Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Fourth, otherwise all Kings, Emperors, Princes and Magistrates would sin against this law of God; for they have added many edicts to these laws and judgments of God.
Fifth, Calvin confesses that the Apostles added certain rites and ceremonies, and so that new ones can be added; nay, he himself with his followers instituted a new form of Church, new rites, new ministers, a new manner of teaching, preaching, praying, ruling and administering the sacraments: so also his Ministers every year make and institute new constitutions in their Synods, which they surely add to this word of God.
Sixth, Moses spoke these words to the Jews, not to Christians, and commands them to keep circumcision and the other ceremonial rites and sacraments of the old law, and to add nothing to them: therefore this law is properly ceremonial, and binds not Christians but Jews; otherwise heretics would have to be circumcised, keep the passover, wear fringes, etc.: for Moses here speaks and commands these things.
Granting, then, to the heretics that these words are to be understood as they wish, they will conclude nothing from them for their opinion: for these things were said to the Jewish people, which was small, and shut up in a little region, and moreover rude and gross: hence there was given to it a law distinguished by so many and so various precepts that to others it would not seem to be needed; it is otherwise with the new law, which was to be spread through the whole world; hence in it Christ rightly, having delivered a few universal precepts, committed the ordering of others to the Pastors and Rulers of the Church, as Gabriel Vasquez rightly observes, I-II, Question XCV, article 1, disputation.
I say therefore: The sense of this place is, as if to say: To my precepts, which I am about to give you in this chapter and the following, O Jews, you shall not add anything contrary, that is, repugnant and opposed to them; especially that there be introduced, as Beelphegor, as follows, or of any other new deity or idol, the worship and religion. For Moses intends in this whole chapter, and everywhere in Deuteronomy, to exclude new deities, new religion and a rite of sacrifices. He adds to the law of God, which commands that one God be worshipped, who teaches that Baal, Astarte, the sun, the moon and other gods are to be worshipped. The word “to” the word is therefore the same as “against” the word; for so the Hebrew al, that is, “to,” is taken for “against” in Psalm ii, 2, Numbers xiv, 2. So Paul, Galatians i, 8, says anathema to those who preach a gospel other than that which he preached: “other than,” that is, against; for he is treating of those who wished to add Judaism to Christianity, and so overthrew Christianity. By these words, therefore, “You shall not add, nor take away,” God only commands that his law be kept entire, that nothing of it be spoiled or mutilated by adding or diminishing; but that the whole remain safe and sound, and be observed, which he says elsewhere in another phrase, chapter v, verse 32: “You shall not go aside, neither to the right hand nor to the left.” Which, however, does not hinder one who in addition adds and observes the laws of parents or of human magistrates; unless parents or magistrates should command something contrary to the law of God.
So by these words, “You shall not add,” etc., he does not mean to say, you shall not keep anything other than what I now command; but in that which I command you shall change nothing, by adding or diminishing, but shall do it entire, as I command, and not otherwise. So Bellarmine and others everywhere.
Secondly, “You shall not add to the word that I speak to you,” namely anything as my own, or as said or commanded by me; for it is lawful to no man to sell his own writings or precepts as precepts dictated by God, or as sacred Scriptures. A like phrase is in Apocalypse, last chapter, verse 18: “I testify,” he says, “to every one that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book.” Otherwise not only Christ and the Prophets, but the Jews themselves also added many things to the law of God, such as the coverings and all the ornament of the temple, the feast under Esther, the feast of the fire given, the feast of the dedication, etc. For these were established and instituted not by God but by the Jews. Finally, these were not added, but rather included in the law of God, because the law of God commands that parents, magistrates, pontiffs and their laws be obeyed.
3. YOUR EYES HAVE SEEN ALL THAT THE LORD DID AGAINST BEELPHEGOR,—of which I spoke on Numbers chapter xxv.
6. FOR THIS IS YOUR WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING.—As if he said: The keeping of these laws will show that you are wise and prudent, and taught most wisely, most holily and most chastely by God, the wisest lawgiver, and that you are ruled, heard and defended by him in all things.
“The wise man,” says St. Bernard, “is he to whom everything tastes as it is,” namely divine things as divine, human as human, eternal as eternal, perishable as perishable.
Plutarch relates in the Banquet of the Seven Sages that they disputed among themselves which people, “which commonwealth would be the best and happiest.” “The first, Solon, answered: That in which they who have not been wronged prosecute and punish the author of a wrong no less than he who has been wronged. The second, Bias, said: That in which all fear the law as a tyrant. The third, Thales: Where neither the citizens are too rich nor too poor. The fourth, Anacharsis: That in which, all else being equal, the better condition is given to virtue and the worse to vice. The fifth, Cleobulus: That in which citizens fear reproach more than the law. The sixth, Pittacus: Where it is not lawful for the wicked to hold office, but lawful for the good. The seventh, Chilo: That in which most the laws are heard, and the orators least.” These are true, but more truly Moses here: “That in which the people fear God, and obey the laws and will of God.” This is surely the wisest and most blessed commonwealth.
7. NEITHER IS THERE ANY OTHER NATION SO GREAT (so eminent, of such dignity), THAT HATH GODS SO NIGH THEM, AS OUR GOD IS PRESENT TO ALL OUR PETITIONS,—For God seemed to dwell with Moses and the Hebrews in the tabernacle, to converse and speak with them, to resolve all doubts, to go before them in the pillar of cloud, and to direct and protect them in all things. Much more is God present to Christians, especially in the Venerable Sacrament, in which he dwells with us bodily, really and essentially, not an angel, but Christ himself, true God and true man.
(wonders) WHICH THINE EYES HAVE SEEN.—So the word is put for the thing, metonymically, as a sign for the thing signified; as Luke i, 37: “No word shall be impossible with God,” that is, no thing.
11. YOU CAME TO THE FOOT OF THE MOUNT (Sinai) WHICH BURNED EVEN UNTO HEAVEN.—In Hebrew, unto the heart of heaven, that is, unto the midst of heaven, that is, unto heaven itself. Heaven here is understood not the starry heaven but the aerial, or ethereal, in which are the clouds. By a like Hebraism Jonas, David and others are said to have been in the midst of the sea, in the midst of the waves, that is, in the great and vast sea itself, in the vast waves themselves.
13. HE SHEWED YOU HIS COVENANT,—that is, the law, which is the condition of the covenant entered into between you and God.
THE TEN WORDS,—the ten precepts, which were as it were the ten conditions of the covenant. The Greeks call these ten words by the compound term Decalogue.
15. KEEP THEREFORE YOUR SOULS CAREFULLY.—Render the Hebrew with Vatablus more pregnantly: beware therefore carefully, as dear as your soul is to you, lest you violate the law of God, but keep it: for he that keepeth it keepeth his own soul.
YOU SAW NO SIMILITUDE, etc., IN HOREB,—as if he said: On Sinai you heard God speaking, but you did not see him in his essence, nor in any likeness; wherefore you cannot imitate it, or fashion or express it, by making a statue of male, female or any other thing, thinking or feigning that God is such as is shewn in that statue.
Some of the Gentiles saw the same, among whom No likeness, entrusted to no metal, is the form of God; he delights to dwell in minds and breasts.
Agesilaus, when they urged him to hear a certain man who imitated the nightingale well, answered that he had heard the nightingale herself. The same ought to be said by the Jews to the Gentiles, who invited them to idols of God: namely, that they had heard God himself on Sinai.
16. LEST YOU MAKE A SIMILITUDE OR IMAGE OF MALE OR FEMALE,—as the Gentiles had some gods male and some female. Nay, Trismegistus in the Pimander, chapters i, iii, viii, calls God male-female; for he says: “God, being male-female, existing as life and light, begot by a word another creative mind,” that is, God, male and female, being life and light, begot the Word, who produces another mind (the Holy Ghost). But he calls God male-female not because he truly has the sex of male and female, but because in begetting the Word he did alone the whole which in human generation male and female do jointly. For God the Father begot his Word as a father, and likewise conceived him as a mother: otherwise this way of speaking is unusual and ill-sounding.