Let it be allowed, indeed, first, to learn his excellent goodwill toward his lord and teacher, and his ardent love — which, as I said above (qq. 6 and 7), is laudable and apostolic. Then, we see how great is the weakness and blindness of human minds, which, in providing for and sincerely judging matters, do not see so many things, and therefore err and slip. Third, that good men too, even in good matters, ought to attend diligently, lest by some excessive zeal they rashly or imprudently determine anything, or speak of others. Fourth, that those deeds or counsels ought justly to be suspect to us in which our own, or our people’s, glory and honor is at stake. For here very often “a snake lurks in the grass,” while [one] seeks God’s glory not purely and cleanly, but either his own, or his people’s — nay, even while he seems to regard their glory, he in some way regards his own, since from the very conjunction with them he wishes and hopes it to redound to himself. For wretched mortals bear it ill, forsooth, if some good be done even by others of which they themselves are not either the authors or at least the helpers and associates. That other, and truly and perfectly apostolic, zeal of St. Paul (Phil. 1, v. 18) — when various [men], for various and indeed depraved causes, and hostile to him, preached Christ the Lord — [is different]. “What then?” he says. “So that in every way, whether by occasion or by truth, Christ be preached; and in this I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” [Such was] that true zealot of the divine glory, heaped with all praise. Lastly, this one imperfection removed, Joshua here too bears the figure of Christ the Lord. Whose force of zeal and fire was such that no [trifle], not even the least little thing, of the Father[‘s honor…]
(col. 147)
…[no least trifle] of the eternal [Father’s] glory could bear to be violated or lessened — so much so that (as St. Mark says, ch. 11, v. 16) He would not “suffer that any man should carry a vessel through the temple”; and of Him it is written (Ps. 68 [69], and John 2, v. 18 [17]), “The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.” So that, if with this little imperfection one may consider Joshua’s zeal, he bore the type of Christ the Lord — not as to Himself, but as to His members, namely good and pious men, in whose deeds, or counsels and speeches, some little stain of that kind of vanity or ignorance sometimes lodges. Yet in this very [matter] that too is to be praised and imitated: that Joshua said it only before Moses, and committed the judgment of the whole matter to him. For there is less danger when something of this kind happens before the wiser. For they are either not deceived by such words, or less; and, when spirits are boiling, they sprinkle something cooling — by teaching, warning, [and] pointing out better and more perfect things — as we see done here by Moses.