened knees” (v. 12). “Let the itch seize [the hindmost],” they used to say in the Satirist [Horace] — “the itch take the hindmost.” But I do not imprecate [this]; I only proclaim and warn: the last, the sluggish, the slow, those too indulgent to the body and slow-paced on this journey — Amalek will seize [them]. The other: that while, with God admonishing [us], we contend in war against this “licking” nation, we overthrow utterly not its men only, but its women too, [its] little ones and sucklings, its very cattle, and [its] cities. Its men are certain great and gross outrages, which nearly all men shun and detest. Its women are the inner thoughts of the mind, from which — as from certain female wombs — are born those crimes of which [Christ speaks in] Matthew 15. Its little ones are certain smaller sins, and less noted or reproved among the common run of men. Its sucklings [are] those least [sins], which even some of the more prudent scarcely enough notice, and sometimes even despise. Its cattle are the occasions of the sins themselves, which grant them, as it were, nourishment or conveyance. But its cities are those inner appetites and disturb-…
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…ances, which, though of themselves they are not sins, yet have in them their seat and domicile — so that [it] behooves [us], by divine grace, by the frequent daily and careful use of the sacraments, and by an assiduous exercise of prayers and of all good works, with keen inquisition into our very selves and all our affections and inclinations, to undermine those houses and cities, and at last utterly to cast [them] down and set [them] afire. Whoever spares any of these is, like Saul, raging against himself and cruel. And it does indeed sometimes come into the mind of some [to think it] a small [thing] to indulge a little the desires of the body — in food or in some drink somewhat too abundant or too dainty; in laughter and jests somewhat too profuse; in sleep and other rests somewhat too generous — and that, in the way Amalek the “licker” suggests, [namely] that we may keep the body itself sounder and stronger in God’s worship, that we may live a longer life dedicated to the same Lord, [and] that we may please our neighbors by a certain charity and show of good-fellowship. These, forsooth, are the “victims” and “sacrifices” by which Saul excused himself, saying: “For the people spared the best of the sheep and of the herds, that they might be immolated to the Lord God.” But what [says] Samuel? “Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord be obeyed?” [1 Sam. 15:22]. Vices, and the fibers of vices, must be torn out by us root and branch: the Lord does not wish holocausts and victims [made] out of sins, or out of the loss of grace and of the virtues. Amalek is anathema, and all that is his. All the kinds of our crimes are to be cut off, blotted out, and destroyed — great, small, manifest, hidden, outward, inward — and their kindling-stuff and occasions, [their] receptacles and domiciles. But of these [let this] now [be] enough. On the rest, [see] 1 Kings [Samuel] ch. 15 — except that this must here by no means be omitted, [something] touched on under q. 27, [as] toward the promise [made there]. And it is of this kind. The Jewish Rabbis themselves reckon [that], properly and simply, the Amalekites are to be destroyed root and branch by none but the Messiah, or CHRIST. For in R. Eliezer, toward the end of ch. 44, partly from Isaiah ch. 10, v. 13, [and] partly from Psalm 82 [83], R. Ioses speaks thus: “When Sennacherib came into the land of Israel, all the peoples who were round about the land of Israel saw the camp of Sennacherib, and greatly feared for themselves, and fled each from his place. It is said [in] Isaiah 10:13: ‘And I have taken away the bounds of the peoples, and have made a prey of their princes.’ And they entered into the desert, and mingled themselves with the sons of Ishmael, and fled together [into] ten peoples in all. For it is said [in] Psalm 82 [83]: ‘The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites, Moab, and the Hagarenes, Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek — strangers with the inhabitants of Tyre. Yea, and Assur is joined with them.’ And all those are to fall in the hand of the son of David — namely, the Messiah. For it is said in the same Psalm 82 [83]: ‘O God, set them as a wheel,’ and the rest.”