1 My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the bed of aromatical spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.
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VERS. 1.-- *My beloved. He came down,* watering with the fount of baptism, coming from on high he visited those set in lowliness. That we might ascend upward, the Lord came down into the mountain, Moses went up into the mountain. When she had said, *He came down into the garden,* she adds in what manner that same garden is ordered, with what crop it is fruitful, when she says, *to the bed of spices.* The garden is the Church: the garden is any faithful soul. *The bed* is the faithful mind, which, taught by the discipline of right faith, is laid out as it were with even sides on this hand and on that: and, as it were, turned over again and again with a diligent mattock, and cleansed of superfluous grasses. She answers that he is delighted by the holy desires of the saints and by their fruitful works, and that he gathers all the perfect, by the virtues of chastity, unto eternal joys. *He gathereth the lilies,* while those who come to the whiteness of perfect merits he leads out from the state wherein they were before, and brings through to the heavenly kingdoms.
2 I to my beloved, and my beloved to me, who feedeth among the lilies.
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VERS. 2.-- *I to my beloved.* She sets this little verse beside it, heightening the goad of that measureless charity which burns within. As if: Into me he came down, in me thou canst have the form of him whom you seek. *I to my nephew, and my nephew to me, who feedeth among the lilies.*
3 Thou art beautiful, O my love, sweet and comely as Jerusalem terrible as an army set in array.
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VERS. 3.-- *Thou art fair, my love.* Thus far the voice of the Church praising and seeking her Lord: and since he is not far from those who love him, there follows what he answers when he is sought: and he declares that he was present while they were speaking, and heard what they were saying; and he requites their devotion toward him with a praise worthy of them. *Terrible, as an army set in array.* Because, compacted by the unity of charity, she opens no place to her enemies through the evil of discord, that is, to heretics or unclean spirits. The camps of the Romans were terrible, because they pressed down the whole world: but they were not sweet, because they had not true peace. In the Church neither does terror take away sweetness, nor sweetness terror: she leads a heavenly life upon earth, and busies herself to draw the barbarous minds of divers nations to her own observance. Yet because she does not yet deserve to behold the face of her beloved, which she seeks above all: she next hears here:
4 Turn away thy eyes from me, for they have made me flee away. Thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from Galaad.
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VERS. 4.-- *Turn away thy eyes from me.* As if: I gave thee dove's eyes, whereby thou mightest discern the paths of justice: but yet in the time of thy pilgrimage seek not to know me perfectly. *For man shall not see me and live*. Seek not upon the way the reward which is kept for thee in the fatherland. *Because they themselves have made me.* Do not desist from the desire of knowing, but presume not upon the power of knowing: whence it is said, *Of his greatness there is no end*. *They have made me to fly away.* The more intently thou seekest to know me, the more intently thou understandest me to be incomprehensible, and it is not thy fault if thou dost not know me: but it is the infirmity of the human condition. *Thy hair is as a flock of goats,* etc. These little verses were set down above, and expounded, but let it not irk us to expound again by repeating what it did not irk the author to repeat in writing, that something new may be added. Lest the Church should take it hard that she is held back from the knowledge of her beloved, there follows a description whereby she is likened to that primitive Church of Jerusalem, of which it is not doubted that she was the friend of God. *All with twin young, and there is not a barren one among them.* With like young, because they render others such as they themselves are. Or twofold young, the works of the twofold charity, or, the faithful converted from either people: or, faith and work.
5 Thy teeth as a flock of sheep, which come up from the washing, all with twins, and there is none barren among them.
6 Thy cheeks are as the bark of a pomegranate, beside what is hidden within thee.
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VERS. 6.-- *As the rind of a pomegranate, so thy cheeks,* etc. When many work wonders, prophesy things to come, forsake the world perfectly, burn with heavenly desires: they are compared, as the rind of a pomegranate, to the holy Church. But all these things are nothing in comparison of that whereof it is written: *Which eye hath not seen, nor ear, I have heard,* etc. Whence he fitly subjoins: *Besides thy hidden things,* as if he should say, great indeed are the things which lie not hidden in thee, but exceedingly unspeakable are those which lie hidden.
7 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and young maidens without number.
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VERS. 7.-- *There are threescore queens and fourscore concubines,* etc. Queens and concubines alike approach the throne of the king, alike bear children, but not both have the diadem of the kingdom. Queens are they who serve doctrine with a view to the heavenly kingdom; concubines, they who announce Christ for the love of temporal things. Therefore are those threescore, because by the love alone of the precepts of God they have the perfection of works, which may be understood by the multiplying of the number twelve by five: or because they temper the five bodily senses to the rule of apostolic doctrine. But the number of eighty, when it is taken in an evil sense, signifies the cares and entanglements of temporal things: because both the course of the world is carried round through four seasons, and the world itself is parted into four regions, east, west, north and south, or is composed of four elements.
8 One is my dove, my perfect one is but one, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her.
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VERS. 8.-- *One is my dove, my perfect one.* Although the persons be many and diverse, yet the faith in them is one, one baptism, one God, one work; not one before the law, another under the law, another under grace: but established in one peace, one fear. Our mother is regenerating grace, which chooses the simple, and guards and lifts up the elect. Or our mother is the Jerusalem above, *because every best gift cometh down from above*, which Jerusalem above approves this only in human converse, that it desires to serve God in the unity of her faith and love. *They saw.* A great praise of catholic unity, which both grace the mother, who bore her, chooses for ever; and the daughters, whom she herself has borne and nourishes through the Spirit, soon saw, that is, learned the chastity of her life. *They proclaimed.* Whether those who are truly partakers of the kingdom; or even those who cleave to her in name only, and, though their hope be in earthly things, confess her worthy of praise.
9 Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?
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VERS. 9.-- *Who is she.* The Church of the Gentiles, so firmly established, and everywhere spread abroad by her own manifoldness and drawn out through her degrees and successions unto the last times, in those last times the Synagogue, now beholding that same holy Church so well wrought and so working, so widely spread, and so many most wise men following one faith without schism: and besides these the miracles of the living and of the dead, and many other proofs of the Christian faith; now joined to her, repenting, and stricken with compunction, says in wonder, *Who is she,* etc. *As the morning rising.* Then does the Church become *the dawn,* when she utterly loses the darkness of mortality and of ignorance. At the judgment therefore she will still be *dawn,* but in the kingdom she will be *day*, where she shall have the full sight of the true sun. *Fair as the moon.* In the night of this present life, where the states of temporal things are varied, she is compared to *the moon:* because now she is bright to the world, now despised; now full of the whiteness of virtues, now dishonoured by the vices of the depraved. In the beatitude to come, where the state shall be one and the same, the just shall shine *as the sun*. *Terrible as an army set in array.* They have such prelates ordained over them as by probable arguments make void our faith, and strike terror into us. The more perfectly she sets the order of the virtues within herself, the more terrible is the Church to the powers of the air, or any faithful soul.
10 I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valleys, and to look if the vineyard had flourished, and the pomegranates budded.
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VERS. 10.-- *I went down into the garden of nuts,* etc. While Judaea wonders at the contests of the Church and inquires; the Bridegroom himself bears witness to the Church. Or, let them be said to be the words of the Church, who assents to the Synagogue that praises her, and straightway makes known what is the cause of her warlike array, answering in the voice of the doctors, that is, of the captains of her spiritual warfare.
11 I knew not: my soul troubled me for the chariots of Aminadab.
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VERS. 11.-- *I knew not, my soul.* While thus the bridegroom, or the Church herself, proclaims her evangelical labours to the wondering Synagogue: she, pricked with a wholesome repentance, professes that by reason of her profane blindness she long went astray. *It troubled me.* Because of the evangelical preaching of the Church, running swiftly through the four quarters of the world, and resting upon the four wheels of faith: whence also it was written by four persons; but those four horses draw one chariot to the battle by one and the same spirit.
12 Return, return, O Sulamitess: return, return that we may behold thee.
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VERS. 12.-- *Return.* When the Synagogue confesses her slowness, the Church answers by consoling and exhorting: four times she says *return,* because the Jews, in whatever manner they are now scattered through the four quarters of the world, are at the last to be converted. Or, *return* in body, *return* in mind from error, that thou mayest decline from evil. Again, *return* in body, *return* in mind, that thou mayest do good, and be not willing to be troubled. It suffices not to return in will, unless the return be shown to the Church. *That we may behold thee,* That we may know the beauty of chastity, and, the love of Christ knitting us to one another, that we both may build one house of faith upon that corner stone.