For we who have believed do enter into rest, as he said,
As I have sworn in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest:
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Read Chapter 4
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
It is faith that opens heaven; but faith animated by charity, nourished by good works, and perfected by mortification of the senses. God only enters into his rest after the accomplishment of his works, and shall we expect to enter before we accomplish what he has given us to do? Let us fear, but in hoping; let us hope, but in labouring.
The works. Were finished.; for these two rests were passed long before his prophecy: therefore David must speak of some rest that was to come afterwards, when he said: To-day, if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts Therefore it must needs follow that some day of rest, some sabbatism, as he calls it, after his time, must remain for the people of God, that should not harden their hearts: and from hence he concludes that David had in view that eternal rest of happiness which the Messias was to obtain for us, a rest without end in the kingdom of heaven.
Let us hasten, therefore, or as it is in the Greek, let us make it our endeavour, to gain ...
For we who have believed, he says, do enter into rest. From what this is evident, he adds: as He said, as I have sworn in My wrath, if they shall enter into My rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. This indeed, is not evidence that we shall enter in, but that they did not enter in. What then? Thus far he aims to show that as that rest does not hinder the speaking of another rest, so neither does this [exclude] that of Heaven. Up to this point then, he wishes to show that they [the Israelites] did not attain to the rest.
