These words the LORD spoke unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
There the finger of God worked upon tables of stone: here upon the hearts of men. So there the law was set outside men to be a terror to the unjust: here it was given within them to be their justification. “For this: you shall not commit adultery, you shall do no murder, you shall not covet, and if there be any other commandment”—written, as we know, upon those tables—“it is briefly comprehended,” said the apostle, “in this saying: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love works not a neighbor’s ill: and charity is the fullness of the law.” This law is not written on tables of stone but is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to us. Therefore the law of God is charity. To it the mind of the flesh is not subject, neither indeed can be. But when, to put fear into the mind of the flesh, the works of charity are written upon tables, we have the law of works, the letter killing the transgression. When charity itself is shed abroad in the hearts of believers,...
More to the people: the other precepts were communicated to Moses. The Chaldean and others gives a contrary turn to the Hebrew, "and he ceased not "ever since to instruct us. (Calmet)
Moses gives the sense, not the very words of the decalogue, in which he is not guilty of any lie. (St. Augustine, q. 8.) (Du Hamel)
