1 Samuel 12:14

Hence, adding further, he says: "Now therefore, your king is here, whom you have chosen and requested. Behold, your God has given you a king. If you will fear God and serve Him and hear His voice and not provoke the mouth of the Lord, then both you and the king who rules over you will continue following the Lord your God. But if you will not hear the voice of the Lord, but provoke His words, the hand of the Lord will be against you and against your fathers." 7. These things are certainly not mystical but historical in every respect. For where both prelates and subjects lead a reprobate life, they equally undergo the punishment of divine vengeance. But because good things are spoken of separately and evil things separately, those things for which the hand of the Lord is foretold as coming upon them must be considered more carefully. What then does it mean when he says: "If you will fear the Lord and serve Him," unless that many dread the judgments of divine severity and yet do not cease to do wicked things? With a trembling heart indeed they think upon future judgments, but conquered by present pleasure, they by no means avoid committing evil. Rightly therefore after the fear of the Lord, service to Him is mentioned: because that fear alone is worthy of approval which, while it shakes the mind, draws it to the pursuit of good works. Likewise, because there are some who through the fear of the Lord reject certain evils and do some good things, and yet neither fully abandon evil nor sufficiently perform good, it is added: "And you will hear His voice." He who hears the voice of the Lord both fully does good and utterly abandons evil. But these same good works must be held in the delight of sweetness, not in the estimation of harshness. For those to whom the things commanded by the Lord always seem hard and harsh gradually fall away and fail. For this reason Truth says through Himself: "For My yoke is sweet and My burden is light" (Matt. 11:30). For this reason John says: "His commandments are not heavy" (1 John 5:3). They are indeed not heavy for the elect: because while they seek the glory of eternal life with great desire, they gladly bear the precepts of the Gospel. The mouth of the Lord can also be understood as the preaching of perfect charity. For He wished, as it were, to show the endearments of His mouth when He said: "This is My commandment, that you…

If you fear the Lord and serve Him, etc. It is understood of all that he noted; because evidently by their merits, as the rule of their first king, so the entire kingdom which they demanded against the will of God, would have worse times in its latter days than in its earlier ones: and meanwhile, as long as they feared God, they would be blessed with good kings; and as often as they neglected Him, they would be punished with evil kings: and finally, when wickedness increased, they would exchange the kingdom itself, along with freedom and homeland, for captivity or death. Likewise, the sign of transgression and the hard-heartedness of the people was no small matter, and the more terrible because it manifested itself in a way unfamiliar to those regions: voices and rain during the wheat harvest, which in the promised land throughout the entire summer only come by great miracles, to thus signify that all who desire to rule themselves against God's long-recognized will, and to serve their own desires, are acting in an improper order: in a time when after receiving the Word they ought to bear ripe fruits of good works, they demonstrate by their disordered morals that they still need the correction or exhortation of the divine voice to teach them the elements of the beginnings of God's words. What if someone seeks to explain this reading allegorically? It easily occurs, considering that Samuel, as the king walked before Israel, declared that he was now old, but from his youth he had lived innocently before them with witnesses from the Lord and His Christ. Because now, with the prophetic foretellings reigning in the Church Lord Jesus Christ, the books of the law and the prophets indeed bear witness to Him; and everywhere affirm, that, with the witness of the Father and the Son, and indeed the Holy Spirit, the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good. Let no place be given to a Manichaean or his associates, in which they might blame the other writings of Scripture, not even one jot can pass from it, nor the giver of the same: nor does anyone who knows himself to be redeemed by the grace of new light doubt that the figures of the prophets have not aged. What is it then when he says he did not take anyone's ox or donkey? Because evidently the prophetic and legal Scripture did not deprive anyone of the triple duty of rightly dealing with a neighbor, or…