4.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall by inheritance possess 1 the earth:" that earth, I suppose, of which it is said in the Psalm, "Thou art my refuge, my portion in the land of the living." 2 For it signifies a certain firmness and stability of the perpetual inheritance, where the soul, by means of a good disposition, rests, as it were, in its own place, just as the body rests on the earth, and is nourished from it with its own food, as the body from the earth. This is the very rest and life of the saints. Then, the meek are those who yield to acts of wickedness, and do not resist evil, but overcome evil with good. 3 Let those, then, who are not meek quarrel and fight for earthly and temporal things; but "blessed are the meek, for they shall by inheritance possess the earth," from which they cannot be driven out. 4
Hereditate possidebunt. Vulgate omits hereditate. The passage is quoted almost literally in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, iii. 7. ↩
Ps. cxlii. 5. ↩
Rom. xii. 21. ↩
The order in which Augustin places this Beatitude is followed in Cod. D, and approved by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Neander, and others (not Westcott and Hort). The meek not only bear provocation, but quietly submit to God's dealings, and comply with His designs. The temporal possession promised is one of the few temporal promises in the New Testament. The inheritance of the earth is referred to "earthly good and possessions," by Chrysostom, Euthymius, Luther, etc.; to conquest of the world by the kingdom of God, by Neander, to the actual kingdom on this earth, first in its millennial then in its blessed state, by Alford; typically to the Messiah kingdom, by Meyer; to the land of the living beyond the heavens by Gregory of Nyssa. "Humility and meekness have been proved to be a conquering principle in the world's history" (Tholuck). ↩
