He has swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.
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Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
The hypocrite desires to know the revelations of God, yet [he does] not to practice them. He would speak sagely but not live so. For this reason, then, he does not do what he knows, and even that which he knows he loses. For since he does not unite wholesome practice with his knowledge, despising purity of right practice, he loses the knowledge also. Therefore, the “riches” of the sacred law that he “swallowed” in reading, he vomits in forgetting. And God “casts them out of his belly,” in that what he fails to do is by a righteous judgment rooted altogether out of his memory. God will not allow him to keep the precepts of God with his words only, but which he did not practice in his life. Hence it is said by the prophet, “But to the wicked God said, ‘Why should you declare my statutes? For what reason should you take my covenant in your mouth?’ ” If at any time the hypocrite should seem to retain these words of instruction in his mouth until the end, he will be condemned the more on th...
17. The hypocrite desires to know the revelations of God, yet not to practise them. He would speak sagely, but not live so. For this reason, then, that he does not do what he knows, even that which he knows he loses, that forasmuch as he does not unite pure practice with his knowledge, contemning purity of right practice he loses the knowledge also. Therefore the ‘riches’ of the Sacred Law, which he ‘swallowed’ in reading, he vomits in forgetting, and God ‘casts them out of his belly,’ in that what he would not observe to do, by a righteous judgment He roots out of his recollection, that at all events he should not keep the precepts of God in the tongue, which he kept not in his life. Whence it is said by the Prophet; But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, and that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? [Ps. 50, 16] Which words of instruction if it ever at any time chance that the hypocrite should seem to retain in his mouth until the e...
