Numbers 16:39

When the divine lesson was read just now, dearly beloved, we heard that our Lord told Moses to forge the censers in which those haughty, rebellious men had offered incense, beat them flat and fasten them to the altar as a sign of the rebellious and proud. "Because the sinners have consecrated the censers at the cost of their lives," said the Lord, "have them hammered into plates to cover the altar, because in being presented before the Lord they have become sacred." By this figure it seems to have been shown that those censers which Scripture calls brazen represent the sacred writings. Heretics put strange fire in these writings, that is, they introduce a perverse meaning and a sense that is foreign to God and contrary to the truth, thus offering to the Lord an incense that is not sweet but abominable. If we bring these brazen censers, that is, words of the heretics, to the altar of God where there is divine fire, the true preaching of the faith, the same truth will shine all the better in comparison with what is false.

With God, as we are given to understand, nothing is useless, nothing idle; but even those things which seem fit to be alienated and cast away by men are found to have some necessary function. This understanding is suggested to us by the present reading, which makes mention of the censers of Korah and of the rest who sinned along with him — that God commands that not even these be thrown away, but that from them beaten plates be made, and that the altar be encircled with them. Scripture therefore relates that, by the command of God, "Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest took," it says, "the bronze censers, which those who were burned up had offered, and they made of them plates, and set them upon the altar, for a memorial to the children of Israel, that no stranger who is not of the seed of Aaron should draw near to lay incense before the Lord, lest it should happen as with Korah and his conspiracy, as the Lord had spoken by the hand of Moses." Plainly in a certain place the Lord says through the prophet: "My counsels are not as your counsels, nor my thoughts as your thoughts." If this case were being judged today among men, and an examination held among the leaders of the churches concerning those men who, teaching things at variance with the churches, endured the vengeance of divine retribution, would it not be judged that whatever they had spoken, whatever they had taught, whatever also they had left in writing, should all alike perish together with their very ashes? But the judgments of God are not as our judgments. For hear how, concerning the censers of those who had risen up against the prophet of God, plates are commanded to be made and to be fastened around the altar. Korah holds the figure of those who rise up against the faith of the Church and the doctrine of the truth. It is written, then, of Korah and of his company that they offered incense of strange fire in bronze censers. The strange fire indeed is commanded by God to be scattered and poured out, but "the censers," it says, "because they are sanctified, make of them beaten plates, and encircle the altar with them, because they were offered before the Lord and are sanctified." This therefore seems to me to be shown through this figure: that those censers, which Scripture names as bronze, hold the figure of the divine Scripture. To this Scripture heretics, laying strange fire upon it — that…