v.5–6
VERS. 5, 6.-- *And every firstborn shall die,* etc. At the last the destruction of the firstborn is brought in, in which there is perhaps something above our understanding, which seems to have been committed by the Egyptians against the Church of the firstborn, which is enrolled in the heavens. Whence also the destroying angel is sent to this ministry, who spares those only who had both door-posts marked with the blood of the lamb. Again the firstborn of the Egyptians are destroyed: whether we call them principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world, whom Christ by his coming led forth, that is, led captive and made captive, when he triumphed upon the wood of the cross; or the authors and inventors of false religions, which the truth of Christ has extinguished together with their authors. Principalities, and powers, and the rulers of these darknesses, are the firstborn of the Egyptians, which [ *Al.,* qui] in the last plague, namely when the end of the world shall have come, when he shall separate the sheep from the goats, the grain from the chaff, shall be condemned, the licence of wandering and of tempting being lost. *Morally.* The soul, while it lives in this world in errors, in ignorance of the truth, is placed in Egypt: if the law of God has begun to draw near, it turns the waters into blood, that is, it turns the fluid and slippery life of youth to the blood of the Old or of the New Testament. Then the law draws out of it the vain and empty loquacity against the providence of God, like to the croaking of frogs. It purges also its malignant thoughts, and shakes off the stings of craftiness that are like to the biting of the sciniphs. The bites of lusts also, like to the darts of the dog-fly, it drives away; and the folly and the understanding like to that of cattle, through which *man, when he was in honour, did not understand, but was compared to senseless beasts,* etc. It reproves the ulcers of sins, the swelling of arrogance, and extinguishes the burning of fury. After these it applies the voices of the sons of thunder, that is, the evangelical and apostolic doctrines, and the chastisement of hail, that it may restrain luxury and pleasures; and at the same time the fire of penitence, that it may say: *Was not our heart burning within us*? Nor does it fail to draw off from it the examples of the locusts, by which all its restless and turbid motions may be grazed down, that it may learn to do all things according to order. But when it shall have been sufficiently chastised for its manners, when it shall have perceived the author of the stripes, confessing that *it is the finger of God,* and shall have received a little of acknowledgment: then chiefly it sees the darkness of its own deeds and the gloom of its errors, and then it shall deserve that the firstborn of Egypt be destroyed in it. For every soul, when it shall have come to the fulness of age, and as it were the natural law shall have begun to defend its own rights within it, brings forth the first motions according to the desire of the flesh, which the inciting force has stirred up out of the tinder of concupiscence or of anger. Whence as a singular privilege the prophet says of Christ: *He shall eat butter and honey; before he shall do or bring forth evil things, he shall choose the good*; since before the child knows good or evil, he shall resist malice, that he may choose that which is good. But David says of himself: *The sins of my youth and my ignorances remember not*. Because therefore these first motions of the soul, brought forth according to the flesh, rush into sin, deservedly in the moral sense the firstborn of the Egyptians are set down as the first things, because they are extinguished if the conversation of the remaining life directs a more amended course. So therefore in the soul, which the divine law, having taken it up out of its errors, chastises, the firstborn of the Egyptians are destroyed, unless, enduring after all these things in unbelief, it refuse to be joined to the people of Israel, so as to come out of the deep and escape unharmed, but remain in iniquity, and go down as lead into the mightiest water. For iniquity, according to Zacharias, sits upon a talent of lead: and therefore he who remains in iniquity is sunk like lead into the deep.